You Sleep When You Die

So you know Apple made the Super Bowl ‘super’ with its ‘1984’ Macintosh commercial. But I bet you didn’t know that Chiat/Day – the agency behind the commercial – almost got FIRED for it!

Every revolution starts with a single shot. In everything we see in life, some event or breakthrough opened the gate. Most people will be glued to their TV sets this weekend watching the Super Bowl. Did you ever wonder how it got ‘super?’ After all, there are championships in every sport, but only one Super Bowl. How did it really happen?

Within the past couple of weeks, GM announced that it will start hearing pitches for select Chevrolet assignments and for Cadillac’s national and regional dealer accounts. Not long before that, VW announced that it was parting ways with Crispin after four years. Should we chalk up this rampant changing of the guard to tough economic times?

Absolutely not.

Many industry experts were surprised about the recent announcement that VW and Crispin are parting ways. After all, VW’s market share actually improved in recent months and although sales were still down, the decline wasn’t as steep as the automotive industry as a whole. In addition, the four-year partnership resulted in some memorable and much talked about advertising.

Crispin certainly helped elevate VW to a new level of ‘coolness.’ Unfortunately, to be cool is often to be niche. And when your job is to market a brand that is dependent on the mainstream masses, coolness alone just isn’t going to cut it. And that’s precisely where Crispin missed it with VW.

Companies shouldn’t dwell on the past…and neither should their ads. Instead, you should concentrate on always pushing forward, always striving to achieve bigger and better things, never being satisfied with the status quo. What good is issuing apology ads going to do, especially when most banks, insurance companies and automakers don’t feel any individual responsibility for the predicament in which the American public now finds themselves?