Musings on advertising and facial topiary. Usually daily. Often dandruff-free. • The book: bit.ly/LCB_book • The story: bit.ly/LeeClowTalksLCB
Joined April 2009
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5 Jul 2011
You cannot become the person or agency you wish to be by doing the type of work you wished you never had to do.
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Jun 12
“Prescriptive edits” are always the result of an agency failure. Sometimes of skill. Most often of spine.
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Jun 11
Advertising is rarely as complicated as some clients fear and never as complex as too many agencies need it to be.
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The notion that writers should always be writing or designers should always be designing is a myth. Every word written and every design decision made is an act of creative problem-solving. Try doing that a few thousand times a day and see how blissful your brain feels.
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Even the most disciplined creative process is sloppy and mercurial. The only thing it begrudgingly respects is the deadline.
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“How’s that coming along?” is not the inspiring question so many seem to think it is.
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The fight to make “approved work” synonymous with “great work” can only be waged by those who don’t assume they naturally are.
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Branding is the art of making a transaction only part of the transaction.
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If an ad agency’s job was to provide options, we’d all be wildly successful.
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The best practices in advertising are all philosophical.
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May 29
Clients are full of surprises. Sometimes they actually love what the agency’s self-appointed brand police swore they would hate.
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May 28
Some clients see greatness and complain it isn’t exactly what they never told you they wanted. Which undoubtedly wasn’t that good anyway.
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May 27
That advertising’s main job is not to inform is still new information to way too many people in advertising.
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May 26
Treat creativity like a commodity and you’ll end up with a surplus of value-priced mediocrity.
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May 22
A unique product saddled with a generic voice is still just another wallpaper brand.
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May 21
Potential clients claiming to want great work should have no hesitation explaining how they treated the last people they hired to create it.
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May 20
Clients who think problem/solution ads are “too negative” are themselves a problem with only one solution.
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May 19
Great advertising is 100% about the product and 100% about the audience. The math may be funny, but it’s still fundamental.
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May 18
“Now we don’t have to hire people who make us look and sound smart” is most often said by brands who never did.
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May 15
Flee the agency that values your efficiency over the work’s efficacy. Unless that’s the only type of agency you ever want to work for.
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