MortarBlog

We launched our much-anticipated Mortar 360 brand quiz today.

Click through to test your brand management prowess against the Web’s most advanced (and we might say pithy) brand analysis tool.

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Our latest hire needs a moniker. Suggestions?

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Inspired by the truly inane (but no doubt true) posts of actual idotic agency and client comments on Adverbatims.com we are pleased to announce our new puzzler.

Send in your inane agency and client messages and the winner will receive, yes you guessed it, $50 in Fandango tickets. Contest starts now. And it closes a week from today. Judging will be by an independent party, most probably not me but definitely a Mortar employee.

To get you started here are a few choice items from Adverbatims:

“They loved it but the want to change the pictures, headline and design.”
(Agency, Account Executive)

“Can you ask the announcer to produce a whispering scream?”
(Client, Area Manager, during the recording of a radio spot)

“POS? What the fuck is that, another word you made up?”
(Agency, Account Executive)

“Make it wild but conservative!”
(Agency, Account Executive, to Art Director)

“Before negotiating something, I practice in the shower“
(Client, Marketing Assistant)

“There’s an X crossing the photo. When you send me the final art, it’s not going to be there, is it?”
(Client, Area Manager)

“Can you change the word ‘exquisite’ on the ad? Words including the letter X are way too complicated.”
(Client, Marketing Manager)

“It’s amazing how well you interpreted the brief. This piece is exactly
what we wanted, you could not have made it any better, I love it. But I
also think it’s too good. This is for a bigger client, a more
international one. We’re not like that. See if you can do something
shittier that we can use.”
(Client, same Marketing Manager)

“This is a picture of how I want the ad. I had to draw it in a napkin.”
(Client, same Marketing Manager)

And my absolute favorite:

"You’re going to rape every piece of crap on the shelf.”
(Client, Marketing Assistant, optimist about a colleague’s future product launch)

Enter your entries below or email them to me.

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These are stills from a new promotional site for an office supply company, Viking (no relation to the cooker company we suspect).  The first two were a snap, but I’m buggered if I can figure out number three (below).

Click through here to see the site and wonder at the possibilities of stationery art.

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Mortar’s Communication Planner, Nick told me about this billboard for Google.

Not content with straightforward help wanted ads, Google designed its own promotion for eggheads in Boston and Silicon Valley back in 2004.

Apparently, the solution to this puzzle is a URL address for an an even harder problem.

I’ll save you some hassle, the answer of course is  7427466391 (yeah, I looked it up, on Google of course).

Its nice to see an advertiser have the confidence to challenge its audience.

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The all white jigsaw from Red Bull says it all. 

With a can of Red Bull anything is possible.

Direct mail program posted on AdvertisingforPeanuts Blog. Credit to 10AM Communications, Singapore.

I would imagine this has to be a trade promotion judging by the cost of production.

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Wassup puzzler?

You are outside a hut. It is windowless and otherwise barren.  Not the kind of place to hang out really.

You are alone. Yes, you are a little sad.

There are 3 light switches outside the door. 

The switches are connected to 3 light bulbs inside the house.

You can enter the hut only once.

How can you tell which switch is connected to which light bulb?

First correct answer wins $10 in Fandango tickets. Email me here.

Update: 6.30.06: We have a winner. Mortar’s own Sarah Thompson is a lateral thinker to be feared:

Turn on switches 1 and 2; leave switch 3 off.

Turn off switch 1 and leave room.

Bulb that is lighted is switch 2.

Bulb that is off is switch 3.

Bulb that is off but warm to the touch is switch 1.

She will be receiving two Fandango gift certificates for her winning entry. Watch for the next puzzler next week. - Mortarmark

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Dear Mortablog puzzlers, the answer to last week’s brainteaser is (drum roll):

Flip the paper upside down.

The equation now reads X = I + IX.

How about that gamma/delta rush? No winners I am afraid.

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Can you beat Tricky Nick, Mortar’s resident Planner?

Turn the incorrect Roman-numeral equation XI + I = X (made out of 10 sticks) into a correct one by moving as few sticks as possible. First correct answer gets $10 in Fandango bucks. Email your answer.

Update: can’t wait? the answer has been posted here.

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