What is MortarBlog if it is not a place of balance? A small oasis of transcendance in a sea of hyperbole and fluff? And what would we be if we didn’t point out when Johnny Consumer gives our heroes a black eye every now and then?

Take our pals at Crispin, who are laughing in the face of a significant decline in Miller Lite sales despite  another fabulous commercial and matching online viral support. From today’s Ad Age:

Not for the Faint of Heart: Crispin’s Rules for Digital
Jeff Hicks Gives a Five-Point Guide to a Post-Interruption World

Interruption as a tool is obsolete. Let ideas find the medium. Great ideas, not channels, create buzz. Get comfortable with consumers messing with your brand. Business results are the only measure of success.

However, in that time the brand’s sales have been less then stellar. Shipments were down 5% in the third quarter and down 3.6% over the six months through September, according to Beer Marketers Insights. In less then two years, Miller Lite tumbled from best-performing of the three domestic light beers to worst.

Ouch. Hey its advertising: no one knows for sure what will work. Read more here.

"With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, "Dove
Evolution," a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather,
Toronto, for the Unilever brand has reaped more than 1.7 million views
on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows "Ellen" and
"The View" as well as on "Entertainment Tonight." It’s also brought the
biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times
more than Dove’s Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year,
according to Alexa.com."

Where have you heard this before? (Regulars will remember that Careerbuilder’s Monk-e-Mail notched up a similar impact in a head to head with the Superbowl).

Also click here for Sarah’s post "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Be sure to run the videos.

Read the rest of Ad Age’s article here.

A friend of the Mortar’s found this poster on the Sunset Strip, and we say, if this kid doesn’t make it as a drummer, (and we hope he does) he’s got a future as a copywriter. Certainly, a phrase like “[Let’s] start the BIGGEST, most OUTRAGEOUS, fucking WILDEST party band to come SCREAMING out of the strip!!!” cuts through the clutter.  But what makes us hold our lighters aloft is the author’s obvious passion for his work. See, there are probably a thousand kids in L.A. who rock a paradiddle better than the Legendary Teenage Drummer. No matter how technically skilled he is-or-isn’t, someone better will come along tomorrow. Proving once again that relative merits are just that – relative. If you make a nice widget, your competitor can make a nicer one tomorrow. But it’s damn near impossible to compete with true passion. Which the Legendary Teenage Drummer has in spades. Just something to keep in mind the next time you’re thinking about your message. Tell your story as if you  “…sure as hell can’t do anything else”.  Because, as LTD correctly notes, "…the BIGGEST sin in rock n’ roll is being BORING!" 

We concur wholeheartedly.

I walk past one of those seasonal Spirit Halloween stores on my way to work each day, and it got me thinking about the business model. Found some interesting articles on the subject thanks to Ye Ole Internet. Who woulda expected such a gargantuan dollar amount in spending?

The most popular costumes each year are inevitable characters from the big screen, Acridge pays attention to movies year-round. Pirates of the Caribbean costumes are best-sellers this year, he said.

“Halloween is so pop-culture oriented,” Acridge said. “Lord of the Rings is dead and Superman is king.”

Read full article: "Trick-or-treaters spending big to get spooky Halloween".