Don’t Let a Botched Facebook IPO Fool You

Posted by Jon Thomas, 19 Jun 2012

Story CEO and Chief Editorial Officer Kirk Cheyfitz isn't ashamed to disclose that he not only bought 200 shares of the Facebook IPO at the opening price of $38, but also bought 100 more after it dipped below $30. He's sticking by the social media behemoth, not because he has faith in it as advertising platform, but because he understands why Facebook is not friends with the Madison Avenue establishment.

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The Future of (Auto)Mobile Advertising

Posted by Adam Uhrynowski, 25 Jan 2012

Growing up, all I wanted was a black Pontiac TransAm that spoke to me and helped me fight crime through a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of criminals operating above the law. What I got was a 1985 Peugeot 505s with cigarette burns on the canvas seats and a tape player that didn't have a reverse button. Cars have come a long way since the "forward-thinking" days of Knight Rider. Cars not only speak to us, they can drive for us, give us directions, and show the kids some Dora the Explorer while en route to a ski trip in Vermont. And this is just the beginning.

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GM Fights Brand Bullies with Social Media

Posted by Luke Dringoli, 26 Oct 2009

When General Motors suffered from financial troubles this year, bloggers and social media types were fast to feed the frenzy. Some of them, including WebInkNow.com blogger David Meerman Scott, leveraged their prominence on the web to gain even more traction than the more objective journalists.

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Skin deep advertising

Posted by Jim Boulton, 07 Feb 2009
This Japanese ad, that uses a fembot to sell insect repellent, has totally bamboozled me. Usually, there's a drop of far-fetched, twisted logic behind even the most dismal ads (Iggy Pop selling insurance for example) but using a robot to sell insect repellent? I just don't get it.
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GM’s Inauthentic Brand Story

Posted by Kirk Cheyfitz, 24 Nov 2008
As General Motors and its US competitors slide closer to oblivion, GM, the leader of the domestic auto-making pack, still fails to understand that survival in the post-advertising age demands that it tell an authentic story with all its words, images and actions. Begging the taxpayers for survival money, GM is displaying the same inauthentic approach to communicating that has driven its business into the dirt for the past quarter century. If you want to cast yourself as the down-on-your-luck-but-deserving recipient of a government bailout, you don’t fly to D.C. in a $50-million-plus private jet. (Virtually every member of the US Congress and the news media now has pointed this out.) And you don’t get off the plane with no story about what you plan to do with the taxpayers’ money. (Similarly, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, when asked if he would work for $1 a year in exchange for government loans said, "I think I'm okay where I am." See taxpayer reaction here. It's brutal.)
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