With so much talk about the impact of small business on the economy, it’s tempting to look at how Main Street businesses — especially storefront retail — market themselves in this environment. How they creatively pull you and your wallet inside the store. Some interesting approaches:

An errand transformed into an experience. Among the 30 nail salons in our Manhattan neighborhood, Dashing Divas has the most tempting promotion posted in their windows. “Girl’s Night Out” offers complimentary Cosmopolitans for you and a friend when you come in for a manicure or pedicure during weeknights. Insightfully, and boosting sales during a normally quiet period, the idea positions getting your nails done as a social activity. Now I haven’t had a proper manicure since my brother’s wedding, but I’m always ready for a Cosmo.

Noisy stunts. Some businesses put their people on the front lines of it, like one I first saw as a Cannes Juror last year. The CEO of PAUSE sound systems in Sweden drew tons of attention by literally swallowing a mini-microphone to become a “Human Jukebox.” A stunt, sure, but a big one that got him publicity he couldn’t afford to buy and customers flocking into his store. The store was deliberate about it as well. First, in an online video the CEO explained what he was going to do and when he was going to do it. Then, inviting press, bloggers and customers to witness it, he swallowed the microphone live. Afterwards, customers could take turns and literally deejay through him.  Who wouldn’t go in and see this? Who wouldn’t want a great sound system?

Behind the scenes, big players pushing. A fairly new trend in storefront retail pull is the behind the scenes push from larger partner brands such as credit cards. MasterCard, for example, created a Priceless app that suggested stores in your neighborhood. I downloaded the app and used it only once, probably paying cash at a place I already knew. Not sure whether it was worth all the effort. The biggest hit, however, is the much lauded program from American Express, Small Business Saturday. During the holiday season, American Express heavily promotes the idea of shopping at small businesses for a rebate credit on your monthly statement (and the feel-good pride of having supported your very local economy). Obviously, this is great PR for the AmEx brand, and two years running, it’s been a boon for merchants to whom AmEx drives bodies through glass doors. Some stats and sources claim 100 million customers turned out for it — including President Obama.

Technology levels the playing field. Small businesses used to rely on being found through the Yellow Pages. Now it’s all about review sites like Yelp, targeted advertising such as Facebook classifieds and, of course, organic search. The challenge for all-important search is that many businesses can’t afford to stay on top of or lack the expertise internally. Small businesses are however tapping technology, especially for promotions. FourSquare promotions (i.e., check-in and get a coupon) are fairly easy to set up for a business and redemptions are often easy and cheaper than a complicated mail-in coupon program that one would have done ten years ago. I checked-in it at my local Pinkberry and saw $1 off, although the first cashier wasn’t sure what to do with it and to call over a manager.

Partnering with friends. Creative Kingsley Harris tweeted to me how he admires the joint promotion by West Elm and Etsy’s of a handmade holiday market inside West Elm furniture stores. While West Elm is certainly not a small business, the idea is a modern combination of digital commerce and brick-and-mortar stores collaborating with a shared agenda. Small businesses can easily join forces and do stuff like this.

Differentiation among fierce competition. Like in many cities, New York has an explosion of pharmacies and banks every twenty feet. Having fought the real estate battle, now they have to battle for bodies. Pharmacies like Duane Reade are now selling fresh food and installing ATMs. And full service banks don’t use toasters and free checking anymore to attract customers, but regional banks like TD Bank are using convenience, opening extra early like 7.30am, staying open seven days a weeks, and making a game out of converting loose change into bills

