For all those media doom and gloom reports about the economy and all of the woes you may be experiencing right now, there is still plenty to be done. Remember, readers, we are the keepers of our destiny and have the power to make it happen.
Peep these tips for all you creative folk out there.
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Jinean Robinson is a CCIO (Chief Creative Infections Officer) specializing in creative strategy and implementation, 360 branding communications, and brand development. Join her at http://twitter.com/germllc or her firm’s website at http://germonline.com/
Chicago – Dallas – Los Angeles – San Francisco – New York City – Seattle: These placement gurus have got some good work and clients brewing. Go get you some work and you are free to send all commission checks to me via Paypal 
Seriously, lots of great work and opportunity for freelance. Let me know how it goes!
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Jinean Robinson is a CCIO (Chief Creative Infections Officer) specializing in creative strategy and implementation, 360 branding communications, and brand development. Join her at http://twitter.com/germllc or her firm’s website at http://germonline.com/
I have a friend who doesn’t eat anything he hasn’t had before without a huge amount of coaxing. He decides he doesn’t like things even before he’s tasted them. There are literally thousands of amazing foody experiences he’s going to miss out on because of this. It boggles my brain how he can be so phobic of food – all he needs to do it pop it in his mouth, give it a whirl, and low and behold he’d probably like it. Maybe even love it.
The same thing happens in advertising. Clients are the main culprits of this extremely frustrating trait.…
When creatives work agency side they spend quite a lot of time moaning about clients. I am no stranger to this. When I worked agency side I used to whine about them until I was blue in the face for all sorts of reasons. Mostly, I used to moan because they said idiotic things like “I don’t like the colour of that background” or “I don’t like the model in that photo” when initial scamps were being presented. I always found this trait of the client quite moronic.
I used to moan about other things too. Like when clients would…
Ever wonder, “what does it really take to develop great ideas?” I mean the big ones. The juicy, sloppy, wet ones that drench the culture and live soaked in society for decades. Well, there is a great Cannes Selection film, “Art & Copy,” that does just that. Or, shall I say instead of wondering, the filmmakers decided to Just Do It!
Check out a screening in your area: http://www.artandcopyfilm.com/screenings/
While in Atlanta, I’m gonna go to the screening on Wednesday, April 22nd as part of the Atlanta Film Festival. Tune in Thursday for my review–like you care what I think–but I’ll let you…
Hello 12 Point Type readers! I’m a new writer to this blog and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with an eloquent and compelling first post on par with my fellow bloggers here that would convince you to subscribe so fast you’d chalk it up to an outer-body experience. Unfortunately, my aspirations fail me. Instead, I offer this:
Now I know a good deal when I see one, but I think it’s safe to assume copy-writing just isn’t for everyone;
even if you do it for a living.
A little something to keep in mind when writing is content and…
Ok. Gonna tell you a little secret….
I know we can get caught in our rut of, “how much bigger do I have to make this logo,” “must EVERYTHING have to be sketched, comped, and spelled out to buy off on just the concept?,” or “do I have to work with the brand marketing all-star team from the 60’s?”
But on my way to meetings yesterday, I got a quick reminder of how lucky we are. I was riding on the interstate and saw a car on the freeway hit the guard rail only to be thrown into oncoming traffic. This reminded…
Working as a creative means that you’re bound to come up with ideas that have been done before. It’s happened to me countless times; displaying a scribbly scamp to a creative director, complete with captioned arrows pointing to my rubbish drawings and puffing my chest out like a scabby city centre pigeon, only to be shot down in ratty, pigeony flames after being reminded that the same idea ran four years ago.
It’s annoying but it tends to happen. The term “back to the drawing board” has never been so true when it comes to creative solutions. But it’s part…
This ad require no help whatsoever…. Brings a whole new meaning to fashion victim.
Joel Kirstein is a Creative Director who has been in the ad agency trenches for 25 years, specializing in shopper marketing, branding, and retail. Contact him on Linked In and www.coroflot.com/joelkirstein
So, what is the answer?
In a world of competing designers where everyone with Arial and a Sharpie are now the next Paula Scher, how do you compete for work? Is spec the answer?
