Starry Eyed Dreamer

Oops, Did I Just Say That?

Like the accidental "reply all" only meant for one recipient, sometimes we accidentally say what's really on our minds.

Click it and print it and post it in your hellish little cubicle

Everyone's a Creative

No, I mean it. Everyone really is. In some way or another, everyone is a creative. But in this business, it'd sure be nice if there was a way to keep everyone's opinion out of every job. Production by committee...you know the result...a watered-down and usually ineffective piece. Client's always right? Rarely.

Bigger is Better

And I thought I recognized that multicultural group from somewhere.

We Buy & Sell

I've been carrying this old sign around with me since I found it behind a second-hand furniture store on the square in Ozark, Missouri around 1999. (It was right about where the black SUV sits in the picture below. My loft's balcony is just above that. Thank you, Google Street Views.)

It's a reminder to me that that's what we do, and that sometimes, it's not art.

I've Lived This Day a Thousand Times It Won't Go Away

Or as the sign outside of Stan's office says:

"I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."

- Bill Cosby

Create Cool Shit

Another in what has become an endless series, the components of which I am trying to locate and put together in a comprehensive category for your viewing pleasure.

Click it if you ever hope to read it.

Tire Tracks All Across Your Back

Click it - it'll grow.

Keep your book and your resume updated at all times. You never know when the "thump, thump" you just heard was the bus running over you this time.

Got Your Back

Thanks to Bill of Make the Logo Bigger for the suggestion for this installment of "Where's My Jetpack?" the royalty-free clipart comic strip.

The Bottom Line

It's no secret: sex sells. And this poor AD is simply trying to help the client achieve the goal of all advertising: sales.

Another cheap clipart comic, and we're calling it "Where's my Jetpack?"







See more here.

I Call You to Action

Creatives:
Print this. Post it in your cubicles full of other sarcastic/ironic stuff.

AEs:
Read this. Ignore it. Wonder why creatives are so stupid.

Part Seven in my new series "Where's My Jetpack?"








Seven already? Damn! It's almost syndication time!

Pay Me to Play

I call the art of goofing off at work "concepting," and I think clients should expect this to some degree. As Scamp says, "When you see me staring out the window, that's when I'm working." But I'm sure it gets abused all the time, as illustrated here.

Part Five in my just-developed-yesterday-morning comic strip called "Where's My Jetpack?"







I could seriously do this for a living and be very happy.
Well, provided the living wasn't meager.

Make it "Pop"

Why is it that when AEs are talking to graphic designers and art directors about an upcoming print ad, they usually ask for something that "pops"? It's their favorite art word - and yet it doesn't mean anything. Then they turn to the copywriter and reiterate how important it is that we "include a strong call to action." I think I'm going to write a call to action that says, "We call you to action!"

Hurry act now don't wait supplies are limited call now don't wait run don't walk log on to click on don't wait another day

And before some snide weasel comes along to tell me that advertising is not about art, it's about sales - thanks, I know.

The Branson Billboard Brouhaha

Or: Why I Don't Do Ad Clubs Anymore

I was once kicked off my local Ad Club board. We were affiliated with the AAF and did all the usual Ad Club stuff that the rest of them do; monthly luncheons with speakers, Addy Awards, and other self-congratulatory ego orgies. I was living in Springfield, Missouri at the time. To you big city dwellers, I know that’s a laughable place - flyover country - but believe it or not, Springfieldians are very proud of their area and actually look down on LA and NY.

Forty-five miles south of Springfield is Branson, Missouri, the hillbilly tourist town filled with unknown country artists, go-carts, miniature golf courses, real golf courses, funnel cakes and vacation timeshares. Branson had experienced an explosion of growth in the 90s that turned it into an out-of-control Mecca for blue hairs on tour buses and other aficionados of American tastelessness. Everyone was capitalizing on the sudden success, cracked wide-open by a feature on 60 Minutes. Springfield renamed their airport Springfield-Branson. One tiny town that neighbored Branson, called Lakeview, decided they’d be better known as Branson West. Highway 65, a well trafficked Missouri corridor and the main entrance to Branson, was sprouting new billboards every week, each new one more hideous than the last, with loud colors and hideous close-ups of washed-up has-beens and never-weres like Andy Williams, Tony Orlando, Yakov Smirnoff or John Davidson, staring down at you with gleaming, capped and bleached smiles.

