So what were you doing last week? Dancing topless on a 200-foot yacht off the South of France? Rubbing elbows with some ECDs from South America? Bumping uglies with a random AD from Amsterdam?
Sounds awesome. Hope you took pictures.
Me? I was in the office, cranking out work like a mofo. Selling shit. Saving projects. You know, a typical week in advertising.
Now, I’ve come down on award shows before, and this post isn’t really about that. I actually think Cannes, out of all the shows, seems to honor some of our …

I’ve been thinking about a quote that I read 15 years ago, when I first got into the business. Someone asked a then-successful Creative Director how he knew something was “good.”
Seems like an obvious question. Whenever we share something we’ve created, it’s a question we ask ourselves. Of course, the common answer is, “I know it, when I see it.” But that doesn’t really help. For some, something is “good” if it makes the little voice in their head say “yes!”. Of course, there are some who don’t have a …

You know the game. It’s at every carnival and boardwalk across the country. You take a mallet and try to pound the crap out of a bunch of stuffed moles that keep popping their heads out of a bunch of holes.
It’s pretty damn annoying really. The more you get into it, the more the moles keep popping up, to the point where it’s impossible to hit them all.
It’s just like advertising, really.
Just when you think you’ve solved a problem, another one pops up. Whack! You write the perfect headline. Another …

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 …

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. …

When I first started doing ads, I would do my job like a 10-year old. Magic markers and construction paper. One time I went into a conference room to show the ideas I had for Hanes. I brought in a boom box and played the Kiss song, I Love It Loud. The chorus goes “Heeeeeeeeeey, yeah.” And I thought it would be cool if Hanes made a version going “Haaaaaaaaaaanes.” My creative director threw an empty Diet Coke can at me upon hearing this idea. That was the punishment for …

Certain clients love to cram too much copy into film and radio ads.
Cram. Cram. Cram.
Got thirty seconds?
Cram thirty-five or forty seconds worth of talk in there.
Sixty seconds?
Surely that can hold seventy seconds worth of screaming and shouting.
Cram. Cram. Cram.
Apparently they know something about space-time that you, I and even Einstein are incapable of fathoming.
Or…
Or maybe they are perusing your script and it just doesn’t look like there’s all that much copy there in the first place.
Why?
Because you used numbers and symbols instead of letters.
$5.99 perhaps?
Maybe there’s a January 28, 2011 …