Dan Wieden made a speech to the wing nuts who work for him before W+K moved to their new offices in Portland's Pearl district. I've read it before, but today I read it again. W+K puts "the work" first and it shows. The work comes before the client/agency relationship and before the people who do the work. Wieden describes why this makes sense: In big agencies, the client/agency relationship is the most sacred thing. …
Winner of the George Parker Award for Excellence
I thought I was frustrated with this business. But after a quick visit to The Rules of Stupid, I now see my gripes are inconsequential. The blogger in question received this brief pitch from a recruiter: Please send your portfolio to superdave@enfatico.com Sent from my iPhone The lack of information and inherent assumptions therein made said blogger go ballistic. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm about fed up …
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How to Appeal to the Deadhead Turned Ad Guy Within
Creative courtesy of HMH. …
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Become A Tradigitalist and Rise Above
Wieden's digital man wonder, Renny Gleeson, has a funny take on the digital vs. traditional battle underway at an agency near you. One of the issues he looks at is creative control, a topic I grapple with from time to time. creative control, as in, "who's that stupid traditional agency to judge the unparraleled brilliance of my interactive idea when they don't know s--- about interactive or the specific nuances of …
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Doing A Lot With Two Letters
Greg Cordell, Chief Inspiration Officer at Brains on Fire, likes to do things just so. …
Not Mad Men & Women
Washington Post business section editors thought it might be fun to gather some present day ad people in a room and ask them about AMC's "Mad Men" while taking their photos. The writer on the job also had a good time, as evidenced by this nostalgia-laden missive. In 1960, the ad industry was a Gotham-based priesthood. Advertisers bowed before the adman's implied knowledge of consumer desire, bolstered by his …
Ad Men. Circus Characters. What’s The Diff?
We're terribly late to this story, but it's worth picking up on. Did you know that Alex Bogusky looks to P.T. Barnum as an insipration? Yep. In fact, CP+B calls their attention-getting antics Hooplanetics, a term that simultaneously pays homage to Barnum while laughing at Tom Cruise and crew. Bogusky and friends even wrote a book about it. Sadly, the book was only made available for a short while. Amazon and all the …
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Walmart-Style Travelogue
Agency Tart reporting from the front lines of Adlandia, confirms that this is a tough business. In Boston today for a huge online branding presentation to my biggest client. My nemesis agency was there as the client’s overall brand presence. What corporate ass-kissing fuckheads. Anyway, our travel booker-person made me share a room with a project manager on the team. Agency Tart does not share rooms. We all got …