Admiration for sales promotion. In between traditional and digital advertising jobs long ago, I worked at a boutique promotion agency in Manhattan. I had come to help build out the agency’s advertising offering and, for me, it was my chance to be co-creative director of a place (I believe in always taking a job that’s got something good in it for both parties). Our clients were brands such as Nathan’s Famous, Johnnie Walker, Guinness Stout, Maxell, and Newport cigarettes. While digital had taught me the importance of response via clicks, here I learned tons of new things about marketing that they don’t teach you in most traditional agencies: the importance of distribution channels and distributors; how sweepstakes and contests work; and of course, the enormous role of seasonality. Never thought I’d learn so much about Christmas floor displays for liquor (including designing them in summer) or how a contest gets you quality and a sweeps gets you volume. Sure we did campaign ideas, but every project had to tactically pull in customers immediately or they flopped —and flopped fast. Our campaign for sentimental favorite restaurant chain Nathan’s Famous, for example, was called “Stop by a Smile.” We creatively took it to the airwaves and billboards for media, but it was also punctuated by the brand’s best-working promo at the time at the end of the spots and on in-store signage: Two hot dogs for two bucks. Talk about pull with, well, bite

Promotion is certainly changing. What’s notably changed is the vacuum within which sales promotion used to operate. Stores would do whatever they did and only current customers and passer-bys would see it. Word of mouth was manual, brought up at the dinner table or over the white picket fence. Incidentally, this was also true of direct marketing; you would only see what you got in the mail. Now, blogging, especially content-hungry community sites, talk about things they see or hear about. Tom’s Shoes, as everyone knows, donates a pair of shoes for every new pair you buy and new platforms like Groupon and Fab have modernized the experience of coupons. Public relations is now inexorably linked with promotion.

Maybe you’re not clipping the Sunday circulars anymore. Maybe you’re worn out from coupons via email. But if you want to be a modern marketer, my advice is to have a Cosmo, get your nails done and be ready; pulling people into stores isn’t going anywhere but everywhere.

1. Imported From Detroit — One of the year’s first campaigns, with a two-minute version of Eminem in the TV spot debuting during the SuperBowl, is still among the best from the entire year. It dramatically restaged the Chrysler brand, and simply took my breath away. Of course there’s a t-shirt. It’ll be fun to see what Chrysler keeps doing with it, including digitally. I suspect with jobs the biggest cultural and economic issue going on, we’ll also see much more Made in USA types of advertising and content.

2. Sustainability — Green has gone from side street to Main Street in marketing, and will be even more important for brands in 2012. I’ve been working lately with OgilvyEarth, our sustainability practice. When done right, it embodies the company from the inside out. It’s never just marketing a message, but authentic storytelling of company beliefs and behaviors which customers expect — and reward. You can read a ‘Red Paper’ on it called “Mainstream Green” by Freya Williams and Graceann Bennett. Adweek also showcased this Nissan LEAF spot as one of their favorites from 2011.

3. Meet the brand editors — I thought I was so ahead of the times when I started proposing that brands should have Tina Browns serving audiences across channels (digital and otherwise) for brands. Someone highly creative and strategic to propose and develop content, events, videos and conversation across not just Facebook, SlideShare and Linkedin but also CRM channels, advertising and new platforms like Google+. But by the time my piece appeared in Direct Marketing News, agency McCann hired a Chief Brand Editor, Twitter hired its own editor, and I created the role on of our big brands at Ogilvy. There are dozens more out there too, though I suspect some are more sophisticated than others. Expect to see much more of this evolution of content management in 2012, and I hope to scale our model as well. Here’s also a recent posting on Harvard Business Review blog with more of a retail perspective.

4. Google the Marketer — Starbucks didn’t advertise until recently, but it certainly didn’t rush the stage as big as Google has over the last 12 months. Google’s advertising, especially for Chrome and recently for Google+, has been everything from innovative to emotional to even a bit bland. Just like the real brand it has become. It nailed several medals at The One Show Festival and Cannes Lions, and we should all expect to see more creatively in 2012, and maybe some marketing muscle from Facebook too for a big face-off. Dear Sophie for Chrome is one of my sappy favorites.

5. Pay for it — The New York Times paywall was controversial and brilliant. Finding that balance between free content (which never really is) and subscriber is delicate and I was impressed although the signup was clunky and I still don’t know why Lincoln paid for my original basic one. (We gave up our Mini for ZipCar — the only Lincoln I’ve ever been in has been a Town Car to the airport) Next year I think we’ll see much more exploration of pay for service models and while many will hunt around for ways around them, companies have to make money to survive and pay their people, including journalism, services and yes, software like Spotify. I help pay for NPR, I can pay for The Times.

