The ad for Doritos in the UK was made for just over $12 by Matt Bowron and John Addis and isn’t half bad.

View it here.

1. DON’T OUTSOURCE ALL OF THE CREATIVITY TO YOUR AGENCIES. IT NEEDS TO BE PART OF EVERY DECISION WE MAKE ON A DAILY BASIS. IT’S NOT TRUE YOU ARE EITHER BORN CREATIVE OR NOT. IT’S LIKE A MUSCLE – THE MORE YOU USE IT, THE STRONGER IT’LL GET, AND BOY IT’LL FEEL GOOD!

2. SIT DOWN WITH A SOME OF YOUR TEAM AND LIST OUT THE CONVENTIONS OF YOUR SECTOR, THEN THINK OF WAYS TO TURN THEM ON THEIR HEADS (NOT YOUR TEAM, THE CONVENTIONS)!

3. GET TOGETHER A SMALL GROUP OF YOUR SMARTEST PEOPLE FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ORGANIZATION. GO SOMEWHERE FUN, LIKE A BEACH CLUB. ASK THEM TO HELP YOU THINK THROUGH ONE THING YOUR STORES CAN BE THE BEST IN THE CATEGORY AT – MAKE IT VERY SPECIFIC AND ACTIONABLE (NOT BEST AT CUSTOMER SERVICE – IT’S TOO VAGUE!). THE NEXT DAY START PUTTING THAT INTO PLACE. MAYBE IT’S THE BEST WAY OF SAYING GOODBYE TO YOUR GUESTS – A NICE PIECE OF CANDY ETC.

4. PICK ONE STORE AND SET UP A CONTEST THERE FOR 10 OF YOUR STAFF AND OUTSIDE PARTNERS (INCLUDE PEOPLE FROM THAT STORE). MAKE IT LIKE “THE APPRENTICE” – SPLIT THE GROUP INTO TWO TEAMS AND SET THEM A SALES TARGET FOR THE DAY, THE WINNERS TO GET A GREAT DINNER SOMEWHERE. THE NEXT MONTH DO IT IN ANOTHER STORE.

5. PICK ANOTHER STORE AND GET THE STAFF TO DO SOMETHING AMAZING AND WONDERFUL IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. WHEN IT’S DONE REWARD THE STAFF THEN ASK OTHER STORES TO DO THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY PROGRAM. DON’T DO ANY PR UNTIL YOU’VE DONE 10 OF THEM.

6. DEFINE YOUR ENEMY – NOT THE OBVIOUS SUCH AS YOUR IMMEDIATE COMPETITOR, BUT AN ATTITUDE. HINT: APPLE’S ENEMY ISN’T REALLY THE PC, IT’S “SAMENESS” OR “DULLNESS.” NOW DRAW UP A BATTLE PLAN TO COMBAT IT.

7. ASK YOURSELF: “AM I A GOOD CLIENT TO MY AGENCY? DO I SET THEM CLEAR GOALS AND GIVE THEM THE FREEDOM TO COME BACK WITH INTERESTING SOLUTIONS?” IF NOT, TALK TO ME ABOUT WAYS TO IMPROVE. IF SO, AND THE WORK YOU’RE SEEING STILL ISN’T GREAT, THEN TALK TO ME ABOUT FINDING A NEW AGENCY.

8. INVEST THEM IN THE BUSINESS. FIRST ASK THE AGENCY TEAM TO EACH WORK IN YOUR STORES FOR ONE WEEK AND COME BACK WITH SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO IMPROVE THE BUSINESS AND SOME CONSUMER INSIGHTS GOT FIRST HAND.

9. GIVE THE AGENCY A SMALL EXPERIMENTAL BUDGET (SAY $50K) TO USE TO COME UP WITH INNOVATIVE MARKETING IDEAS THAT YOU PROMISE NOT TO INTERFERE MUCH WITH. IT’LL MAKE THEM FEEL EXCITED AND MOTIVATED.

10. MAKE YOUR AGENCY PART OF THE WHOLE PROCESS. SET THEM BIGGER PROBLEMS AND THEY’LL COME BACK WITH BIGGER SOLUTIONS.

Portfolio magazine said this about it (they loved the darn thing).

