It’s not new to complain about the craft of writing being under assault. I’m sure when the printing press was invented monks everywhere were cursing Gutenberg’s terrible invention. These days, writers in the ad world are called upon less and less to be simply professional and proficient writers. But I see this as less an […]

Back in the 90s I was on a list serve (remember those?) on the convergence of media. The thinking back then was that sooner or later television would no longer be bound to the living room and that the Web wouldn’t be bound to the desktop. They would converge. If content could be delivered at […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

If you work as a creative, chances are your job isn’t nearly as glamorous as you imagined it would be in portfolio school. Like the kid shooting hoops in the driveway, or practicing his pitching  on the mound, you most likely imagined yourself becoming the hero by applying your skills against adversity. Instead of sinking […]

One of the great things about social media is how it can connect you with thousands of people you would otherwise never know. This makes it easy to  be exposed to new things, learn from them and become more informed and smarter about business every single day. Indeed, social media has helped to vastly improve […]

When I first started in the ad business I couldn’t decide if I was an artist, a craftsman, or a hack. Now I’ve come to realize that I’m all of those at the same time, maybe even on the same day. It may be a creative business, but business it is and sometimes in business […]

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 […]

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 […]