I have worked on a number of airline accounts over the years, United, American, along with Braniff and Southwest. But the first airline I ever worked on was Muse Air.

I remember two things about Muse Air:

1.  Muse Air was America’s first non-smoking airline. And they did it  before government regulations.  Talk about a USP!

2. The tagline we were forced to work with was TERRIBLE. Not just terrible…it was what I call a  whistler. (I mean by that, when you see it on TV the only sound that can come from your lips is a whistling sound, hence a “whistler”)

I went to YouTube to see if I could find any of the  old spots. And sure enough, I found a giant turd waiting to be played. I couldn’t believe how truly awful it was and still it.The worst part, the tagline.  ”Muse Air.  You can’t describe it. You gotta fly it.”  The “idea”, if there even was one, had to do with consumer’s  inability to describe Muse Air. So they’d mumble and stumble on their words for :24 second before blurting out, “you can’t describe it, you gotta fly it.”  I didn’t write the tagline, but I had to polish that turd before I quite the unnamed agency to move to Leo Burnett.

I remember telling the CD how I felt about the line and “idea”. He’d written it and loved it. We had great things to talk about…all-leather seating, assigned seatings, low costs, only four seats across, non smoking and low fairs. And this is the best tagline anyone could come up with! There was a reason that for this…the brief. We didn’t have one. We didn’t have plannin back in 1982 either. Creatives during that time would sit around thinking commercials without anything to guide them. I have always said that working without a brief is like shooting a gun into the air and hoping a duck flies through it. Never has this been more evident than with the work we served up on Muse Air.

I would love to work in this piece of business again, with a great planner. But that will never happen. Muse Air went out of business in l985.

RIP Muse Air

Twitter, I have discovered over the past couple of weeks, is completely worthless. Most Twitheads, I have learned, are lazy. They  find something online or in Your Tube and post it as if to say “look at me. I am so smart.” I think they look stupid. I don’t follow anyone except Charlie Sheen, whom I believe, is a marketing genius.

But I like to twitter on Twitter! But since I don’t have anything nearly as interesting as Charlie to talk about, my Twitters have mostly fallen on deaf ears. I figured I needed an angle to my Tweets, sorta like those “things my crazy moms says” .

My Twitter angle will be about all the worthless information I have gathered during my 30 years (which I will celebrate on April 1, 2011) in this advertising business.

Did you know that Safe-T-Mark road paint last longer than most road paints because it is epoxy based? Well, you do now.

If you follow me on Twitter at Jake_Ferguson and  learn things about hog feed (Acco Feeds), dirt pipe (Tyler Pipe) and on and on.

So, come with my on a 30-year ride through more conference rooms than anyone can ever imagine. Speaking of conference rooms, do you know the name the room at McDonald’s worldwide headquarters where the agencies sit? I do!!!

I have become a fan of Twitter. Why? I can write one-liners instead of long blogs! So follow Jake:Ferguson on Twitter! That doesn’t mean I am going to stop writing the Daily Ferg on a bi-annual basis. We’ve just been incredibly busy chasing new biz and trying to get our friend Mike Rawlings elected Mayor Dallas!

It probably won’t be long before this logo will be coming to your television set.

Recently, Ofcom, the governing body of British television, notified broadcasters (ie, TV producers) they must must show this logo during UK-produced programs containing product placement, together with rules on when it has to be shown.

And here are the rules:

The logo must:

*Appear for three seconds at the start and end of programs, and after any ad break.

*Be placed in one of the four corners of the screen.

*Not conflict with program idents.

*Meet minimum size requirements, which according to an Ofcom spokesman means it will be “roughly equivalent to the size of a channel logo”.

In other words, the British goverment is telling consumers, what is and what isn’t a product placement.

I know the Brits are much more intellectually superior to their brothers and sisters across the pond. That’s why all the planners in the US are of British origin. And when it comes to humor, I have only two words for you Benny Hill.

Guys, it isn’t that hard to spot. When you see someone drinking a Coca Cola in a TV show with the logo pointing at the camera, it’s a product placement. Trust me…

I don’t think we need a giant P in the corner of the screen to tell us that, do you?

What we could use are a few symbols like:

NF: Not funny. This would go in the corner of 99 percent of all sitcoms.

TC: Turn channel. Again, this would go in the corner of 99 percent of all sitcoms.

TS: This sucks. Again, this would go in the corner of 99 percent of all sitcoms and the Daily Ferg…

I wish I could write something funny about this website. But I can’t.  The captions pretty much nail the ad industry right between the eyes.

It is sad to say that we do spend hour upon hour on minutia. Or, as I have been known to say, “picking the lint out of a gnat’s bellybutton.”  But it’s true. Over the years, I have had my share of “discussions” on more than one occasion with brand managers on what’s important and not important to consumers when it comes to a piece of communcation. I have lost more battles than I have won. But that doesn’t mean I won’t give up the good fight….EVER!

Take a look that what consumers really think about advertising.

I tried to embed the link. But I can’t. Go figure…

According to my friend Ross Sutherland who works as a adman in Moscow, the Soviet government has asked their citizens, or should I say comrades, to drink and smoke MORE! He sent me an article from a Moscow newspaper to prove it. It doesn’t seem like a bad idea. The more a person smokes and drinks, the more tax revenue goes directly to the government.

Something tells me there are some creatives in Siberia having fun with this brief.

watch?v=-_g5IKGxGPc

I remember waaaaaay back in 2001, we created a series of “viral videos” for Sony. Funny thing is, we really had no east way to send them out on the www. This was pre- YouTube. There was something called IFilm and it took about a week to download these films. But they turned out to be a huge success. Now, we can download from our phones straight to YouTube. I’m starting to feel old again.

I’ve  been asked many times what a creative director does. I’m always said, “a creative director  knows when he sees a great idea and how to get out of the way of it.”  Just ran across this great quoate from Leo Burnett,

“I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.”

www.wechoosethemoon.org

When you get tired of watching kids pick their nose on You Tube, you might wanna check out this great website created by the Martin Agency, specifically Wade Alger, a former colleague at DDB/Dallas. It’s easy to see why it has won ever major award. Congrats, Wade…

About twenty years ago, my friend Terry Allen made this great piece of art especially for me. It’s called Nice. The piece of art is proudly displayed in the offices of Jake:Ferguson. He told me there’s a difference between artist and people in advertising. Namely, when a client blows an artist a bunch of crap, a true artist leaves. But when a client a client blows an ad guy a bunch of crap, the ad guy smiles like a jackass and takes it. Thus, Nice. Funny thing is, it doesn’t really work like that around here. (By the way, on’t you love the way the tie is being blown into the air? Nice touch, Terry.)