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EMRL
1020 Tenth Street
Sacramento, California 95814
(415) 689-4820

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  • Hands On

    One of the things that kind of makes us different, weird, eccentric, or whatever in relation to many other advertising agencies is that we actually enjoy the process of making the stuff, hands-on style. Designing the master plan creative stuff is awesome too, but the fun of “getting your hands dirty” (I mean this literally)…

  • I will not join you

    So, Chevron’s latest campaign really sucks. The campaign has a threatening overtone and when combined with the whole greenwashing thing its got going on, it really makes me want to pull down my pants and scream and shake my fists at the world. In answer to the campaign’s question/title “Will you join us?”, no I…

  • The Ultimate Vulgarity

    Rosser Reeves made a series of TV spots for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 election campaign. They were some of the first political television advertisements ever made. Some of the spots were just dumb, like this one that was animated by Disney but others were far more contemporary in feel. David Olgivy called using advertising to sell…

  • Still Looking…

    Help!  We need someone who can help us build websites – we posted this previously (in September) but still haven’t found just the right person.  If you’re pretty skilled with web stuff (see below) and think you might want to work at the happiest ad agency on earth, let us know and drop us a…

  • Economics, with cows

    SOCIALISM You have 2 cows. You give one to your neighbour. COMMUNISM You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

  • Ad Clichés Are for the Birds

    I wonder how much big-picture thought honestly goes into much of the advertising we’re all exposed to. Although I don’t think it works like this in the “real world”, I believe that we (the people in marketing and advertising) have a responsibility to ourselves, our clients, and our target audiences to avoid pat clichés and…

  • Kick & Push & Coast

    I realized a few weeks ago that I really missed my skateboard. There’s something really cool about skating – you just kind of float…. Back in the day i used to skate alot for fun, and for transportation too, but when I first moved downtown I kinda gave up on skating and moved on to…

  • It Takes a Village, Comrade

    This parallel universe moment made me giggle. And on a quasi-kinda-related note, here’s a quote from an anonymous Soviet news correspondent, based five years in the U.S. – I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world —…

  • Artvertising

    Advertising is a struggle. I beat myself up on just about every project I’m involved with, because what I’m really trying to create is lasting art, not just loud-mouthed marketing to sell people crap they don’t need. It really is challenging though – the froofy grand ideals of creating art in mass media is often…

  • Touch the Egg

    If you hang out around Down/Midtown you must have noticed those parking things, the thingies that replaced parking meters locally. Not long before the solarpoweredparkeonofthefuturethings came, new digital parking meters replaced the old classic wind-up mechanical ones. Cool, whatever. But then shortly after that (the new digital meters were FAR from worn out), these Parkeon…

  • Congratulations!

    Three of our clients were voted Best of Sacramento in their appropriate category! Congratulations go out to LJ Urban, Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates, and Greenbuilt (not pictured.) Nice work!

  • A Little Off the Mark

    Last night i was walking home and I saw this transit ad. My first thought was “wow, small children don’t have much nutritional value.” This ad seems to be the result of some group of people trying to make a “hard-hitting” ad – I imagine they must have realized it was off the mark at…

  • Want a Job?

    We are looking to hire another person. Naturally we want someone who has a design eye – but the critical thing we are looking for is someone who has analytical brains, is skilled in engineering and executing websites (XHTML/HTML & PHP), and also has a good knowledge of WordPress and other blog-type stuff. If you…

  • The Quality of Light

    I can see it when the sun is setting – the quality of light is very special this time of year. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it seems like the shadows are longer than normal, the yellow/orange color of sunset is a bit off, a little more intense. Maybe its all…

  • The Unbearable Weirdness of Being

    A few nights ago I was walking home late. Like 2:30 in the morning late, which I guess is so late it’s really more early than late. Anyhow… I was walking home down J street and I ran into Ground Chuck, an old friend from around town. This footage is some hand-developed 16mm stuff I…

  • A (kinda) New Design

    I just finished writing a rather long treatise on how we approached renovating our website. When I was checking to make sure I hadn’t made any typos or anything, I re-read what I had written about reductionist philosophy (!!!) and I realized the irony in having such a long-winded post to say something simple. So…

  • Another Award

    The trilingual television public service announcements we made as part of the Spread the Word, Not the Flu campaign for the Yolo County Health Department won a Crystal Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

  • I Hate You, Spam.

    Hate is not a strong enough word. Stay tuned, new site on the way.

  • We Need a New Awards Shelf

    We won two CAPPIE awards for our work with Yolo County on the Spread the Word, Not the Flu campaign. The campaign included print, outdoor media, television, and public outreach, and won awards in the Short-term campaign category and the Television Public Service Announcement category. Go us.

  • A Little Design Mention

    One of the sites we designed, ljurban.com, won 5/5 hearts from welovewp.com. Neat!

  • Congratulations!

    My friends Jay and Siobahn Truesdale have a new baby girl. Best wishes and congratulations from all the ERMLs. =)

  • 40 Under 40

    Apparently Sacramento Magazine thinks I’m one of the New Generation of Power Players *cough* and featured a bit on me in their January Issue.

  • EMRL Tree-Trimming Party!

    Help us trim our Xmass tree and drink some booze. December 7th, 6-9pm @ EMRL Media Group, Downtown Sacramento, CA.Call (916) 446.2440, check the link, or Email us. If you have any questions or need any other information. Hope to see you all there!

  • Hello Pain

    I wonder which is worse. An innocent cat dressed up as Hello Kitty or Hello Kitty dressed up like Paris Hilton. Tough call 😮

  • So Joe

    Joe came to fix our computers. Dressed like this. Rad.

  • New Campaign Preview

    We’ve been working hard on a new English, Russian, & Spanish cross-media campaign that’s shaping up to be pretty neat, so here’s a preview.  

  • RSS Feed

    We’ve added an RSS Feed to our news blog. Enjoy!

  • New Staff at EMRL!

    We’ve got two new people working with us now and would like to introduce them. Erica (she was hired quite some time ago, so this is late in coming *sad face*) is a great designer and is working primarily in print and web design. Rebecca started here last week and is focusing on web coding…