Nothing kills innovation more than someone in a meeting making a “good point.”
Good points are made by people in the meeting who really don’t need to be there. People with vague job titles. Their job is to make these good points whenever someone important is in the room. Someone like a client or a CEO. These good points sound something like this:
“According to our research, humor doesn’t resonate with our target market.”
“Our audience is known for loyalty. This work doesn’t acknowledge that.”
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but the work …

Ah yes, good old research.
100% Knowledge. 0% Wisdom.
You can hate it all you want, but it isn’t going anywhere. There’s an entire timidity-industrial complex to make certain of that.
The point of this post is to share all the wisdom I have heard and used over the years, so that others can use it when they’re sitting behind the glass watching their brave thinking being masticated by the many manic moving mouths of “experts.”
It won’t make the experience any less painful, but at least it will generate a few laughs and …

I’m going to ask you, the hard core advertising professional, to do something out of character.
Get up from your desk, walk to the elevator and go down to the lobby of your building.
Step out of the elevator, walk out of the building and find someone who fits the description of your target audience.
Now just watch them for a little while. No, not the kind of watching that could get you arrested. Just notice them. See what they look like. Listen to how they sound. See who they’re with. See if …

I was sitting through a few focus groups last week, getting feedback on some proposed campaigns. The groups went well. They liked what we wanted them to. They responded right on cue.
The day after the groups, I was discussing the results with some fellow creatives and they began telling me how unfortunate it was that my clients subject my work to such unprofessional, uninformed scrutiny. I’ve heard this plenty of times before. I probably even espoused the same point of view at one point in my career. But I have …

I never understood the idea of making research groups to test ads.
Ok, it’s part of our jobs and I respect that. But isn’t it strange?
I was wondering how this idea came out.
Maybe somebody just raised his hand in a meeting room and said:
“I know how to choose the next campaign. First, we put some strangers in a room with a window mirror, just like in the police interrogatories. Then, we show them some poor animated cartoons with the ideas. Next, we make this people talk about something they don’t understand: …