Comcast announced today that it will be rebranding its Versus network as NBC Sports Network at the beginning of next year. This is a great move. No one knows what the hell Versus is or where the hell they can find it in their channel lineup. The familiar NBC moniker should make things much easier for potential viewers.

Now it’s your turn. Do people know where to find you? Do agencies know what you’re all about? Do your communications to the outside world accurately reflect your true persona?
If not, it’s time to …

Our entire day is sent working with other people.
We team up on concepts.
We meet with account to make sure work is on brief.

We loop in media to discover new ways to expand the work.
We work with production companies, editing houses uses and recording studios to create TV spots.
We collaborate with coders and UX people to craft engaging digital experiences.
And yet, when it comes time to show off what we can do to potential suitors?
We create the most “me”-focused presentation possible—the portfolio.
It’s nice to see the beautiful end results of our …

I can’t tell you how many portfolios I’ve received from creatives who say, I’m at a bad agency. They don’t get me here. They don’t want to do great work like I do. They’re all about politics/money/boring clients/the suits run the place/insert excuse or self-delusion here.
I certainly can relate to the instinct. After all, all I wanted ten years ago was to get to “a great place” where they knew what great work was. And to me, that meant ten entries in that year’s One Show annual.
Having now worked at …

Is a collection of pictures and videos really the best way to sell yourself?
Some people are quite good at putting together a killer portfolio. They spend hours upon hours perfecting it until it tells a seemingly perfect story about themselves.
But is it perfect, really?
I don’t think so. Because so many of these perfect portfolio creators turn out to be not so perfect employees.
How can that be?
Simple, really. The job we are asked to do each day does not even remotely resemble the act of putting together a portfolio. Perhaps there …

Like it or not, the world ‘lives’ on Facebook these days. It is the hub for virtually everything that happens online. It is where people go to coordinate their social lives. It’s where we share stuff. It’s where we go to find stuff. It’s our network. It’s our life.
So why the hell would you leave your work info off of your profile?
As someone who looks for talent on a pretty regular basis, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when I see a Facebook profile with no work history …

It’s a pretty damn fine song by the Clash – and a question lingering in the back of the mind of every ambitious advertising person.
Which is the better path to success – the loyal “company man” who hangs in there at an agency, developing loyalty and deep relationships, or the “jumper” who is more loyal to his own ambition than the people who are depending on him – the art director who keeps Mayflower on speed-dial and packs a van every 18 months for the next city and the next …

I never had to walk 17 miles to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways.
And I never had to run down to the creek to fetch my own water.
But you know what I did have to do, back in the day?
I had to actually call people that I wanted to work for. Not only that, I had to dig through a big red book that listed out every damn agency in the world to find out who might be the right person to contact. Emphasis on the word ‘might’.
I had …

“So, what do you like to see in a portfolio?” was the first question, from the moderator.
“Besides the obvious technical things, like mastering programs, I like to see lots of ideas. Ideas should be falling out of your pockets, you have so many. Show that you have read everything, that you’ve seen lots of international films, and that you’ve been to all the museums. If you’re an art director, I would love to see a notebook with collage, photography, graffiti, poems—anything that shows me that there’s an interesting, curious person …

Everyone had a friend in High School who was great at math. If you went to an expensive school you probably had many friends who were great at math. But what are they doing, now?
Schools put more value on subjects like Math and Science than they do on the Performing Arts or the Visual Arts. Why is this? It is because the school curriculum is designed by college professors to produce more college professors.
So, chances are, if you told your parents that you wanted to study art, you were greeted …

It was 1994. Sure, I had spent a couple of years on the client side and a couple of years on staff at a small Atlanta agency.
But this was Chiat Fucking Day.
The place that I saw in all those award show books. The agency that had created the incredible “1984″ commercial for the Macintosh. This was Real Advertising.
There was a popcorn machine and a caterer and there were these crazy offices that weren’t even offices, where you just checked out a laptop and a phone and found a perch somewhere. There were vibrant colors and hip people and tables that looked like diner booths and the …