A wise comic-strip beagle once said, “There’s no sense in doing a lot of barking if you don’t really have anything to say.”

Somebody get this puppy a job in advertising. Please.

These are the words we all need to live by, agency and client alike. People think if you shout loud enough or make something clever enough, it will make people think you actually have something worth talking about.

More likely, they will either be annoyed by you or simply forget about you.

Think of the greatest ads or campaigns you’ve ever seen. I would bet they all have a strong point of view, in addition to being entertaining and informative.

Apple, Nike, HBO, FedEx, BMW—the list goes on—all of their best work says something meaningful about their brand and to their audience.

Clients need to realize that advertising is not meant to solve all of their problems. It’s meant to solve their communication problems. If you make a crappy product and put out a crappy offer, no amount of advertising lipstick is going to make your brand’s pig look any better.

And agencies need to help their clients find the insightful gems that will actually excite potential customers and move product. Dig deep. Think less like an agency guy and more like a potential customer.

I know we’ve all had those moments when we saw some seemingly obscure tidbit in a brief and thought “why the hell aren’t we talking about this?” Almost every brand has something worthwhile to talk about, we just need to be better at recognizing it more often.

And once we do find those gems? We need to sell the client on them. We can’t be afraid of getting smacked down by a stuck-in-his-ways CMO or a paranoid marketing manager. Our job is to sell shit, we should be good at this.

Now, there’s always the off chance that all the digging in the world won’t yield anything worth barking about.

If that’s the case, as Snoopy would probably say, it’s probably time to start digging in someone else’s yard.

- TJ Bennett