A while back we were asked to contribute a small chapter to a forth coming book, "The Portland Bottom Line, Practices for Your Small Business from America's Hotbed of Sustainability." Of course we happily accepted since we always jump at any chance to unfold the many crazy stories we have from years of being in the ad biz. Plus we figured it's only a matter time in this town before the tall tales we tell will be as stale as your senile grandfather's fishing stories.
However The book isn't stale and is a collaboration of fifty small business people from Portland who share thier experiences and practices with sustainability in thier companies.The Portland Bottom Line also explores how small businesses can effectively and efficiently shift toward an more earth friendly way of working and still prosper.
Sales from the book go to help fund Mercy Corps Northwest a local charity who, according to their website,
"Mercy Corps Northwest works to assist motivated low-income individuals improve their lives through starting or expanding a small business. We provide funding, matched savings and other services that help clients increase their economic self-sufficiency through self-employment."
"The Portland Bottom Line" was co-edited by Peter Korchnak and Megan Strand, and hits the bookstores in November. So reserve your copy today. We know we will becuase aside from our love of telling ad biz war stories, we love seeing our names in print. But seriously folks, it's for a great cause. Buy it...and then ask us for an autograph.
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Some people have accused us of being more advertising deconstructionists over anything else. Fine. we'll accept that moniker since we're firm believers in the Putney Swope school of advertising.
For further proof of that here's the second in the Vision Trouble campaign that we've been working on:
Actors: Suzanne Peterson, Eugenio Marrazzo and Female Voice Over by Tiffany Garner. Makeup: Debra Rapoport
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There once was a simpler time in advertising when an ad campaign didn't drive people to a engage a social media site, which then connected a person to a smart phone app, which then connected a person to the company's product website, which then possibly would drive a sale of the product.
No, it was so much easier long, long ago and the formula was much simpler: Paint a giant proclaimation about your business and hope to attract attention and/or influence people to buy.
Granted, you never knew if the advertising really worked, or if that influx of customers buying a product was due to a sale at the local five and dime, but it sure was a grand idea. And quite frankly it was an even grander bit of flim flam that the ad industry used as its business model for the last 125 years.
Despite the hokum of this reasoning, talented craftsmen were still hired to ply thier trade in the pursuit of the elusive customer. And one of these craftsmen was the sign painter, who as I mentioned in my last post, are a dying breed.
So in a further salute to the lost art of sign painting, here are 15 examples of old hand painted ads. Some ugly, Some beautiful, but all testaments to an simpler age in advertising.
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Have you ever given any thought to the lost treasures of typography? We do. We love type and we love those folks whose job it once was to paint lettering by hand. It quickly become a lost art with the advent of printed billboards and then huge vinyl building wraps.
But while the craftsmen who apply this trade may have disappeared, if you look around you can still find relics of thier hand painted typography peeliing and cracking away on brick facades.
This past saturday we decided to ride our bikes around and see just how many random examples of painted lettering we could find that still existed here in Portland.
And to add to the fun, let's see if you the reader can identify where these are located. First one to correctly identify the locations will win a copy of "Typoshere: New Fonts to Make you Think" by Pilar Cano!
To enter just email your answers, your name and address to
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here's a gallery of the images to reference:
...OK, OK...#1 was just put in to throw you off, The "FREE" sign technically wasn't painted on a building nor was it a standard type font so we'll forgive you that one.
Contest rules: Open to US residents only. (We're too cheap to pay for foriegn mail delivery.) Deadline to enter 12:00AM PST, 8/1/2010. Portland residents have a decided edge on this contest but hey why should that stop you from trying?
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And to add to the fun, let's see if you the reader can identify where these are located. First one to correctly identify the locations will win a copy of "
