Is good advertising always good?
By good advertising I mean the stuff that either wins awards or gets recognized around the office.
Is it really good though?
Is it working for the client? Is it selling anything? Is it making people think differently about a product?
So many creatives get hung up on doing something cool that they forget the main goal of our jobs—to sell shit.
We can make as many excuses as we want, like ‘I’m protecting the integrity of the brand.’ or ‘It’s going to get create a ton of word-of-mouth.’
Maybe.
But I’ve …

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate my big salary, the nice hotels, the fancy dinners and the expense reports—but I’m a creative bitch and I’m addicted to compliments. I need compliments from my creative director. I need a visit from the CEO to personally tell me how great I am. I need to hear it from the client. And, I want the client to say it in the meeting. Not just nod his or her head and later on tell the account executive they were happy. I need instant awesomefication. …

There’s a trend in marketing circles between agency and client. It goes something like this. Client wants to find the very best agency they can to help them market their wares for the best possible price. Client puts out an Request For Information (RFI) to find an appropriate suitor. Client then invites a smaller number of agencies to a Request For Proposal (RFP) that amounts to that agency making their case for why they should be selected. If the client is indecisive, of low moral fiber, or just not very …

Those words freak me the fuck out. I usually hear them from a superior or a client. And, they could mean one of two things:

I know I’m not a copywriter, but this is the idea I’m trying to communicate. Could you please help me make it stronger/clearer?
I know I just said I’m not a copywriter, but—damn, what I just wrote was pretty fucking good and someone here better fucking acknowledge it or I’m going to get in a really pissy mood.

It’s usually number 2.
- John Huggins

You get a brief. You work up a few ideas. You get them in a nice place and decide to show your account team.
That’s when you see the look of fear in their eyes.
They’re afraid to show one or more of your ideas because they are anticipating a poor reaction from the client.  Not because the ads are off-strategy. Or off-brand. Or off-anything.
They’re afraid simply because the client has reacted irrationally to work before and they are trying to anticipate what might set them off again.
I get it. Understanding the …

We hear all the time how advertising has to be more accountable. We need to ‘mine the data’ and find out how to ‘optimize’ every piece of communication.
Okay.
So explain to me why I’ve pretty much never received any feedback on how a piece of communication that I created performed? Sure, if I harass someone, I may get a cursory “it did great” or “it underperformed”, but why isn’t this information made readily available to the people responsible for creating the work?
Listen, I’m not dying to hear all the nitty-gritty details …

It happened last week.
We were doing a pre-production meeting and one of the clients realized that there was too much information in their new TV spot.
I agreed. Our first script had at least half of the information about their offer.
I opened the computer and rewrote it.
That’s when the coffee lady entered the room.
“Here is our target.” said the client. “show it to her.”
The woman was a bit scared. I would probably be too, if I entered a room with 15 people and somebody called me “target” and then said they …

So I read this article the other day.  It detailed some survey results that speak to a few issues clients have with their current agencies.
Tops on the list? We’re too reactive.
Okay. I can buy that. But I also think that if you took a survey of agencies’ attitudes about their clients, you would find the same complaint near the top of the list.
Which brings us to number two on the list—poor communication.
And therein lies the real problem. We’re not really talking to each other.
I’ve seen it time and time again. …

Think you’ve got a daunting task ahead?
A great script – the most genius one you or anybody else has ever written – is in your tiny little hands and the only thing that remains is… (insert ominous pause here)… selling it to the client.
But you’re up to it!
You’ll sell it through. You’ll sell it to the client you work with every day, right? And her boss, too, right?
Why, you’ll even sell it through to their pretzel-headed president who came up through sales and makes every key decision based on …

So, I know this has been discussed before, but I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation.
Why don’t advertising agencies advertise?
We ask our clients to put their faith in us. We tell them that their media dollars are an investment, one that will pay off with increased sales and additional customers.
And yet, when was the last time you saw a BBDO spot on TV? Or a Crispin print ad? Or an R/GA banner?
We don’t even have a particularly strong social media presence. Sure, there are a few agencies that have a decent …