ARTICLES

COLUMN: Bouncing back and forth between the worlds of marketing and music, Scott G took some time off from writing about advertising in order to cover the musical madness known as the NAMM Show. Upon his return, he finds the communications industry to be semi-chaotic, with zombies, reptiles and torture-porn all over your TV.

COLUMN: Political advertisements are frequently insulting, misleading, intrusive, divisive, belligerent, harmful, and/or just packed with lies. Everybody, it seems, hates political advertisements, but one man has decided to try to do something about it. Scott G interviews Tim Warner about a controversial proposal for grading political ads.

COLUMN: Announcing the number one fastest-selling product of its kind released on a Wednesday aimed at 29-54-year-old left-handed female residents of Midwestern states! You wouldn't put much stock in that as a marketing boast, but Scott G points out that sales figures often approach that level of absurdity.

COLUMN: A public restroom. Dripping faucets. Double entendres. Another annoying pharmaceutical spot for medication that shrinks prostate glands? Nope, it's for corporate polluter ExxonMobil. Scott G admires the photography while hoping the communications industry holds the big Ex up to ridicule.

COLUMN: Yes, they attempted to ruin a lovely song. Yes, the company admits to firing the person who leaked the video. And yes, they are wasting money on an executive with enough spare time to trade misspelled barbs with people on YouTube. But in defending its horrific version of U2's "One," Bank of America stands up for dorks, dweebs, jerks, idiots, morons and no-talent greedwhores everywhere.

COLUMN: Disgusting advertising campaigns do more than anger people; they also bring shame on the marketing profession. In addition to calling for a boycott of the products themselves, Scott G suggests the marketing industry refuse to hire the creators of the ads.

COLUMN: Current television advertising contains soldiers, elephants, autos, mirrors, and balls. According to marketing guy Scott G, some of the campaigns are quite good while others are puzzling, inane, harebrained, obtuse, weird, and a wild waste of money.

COLUMN: After seeing one of Sony's debut TV spots for their new PlayStation(r), I'm sure I was not the only one slightly freaked out by the toy baby who comes to life, starts to cry, then laugh maniacally before flashing demon red eyes... all while pawing the air toward the floating black slab of a PlayStation 3 (PS3).

COLUMN: BOONTON, N.J. -- The $40 billion private line services market is posting solid growth for the second year in a row, says a market analysis study from Insight Research. Private lines are point-to-point circuits leased by enterprises from telecommunications carriers in order to link enterprise sites to each other and to the Internet. Private lines are also used by cellular carriers to link their towers to land line networks.

COLUMN: There was a time when marketing executives were considered savvy, smart, or slick. Some probably are all those things, but not those involved with Microsoft's new digital music player. Scott G takes a look at the marketing decisions for Zune (as in "rhymes with crazy as a loon").