Tag: creative

Doubt. Do you doubt yourself? Do you ever stare at a blank page and doubt you can fill it with something great? Do you doubt that your work is going to be as good as the next guys? Do you doubt that you're a good creative? Doubt is natural. But…

Non-creative people think about things in either yes or no. It's blue or not. The project is completed or not. The books balance to zero or not. This is what most people do at their jobs everyday. They look for binary patterns and make decisions based on those patterns. This…

As we wind down to the last days of what seems to be the worst, most negative, election in our nation's history, it's a good time to see what an advertising and marketing pro can learn from it. I have a few takeaways. 1) None of this really applies in…

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the negative marketing aspect of a US election is different than any other marketing category. The fact that there are only two options for voters to consider makes the race to the bottom attractive. Throw enough mud and folks won't have a choice but…

Advertising pros that have careers that last more than a couple years will find themselves working on more than one brand in a single category. I, for example, have worked on multiple hotel brands including Ritz Carleton and Hilton hotels. Multiple motorcycle brands including Kawasaki and Suzuki (twice). And multiple…

Last night the Wrigley corporation was faced with a difficult situation. A really stupid analogy was made by Donald Trump Jr. comparing skittles to potential terrorist refugees. Not only did Wrigley's take the highroad, they shut the conversation down by saying continuing it could be misconstrued as marketing. And we…

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,…

When Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the pledge he gave his employer, the NFL, has a difficult brand problem. Many of its biggest customers started to say the NFL's stars are anti-American. Politics is somewhere most brands and anyone in business probably shouldn't go if it's not literally their…

I wrote a few weeks ago on why negative advertising is so effective in politics but is much more rarely used in consumer brand advertising. But what about basket of deplorables? It seems a lot different. It's also been compared to Mitt's 47% comment. But that's the politics side of it…

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…