And now the news. I have been thinking a lot about “slap of fame” that hits a lot of us in our lives and how it is SOOOOO much better than “brushes with greatness” or just seeing a star and telling our close pals.

This sample are the kind of words you’ll find in my new one (though below is original work):

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for a star.” -radio era comedian Fred Allen

In the coming years, insubstantial moments where you come upon someone famous must be lessened in importance. Please stop thinking those Brushes With Greatness (”I saw X picking his nose at Olive Garden!”) make you whole.

Take my nonstop colorful buddy — let’s call her Martha — who once sat behind Kate Hepburn at a Broadway matinee and tapped her on a shoulder to ask her what the longevity was about. “Chocolate, my dear,” came the remark she’ll tell to this day.

BWG is over. Instead, let’s talk about utterly useless moments of personal fame that charge us up. “This paltry thing, our life,” as Ouisa Kittredge claims in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, is nothing more than fantastic vignettes to tell our friends! The way I see it, though, the tale that trumps all is when we stumble upon fame — by accident! Let’s look at times when as though by fate, we’re plucked from obscurity to become known to the masses.

Yeah, well, for a few days, anyway.

We live for the movies, TV and the “the-at-ah” — watching, talking about, and living amongst. A regular guy gets his face on the screen (or standing in real life) and everyone chatters. Here are funny examples — some from my own days in the sun.

* Inside “Annie Hall”: An older lady I met in a manicurist shop looked like Diane Keaton so I told her and she cracked up. “Remember the scene where Annie [Keaton] and Alvy Singer [Woody Allen] sleep together but he won’t let her get high so she leaves the bed and watches?” It turned out the woman in the bed with Allen was the lady from the manicurist’s, who was an artist The Woodman discovered and asked to play along. You know, 1976 was a world away from the CGI capabilities of today so a stand-in was needed. Today they’d just shoot Diane in both places. I asked the artist how it felt to be used in such a way. “Marvelous. I love seeing it.” I admit I’ve checked it out a few times since. You’d recognize her on the street.

* Inside “Manhattan”: An acquaintance’s wife had a torrid affair with Woody Allen while in her teens and a few years later got outed in Allen’s black-and-white classic. Since the 70s people have looked her up and asked what the fuck? She explains that while art imitates life, this was just a rip-off!

*Inside “Saturday Night Live”: Remember that copy-guy character The Richmeister, who added a suffix to everyone’s name in the most loserish way? “Hey! How’s the Samster today?” Well the copy-guy’s name was…yep…Richard “Lermer”. I know how this transpired, but the telling was not as uproarious as the calls I got asking me how Rob Schneider knew me. [If you want the copy-guy story about an SNL writer and a too long article I wrote for the Chicago Tribune on “Late Night with David Letterman,” write me at richard@laermer.com. Not for the blogosphere–not yet.]

* Inside “Woodstock”: The Movie: I once had this oddball accountant, Jeff Something, who blabbered all the time about his days at the Woodstock Festival. I didn’t believe him since everyone claimed same. And this dude was EIGHT YEARS OLD in 1969! But he had proof that no one but CSNY possessed. In a scene from the documentary Woodstock, you can see a chubby child version of Jeff dancing in the mud! Talk about an historic moment for the cable archives!

* Inside Manhattan Cable “Public Access”: This one proves how even in pre-Internet era any concept of privacy was laughable. A guy I know, some comedian, used to tape a show for Channel 35 back in the 20th century where he interviewed people along the street in the Village. My pal, let’s call her Martha since I only have one friend, was flying down Bleecker Street when Comic Fellow’s camera accosted her. “No — I’m way too busy right now” she yelled, with rude aplomb, as she swatted him away. It was sensational — proving to anyone that this busy talk was a doth-protest-too-much act. In years to come the thing got replayed ad nausea and she got hundreds of chiding calls saying “Was that you acting all self-important?” I love this woman for her audacity.

The lesson: fame teaches us about ourselves.

