creative juice
If you’ve ever wondered where creative juice comes from (and where they farm creative directors), this video from South West England gives a very clever synopsis. Thanks to Rodes for sending me this.
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the agency bid
Several of my agency friends have complained that client negotiations have gotten more cutthroat recently. As companies look for ways to trim expenses, many are putting agencies through the same...
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where the creatives are
It cracks me up whenever I hear a creative director referred to as “the Creative”. It makes it sound like creative directors belong to a different species. We wouldn’t refer to “the Supply” or “the...
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fad men
The famous Cannes Festival is adding a new category of Creative Effectiveness in 2011 “to establish a direct correlation between creativity and effectiveness … now more than ever ROI is paramount to...
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for immediate release
PR is called earned media for a reason. You have to earn it. If you earn it, PR can be far more valuable than paid media. But earned media follows different rules than paid media, and certainly...
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creative brief
Creative briefs may be brief, but often they aren’t very creative. Rupal Parekh wrote an AdAge article on poor creative briefs last week: “Marketers, Quit Blaming Your Agency — It’s Your Brief at...
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compromise with legal
A friend told me recently that if she listened to her lawyers on a new product launch, the packaging would be blank. Marketing and legal are often the functions with the greatest friction. A legal...
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agency pitch
The right client/agency fit can make all the difference in marketing. Yet the typical RFP cattle call used to make that match is broken. The hoops clients give agencies to jump through in a pitch...
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marketing strategy
A marketing campaign is only as strong as the strategy that drives it. Yet sometimes we treat marketing strategy as an afterthought. This often comes across in the creative brief process. Marketers...
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creative brief
This cartoon follows this theme of the Marketing Strategy post a couple weeks ago. Jennifer Nelson shared a comment on that post that struck a particular chord with me: “If you can’t invest the time...
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the 8 types of creative directors
I’ve been really fortunate to have worked mostly with Creative Directors in "The Genius" camp. But, I couldn’t resist poking a little fun at some of the other archetypes. This cartoon is a response...
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is it on brand?
Considering that clients and agencies both work in communication, it’s amazing how dysfunctional they can be at communicating with each other. This is particularly clear in the creative process, from...
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full-service agencies
It’s an age-old decision point in marketing — work with a range of specialized agencies, or find a full-service agency that can handle everything. In the last couple years, we’ve seen an ever-expanding...
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marketing procurement
In my marketing career, I’ve worked on both sides of the client-agency relationship. I’ve experienced genuine strategic partnerships where the resulting work was greater than the sum of its parts and...
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the creative brief gap
In 2015, the ANA surveyed advertisers and agencies to identify problems in the often dysfunctional client/agency relationship. One issue rose to the top — the creative brief. The ANA found that 58% of...
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Procurement and Partnership
The nature of the relationships between all the teams across client and agency has a direct impact on the work that comes out. Small areas often overlooked — like how much care is taken in writing...
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Brand Naming
This cartoon was partly inspired by reading someone described as the MD of EMEA at VMLY&R, part of WPP. I’ve always found it funny that some of the most successful ad agencies have some of the...
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Definition of Marketing Insanity
I’ve drawn a lot of cartoons about the tendency of marketers to want to change everything, all at once, and all the time. There’s an old marketing truism that “marketers get tired of their advertising...
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