Tag Archives: advertising

Creative in the age of measurement.

New post on agency blog: The dig­i­tal age has added a new respon­si­bil­ity to the creative’s job. It used to be that we just had to be funny, smart, and on tar­get. Now we have to be mea­sur­able, and we must cre­ate con­tent with mea­sure­ment in mind. While this cer­tainly sounds like an extra layer that

It’s OK to be an idiot. Sometimes.

In the age of social media, every­body want to be an expert and nobody ever wants to be an idiot. Ones idiocy could be on their per­ma­nent Twitter-record after all. But I’d like to stand up and say it’s OK to be an idiot, at least some­times. Early in my career I worked with a

Top 10 things about being an advertising copywriter.

More than a few of my posts have been about the dif­fi­cul­ties of work­ing in adver­tis­ing these days. It’s always been a com­pet­i­tive indus­try with high burn out and turn over. But it’s been even worse lately thanks to the econ­omy and the rapid change in tech­nol­ogy. But there are also some really great things

Where is Alex’s chorus? Or the triangle of ad deprevity.

Imag­ine a tri­an­gle. On one side is push­ing tobacco. The other side is glam­or­iz­ing gam­bling. And the last side is exploit­ing chil­dren. When I started my career this was the ter­rain I promised myself I would never work. And I never have. And, frankly, my moral com­pass hasn’t wavered much through the years. But I’ve never

Why your advertising sucks part 7. You forgot why you hired your agency.

Some peo­ple who get divorced from or break up with a lover often talk about how they for­got why they ever got involved with their spe­cial some­one in the first place. Or they just won­der what hap­pened to the love. As if it was a mag­i­cal thing that came and went with the wind. These kinds

New post on Agency Blog — Thank you for sharing

Part of the creative’s job these days is to develop ways to encour­age shar­ing a new cam­paign. It’s no longer enough to cre­ate bril­liant cre­ative that con­nects with the audi­ence. Now, cre­ative needs to be so pow­er­ful that it encour­ages “engage­ment” and “shar­ing.” Read the rest here.

Personal time. Sometimes you have to take some from social media too.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted here and for good rea­son. But this really isn’t the time or place to talk about it. (If you’re my Face­book friend and you know me per­son­ally, you already know why I haven’t posted.) I’ve writ­ten here before about the need to post fre­quently and main­tain a 

Why your advertising sucks part 6. You’re scared you might offend someone.

Ever met some­one who never takes sides. Never makes a clear deci­sion. Always wants the group to decide so he doesn’t run the risk of mak­ing any­one upset. You prob­a­bly called this per­son wishy washy, inde­ci­sive or maybe even weak. And never a leader. Now imag­ine this per­son is your brand. A lot of mar­keters

What the hell inspires me? Actually, you can.

As a writer and cre­ative per­son, inspi­ra­tion is some­thing I’m sup­posed to know a lot about. I shouldn’t need your help, because I’m inspired to write witty, inter­est­ing things all the time, right? Cer­tainly I’ve got a direct line to the muse? Unfor­tu­nately, there’s no bat phone for writ­ers. Arti­cle con­tin­ues here on agency blog.

Are “digital” creatives the future for traditional shops?

There’s been a lot of dis­cus­sion lately about what the future’s cre­ative depart­ment should look like and who it should be headed by. Do tra­di­tional shops need to get rid of their old guard and make way for lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers steeped in the tra­di­tions of the dig­i­tal shops? Surely they need to get rid of