* Inside the Perverted Mind of Tennessee Williams: I was a big theatergoer before every show became cheap revival fodder. Theater is the bastard stepchild of art in this nation and brings fame to regular folks in an eclectic (screwy) way. Because of proximity we overhear celebs — I once listened to Carol Channing discussing Kathleen Turner’s drinking problem with a pal during intermission at Eric Bogosian’s “Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.” Long-lasting dinner fodder!

My bizarre moment with Tennessee made gossip rags - people were in hysterics — when I was in my late teens and ushered at a now-defunct Manhattan stager while sort of attending college.

The company was preparing the premier of Williams’ “Something Cloudy, Something Clear,” a biographical ditty about a boy crush of the playwright’s. I watched every rehearsal, dumbfounded by the writer’s sense and sensibilities, and struck by how charming and flirtatious he was with everyone.

There I was, on opening night, strolling down the aisle with the audience peering, critics and my parents watching me as a nervous Laermer ushered the great one. I handed him the Playbill™, exclaiming innocuously, “Another time for you, I guess, huh?”

He grabbed my chin in a most dramatic way and sighed with the dirtiest grin plausible: “Oh, why do I have to wait so long?”

Then I lived through an embarrassing audience moment during the First (interminable) Preview of AL Webber’s “Cats” when the audience was totally perplexed by what the hell was going on. Remember critics and crowds hadn’t pounced and proclaimed it the…meow. All we saw were a bunch of performers in cat uniforms perching on our laps singing breathlessly about feline forlorn memories. Then a silence while the audience waited patiently. I was fed up, though, and cocked my head to my confused companion with an unexpectedly loud “Nu?”

Everyone, cats included, had a laugh with fingers pointing. The Daily News ran my comment the next day. Like it mattered! While I detested the stink those critters caused the monster became the longest-running stage show since “Hamlet.” Me? I became the longest-running mouth in New York.

We love us some fame. Still there are those who bitch about it. In 1990 singer emeritus George Michael was quoted in the LA Times saying he refused to appear in any videos for his long-delayed follow-up to the zillion-selling “Faith.” He claimed “all this fame” had screwed with his head and he was “just sick of it.” Soon after the LAT published a Letter to the Editor from Frank Sinatra who said (I paraphrase): “You know what, George? Hate fame so much? Do us a favor and quit.”

Fame has its detractors who are liars waiting for it to appear or return. For most it’s a Paris Hilton-like accident or undeserved in a headshaking way. But isn’t it always funny?

*****Stories like this are all over “2011: Trendspotting” - buy it from McGraw-Hill. And read the free stuff at Laermer.com!

Pretend for a moment that the nation’s publishers met Godfather-style in a smoke-filled room somewhere high atop midtown Sixth Avenue. Everyone is there: The Random House overlords; the Simon & Schuster bosses; the charming and benevolent folk who run McGraw-Hill. All the other bigwigs. In the corner there’s a nice dairy tray with lox and whitefish, but no one’s paying attention to that. The business at hand is way too life and death. The industry heads agree – yes, they’ve been flooding the marketplace with too many books. Too many authors for too many niches and too few eyes.

So they’ve reached a decision. They’re tightening the reins and establishing what amounts to a basement. Let the Internet have its laissez faire free-for-all. That’s what it’s intended for, damn it. But the ink-and-binding set will move in the opposite direction: only credentialed, worthy writers get to publish under commercial banners. Word tumbles down to the editorial gatekeepers that, yes, or rather no, there will be no more taking chances on just anyone’s two bit thesis. Err on the side of exclusion. If something looks like it should be relegated to the vanity presses, it should.

“We can’t afford to take chances on a slush pile’s silt. The draw bridges are rising up, and we’re taking the express elevator to the upper floors of our ivory tower.”

So here’s the question: is there anything wrong with this?

Sure it’s elitist. But we’re evolving into a culture that can allow for a healthy dose of selective elitism when needed. You aren’t Spielberg? So what. Throw that video of your toddler angrily dropping Fuck-words on the family cat onto YouTube. If it’s compelling, a few million people will watch it. Or maybe they’ll prefer your neighbor’s video of Grandpa belching out the national anthem.

