Adweek has been reaching out to the ad community for thought pieces. They're running one now from Mark Wnek, chairman and chief creative officer at Lowe. He says stop worrying so much about who gets credit for an idea. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins begins his chapter on Level 5 leadership with a beautiful quote from Harry S Truman: "You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not care who gets …
Ad People Are Creative People (mostly)
When presenting agency capabilities, how often do you stretch beyond the org chart? Sure, you determine some points of difference and place catchy epigrams on Power Point slides, but these steps, although necessary, don't properly capture your company. How could they? You need human beings for that job. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story, where Atlanta shop SuperGroup was pitching The Weather …
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Renny’s “Rampant Kudzu of ‘You-Ness'”
Renny Gleeson of W+K wants to know how we manage to tend to our personal brand(s) and our online workflow. This is what he does: Here I am sitting in Finland, sipping from the hotel wifi, and I've got skype, twhirl, work webmail, gmail, yahoo mail, twitter, netvibes and Facebook live - and in this multiplicity, watching 'Friend Feed' choke, flail and self-reference itself. And I still have to figure out how to force …
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And You May Ask Yourself, Where Does That Highway Go?
The following video is the work of Howard Pyle, creative director at Local Theory, the New York boutique that created and produced the Nokia Young Lions film competition sponsorship campaign. MTV plans to use some of this footage in an upcoming special on Cannes. Nokia Nseries sponsored the Young Lions film competition, providing mobile cameras (the Nokia N93i) that the teams used to create 30 second commercials on …
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Epigramatic for the People
"Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword." -E.B. White, "Truth in Advertising," The New Yorker So begins The Happy Soul Industry, by …
Diplomacy in the Ring (seems like an oxymoron, but isn’t)
"Diplomacy is not weakness," said Kate Walsh, the star of “Private Practice” on ABC and a member of a dissident faction with Screen Actors Guild. The New York Times has more on struggles at SAG, but I'd like to linger on Walsh's thinking. The great struggle of my ad career has been diplomacy, because frankly, I feel like I'm holding myself back from slugging it out on a regular basis. What I've learned is my ability …
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God Looks For An Agency to Fix Her Brand
Steffan Postaer's new novel, The Happy Soul Industry, is available to the reading public today. Postaer took a moment to answer a few questions about the book. Q. What inspired the writing of this book (other than your career of choice)? A. The concept. I think I was looking for an idea big enough to support 50,000 words. In some ways it was a lot like judging creative campaigns at work. Which idea is best? Then …
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Link Love Needed To Mellow The Bitter
The Ad Contrarian, a.k.a. Bob Hoffman, ceo of Hoffman/Lewis, is fishing for links. But not in the typical groveling manner. Can you imagine that not one of these creepy low-life bloggers would include your and my absolute favorite blog on their blog roll? And do you know who these bloggers are? We're talking here about people who can't spell; who can't produce a simple declarative sentence; who wear bicycle shorts; …
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