“It’s what I call the old-comfortable-shoe phenomenon,” says Jonathan McHugh, a music supervisor, director and founding member of the Guild of Music Supervisors. “You give people something familiar, like Destiny Child’s ‘Say My Name’ in the new ‘Candyman,’ and all of a sudden they’re more engaged in the content and predisposed to enjoy what they’re watching because they love the song.” Says Brian Monaco, president and global chief marketing officer at Sony Music Publishing: “It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is to catch people’s attention. Maybe they’re not paying as much attention to the trailer, and they start to hear the chorus of the song, and they go, ‘Wait, I know this song.’ They start paying attention, and now they’re watching the trailer.” At Sony and in his four-times-a-year writing camps, Monaco has teams of writers working on reimagined versions of legendary artists’ catalogs. He has entirely reworked ELO’s discography, has redone a large portion of the Beatles’ songs and now is tackling Paul Simon’s newly acquired hefty songbook.

A look into the hoaxes and dubious genesis tales of cult musicians. --- However, would the music of Jungle really, truly have taken off in the way it did if it was presented honestly by the creators from the off? Would two white guys from a failed indie band who went to a £20,000 a year private school, knocking out generic laptop music, have been the buzz band of the year? […] The underlying question around all of this remains, of course: why? Pretending to be a retired Serbian factory worker is of course not the same as racial or cultural appropriation but they are linked and the answer is somewhat axiomatic in the fact that articles like this are being written. More pieces have been written about this kind of music because of both its backstory and its likely fakery than ever would have been written if some Scottish band started knocking out some retro 1970s German music. The real answer to this approach arguably comes when McFadyen is asked about the ongoing success of his project, as volumes continue to sell. “It’s been very satisfying to see the music spread naturally through word of mouth. Thankfully, as the advertising budget has been, and remains, zero.”

“It’s a great move,” said Adrienne Keene, a professor at Brown University, author of the popular Native Appropriations blog and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “It makes me really happy to think that there’s now going to be an entire generation of folks that are growing up without having to see that every time they walk in the grocery store.” But Keene thinks the company missed an important opportunity in not explaining why they removed the image of the Indian maiden from their brand. “It could have been a very strong and positive message to have publicly said, ‘We realized after a hundred years that our image was harmful and so we decided to remove it,’” Keene said. “In our current cultural moment, that’s something people would really respond to.”

Buttondown is a small, elegant tool for producing newsletters. The minimalist interface makes it easy for you to write great emails; the automation acts like the editorial assistant you wish you had, by checking for typos, broken links, or malformed images; the portable subscription widget makes it really easy to grow your audience from wherever. And then Buttondown gets out of your way. Buttondown's emphasis is on speed and ease of use over complex featuresets or powerful automation.

Reaching the unreachables is what RBMA is all about. It’s worrying. Especially when you consider what’s in the stuff.

Jacob Bakkila could have made his own Twitter account to post gibberish to. But the point was to appropriate something people were already paying attention to. What we thought was marketing rediscovered as art has turned out to be art rediscovered as marketing.

For some reason, as soon as you describe something as a brand all this fake science marketing mysticism gets invoked and paralysing decisions get made.

All of which to say that Springsteen is very canny about his legacy. He’s smart and he should be. And he’s done a lot of good and made a ton of incredible music and inspired and even changed the lives of many people, including mine. But you have to remember to keep those two contradictory ideas about him in mind at the same time.

A schoolgirl and a former traveling Bible salesman helped turn deodorants and antiperspirants from niche toiletries into an $18 billion industry.

On one basic level, what happened in 1969 with Wonder—and what happens every day with mp3 leaks—illuminates a very basic economic fact: Official markets will always lead to unsanctioned ones that feed off of the legit products—and often operate much more efficiently. Consumer desire has never automatically limited itself to strictly legal operations, particularly when fans can convince themselves (often rightly) that they’re doing no harm to the artists.

Journalism in its purest form is a transaction. But inch by inch, story by story, deal by deal, we are giving away our right to ask a simple question and expect a simple answer, one that can’t be taken back. It may seem obvious, but it is still worth stating: The first draft of history should not be rewritten by the people who make it.

They don’t show the product. They don’t explain the product. They make the target audience feel stupid. They make the Geniuses look like unsupportive know-it-alls. There’s no clear call to action.

‘The coal companies are lying to you. Coal energy is not clean energy. It is the dirtiest form of energy generation we have. The coal companies are spending millions of dollars hoping you’ll forget this. A slick ad campaign doesn’t change the truth.’

An unsigned band's success story. Via TopSpin forum.

This success story is almost entirely the result of efforts by my friend Mike Pooley, who works at Mountain Apple Company and is about to go free-lance to offer his digital marketing services to the world! “These efforts are a great example of how an artist can capitalize on viral buzz. By linking to their free-download offer from the YouTube video, Mountain Apple Company harnessed the video’s exposure to increase their fan base. Their store is beautiful & well-designed, and their marketing efforts drove direct-to-fan sales around the globe.”

‘Ian Roger’s presentation from New Music Seminar Los Angeles, February 2011.’ A great overview of how bands have used Topsin and online marketing to great success. Some good takeaways here: a) Don't sell anything until you have a few thousand people on your mailing list, b) Until that point, focus most of all on getting known, c) Do something small every week and something big every month, d) Communicate honestly and treat your fans well.

"Commercial concerns are both implicit and invisible in the consumption of content."

"'I do not see any socially redeeming purpose being served by these beverages. At the end of the day, they’re aimed at a young, inexperienced market for the purpose of enabling them to become rapidly intoxicated.'"

On "shortening your workweek" in every way: outsourcing, clever promotion techniques, social engineering, and focusing on the right things.

On shortsighted advertising schemes and the power an arbitrary number assigned to products could have on the decisions of consumers.

Okay, seriously, I can tear out the page of my journal with sketches for this idea from last year. ;-) An awesome idea, though.

Entertaining ad campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I'm not going to start eating BK, but this is tasty.

"Steve Jobs gives a legendary keynote at Macworld SF every January, launching products and giving a state of the union view of things at Apple. What if you invested $10,000 the day before the keynote, then sold at the end of the keynote day?"

The head of a company that makes videos go viral explains exactly how it's done. The commenters go crazy. Very interesting in the specific sense, but even more so in the overall evolution of media.

Another take on the "NYC" portion of the recent and much-maligned NYC taxi redesign. It is praised. The logo on its own is quite interesting, and the possibilities shown with it as a "vessel" are cool.

"A series of professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories," including Razors for Women, Low-Carb Lifestyle, and Packaged Rice.

Customer service done right.

A superb guide for anyone proposing ideas to clients who challenge you in potentially frustrating ways.

On writing good copy, especially headlines.