Tony Schwartz, 1923-2008: his ‘daisy ad’ changed political advertising.

Even though he became famous in an era of black & white and radio, Tony Schwartz taught core lessons of communication to everyone in the media. Whether they knew it was coming from him or not.

His most famous piece was this campaign spot for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, which, lore has it, ran only once (and never even mentioned the opponent’s name) but was responsible for defeating Barry Goldwater in a landslide.

My mentor, Dale Pon, not only insisted I buy and read Tony’s book “The Responsive Chord,” but that I should meet the man himself. It was an incredible experience, and I learned more in one sitting than in any other single experience I’d had. From then on, I made the book required reading among my promotion staff.

Check it out. The things you think you know because you’re smart are probably things that Tony was smart about before we were born.

or, What online video can learn from the coffee business.

There’s a pretty incredible thing happening in the coffee business here in New York and other cities all over the country — independent, locally-owned coffee shops are springing up that are giving Starbucks a run for their money by paying obsessive attention to quality of their product and creating a better, more unique experience than an international supercorporation possibly can.

I first noticed this in my own neighborhood when I wandered into Cafe Grumpy at a friend’s recommendation, or, more accurately, his obsession — he wouldn’t stop talking about it. Cafe Grumpy (their name is a poke at Starbucks baristas) (deleted, see Caroline’s comment below) started out in Brooklyn, then began conquering Chelsea with their ultra-fancy single-brew Clover coffee machines, which people obsess over; fair trade sourced and locally roasted coffee; and super-rich, hand-poured espresso drinks — no more expensive, and often cheaper, than the mass-produced ones at Starbucks — where they draw little designs with the foamed milk, part of a fun new trend called latte art. The coffee was noticeably tastier than most other cups I’d ever had, the place was cool and welcoming, and being the silly old hipster I am, I was soon hooked enough to start walking several blocks out of my way to stop in on my walks between home and work.

Sam pours up a cafe latte at Cafe Grumpy, from their Flickr stream.

But Cafe Grumpy’s just one example. Joe is opening shops all over the city, there’s the tiny Gimme Coffee in Soho and Brooklyn, Gorilla in Park Slope, and a couple Ninth Street Espresso locations, one of which broke off on its own as Everyman Espresso. In Los Angeles, there’s Groundwork coffee in Venice and Hollywood, my frequent hangout Kings Road, Intelligentsia (invading from Chicago), and the Latino-owned Sabor y Cultura. San Francisco’s got Ritual Roasters and Blue Bottle. In Austin, there’s the amazing Jo’s Coffee, creating some of the best new jobs for hipsters since Waterloo opened, and in Washington, D.C., there’s Tryst (their slogan: “no corporate coffee. no matching silverware”) and the fast-growing, famously black-owned Mayorga with over ten locations already. Many of these businesses are opening franchises in local airports and train stations — the places you’d expect to see yet another Starbucks — benefiting from programs to attract local businesses. And like Starbucks or Whole Foods’ Allegro team (a bunch of whom I met randomly last week in Austin, and who seemed uniformly passionate and smart), these businesses take personal pride in sharing the sourcing of their coffees, even visiting the growers and posting photos of their trips on Flickr.

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Everyone here knows that Justin Johnson is the cat’s pajamas. After all, aside from being our beta colleague (he started doing promos for Channel Frederator almost 18 months before Next New Networks formed) and mentor to us all, he was the defining catalyst for bringing Erik Beck and Steve Nelson into Indy Mogul (aside from being a primary contributor).

But it’s great when others around the media world recognize how wonderful people around here are, like Tilzy.tv’s Josh Cohen has done with Justin. Tilzy’s the only place consistently writing intelligent analysis of internet television (I emphasize the ‘writing’ because, while there are a lot of words spilled on the web, very little of it is actually written well). So, we welcome them into our world with great joy, whether they like what we’re up to (often) or not (sometimes).

Thanks for the Justin shout out guys.

(via Emil Rensing)

This post has absolutely nothing to do with the internet, or networks, or any of the stuff we do here.

I’ve been cleaning out my drawers lately which caused me to scan some of my stuff and throw it on my Flickr page. Some of it’ll eventually get linked to on my old branding agency archive, but who knows about the rest.

The picture above is from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. It’s from a random collection of photographs I found in a box at a junk shop specializing in then-uncool mid-century furniture. I couldn’t resist the hundreds of vintage prints of these amazing deco buildlings I’d really only seen in amazing stylized illustrations from the fair. I had no idea what I was going to do with the snaps –hell, I still don’t know what I’m going to do with them– but they were great just to have.

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In the late 70s I was producing jazz records and became friendly with Michael Cuscuna, soon to become one of the medium’s most revered producers and the leading reissue producer in history. (more…)

It occurred to me at a lunch last week that Next New Networks had something going on for it that we’d been taking for granted. So spontaneously during a meeting I sent an email a few folks around the office:

“Subject: An unpromoted ‘network’

“I think we should non-launch a new network. ‘Non-launch’ in the sense of put up a page with our platform, put the video on, put it out on our distribution platforms that will take it, blog it, BUT don’t particularly work hard on it.

“Oh, the network? The NNN Promo Network.

“Once a day (a week? I don’t know) post three (four, two?) Of our coolest promos.

“Why? Why not? They’re cool, it’ll make NNN and each of our networks look cooler.

“Our promos are assets. Let’s use them in another interesting way.”

So, we’re starting. Spot Crunch will be rolling soon. In fact, we’re already posting on YouTube.

My media “career really took off as a promo guy and I’ve been enjoying thinking about them for many years. Our team, superbly led by Justin and Alan, is doing work that blows me away. So, instead of just using the as promos the way they were meant to be seen –in the middle of networks– why not show them as interesting entertainment in their own right? It’s the web! Try it differently.

Will anyone like Spot Crunch? Will you like Spot Crunch? I guess we’ll see.

Is there anything I really need to say here?

I had a great time meeting Astra P.S. Dorf and Ivano Leoncavallo for the first time at lunch today. They’re two of the principals at a very cool and successful branding/desgin/motion graphics company called CA Square, located in the very fashionable Soho neighborhood in New York.

We immediately found we had a lot in common, from young children to Ivano’s tenure at MTV Networks and Astra’s with my old friend Lee Hunt. I subjected them to much too much of a too typical Fred/talk about NNN and what a exciting moment we’re having. Hopefully they’ll still want to do stuff with us.

Geez, these guys are good.

Mike Lazzo is one of the smartest folks ever in cable television. He started as a cartoon scheduler at SuperstationTBS, impressed everyone around and was named the founding programmer at Cartoon Network. While he was using his considerable left brain to make CN super successful, his right brain was churning ideas like crazy and his innovative production of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast begat his explosion of [adult swim].

Mike put together an incredible network team, made up entirely of not-the-usual-network-suspects, probably a large part of their success. They were focused on the viewers, all the viewers, and nothing but the viewers. They spoke to them in every way possible and were the first to have a deep understanding of how to actually use the internet to build the relationship between what’s essentailly a corporate enterprise and a diffuse bunch of geeks. And the audience has paid them back in spades with a loyalty that must be the envy of absolutely every other television executive in America.

This post is a continuation of the “My Favorite Brands” series, but somehow the idea of a band as a ‘brand,’ while incredibly popular in the music business, completely rubs me the wrong way (in fact, I’d argue it is one of dozens of reasons their biz in flushing down the toilet).

But, it’s true, great artists of all stripes –notice “great”– have many of the attributes by which we would define a brand, and to me The Beatles are the explemplar of this phenomenon in the last 50 years.

Here’s what I’ve always admired:
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