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Truth in Advertising — and Beyond

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  • The loud, cramped, and high-pressure world of radio ad sales in one image.
    July 8, 2026 The Cranky Creative

    16 days as a human lottery ticket: my short-lived career in radio

    There is a serious, quiet weirdness afoot in the business world today. Across almost every industry, a surreal new management template has taken root: People are being hired into roles

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  • A wide landscape image of a bustling city downtown with pedestrians and cars, where the right side of the frame dissolves into blocky, various-sized pixels in a retro palette of red, blue, green, and orange.
    April 23, 2026 The Cranky Creative

    The 8-bit human: Why 2026 feels lower-resolution than 1979

    What a road-crossing turtle, a breast-pumping nurse, and a house on wheels taught me about

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  • A weathered laptop and a tropical drink on a tiki bar at sunset, representing the "Cranky Creative" office and the advertising apocalypse archive.
    March 19, 2026 The Cranky Creative

    The very best of The Cranky Creative: a guide to the ad world’s decline

    When I launched The Cranky Creative in 2018, I thought I was starting a support

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  • Image reminiscent of the final scene from the movie Planet of the Apes in which Charles Heston's astronaut character finds the ruined Statue of Liberty on the beach and realizes that mankind has destroyed itself
    October 26, 2025 The Cranky Creative

    How advertising created a nation of entitled assholes

    It’s over. I’m done. For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to vent about the

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  • A collage of virtue-signaling ad campaigns that flopped: Bud Light, Pepsi, Jaguar and more
    August 20, 2025 The Cranky Creative

    Virtue, Inc.: How progressive politics hijacked business and marketing

    Marketing used to be about connection — understanding what people wanted and selling it with

    Continue reading
  • In 1957, researchers experimented to see if subliminal messages could be used to increase sales of popcorn and Coca-Cola
    May 8, 2023 The Cranky Creative

    Subliminal messages in advertising … and Disney cartoons?

    A phallic shadow. The word “SEX” etched in ice. The American public has been bombarded

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  • Today's blog post talks about the top 10 reasons why people hate TV commercials
    February 28, 2023 The Cranky Creative

    The real reasons people hate TV commercials

    Oh, advertisers. It didn’t have to be this way. Once upon a time, consumers might

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  • The Cranky Creative explores where all the white people are in commercials
    January 5, 2022 The Cranky Creative

    What happened to white people in TV commercials?

    If you only watched TV, you might think that white people (including fumbling, bumbling white

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Copywriting and Strategy, Now Available on Demand

I am currently accepting select freelance copywriting and strategy projects for businesses that value real results. Want to work with a 30-year veteran instead of an algorithm? Drop me a line.

Our hidden history. Photo of the White City at the Chicago World's Fair.
December 7, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Is history a lie? Uncovering a lost global civilization

What if everything you learned about history was wrong? Is official history a lie? Did we inherit a majestic past only to be taught “we built it”? In my recent

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NASA bloopers showing astronauts on wires, combined with a composite image of a CGI globe and missing Apollo 11 tape boxes.
November 9, 2025 The Cranky Creative

NASA bloopers: wire fails, lost evidence, and CGI globes

After taking aim at processed food in my last post on “The Foodening,” I felt the need to aim a little higher… about 200 miles above Earth, to be precise.

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Watch "The Foodening: How We All Got Cheerily Poisoned," from Probably Alexandra
November 4, 2025 The Cranky Creative

The brands you trust are poisoning your food (for profit)

Stop blaming yourself for being sick. We are living in a rigged game, and the playing field is literally your dinner plate. As devoted Cranky readers know, I am highly

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Image reminiscent of the final scene from the movie Planet of the Apes in which Charles Heston's astronaut character finds the ruined Statue of Liberty on the beach and realizes that mankind has destroyed itself
October 26, 2025 The Cranky Creative

How advertising created a nation of entitled assholes

It’s over. I’m done. For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to vent about the decline of the advertising industry. I’ve complained about the lazy concepts, the idiot creatives, the

Continue reading
Let's save Cracker Barrel
August 27, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Let’s save Cracker Barrel! Ideas inside

Cracker Barrel is no longer changing it’s logo — that’s right, the company just announced it’s keeping the old design — but that doesn’t mean its problems are over. Far

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Cracker Barrel's rebrand disaster: what's really going on?
August 24, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Cracker Barrel’s rebrand disaster: what’s really going on?

What started as just another bafflingly bad corporate rebrand has quickly escalated into a full-on scandal. As customers, employees, and rival companies pile on, the company’s “woke” policies, reports of

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A collage of virtue-signaling ad campaigns that flopped: Bud Light, Pepsi, Jaguar and more
August 20, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Virtue, Inc.: How progressive politics hijacked business and marketing

Marketing used to be about connection — understanding what people wanted and selling it with style. Today, marketing has become a megaphone for progressive politics, preaching woke ideologies that alienate

Continue reading
This new American Eagle jeans ad featuring Sydney Sweeney is driving the woke mob mad.
July 29, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad triggers woke freakout

Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle jeans ad is fun, flirty, and — gasp! — blonde. So naturally, the woke screeching class are calling it Nazi propaganda. Here’s why their meltdown is

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Puma's AI-generated ad puts the advertising industry on notice
April 15, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Ad Review: Puma’s world’s first fully AI-generated ad

Sporting goods brand Puma released the first-ever AI-generated commercial on March 18, 2025 — and the ad world will never be the same. Partnering with digital agency Monks, Puma produced

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A new-breed marketer doing the work of 10 specialists using AI apps for unprecedented productivity
March 26, 2025 The Cranky Creative

Vibe marketing: the future is here, your job is not

If you’re a marketer still plotting campaigns (and your career) like it’s the “old world” — say, six months back — then buckle up, because you’re about to get blindsided.

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As AI gets smarter, humans are getting dumber
March 4, 2025 The Cranky Creative

As AI gets smarter, its use is making us dumber

With the release of xAI’s Grok 3 AI model and Microsoft’s announcement of a new quantum computing processor based on a novel state of matter, the world is about to

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Posts pagination

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Today’s Top Posts

  • Liberty Mutual's branded idiocy: is this the future of advertising?
  • My short-lived career as a United States Postal Service (USPS) mail carrier
  • Subliminal messages in advertising ... and Disney cartoons?
  • The real reasons people hate TV commercials
  • 16 days as a human lottery ticket: my short-lived career in radio
  • Yes, the Gillette Venus Pubic Hair and Skin razor ad goes (down) there

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