Short Takes: Paris stops

Good book to read if you're interested in Shakespeare & Company: Time Was Soft There, by Jeremy Mercer. Documents the experience of living and working at the famous bookstore in Paris.

You've Been Selected for Inclusion into The Who's Who of Executives and Professionals

i think this is really good direct marketing. you've been selected!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Strathmore <info@mktgsystems.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 5:28 PM
Subject: You've Been Selected for Inclusion into The Who's Who of Executives and Professionals
To: XXXXXXX

Dear Executive,

You were recently chosen as a potential candidate to represent your professional community in the 2009-10 Edition of Who's Who among Executives and Professionals.

We are please to inform you that your candidacy was formally approved October 12th, 2009. Congratulations.

The Publishing Committee selected you as a potential candidate based not only upon your current standing, but focusing as well on criteria from executive and professional directories, associations, and trade journals. Given your background, the Director believes your profile makes a fitting addition to our publication.

There is no fee nor obligation to be listed. As we are working off of secondary sources, we must receive verification from you that your profile is accurate. After receiving verification, we will validate your registry listing within seven business days.

Once finalized, your listing will share prominent registry space with thousands of fellow accomplished individuals across the globe, each representing accomplishment within their own geographical area.

To verify your profile and accept the candidacy, please  visit here. Our registration deadline for this year's candidates is December 31, 2009. To ensure you are included, we must receive your verification on or before this date. On behalf of our Committee I salute your achievement and welcome you to our association.

Sincerely Yours,

J. Edward Simmons
Vice President, Research Division

Strathmore's Who’s Who
26 Bond St.
Westbury NY 11590

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail communication and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information for the use of the designated recipients named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of it or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please delete the communication and unsubscribe from the mailing using the options available in this email.

This message was sent to XXX by info@mktgsystems.com

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23-35A Steinway St, Astoria, NY, 11105

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re:direct launches

At the DMA Conference in San Diego last week, OgilvyOne launched re:direct, a movement to reinvigorate creativity in the direct marketing industry.

Above is the video we played at our cocktail reception. It was part of a print->mobile ad experience as well as PR (guest column in AdAge, press release) and social media. The re:direct blog is here and you can follow us on twitter @re_direct.

Rory Sutherland at TED

Very funny+smart perf by Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman, including highlights of Diamond Shreddies towards the end (14:00ish).

Short Takes - Torrey Pines

Ezra Pound in Print

The West Side Spirit and Our Town published a piece of mine about dog parenthood, featuring Ezra. You can find it in this week's street boxes on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side of Manhattan, or over here.

Early firsts : Ecommerce and Dayparting

I think I’m getting sentimental or just paranoid of my memory going. I’m thinking back to early digital experiences and realizing how early on I emigrated from advertising to the web.

In 1995, America On-Line was very precious and didn’t allow anything commercial (this would be amusing years later when it became a shopping mall), but CompuServe had an online store where you could, get this, buy directly. I was a copywriter at FCB and for our client Rayovac Batteries, and with Sean Connolly and Adam Gargani, we set up a mini-store in what would be one of the first ecommerce plays for a packaged good. I wrote sell copy in formats I had never done before, and within a few weeks, we had sold thirty (30!) sets of rechargeable batteries. I remember being excited, feeling the rush of actually selling something directly to people.

Just a few months later, Nabisco wanted to be among the first corporate web sites, so my art director Miguel and I concepted a Nabisco “town,” where Town Hall would have corporate and HR information, the park would have Oreos, a cafe would have Cream of Wheat, and so on. We created the design comps but to program it, we went over to then-True North partner Robert Greenberg & Associates on West 39th Street, who seemed to be the only ones in town who knew how to actually program it. (I would return ten years later to work there as a creative director when it was hot interactive shop R/GA). Realizing that people could come to nabisco.com at any hour of the day, we suggested it go dark at night and those crazy programmers were able to do it. Yup, this is one of the earliest examples of day-parting on the web. Later, there were tons more virtual towns for brands but this was before all that.

I'll try to update this with screengrabs but my images are all on FLOPPY disks ;-)