Giant Balloons Company

Summary: The interesting thing about advertising is that it employs many different schools of thought, from art and sociology to business and psychology. We believe that an economist could be just as successful in AdLand as a writer, or a creative just as wanted as a business analyst.

When it comes to consumer behavior and why people do the things they do, we see wonderful symmetry with the fields of economics and advertising. One could say that as economics is the study of “choice under scarcity” and advertising is the means of displaying the choices and highlighting the scarcity.

Today the highlight is the “cobra effect.” It was covered recently by the Freakonomics writers.

Summary: Ads for this year’s presidential campaign have been seen on TV, Internet banners, video games, and mobile apps. Interest in the 2012 election is extremely high, and brands are joining in on the fun. USA Today recently ran two articles (“7-Eleven, Boston Market, Maker’s Mark get political with ads” and “Pizza Hut, JetBlue, etc., try election PR stunts”) discussing brands that have jumped on the political bandwagon. Let’s take a closer look at the online campaigns run by Boston Market and JetBlue.

Boston Market recently launched a limited-time only menu item: Market Bowls. There are three options to choose from.

Summary: Agencies, for quite some time, have been shifting to specialization. From creative shops to crowdsourcing and to specializing in niche markets, many agencies have decided to ditch the general market pitch and hone in on a certain activity or audience. In this technology-driven market…