LoudSauce: Crowdfunded Advertising for Causes

What bus shelters have to do with civic engagement and Marshall McLuhan.

The key folly of cause marketing can be reduced to low awareness and an unconvincing voice — weak, creatively uncompelling messaging that fails to reach a sufficient number of people and fails to engage those it does reach. Or, to frame it in Marshall McLuhan‘s famous medium/message paradigm, an insufficient medium carrying a toothless message. We’ve previously looked at how UK nonprofit DoTheGreenThing is solving the creative merit problem by borrowing talent from the traditional ad industry to reshape the message. Now, startup LoudSauce is borrowing, quite literally, media space from the traditional media industry to reshape the medium.

Dubbed the world’s first crowdfunded media buying platform, it does for causes what Kickstarter and other platforms do for creative projects, allowing fans and supporters to microfund media space for the causes they’d like to support who couldn’t afford it on their own. Part civic activism, part socialist capitalism, LoudSauce aims to give ideas that matter the share of voice they deserve, help bring smart projects to life and, ultimately, create a new market for conscious creative ad content.

Our vision is to transform the medium of advertising from one that primarily drives consumption to one of civic participation. What if we had more power to shape which messages were promoted on our streets? What if our billboards inspired us toward a future we actually wanted?” ~ LoudSauce

LoudSauce already helped Green Patriot Posters raise $3,200 to get beautifully designed sustainability PSA posters onto San Francisco’s bus shelters. This week, they’re helping Brain Pickings favorite The Story of Stuff microfund a teaser to reach 2 million people during A&E’s show about hyperconsumption, Hoarders.

If you have or know of a cause or pro-social message that needs to reach more eyeballs and eardrums, LoudSauce would like to hear from you. Meanwhile, browse the current campaigns to microfund and keep an eye on the site as it continues to grow — we think it’s a winner, and that’s our two-cent microcontribution.

Our only hang-up with LoudSauce is that, for a project that aims to up the ante on creative engagement in marketing communication, it suffers from tragically low production value and creative merit on its meta-communication, from the site design to the videos promoting the campaigns being microfunded. We wish they’d do a LoudSauce campaign for LoudSauce itself, getting funding to hire a good designer and a good microdocumentary filmmaker. We’d certainly contribute.

via TBD

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Mad Men: The Illustrated World

Tips for the modern metrosexual from the 1960s, or what martinis have to do with Twitter.

Yes, we love Mad Men goodies, who doesn’t? Nearly two years ago, we featured NYC-based illustrator, designer and comedian Dyna Moe‘s absolutely wonderful Mad Men illustrations. The series eventually charmed AMC into launching the popular Mad Men Yourself app, which has since populated countless Twitter streams with Mad-Menified avatars.

This fall, Dyna Moe released her dynamite work in Mad Men: The Illustrated World — a truly, truly fantastic book that captures not only everything we love about Mad Men, but also the broader cultural landscape of the era, from fashion and style to office culture to lifehacks like hangover workarounds and secretary etiquette.

With stunning, vibrant illustrations inspired by the aesthetic and artistic style of vintage ads from the 1960s, the book is a priceless and colorful timecapsule of an era few of us lived in but most of us romanticize.

And, of course, effort to capture the spirit of the era would be complete without the spirits of the era.

Conceptually playful and artistically ambitious, Mad Men: The Illustrated World is the perfect gift for the vintage revivalist, illustration aficionado or Mad-Men-holic in your life, and a fine addition to your own collection of paper-based design gems.

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Sterling’s Gold: A Fictional Mad Men Memoir

Last month, we rejoiced in the news that Mad Men‘s Roger Sterling is publishing a fictional memoir to be sold on the very real Amazon — pure genius by AMC. Today, Sterling’s Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man hits the virtual bookstore in a very non-virtual way. In 176 pages, the fictional Sterling keeps it real on everything from the business consequences of his divorce settlement to juicy details on his longtime affair with Joan Holloway.

Divided into chapters on women, clients, drinking and other essentials of the Mad Men lifestyle, the book is full of Sterlingisms, many of which remain surprisingly timeless truisms about life in the Madison world.

The day you sign a client is the day you start losing him.” ~ Roger Sterling

Even the Amazon product description is written in complete biographical seriousness, treating Sterling as an actual pioneer from the golden age of advertising.

Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually they hit you in the face.” ~ Roger Sterling

Also abundant are the era-appropriate chauvinism’s we’ve come to expect and welcome with anthropological bemusement in the Mad Men universe.

When God closes a door, he opens a dress.” ~ Roger Sterling

Sterling’s Gold is without a doubt the most brilliant piece of cross-platform entertainment we’ve seen this year. What makes it all the more special is the stark contrast to the majority of try-hard transmedia storytelling efforts, which immediately jump to the flashy stuntsmanship of digital platforms. Yet here we have something as analog as it gets that adds a rich and engaging layer to some of our favorite “traditional” entertainment. Well played, AMC, well played.

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