6. Twitter as customer service channel — Maybe Zappos pioneered it, but 2011 was breakout year for brands swarming to use Twitter to solve customer complaints. Hotels. Restaurants. Public sector (NYC311 is amazing and Rachel Sterne is the city’s Chief Digital Officer, bringing more services online) And perhaps most importantly if you’ve ever been trapped on a runway or weather delay, airlines are getting Twitter down to a science with serious resources and response time. My buddy Joseph Jaffe’s book Flip The Funnel (a good read too) also underscores the central role of customer service to marketing a brand the he modern age so expect to see even more ambitious customer support across platforms in 2012. Watch out too for embarrassing tweetstakes. Brands can easily suffer in the manner of Ashton Kutcher. (that rhyme was on purpose).

7. Nebish Netflix — The sub-brand and pricing fiasco was stupid, but it was perversely fun too. Every year, we need a brand to make a gaffe to help remind us how do things right. The goal is not to be the one who does it. The Washington Post recently had a quick slideshow on digital darwinism and survival. Sears, of course, is in there, with the prediction of its disappearance in 2012.

8. Klout — The new social currency for digital influence will either tempt you or drive you mad. Some revile it, many are obsessed by it, many more are ignoring it. But just as there is a badge to your number of Twitter followers, we also have a fetish for new algorithms. This one is your power and personal share of voice. Mine dipped for awhile and then climbed up to 51 as of this writing. One of the best ingredients to a good Klout score, I’ve learned, is not just volume of activity across channels but folks retweeting and re-sharing what you do say. Recognition of good sharing has gone from simply being a compliment to a tangible asset. The end goal? If you’re a gamer, you can simply enjoy the game of it. Another could be monetizing it.

9. The Cloud —Like many, I love Dropbox and now there’s iCloud too, but the biggest marketing of it was in business-to-business by players big and small. It’s a boon not just music and personal storage but for small and medium-sized businesses who can outsource much more of their infrastructure. If last year started to market that it existed, this next year will be about who’s is best and what it does for you.

10. Political Ads — Now that web video is so mainstream, I bet we’ll see tons of political advertising that’s not fit for TV but created to be passed along online. Cain’s unintentionally hilarious smoking ad and Perry’s aggressive anti-Obama leadership ad (which ends like a movie trailer) give a taste of what’s to come.

There will be plenty of other lists (I’m sure with catvertising on many) but this is mine. There’s also plenty of Olympic advertising and changes on Youtube and Search to look forward to. Have a good holiday. Mine is starting early.

—Your humble ad correspondent near (but not too near; the crowds are awful) Madison Avenue

It’s not unique to complain about customer service. You probably have at least one or two bad experiences a week like me. They make us skeptical of customer service claims in advertising since it’s usually a throw-a-way line about how much they care about you or how much they loan to small business.

So when I saw the Enterprise Rent a Car spot in which employees proudly said they don’t have to find a manager and can solve issues right then and there, I took notice. What a specific claim that nails a true pain point.

Enterprise is connecting with a nerve in the culture and reflecting it authentically through their culture —something successful brands do.  And Enterprise isn’t a premium brand like American Express, Danny Meyer restaurants or Starwood from which you expect and usually get good service. Enterprise is just a regular brand, like Citibank or Starbucks, so hearing that they can solve a problem on the spot stands out and deserves applause. Especially if they mean it.

This wasn’t a one-off either. Recent Enterprise commercials all star employees, with a focus on listening and being customer-focused. Scanning about 50 customer reviews on blogs and sites gives me the impression it’s fairly true.

I plan on trying the Enterprise brand next time I need to rent a car. I even wouldn’t mind a problem to experience its resolution. Hopefully quickly.

Classifieds might be a $30 billion dollar business, but you don’t need a professional agency to do classifieds. With modern tools available and easy to use, regular you can create and place them in local newspapers and penny savers or on web sites like Craigslist or through social networks like Facebook.  You don’t have to be a professional art director or copywriter — or even a decent writer.