But you’ll be better off, either way, because the chance of someone in Singapore seeing your adventures in auteurism is much higher than if you decided to try for a dozen years to secure foreign distribution through Universal.

It’s an extreme and not completely analogous example, but there’s truth to it. Despite all those fancy technological advancements and truncated attention spans leading publishing gradually down the path to the dinosaur graveyard, books matter. They still have cachet. Having your name on the spine right above Knopf or St. Martin’s or Penguin-Putnam still means something to *you as a writer (*did I say me?).

But walk into any Barnes & Noble and look on those overflowing tables. Just gander at some of the people “playing author” right now. It’s one thing to be an expert in a particular field and have a little assistance, whether from a ghostwriter or a co-author, like many in business do. But some of these books are midlife crises with acknowledgments, an index and a marketing budget.

Just because you’re good at one thing, doesn’t mean that you’re a natural in another. It seems true in the book biz. Some people have compelling stories that should be told. Most people do not. And the filters are broken.

There’s a reason we call them vanity presses. They appeal to those self-absorbed bits of every person’s soul, or the bulbs that light whenever you pick up Tolstoy and murmur with your eyes ablaze, “Shit. I could do that.” So go ahead. Publish. Do it independently. Write up your masterpiece, put it on Amazon or in the back of your van, and take it to the people at a state fair. If it’s good it’ll sell—you just have to make them open it up.

The home-schooled child who wrote that dragon book proved just that. More likely, what you wrote is really just for your friends and associates…it’s not good and will not sell. At which point . . . think about giving up. Because just like it’s not every morning a shower karaoke balladeer winds up on Sony BMG, not every halfwit who can “keyboard” (type) and spare time to jot it down, should wind up clogging an already ridiculously congested publishing pipeline.

[I will add that just because you aren’t a pro writer doesn’t mean you need to stop reading books and posting fantastic blog comments….]

“It’s choose-your-own-adventure advertising,” enthuses Jean-Paul Colaco, Hulu’s ad guy quoted in today’s Financial Times. Yeah, JP, it’s a veritable adventure. One bad car ad over another, that’s real consumer control. He recognizes that online vid viewers (OVVs) get bugged by having to watch the same old “pre-roll” ad at the for the first 15 seconds of the video and hence the solution - a nod towards relevant content (rather than simply, you must be a young adult if you’re watching this stuff so we’ll plop an ad for a product targetd to you lot before the real entertainment begins).

But it is just a nod. And is a very blunt way of targeting. The viewers won’t, for instance, be able to forgo watching the an ad altogether; they can just choose from a very limited selection which one to play.

If they want to see the damned clip, they have to just grin and bear watching the godawful ad too! Got it?

YouTube’s approach, announced a couple of months ago, is a little different. There will be overlay ads on the bottom quarter of the video screen which viewers can expand to fill the whole screen or, thankfully, block out altogether.

This is better than forcing people to watch the ads, but is still a far from perfect solution; one that uses the medium as the interactive experience it should be. I always loved “Pop-Up Video” on VH1 - you know, the music video show in which trivial facts about the videos popped up as they played - and now dream that online video could do the same thing. For online video the pop-ups wouldn’t come up automatically - as, on a screen that small they would obscure the whole picture and only doesn’t irritate on much repeated content, such as music videos you’ve seen a hundred times before - but would pop up if you, the viewer, decided you wanted to know more: more about the character, the production or maybe even the stuff (aka “the products”) shown. Rolling the mouse over the cool car in the clip could give you a price and some specs, perhaps mention a promotion or invite you to click for a test drive.

Thing is, that technology is available now (see the demos on videoclix.com), it’s just that using it would take too much effort for advertisers to individualize the pop-ups to each different video. They like a one-size-fits all approach, treating the audience as one homogenous demographic, rather than recognizing that in this new Punk world marketers need to customize their messages.

Oh well, I’ll keep dreaming, and probably avoid altogether watching the online videos with pre-roll ads.

I was flipping through the cable-waves and couldn’t help but notice a pattern: Dancing With The Stars, Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Rehab, Celebrity Apprentice, and I think one on celebrity dieting! Yet the writer’s strike was over! Did the writers stay on vacation?

