January 22, 2010
The broken economy and the resulting mood of pubic bitterness are more and more evident in advertising. One of the industry’s truisms – positive messages are more motivating than negative – is losing ground to ad themes that are blunt, in your face, even caustic. New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott looked at the trend as it appears in annual post-New-Year-resolution fitness ads, concluding, “The tone in many campaigns is less cheerful than in previous Januaries.” He cites the new Nicorette campaign that CNBC’s health-industry writer Mike Huckman has been blogging about. Its crude tagline – almost shocking hear in a broadcast commercial - is “Nicorette makes quitting suck less.” (Facing resistance to the crude language, Nicorette has euphemized the S-word in newer versions.) But if edginess sells these days, The New York Times’ Elliott quotes several executives advocating a more nuanced edginess. Wheaties’ very effective new tagline is “prepare to win.” It seems to say: expect to win, but also prepare well for the competition. But it says that without sounding rosy. As with much good advertising, it strikes a fine balance of messages.
January 20, 2010
While most people scurry through Disney theme parks enjoying the fun and spectacle, urban planners and architects notice Disney’s complex design. Sam Gennawey goes even deeper, stopping to inspect hidden strategies or whimsical details. His blog, Samland’s Disney Adventures, is a daily dissection of these intricacies. Recent posts include: what happens when you eavesdrop on Main Street’s old-fashioned hand-crank telephones; Disney’s Tiki Room interpretation of a traditional Hawaiian lanai; and Walt’s innovative strategy of a single park entrance leading to Main Street which “hubs” into the various lands at Disneyland, each of which lures and orients the visitor with a dominant architectural icon, e.g. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. (This approach has become a mainstay of new urbanist city planning.) As Gennawey says, “Samland is an urban planner’s view of the history and design of Disney’s North American parks plus some helpful touring tips.”
January 18, 2010
As the economic landscape continues to shift, Paolucci Communication Arts (PCA) continues to share its creative talents. (See our video on strategic partnerships, The Vault, here.) The most recent example of this pro-active business approach is the new PCA Strategic Alliance Program launched with long-time marketing professional D.E. Barber Company Inc. (DBC) www.DianeBarber.com.
The PCA Strategic Alliance Program provides like-minded marketing professionals the opportunity share contacts and resources, offering the best-quality work to their clients. The Agency has commissioned a select network of PCA ambassadors to make introductions into previously undiscovered fields. These individuals and smaller firms will then partner with PCA – its creative resources and integrated marketing approach – to boost business for these clients in cooperation with PCA Ambassadors.
”The world today is very different than it was just two years ago. Strategies, demands, budgets – all have changed. What hasn’t changed is the power of relationships. That’s why we choose to launch Read More
January 15, 2010
Used to be that Disneyland was Orange County’s only place for futuristic rail: You know, monorails, people movers. But the county will soon get two huge and transformational rail improvements. Anaheim will be the southern terminus of California’s high-speed rail, super-charging the city’s role as a transportation hub. Meanwhile, Metrolink commuter rail is about to expand daytime service, catalyzing smaller but equally important transit hubs in communities such as Fullerton, Orange and Santa Ana. It’s in these cities where new economic activity in the region will happen, via Transit Oriented Developments, or TODs.
The high-speed rail planned to connect Anaheim (and Los Angeles’ Union Station) with Las Vegas, San Francisco and Sacramento is one component of the emerging Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. A kind-of West Coast Grand Central Station, it will bring together Amtrak, Metrolink, bus service, shuttles, bikes/pedestrians, the high-speed rail and a “fixed guideway” train connecting to, naturally, Disneyland.
Paolucci Communication Arts’ Jack Skelley gets on board all these new developments in this article just published in Riviera magazine.
January 13, 2010
It may not be oozing profits as it did during the Aughts, but the U.S. homebuilding industry is showing signs of life. The Los Angeles Times today showcases Irvine’s Woodbury East community as an example of a once-stalled residential project emerging from the mire of the Great Recession. Don’t believe everything you read in newspapers? Then, chew on this: In just four short weeks last December, Santa Ana-based homebuilding start-up City Ventures sold all nine first-phase homes at Viscaya, a collection of 19 single-family residences outside San Diego. Is the builder using Jedi mind-tricks to convert these sales?
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January 11, 2010
25 years ago, Sonic Youth invaded the Los Angeles music scene from New York. They played a series of riveting shows (some of which this writer was fortunate to perform in with in another band) and established themselves as a new force in what became known as indie rock with albums such as Bad Moon Rising, EVOL, Goo and Sister. Sonic Youth returned to Los Angeles at the Wiltern Theater on January 9, focusing on new album The Eternal, but with encores featuring material from the mid-80s. Guitarist Lee Ranaldo mentioned to me after the show that the band decided to perform songs such as “Death Valley 69″ — also from the early period — to remember their first L.A. shows. The Wiltern performance was as powerful as ever. If anything, the band attacked the jagged rhythms and melodies even more fiercely. But it was the pensive intros and extended endings to each number that offered the most jarring beauty. Abstract, colorful, surging, transcendent… these instrumental waves of guitar bliss would surge into pure psychedelia if they weren’t also so deep, hard and heavy. Ranaldo’s “Walkin Blue” was a highlight: A wise and empathic message of comfort to friends. Which kind of sums the whole show.
Steve Appleford from Los Angeles Times also wrote a review, here.
January 11, 2010
Washington Technology Magnet Middle School in St. Paul has been transformed from an early 20th century brick schoolhouse to an open and tech-savvy teaching environment. That’s the conclusion of Architectural Record’s Chris Hudson in discussing the redesign by Cuningham Group Architecture, in the magazine’s New Schools of the 21st Century case studies.
Additions dating to the 1930s had jumbled the campus into “a rabbit warren of half-stories and narrow stairs. The only corridor connecting the east and west sides of the building, for example, was choked at one end by a 6-foot-wide stair,” writes Hudson.
So Cuningham Group replaced the center of the building with a three-story, skylit technology gallery that dramatically clarifies and eases circulation and gives the school the cutting-edge identity it sought. “The need for smaller and larger spaces different from that of classrooms isn’t going to go away as programs change,” says Cuningham Group project manager Margaret Parsons, AIA. “It’s the use or the function that may change.”