Well, as lines have been drawn, there are two sides to the work-for-free war and boy oh boy are the jump drives flying.
One side believes that designers must take a united stand to not give free labor and belittle our purpose and industry. The other side says that in this overcrowded, over-saturated, and any other “over” word you can think of, it is just part of the evolving world…
Episode Six of TRUST ME struck an especially resonating chord being about partners and pitches. They are often mutually exclusive and one can often make or break each other. Both inside and outside the advertising business. That can become an Olympic Decathlon of another sort.
Mason McGuire (Eric McCormack) still stinging from the ARC Mobile fallout with GCD Tony Mink (Griffin Dunne) for shooting a commercial the client loved and now there are NOT a client any more, finds out that his group’s agency rival Simon Corcoran is working on a pitch for the 2016 Chicago Olympic Games pitch. Mason convinces Tony to ask RGM big cheese Denise…
The Pepsi Saturday Night Live MacGuyver spoofs “MacGruber” really sucked and were a great example of how to make an unwatchable TV commercial.
Besides stupid people and abject nonsense, they’re a given. We all do things that don’t help our own cause and make what we normally do very fluidly, into a battle and a struggle. Shalu Wasu a creative consultant with a terrific website that offers some great “reminders” on how not to be your own worse enemy. It is a simple, effective read that will be useful: http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/15-elephant-tethers-that-stop-you-from-being-creative/
Here’s a taste of what Shalu Wasu identifies as the many things creatives use to tether themselves to failure:
1. What will people think?
2. But I’ve never had any great ideas!
3. What is the right answer?
4. I don’t…
Successful branding is all about “BEHAVIOURAL MOMENTS” that are a set of actions that happen in the real world that actually drive sales an repeat business. “Once you decide, We Are Not In The Image Business, We Are In The Behavior Business, It Empowers A Different Conversation About Everything.”
10 – Our Troops all coming home ahead of time, safely and being appreciated for doing an impossible job!
9 – More Talented, Smart Creative people being rehired in Advertising
8 – The Ad Industry coming to their senses that Creatives are the muscle that drives our industry
7 – The economy rebounds from the current melt down as fast as possible!
6 – The price of gas continues to plunge and we’re paying under a buck a gallon by February and it doesn’t stop going down there… (Oil companies going under would make my millenium!)
5 – Wall Street Interlopers, Scum Bag Politicians, Predatory…
10 – More Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates Microsoft commercials (Give up, you suck!)
9 - More GEICO Caveman and GECKO commercials (Unwatchable)
8 - Any Advertising of any kind with Paris Hilton in it (Just go away already)
7 - Any Political Campaign ad or commercial… (I think we had our fill in 2008 to last a lifetime?)
6 - Any Politician saying “I approved this commercial.” (If you can’t put together a good tv spot,
how can you think you can run anything?”)
5 – Stop talking about “Change We Can Believe In” (and actually start DOING some of that change!)
4 – More New Brand launches…
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/garmastan_nipple?size=_original
I got this ad sent to me by a friend who isn’t in advertising. I love when people send me stuff like this because it is always interesting to see what appeals to people and what triggers a response from them, especially if they aren’t on the inside looking out.
This is a double page spread for Garmastan, an ointment used in the prophylactic and therapeutic treatment of the nipple inflammation during the pre and postnatal period and in the care of nipples skin during lactation. The ad appeared in maternity magazines showing a woman breastfeeding. When you pull the and the…
The reason why print will never go toes up is because broadcast in all of it’s new, rich media forms has an inherently higher perceived value, therefore the cost for it is always going to scare a lot of smaller brands and companies from going that route and they have been served well, by their measure by print, so it will not wind up as obsolete.
A lot of copywriters hate puns. The poor pun has been getting picked on left, right and centre since the new school of advertising arrived in the 1970s. Still, the pun is not my most hated entity in the world of advertising copy. I do enjoy a good bad pun; the ones that make your toes curl they are so bad never fail to please me. They’re like a guilty pleasure I indulge in when no-one’s looking. I know they’re bad but I can’t help myself.
However, there are some words and phrases that genuinely irritate me when I see them…