Out of some weird curiously, I watched the first episode of “Celebrity Rehab” – the term train wreck is a generous review. Seeing Jeff Conaway barely mobile or coherent isn’t entertaining in the least but crept into my soul in a dark way. What happened to privacy for someone’s horrible downfall? To a shred of dignity? Celebrities used to represent some kind of intangible ideal. From Bonaduce to Britney it’s clear that the Hollywood landscape has changed, maybe inalterably.

Flimsy reality TV is in its heyday. Gosh, Hilton’s celeb reality show lasted five seasons! (Gees, yet straight-to-DVD “One Night in Paris” lasted but one horrible night!) And just when we thought it was safe to turn on the tube without her, now we hear she’s coming back with a guest spot on “Earl” and a new show hilariously called “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF”!

Wasn’t realty TV a “Real World” concept born from the desire to watch normal people go through their days with human drama the star? Remember our ole friend Puck! He was never a celebrated guy, didn’t pose for mag covers, but we watched him because he was consistently Puck. And Pedro? He inspired us with his transparency.

So the nets are giving us what we want, yeah. Just look at the ratings over these past years. While the broadcast/cable homes rely on more and more reality, and more and more celebrity crap, viewership for everyone (even Bravo) slides fast into let’s-remake-this-channel territory. They can blame the Internet or games or even, like they did last year, Daylight Savings Time!

But it used to be you watched to “go where everyone knows your name” and where friends were “there for you.” Now we have Hugh Hefner chasing – let’s face it – ho’s. Other than Eliot Spitzer, does anyone REALLY want to know who he’s with when the guy is that gross?

Could be that ratings built on lame reality and tawdry fame isn’t what the public wants and they’re merely watching between laundry runs. Maybe instead of slapping the word celeb on every hair-brained concept, networks should invest in content with a shelf life longer than the latest Us Weekly cover story.

Everything on TV seems to be what works now–this second. Look at Fox. If something doesn’t click with us with super-hype before it airs, it’s history. That is not historically how it’s been with huge hits. So why, then, would it work today?

Building a business with a brand band-aid isn’t a Punk strategy. Being Punk is about listening to your consumer/user/viewer, taking that knowledge to heart so it intelligently works today and keeps people into you tomorrow.

To those short attention span thinkers at E!: maybe Paris doesn’t want us to be our BFF. And you know what? I think the folks at home are happy enough with Miley.

The “second” Spears (gee, we need a spare) played a troubled teen debating between going to college or sticking around for a boyfriend. For those of you shacking up in Saddam’s old spiderhole, Jamie Lynn just made the decision to have a baby and take some time off from her acting career.

Is this life imitating art or the other way around?

Her sabbatical is treating her well - things have never been better for SpearsSpare! By taking time off, she meant taking time to get even more famous. Though her pregnancy goes against Nickelodeon’s wholesome image, ratings for her show, Zoey 101 have soared. And the hype around her appearance on Miss Guided… well, I’m even talking about it. (Shame on me, I know.)

Who’s to blame! Let’s go with Juno. Jamie Lynn’s publicists are not idiots, and we know the Spears clan has a knack for drawing attention (self-promotion is too generous). They saw the amniotic fluid on the wall after Juno went big and so they said “Here’s a way to make JLS super known.” Quietly dealing with the situation back home on the Bayou wouldn’t work for this management. Instead they SOLD the story to OK! magazine for seven figures. A nation of kids now considers her the real life Juno McGuff. Except, instead of being the cheese to someone’s macaroni, Jamie Lynn is the Easy Mac for the college kid on a budget (no offense meant to Easy Mac).

In my last post on celebrity babies, I intentionally barely touched on this. There’s just something unsettling about babies having babies. I’m old school, but there’s a way to handle very public scandals that, while acknowledging mistakes, deals with the repercussions soberly. It reflects strong character and just happens to be the healthy way to live a life. It’s a personal opinion, and the public, at least in the long term, appreciates it more than a naked parade around the town square.

That respect/goodwill counts when trying to make a career in the public sphere.

