We are back with Part Two of our interview with Lance Mald, Vice President Creative Director of Corporate Sales and Marketing at Time Inc.

This episode includes a discussion of what advertisers are now looking for from media companies like Time Inc. and advertising agencies as the world of media has moved from the traditional to the much more complex. We also cover the benefits delivered by Time Inc. properties including their ability to deliver solutions that engage audiences across multiple channels and Time Inc.’s “trusted brand” status in a world of “me-media”.

Other subjects include advertising client’s desire to work with agencys that take a media-neutral perspective and are able to get past the :30 commercial.

I am still in Costa Rica, maybe bungee jumping (not!) I’ll be home soon.

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While I am on a beach in Costa Rica I am sending this Podcast interview with Lance Mald, Vice President and Creative Director of Time inc., to you via a pre-scheduled RSS feed.

Lance recently joined Time Inc. as its first Creative Director and moved from a long career in advertising as Executive Creative Director and Creative Director of agencies including Ten United, Earl Palmer Brown, Campbell Ewald West, Saatchi & Saatchi (where we worked together) and BBDO. His clients have included the launches of TIVO and DirectTV, Northwest Airlines, British Airways, P&G and Burger King.

Part One of the two part interview covers a range of subjects including the effect of the unbundling of media from creative services at major agencies (not good), the idea that Time Inc. is a brand that crosses over multiple media not just print and how brands like Sports Illustrated (the Swimsuit Issue) and This Old House are now multi-media brands spanning print, TV and Podcasting.

Hope you enjoy. I’ll be raising a cold beer while you listen!

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I am running. I am off to a two week vacation and I can’t find my show notes for the third part of my ranging interview with ADWEEK and ADFREAK’s Cathy Taylor so you’ll just have to listen… hey, stuff happens.

While I am away, I’ll be sharing a two part interview with Lance Mald, Vice President and Creative Director of Time, Inc. Good stuff.

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Here is part two of my interview with ADWEEK’s Cathy Taylor, Contributiing Editor of ADWEEK Magazine and blogger at ADFREAK. Cathy has been covering the interactive world for ADWEEK since 1994.

In this episode, Cathy helps us understand why changes in the advertising world have accelerated so quickly in the past few months. She mentions that many of the “improvements” to the interactive world that we began discussing in the late 1990’s have come to fruition: the growth of broadband penetration, the adoption of wireless technology, more memory and better user interfaces – the holy grails that we have all been waiting for. And then, there is the TIVO effect.

In addition, advertisers have been holding their agency’s feet to the fire as recognition of changing media usage habits has hit even mainstream marketing departments. This is a reason that platform “agnostic’ agencies like Taxi and Strawberry Frog have been on a growth tear.

Finally, we spend a few minutes discussing the Chevy Tahoe citizen media campaign just in case you thought that this subject hasn’t been talked to death yet.

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I am currently sensitized to Apple. I have been reading “iCon: Steve Jobs The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business”, a great take on Steve Jobs by Jeffrey Young and William Simon. I highly recommend it as insight into Steve, Apple and Apple’s resurrection. The book is informative, and more to the point, highly entertaining. It isn’t often that I view a book about a computer company CEO as being a page-turner. By the way, Steve (ever capable of being majorly pissed off) disliked his profile so much that he banned the publisher’s books from all Apple stores. Get this, John Wiley & Sons, the publisher, publishes the Dummies series.

OK, on to the commercials. Wonderful. Simple. Clear. To the point. And, not just to the point, they make all the points that make Macs the best computers in many users heads. Each simple spot, which shows two actors (one with a Bill Gates vibe and one with a combo hip/slacker/cool vibe) and the simple intro “Hello I’m a Mac. Hello I’m a PC”, highlights a key Mac vs. PC advantage. These include PC’s poor viral protection, the PC’s desire to occasionally freeze, Mac’s iLife and a glowing review from The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg on the Mac.

I also like the spots because they remind me of the TV that we did a couple of years ago for the Bend Memorial Clinic. Wonderful. Simple. Clear. To the point. You can see them by going to our website and moving to the “Our work” section off the front page.