Author Archives: Michael Mandiberg

Terracycle upcycles waste and recycles corporate branding

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: November 13, 2010

Terracycle upcycles consumer waste into new salable goods. They primarily harvest their raw material from schoolchildren as part of charity drives, though they are now placing recycling stations at certain Walmart stores. At the Walmart centers they pay 3 cents per piece, but only for a narrow range of product packaging; the website supports a [...]

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Logorama – Ronald Raygun McDonald gets his revenge

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: February 22, 2010

[Oscars 2010 Mejor Cortometraje] – Logorama This is 16 minutes long animated film of logos and and advertising characters produced by a serious 3D house in France, and nominated for an Oscar, but yet in dire threat of lawsuits for use of corporate logos. At least this is according to the blogs, which, are… well… [...]

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Vintage Ad Browser

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: February 15, 2010

A site called Vintage Ad Browser has over 100,000 categorized advertisements from today all the way back to the 1840s. Categorized by type and date. A great resource for research. (tx @twhid)

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Advertisaphobia

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: February 8, 2010

Is there a word for the irrational and/or rational fear of becoming the target of direct marketers? Advertisaphobia? Adverphobia? Adphobia? Ad-phobia?

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This makes me angry

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: February 1, 2010

This makes me wish I had a big fat marker with me to cover this up in something other than this insidious shit. And i don’t really ever have the impulse to tag. Canal and Broadway. All you Chisel-tippers and KRINKers go after it.

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From the Archive… Q: Head Scarf?

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: January 28, 2010

From October 2008… this post was caught in WordPress limbo. I publish it now, well after this NYC microtrend has gone national, if not global. The questions remain the same, the scope has just increased… I’ve noticed a new NYC microtrend of people wearing billowy checkered cotton scarfs around their necks. They remind me distinctly [...]

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Who owns & who controls public space?

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: January 16, 2010

Two things happened on my bike today, one which is about advertising and the other isn’t but both are about public space and it’s uses and controls. One: who owns the street sign posts This morning I rode my bike to a not-so-close subway stop because I had to run into Manhattan for a meeting [...]

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Ad Creep: Health Insurers Bribe Users of Facebook’s Mafia Wars

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: January 14, 2010

I guess there is a reason they call it Mafia Wars. Business Insider has broken a story about insurance company shills paying Facebook users into sending emails to their Congressional Representatives opposing health care reform. This is interesting in the context of the Health Care debate (see the attempt to push Komen for the Cure [...]

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Give me my damn three feet!

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: January 14, 2010

Steve sent me someone’s inquiry that came in off of the AAA contact page. Usually these are either “hey you guys rock” or they are lost advertisers who try to sell ad space somewhere they shouldn’t and don’t get it when we shame them. Here’s the full email. I put it out there in full, [...]

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Corporate Giving, Social Networking, and the Devil

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: December 9, 2009

Corporate giving is a bad enough deal with the devil, but take corporate giving and mash it up with social networking, and wow! Not only does chase have you scurrying about to give them PR/branding impressions, they get all your personal data in the process.

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Exactly what are you selling me?

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: November 13, 2009

Give me Capitalism or Give Me Deatlh & Make Love not Capitalism On the LES of NYC. Too slick. What are they selling? Whose campaign is this? Just imagine for a moment: you sit down for dinner, and you are asked, would you like bottled, tap, or enhanced water tonight? is this a self help [...]

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30,000 feet, the final frontier

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: September 16, 2009

I’m on an airplane to San Francisco as I write this, we are somewhere over southern Nevada. but I will post it when I land. I wait, despite the fact that everyone on this flight was given a trial voucher for an in-air wifi service that is partnering with the airline I am flying on. [...]

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Portland Summer Advertising Smorgasbord

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: August 31, 2009

This is a mixed up collection of funny advertising pictures from my 5 weeks in Portland. Some funny, some tragic, some WTR R U Serious?!! The lamppost with all the flyers for music shows says “Dont Advertise” but… do they mean, don’t advertise anything other than indy rock. Or does no one care? At first [...]

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Be-twix and ad and a hard case

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: August 30, 2009

So the question is… is this a twix advertisement? or was it just that cool to paint a Twix logo on the back of your white portable radio in the heyday of 80′s graffiti-cool? Picture via Mariasa Olson’s flickr set IMG_FAN

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Its Tappening: Bottled Water is Joke

By Michael Mandiberg | Published: August 9, 2009

The folks at Tappening have released one of the funniest and smartest PSA-ish social education campaigns I’ve seen in a long time. Well, maybe since the New York Times Special Edition. Reports are these cute single color posters with white lies about the bottled water industry will be hitting the streets of NYC soon, if [...]

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