A wise man named Jack Handy once said, “To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.” These wise words remind me of the Spears clan. Their lives are primetime dramas, except there are no ratings, nothing but shame gained, and at the end of the third trimester, Jamie Lynn really will have a baby, G-d love her. Sometimes bad publicity is just bad publicity.

What’s interesting about this is that Apple is proving itself once again to be adept at shifting and innovating as the market moves. Rather than simply sticking to the business model that has made them the most successful seller of music downloads (by far), the black turtle-necked one has recognized that being the biggest in ANYTHING is no guarantee of future success. Consumers don’t like being taken for granted and if something new and shiny comes along, such as unlimited music, they might easily be tempted to dump their iPods or iPhones in favor of a cool new Nokia phone that gives it to them. And data shows that consumers would be willing to pay a $100 premium for as device to get unlimited music over its lifetime, or $7-8 a month in extra subscription charges.

To be a Punk Marketer you have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer (however smelly they might be) and imagine what they want and need. As a starting point, assume there is no brand loyalty, even for a brand as “cool” and iconic as Apple, and that consumers are fickle and will change allegiance as fast as it takes to say, “but this ones cheaper!” Research is useful for that, but so is intuition and common sense, and Jobs is a master at understanding what will appeal to consumers emotionally without having to see proof of it. And the other thing that Apple consistently does is to set its own standards, not be governed by those of the industry. Each product they come out with doesn’t just improve on the competition, it redefines the market. Sure, the iPhone has its problems (most of of them because AT&T’s network isn’t good enough), but it has set the standard for all future mobile devices leaving all but rival Nokia, with its new N-95 phone, scrambling in the dust.

While some are using this as an excuse to reargue the Clinton impeachment – “See? Slick Willy deserved to hang!” (which a lot of us know as “a vast rightwing conspiracy turned a BJ into a national catastrophe, yet it’s OK to lie about WMDs?”) – all that does is miss the evident point.

Facing a blood-seeking Republican Congress, Clinton lived to see the end of his presidency; Spitzie on the other hand was forced to resign within days of being found otu. Is it because one committed adultery while the other spent an estimated 80 Gs on prostitutes? Maybe. Or the real difference is, we think, Branding.

Sidebar: $80,000, wow, what were those women doing that made it worth $4500 a pop? I really can’t figure it out! If they haven’t started a how-to book, they’re need an agent. “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” there’s the title.

I’m back…. Politicians, like all public figures, consumer products, or corporations, are brands. They each use publicity and marketing to craft an image in the public consciousness. Clinton felt our pain cause he was one of us. He scarfed Big Macs, took an occasional toke, chased a little skirt. Was a dude!

But Spitzer, he was so much better than all of us, or at least that’s what he portended. The man used a shield of incorruptibility and a sword of integrity to smote those too morally weak to obey the law. He went after pillars or conmen of Wall Street (not to mention a few prostitution rings…I tell you undercover research must be mad fun) while glaring with open contempt down at those who failed to meet his standards. If your image is holier-than-thou Mr. Clean, you better make sure there’s truth in advertising.

When building a brand, you’ve got to leave room for human error, which is always inevitable as the absolute law of the universe. People make mistakes. PR and marketing strategies need to be flexible enough to allow for gaffes, lapses, peccadilloes, and, what the hay, even the occasional scandal.

It’s not what he did, right, but the hypocrisy that was immediately associated with the actions he pulled. Those nighttime activities conflicted with his brand and messaging. Were his actions that horrible? I don’t think so. But he was so buried in his own rhetoric that he had no choice but to step down before he was laughed down!

Want proof? Take Louisiana Senator and prostitute-lover David Vitter. After his recreational habits were outed by Larry Flynt, Vitter plum apologized. The verdict is not in on Vitter’s Hoegate, but it’s worth noting how, yep, he’s still there. While Vitter might have disappointed his constituents, nothing close to outrage followed.

So the lesson: Don’t let the messaging outstrip reality. And if you see a copy of “Thousand Dollar Sex for Dummies,” get it before the prurients protest it off the shelves. Cause according to a former high-ranking public official it’s worth the price.