I had great fun self-managing my own classified campaign two years ago in an experiment to use social media to fundraise. Most good classifieds are short, with deliberately chosen words. This used to be out of price concerns (paying by the word in printed publications) but now more for search-engine friendliness or just timely appeal in a sea of competition.

My very own case study: My house.
We’re selling our apartment in Manhattan. My partner Bryan Fuhr and I both work in marketing, so you’d think we’d be running our own advertising campaign, and bringing in a photographer friend to shoot our apartment and hand-crafting each piece of collateral and running a massive measurement dashboard with real-time reporting of site traffic and leads. You might think we’d test different messaging. Nope, we found a great real estate broker with an expertise in places like ours, agreed on the right price and handed over control.  He recommended a person to stage the apartment for photography, which is humiliating to a gay couple with excellent design taste, but we understood and respect the value of professionals in their field.

I’ve learned a lot just in the early days of advertising it. The listing itself is pretty fascinating and says a lot about modern marketing. Compliments to Josh, our broker, as we do a little analysis of the listing that went live this week:

“Stunning Penthouse Duplex…Private Terrace, Two Bed Two and a Half Bath atop Meticulous Townhouse in Mint Condition. Welcome home to this bright and airy retreat featuring large living room, wood-burning fireplace, hardwood floors, enormous formal dining room, washer/dryer, renovated bathrooms and good closets. 349 is a pet-friendly boutique co-op on treelined 21st Street in West Chelsea Step outside and find some of the world’s best restaurants, entertainment, schools and recreation within minutes of your front door.”

The breakdown:

1. Stunning Penthouse Duplex — Yes, it’s a duplex on the top two floors of an 1846 brownstone. I hadn’t thought of calling it a penthouse before but it is the top. Cool.

2. Private Terrace — this was my suggestion to put near the very front of the listing. The deck is one of the best and most unique features and sure to bring in a lot of people to see it. Who doesn’t crave personal outdoor space. I had originally suggested Private Patio for the alliteration, but Private Terrace sounds more elegant, patio could mean tiny — which it’s certainly not.

3. Meticulous Townhouse — I think this means the building is in good shape, which is true. I think of the building as a brownstone, but townhouse is probably a broader term for non-New Yorkers. Townhouse also has connotations to me of suburban apartment developments but then again, if you think about it, these brownstones were all built at the same time too. Just 150 years earlier in the city.

4. Welcome home to this bright and airy retreat — When we first walked in to our apartment, during its first open house back in 2002, “home” is exactly what we thought. It feels like a home. We were so floored by the idea of a home-like apartment, I believe we made our initial bid for it within six hours.

5. Pet-friendly boutique co-op on treelined 21st Street in West Chelsea — “boutique co-op” is a great way to phrase our building. It’s a co-op but a four-unit self-managed co-op. Plus the word boutique is trendy. Kinda like bespoke. West Chelsea is important since Chelsea is so big and diverse now, we don’t want you thinking we’re on the cheesie strip along 8th Avenue. West Chelsea is also hip now, close to the High Line and waterfront.

6. The world’s best restaurants, entertainment, schools and recreation — The location really is convenient, with lots of new (and good) restaurants like Cookshop and the Meat Packing District.  The High Line is just one avenue west and our dog run is by the water. In the original draft, I suggested adding in “education” not because we have kids (we don’t) but because right on our block is a great public school (PS 11 as well as a charter), which is always hard to find in New York City and over which we find most parents utterly obsessed.

Response?
In the very few days since the listing went live, results seem solid. Attendance to the first open house was great (full turnout), though the pictures, location, market, fall timing, and other marketing of course also help.  We took our dog out for a long walk and lunch during the first open house on Sunday. Bryan mused that the next few weeks mean keeping the place clean and living in a ‘fishbowl”. I may not control the copywriting of the classified, but that is certainly one word I wouldn’t put in.

