Advertising Archives

Advertising

Sad Copy

From the website of the Japanese retailer Muji. Muji was founded in 1980 in a thorough rationalization of the manufacturing process. The ensuing products are remarkably pure and fresh: succinct.…

The Pleasure of a Working Life

by Michael Deagler,

Illustrations by Miguel Manich At the time of the adman’s death, Gary Minihan had been with the Postal Service for thirty-five years. He spent the first thirty as a letter…

Bad News

by Joseph Bernstein,

Selling the story of disinformation

Harper’s in the News

by Joe Kloc,

Harper's publishes a story about PBS; PBS pulls its advertising from Harper's; the Internet has the story.

Operation Margarine

by Nina Martyris,

Tracing the wartime rise of ersatz butter

My Oh My!

by Daniel Menaker,

From my Maypo to my Aleve to myRA

Publisher’s Letter

by John R. MacArthur,

When I began my tenure as publisher of Harper’s Magazine nearly thirty years ago, my biggest challenge — or so I thought at the time — was to get advertising…

Helter Seltzer

by Jamie Levin, Sarah Treleaven,

The campaign against SodaStream

A Possible Urtext for Mad Men

by Thomas Frank,

James Kelly’s The Insider

Bro Burning

From posts on mensactivism.org and the affiliated website standyourground.com, which maintains a list of “companies to avoid doing business with due to male bashing.” Just a comment on your latest…

The Highbrander

by Lucy Bird,

From an October 9, 2012, email sent by Lucy Bird, then chief executive of Marketing Edinburgh, to city councillors Sue Brice and Alastair Maclean, during the development of an ad…