And then along came a state proposition that recommended the eventual halt of new billboard construction. I liked the idea.

The Ozarks are really quite pretty, and that stretch of Highway 65 between Springfield and the Arkansas border was becoming (to me, anyway) an eyesore of crass commercialism. I'm no tree-hugger, but it was really out of control, enough so that I decided to flip off all my commercially minded colleagues and support the proposition publicly. Tipping the scales for me was the club telling me that our official position as an AAF affiliate was total opposition to the proposition. Tell me how to think or how to vote? Damn, you've just stepped all over the liberty we cherish in this country and awakened the revolutionary in me. So I wrote a piece for the newspaper that ran with my picture and the caption, “Jetpacks is a VP of the Springfield Ad Club.” It basically said, "We've got enough f-ing billboards now. Support Prop A." It ran in the local paper as well as in the Kansas City Star. It took the Kansas City AAF brass about ten minutes to call down to the local chapter and inform them that I was unfit to continue in my capacity on the Ad Club board, having just embarrassed them by using an AAF Club in my byline and mentioning that august organization in my article. I was now a traitor to the trade. But by that point, I was glad to be gone. Ad Club functions are generally just incestuous business card exchanges where the old divorced AE guys hit on the hot young AE girls. Oh, sure, they do some good with their annual contribution to the Ronald McDonald House or whatever, but by and large, it’s just a circle jerk and a chance to snipe about the local hot shop that always cleans up at the awards. Or if you’re lucky, a chance to land a job at that hot shop.

So, anyway, the proposition went on to be narrowly defeated. I’m sure if you drive that stretch of Ozarks highway today you’ll face a stacked and blazing gauntlet of cheap, ugly and loud billboards all shouting at you from the hills. There’s money to be made all around.

I’m never going to convince people like those on that ad club board that advertising can be more than loud calls to action and assaults on intelligence. It’s more than just dollars. It’s more than just buying more airtime than your competitor and bludgeoning the audience with increased frequency. But eventually - maybe even hopefully - over-saturation turns into backlash. Sometimes, one more billboard is one too many.

There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere

Been watching this scene in my backyard the last few days. Two lizards, one inside the porch and the other outside, have been trying to hook up to either a) fight b) fornicate or c) discuss the creative direction over drinks. They're very dumb and haven't yet grasped that the screen is not going to give way.


















Caption at your own risk.

Locals Only - Part IV

Since 1969, Weichert Realtors has been perfecting a smarter approach to real estate focused on the needs, concerns, hopes and dreams of our customers.

And this is a picture of our corporate office. Or maybe it's a picture we got from a stock photography house in Hungary, but it clearly shows you our incredible diversity. Yes, the bossman is still a middle-aged white guy, but look at his team! It's a veritable United Nations of Diverse Real Estate Talent!

Weichert has 500 company-owned and franchised sales offices in key markets throughout the U.S.

It's those franchised sales offices I'm worried about. I'm fearing corporate isn't watching their local ads very carefully.

Found this today in one of those thrown-on-the-driveway printed on pink, yellow or blue paper local ad rags that gets walked straight into the garage and tossed in the bin.

The man is chained to a house. He is apparently dragging it. His head is giant. He looks horrified. The helpful copy lets us know that "Selling your home doesn't have to be a "drag" with "drag" courteously quoted, just in case we didn't "get it."

There you go, account execs. Now you know why the creatives cringe when you walk into their offices. Or more likely: you think this ad kicks ass.

Locals Only Part III

Local Only Part II

Locals Only Part I