The New York Press. The Village Voice. Our Town. Gay City News. Chelsea Now. It’s not because I’m cheap, but because these publications have a distinctly local flair you can’t get anywhere else, perhaps even online. Even in our news-saturated digital universe, I find these are still the best way to get hyperlocal news, whether what’s going on at our neighborhood General Theological Seminary or updates on St. Vincent’s Hospital and if we’ll ever get a nearby emergency room. I’m quite desperate to have something within choking distance. I haven’t had pasta or stringy cheese since St. Vincent’s shut down.

When I ran marketing for local online service NYC NET back in the mid-nineties, I was not just a copywriter but also a media buyer in these pubs. In the Voice, LGNY and The Press, we ran weekly 1/8 black-and-white ads to keep new subscribers flowing in and occasionally, a 1/4 page or even 1/2 page when we had big news to announce. Local advertising worked. I know for sure, because we measured every single print run against the calls and web traffic we got requesting software.

It’s no news that advertiser-dependent print publications like these struggle as online readership has grown (especially sex classifieds, a cash cow, which moved online years ago), so I was excited to pick up from a green street box Our Town Downtown, the re-launch of a downtown newspaper by Manhattan Media, who runs several neighborhood pubs and (self-interested disclaimer) has even published pieces about snoring, puttering or about my dog by me.  Here’s a recent piece about the paper’s launch by The New York Observer (another printed pub who has faced digital reality).

Yes, there are digital local networks such as Patch and great local ‘zines like Gothamist, but I still also like the street boxes. There, flipping through the crime blotter or arts features, I learn as much as about my neighborhood from advertisers as from the articles. For example, in the premiere issue of Downtown, I saw notice of a Hudson Valley Wine & Food Fest next week (grapegetaways.com), upcoming events in writing at Hunter College, and a reader special for Michell’s NY delivery service. Plus, a loving couple named Rebecca and Mark wants to have my baby. All expenses included.

As a gift at the end of my jury experience at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, my soon-to-be-legal husband (thank you, New York State Senate) Bryan Fuhr handed me a first edition copy of advertising legend George Lois’ memoir Be Careful, George. What’s special about it is not only the author George Lois, but how it got to me.

Bryan first found the book in Paris at Shakespeare & Company, an homage to the original lending library founded by Sylvia Beach, which served literary greats such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Run by George Whitman and his daughter Sylvia (named after the original) since 1951, it’s still a famous center for literary expats in Paris and an annual destination and touchstone for people like us. Other than McNally Jackson in New York, it’s probably my favorite bookstore in the world. The beaten-up yet still readable book had no price listed. When Bryan went to pay for it, he learned there was no price because it simply wasn’t for sale. Bryan pleaded with Sylvia that the book was a gift for me —who works in advertising and who he was going to visit next at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. Sylvia’s answer has touched us both: He could have it but she wouldn’t charge him because, as she said, it sounded like the book would be more important to me than to them — and her father George would have wanted me to have it.

So with careful fingers and great attention did I start to read George Lois’ memoir. Famous for campaigns such as Xerox, Aunt Jemima, and even MTV (“I Want My MTV”), it’s a hilarious read of a Greek boy growing up in a tough Irish neighborhood and finding his way to the center of an industry. And if you’re a lover of design, for ten years of poignant and provocative Esquire Covers. Lois comes from a generation of greats in advertising, which, to me, include Bill Bernbach, David Ogilvy and Mary Wells. I only recently attended the Advertising Educational Foundation (AEF) Lifetime Achievement Award dinner for Mary Wells. Mary Wells was among the first to break the glass ceiling for women in marketing, started her own agency in the sexy sixties and contributing successful work like Alka Seltzer “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz Oh What A Relief It Is” and Braniff Airlines for which she had the planes painted colors for the first time and stewardesses dressed by designers. (I think the closest to real fame I’ve gotten in my work is hiring Alice Playton from the Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz commercials twenty years later to do radio spots for Stella D’oro Breadsticks). Rumor has it Peggy Olsen in TV’s “Mad Men” is based on Mary Wells.

