The advertising agency business has been in one bind or another ever since the dawn of digital. Digital shook the industry to its core, and the reverberations are still being felt from top to bottom. The list of problems is long, but one problem we don’t spend enough...
Rockin’ the Boat: Why It’s an Excellent and Terrible Thing to Do
Creative people in media and marketing spend their days working to disrupt the norm. That’s how attention—which is in scant supply—is won. The information products that we create from the ideas that we generate are meant to be unusual, odd, or even scary to a degree....
Show, Don’t Tell: A “Help Provided” Prose Poem Campaign
In my desire to "Show, Don't Tell," and to chronicle the prelude to my third career act, I've been writing prose poems about my career, the communications industry, and some of the philosophies that guide me. I published more than a dozen of these prose poems on...
Writing Advice: Readers Are Real People (Get to Know Them Better)
Writers of literary works say don’t go chasing an audience. Don’t picture the reader in your mind. Just focus on the story and serve the story. Basically, the exact opposite of how copywriters work. The best copywriters are obsessed with reaching members of a...
My Presentation to Advertising & PR Students at the University of Texas
I was invited to speak to undergraduates at the Stan Richards School of Advertising & PR at the University of Texas. The invite came from the Association of National Advertisers in New York City. The suggested topic for this guest lecture was "My Work as a...