Tag: Advertising and Marketing

Problems, problems. We creatives love problems. We embrace them with open arms, eyes and minds. Problems are the things that get us up in the morning. You see, if everything was going swimmingly, no one would ever need us. We like to be needed and appreciated. The bigger the problem,…

In the advertising world, we love a good "visual solve." When we see a really good one we'll often say to one another. "Wow, I wish I would have thought of that." There's a simplicity of communication that's not easily done with words. Words can get complicated and require a…

If you ask the average person if they like negative ads or even think they work, they'd probably say "no they don't work and can they please just stop." But every campaign season there seems to be more and more negative ads. I'm predicting a record amount of negative advertising…

In advertising we deal with competing brands all the time. Logically thinking, you might assume that one brand really is better than another. But if facts and logic where what consumers were in the market for each product category would have one dominate brand and everyone else would just get…

During my agency days, every year the creative department would "gang bang" on a "Christmas card." Which later became the holiday card. And then became the digital holiday card. And then the holiday video. (I can safely say that many agencies should have stuck with cards.) The idea is to…

If you work in advertising and marketing long enough you will eventually find yourself working a celebrity shoot. And almost always, celebrities are not like the rest of us. Their lives are different and therefore they must be treated differently on set. Here are a couple pointers. 1) Most have…

In the agency world and production it's long been a trope that there's a triangle with three sides named good, fast and cheap. You can have any two sides but you can't have all three. Agency professionals understand this just as well as those of us on the production side.…

One of the great things about being an advertising creative is that you get to learn something new everyday. It's often something about a client's business that's far afield of one's normal interest. It could be something mundane like an arcane law that governs a business or a manufacturing process,…

After spending over a decade as a copywriter, and working through the internet explosion, I have a few opinions about what it takes to be a great copywriter in today's creative environment. The three key elements are first, being well a rounded writer, second, having a great understanding of how…

A study by Cisco VNI states that by 2014 90% of web traffic will be video. You might want to read that again. And no, it's not a typo. This is probably one of the more shocking numbers on the rise of video on the Web but maybe not the…