Who are the greats of today— and what does it take to be come one? Is it about winning the most Cannes Lions, the way a baseball player hits home runs? Is it about being first to use photography, do have done a well-remembered television commercial, create the first web advertising, or make a best-selling mobile app? Is it about your behavior —being brave and uncompromising the way George Lois famously dangled outside a building to protect a campaign from being killed by a client? Maybe it’s about campaigns and wisdom the way our agency founder David Ogilvy is immortalized in his aphorisms. (i.e. “The consumer is not a moron. She is my wife.”) It certainly can’t be about success in terms of raw money or wealth, since it’s mostly non-creatives that earn all the big dough. I can’t imagine many of them at all will be remembered for more than the assault on creativity done by stockholder pressures for year-on-year growth. It’s definitely about bravery and boldness. To paraphrase David Ogilvy, we shouldn’t bunt but aim out of the park. “Aim for the company of the immortals.” And he meant with our ideas.

Who is great? I think Mary Wells is great. I think D.O. is great. I think George and Silvia are great. All of them.

If you care about important things like politics or student council elections, this won’t be worth its digital newsprint. But if you care about marketing and where things are going creatively in advertising, Cannes Lions is the biggest show of all.

My vote was to award a coveted 2011 Grand Prix in the Direct category, of many juries that week which included Film, Cyber, Outdoor, Media, Radio and Promotion. Our medals would publicly reflect the freshest, boldest, most surprising and effective work that engages customers created anywhere in the world (and by agencies willing to pay the steep entry fees).

Among some solid choices in our Direct category were gold winners from hours earlier in our voting, such as Coke’s charming The Friendship Machine and the impressive De-code Jay-Z with Bing. Whatever we chose would be among the most remembered from this year and a benchmark for future years. I’d be a part of a team that was either brilliant and prescient — or sloppy and foolish. (How quickly we chose would also affect my mood and stomach. We had spent hours and days in the same room, not to mention I was probably going to be very late and un-showered for an arranged dinner.)

For the Direct Grand Prix, our final choice was something surprising and from a surprising place: Romania. American Rom was a stunt in which Rom —a failing local candy brand wrapped in the Romanian flag — briefly and bravely altered its packaging to, of all things, the American flag. Stirring national pride and enormous debate on social media and with in person protests, Romanians quickly re-claimed their chocolate bar and after about a week, Rom packaging returned to normal —but with a burst in sales results, raising it to #1 in its category for the first time in a decade. Like other work under consideration by our Jury, it was a brave solution to a real business problem. It was also timely; research had recently unearthed low national pride at the time. As our jury president, Alex Shiller of Germany, pointed out the crucial role of the customer in standing up for their country and their chocolate. If Romanians hadn’t gotten involved, he’d said, they’d be stuck with a chocolate bar on the shelf in the American flag.

Alex had given each of us a golden bullet our first day. It was to remind us to look for work that wasn’t just good, but pierces through to your heart. For me, I felt like in addition to holding a bullet, I was also wearing an eyepatch. My vision of what great work should look like during judging was being shaped by another presence felt around us in Cannes, especially this week during what would be his 100th birthday — our company’s iconic founder David Ogilvy, creator of many provocative and memorable campaigns, including the Man in the Hathaway Shirt.

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.” According to both legend and people who worked for him, D.O. had extremely high standards for the content of the work. He thrived on both revision and on coming back to clients with new ideas. He was a champion for big ideas, a stickler for small details, an advocate for the customer and an early fan of direct response.  Cannes Lions too are about celebrating ideas and rewarding bravery. In my five days helping sift through 1,800+ entries in Direct alone, we saw a variety of novel solutions which excited us.

- A pop-up store in Washington Square Park in New York City that you can only see with your smartphone.
- An exhibition about human rights in Burma in which you are encouraged to touch it.
- A mobile application that teaches you how to do a proper naval salute (which helps the government recruit the right candidates).

