Marcie's blog

Mad Men has become the iconic go-to TV show for those mad about advertising,  business life, the 1960s,  unbridled smoking and drinking,  adultery,  the oh-so-smoldering Don Draper.

Dear Effete (I pray to God you're a woman):
Men like sports because it's the manly thing to do. War is not all it's cracked up to be and lately it's getting an extremely bad name, so sports does it for us. 

BUT NOW IT'S KILLING ADVERTISING  AGENCIES.

It's long been a saying  among advertising people:  Word of mouth is the very best way to convince someone to try a product or service.  Credible PR was a strong second. Advertising, however brilliant, came in third.

So...some Detroit City Council members are questioning the wisdom of a regional authority buying and running Cobo convention center.  And they are looking for allies—even among the dearly departed.  What, for example, would the late Mayor Coleman Young say?

Of course, everyone agrees Cobo needs a big time facelift and expansion.  And that Detroit doesn’t have the big time bucks to do this.   Still, some Council folks and City residents oppose regional ownership simply because Cobo belongs to the City, it is a City jewel.  Some question the fees being paid to the City for Cobo’s parking garage. 

For many, however, the biggest problem is that the regional deal does not give contracting preferences to Detroit businesses and residents.  And they infer that Coleman Young would stand with them in insisting that Detroit should be Cobo’s primary contracting beneficiary. 

This could be hard to refute … unless someone happened to know exactly what Mayor Young wanted to communicate when he expanded Cobo in the late 1980’s.  Well, it so happens that Brogan & Partners was Cobo’s ad agency during that time and we needed Mayor Young’s OK for ads and TV spots. And this is what he wanted said about job preferences in communications from 1987:

So SURPRISE! to all those who loved Mayor Young for being completely Detroit-centric. 

And BIGGER SURPRISE! to all those who disliked Mayor Young for not being regional enough. 

Or is just me who is befuddled by the marketing strategy behind the M&M advertising that been running for the past year or two? Where the candies are anthropomorphized with legs and eyeballs and hair... And often do shticks between some not-so-bright boy M's & a very vampy girl M.