Other voices in my head and around it. In addition to what David Ogilvy might have thought, I found judging to challenge two other forces of opinion: first, the opinions of experienced creative directors from all different cultures and tastes; and secondly and perhaps most importantly, my own voice and opinion. What did I admire most? Of what was I most envious? What pierced my heart? I write more about it and share some links to work on a company blog here.

I’m terribly happy about going back to a work of creating versus judging. The difference of course, is because of this experience and its external and internal pressures, I’m privileged with a far better perspective and view of what gold looks like. And with both eyes open.

Cannes Lions is the biggest advertising and marketing festival in the world, and thousands congregate in this beachfront city near Nice, France, to judge, reward and celebrate the best and most provocative work in the industry. It’s admittedly indulgent, it’s navel-gaving, it’s grotesque — but it’s also incredibly important. The thing about contests and awards shows is that if they’re credible like Cannes, then you get a sense of where you stand in your field and to be recognized by your peers for unusual or innovative ideas and effective work is a huge honor. In addition to Direct, there’s Public Relations, Promo/Activation, Radio, Cyber, Media, Press, Outdoor, Design, Film, Integrated, and this year for the first time: Effectiveness. And with awards like Titanium, it also gives you a look forward of where the industry is heading.

Last year, I was mostly focused on our agency’s global contest, Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson, which culminated at the Cannes Lions festival and where at the Ogilvy seminar the audience voted with their phones to pick among three finalists one winner. This year, Ogilvy is celebrating what would have been David Ogilvy’s 100th birthday.

This is my fourth year at Cannes, and I try to take in as much work as possible from around the world as well as attend a few seminars and events. Throughout the week agencies host topical seminars and there are also keynotes with some famous folk like will.i.am, Piers Morgan, Arianna Huffington and more. Here’s the schedule. IKEA is also being honored as the Advertiser of the Year. Of course there are great parties too, but those are more inevitable than the actual point. Unless you get on a yacht. Then that is the point.

You’ll be able to follow daily coverage through publications such as Advertising Age, Adweek, Brand Republic and Campaign. I’ll probably be tweeting more than posting long columns, but will do a round-up about something interesting I learn as soon as I can.

The hit among award shows, and well positioned do well at Cannes (much like the Golden Globes are precursors for Oscars) so far this year has been Old Spice Response Campaign, which most recently nailed the biggest Effie Award.

Will it hold up against strong work from around the world at Cannes? What new insights will I glean from my first-hand jury experience? Stay tuned.

The Food Plate replaces the despised Food Pyramid. I hated the Pyramid for its complexity but also because during Passover, it reminded me of the exodus from Egypt. I would think about how I was such a slave to fattening breads, dairy and routine, mostly due to my severe food allergies which had affected me nearly my entire life and were only getting worse with age. My banned food list — everything from nuts and pears and apples to spices, mustard and pepper —  was a kind of indenture to a short list of what I could eat. It took five visits to an Upper East Side nutritionist to get me to a happier and healthier place of variety. I learned to focus on the green light of what I could eat rather than the red light of what I couldn’t.

The best educational symbols are like traffic lights. They stick in your mind and quickly teach. They provide a subtle confidence that you can go about your business in a normal way, with a foundation of civilization stable underneath. The earliest signs outside stores in the medieval ages were pictures of the services sold within. Shoes for a cobbler. Shirts for a tailor. A white castle for burgers.

Because we are a culture that’s both busy and semi-illiterate, we still use visual shortcuts. Street and traffic signs. Pick up after your dog signs. The choking poster in restaurants. Some stick, some don’t. The Department of Homeland Security recently replaced the five color coded threat system which didn’t help people with a two-level system which might, and the FDA has also updated the food label with clearer type, information and layout. The iconic Red Cross has one of the best, most universal and enduring logos on the planet, reinforcing its utter neutrality and support for all. It’s the reverse of Switzerland which also doesn’t like to pick a side.

Not everything is simple. The digital age has made richer information much more in demand.  Infographics have become a part of the culture. Charts. Graphs. Maps. Comparisons. Two pioneers were the Smart Money Map of the Market and Marumushi’s Newsmap. In more recent years, Mint.com, Good Magazine, Daytum and even USA Today‘s popular little snapshot graphics have brought information design to the masses. Now you can enjoy data in context much closer to you and intimate with your life. The interactive Electoral Map in 2008 was also a watershed for widespread adoption. Who didn’t play out the scenarios with different swing states swinging different directions? Several of the big brands I work on in my day job tap infographics in different ways as a routine part of their work, whether it’s to communicate facts about their products in a new way or demonstrate the impact they’re having on an area of the world. We’ve been using icons for a long time on websites to help with navigation. Now we’re using infographics to help express thoughts more quickly.

Can’t wait to see the new Food Plate. I hope it’s colorful, I hope it’s clear, I hope it works. And for those hungry in the morning for a taste every day, there’s a blog for you: Daily Infographic.

This weekend we visited an upstate Farmer’s Market in Great Barrington, MA and enjoyed walking from stand to stand, chatting with the folks about their bread, dairy, jams or meats they were selling. In most cases, the people were the farmers or owners themselves. I’m no stranger to farmer’s markets, and they’re a growing trend in both cities and country for good reason.

What I couldn’t get enough of was the detail with which they described their process, the love and passion that came through, casual banter that formed a personal connection, and the helpful tips and suggestions about preparing meals that only inspired me more to buy. There also were tasty samples.

I’ve always been a fan of great salesmanship. Back in high school, I ran the French Club croissant and orange juice sales early in the morning, eventually raising enough to send the entire club to visit both the Statue of Liberty and see Les Mis on Broadway. Selling has stuck with me. One year ago at my agency, we created the Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson to reassert the nobility of sales and create a product offering around social sales for it. I recently updated a list of favorite and memorable advertising from the last 30 years and see that nearly a third of my top votes were campaigns that involved in-person selling. It has, after all, a lot of effective ingredients for marketing — the formation of a personal connection, longer format to tell more of a story, and actual product demonstration to show off how it works or why it’s great.

Up late for the informercial: Long-form television commercials are an American phenomenon rich in information, background, tips and of course a compelling and repeated offer to motivate action now. You probably know them most for bizarre health or mental aides, celebrity jewelry, or workout equipment. They’re fun to parody but they also work very well at what they do. Act now.  While it might seem like a dated format, the informercial has seen some modern upgrades. Perhaps no brand embodies the modern digital demo better than Blend-tec, maker of the Total Blender. Blendtec’s series of online videos have earned more than 9 million views and shares first by blending iPhones and then by entertaining suggestions of objects to blend.

Seeing is believing. Product selling also builds brands for the long haul. Procter & Gamble has built many of its brands on the strength and formula of the product demonstration — showing how it works and even how it works better than a competitor. As consumers, we’ve learned to trust the data and sources so even the Pepsi Challenge was temporarily believable. Briefs today for many packaged goods commercials for cleaning supplies or hair care still require at least a few seconds of showing the ingredient in action or a comparison.

The best connection is personal. Most of all, there’s something about knowing exactly where your food comes from or having been taught by Gary Vaynerchuk online how not to be afraid of wine. It changes the purchase experience, not to mention the usage experience later in the kitchen or at the table. Supermarkets do it in a half-hearted way but there’s no substitute for doing it outside or in a more intimate setting like a farmer’s market.  The visit to the Great Barrington market this Saturday was an activity of which Bryan Fuhr and I were both quite proud. We ambled along the old railroad station where the Saturday market is held. I entered the raffle giveaway for a Mother’s Day basket. We bought cheese from one dairy farmer, mushrooms and spinach from a vegetable stand, eggs and ground meat for hamburgers from Blue Hill Farm, a place we know with a connection to a great New York restaurant. On the way out, I braked for a second dairy farmer, an Ethan Hawke look-alike, with the most amazing sign for The Amazing Real LIfe Food Company. I already had bought some cheese, sure, but was so inspired, I ran back and got some ideas from him for a delicious lunchtime omelette. Yum.