Well, this week Apple came out and announced a recall of the batteries for their more recent Powerbooks and iBooks. Now this has to be one of the least surprising headlines of all time. Not only had Dell already announced a recall of their Sony Laptop Batteries, Sony being the same company that makes Apple’s Laptop batteries, but any man who has ever put a Titanium Powerbook Laptop in their laps will tell you that having children is no longer a concern. These things are hot, I mean really hot. How hot you ask? When future groups of extreme tourists go to Mount Everest and get lost, the first thing we should send them to help them recover is Apple Titanium Powerbooks. When Hell actually does freeze over and Donny Deutch starts talking about advertising again on the Big Idea, then the Devil will be ordering Apple Titanium Powerbooks to heat things up again. As the Boy Scouts step into the 21st century their manual will soon replace the sections “Starting a fire with flint” and “starting a fire with two sticks” with a section on “Starting a fire with an Apple Titanium Powerbook.” Now, don’t get me wrong I love Apple, the company, the philosophy, the interface and both Steves (The Woz and the other one), but, the moment Dell fessed and Sony started doing their Firestone impression I started wondering why Apple hadn’t taken the lead. Because, as I said before, the moment you put one of these laptops on you lap, it’s no secret that a skin graff might be a good idea.

Okay, let’s face it advertising isn’t always fun. There are clients and AEs out there who are either control freaks or meat puppets, or worse a combination of the two. (By the way let me thank Luke Sullivan for Hey Whipple Squeeze this and giving us a great vocabulary with which to complain.) Keeping the creative juices flowing can be a chore in its own right and having your head slammed by someone who once took a marketing 101 class and read just enough Ogilvy to think they have the right to judge your work would probably qualify as cruel and unusual punishment in different circumstances. However, I do have a suggestion. To borrow a page from 9 out of 10 new age gurus who chew gum, be your own best client. Create a self-promotion radio spot, website, brochure, print ad or billboard. Let your creative juices lose on selling yourself. Think of it this way. You win three different ways: 1 - It’s a great creative exercise to get the juices flowing. 2 - You have a chance to impress yourself again and remind yourself why you got into this business 3 - If your current position really doesn’t offer any creative outlet for your revived juices, at least you have something to send out to look for a new job. In an earlier generation, I probably would be suggesting that you find a great cause and do pro-bono, but let’s face it pro-bono clients often try to act as if they are paying for it… and, instead of saying “thank you,” hit you with 93 demands on how they want you to change what is already a brilliant concept. There are, of course, some great pro-bono clients still out there, but most of them have been tranquilized, tagged by major agencies and then released back into the wild, where they can be found if the big agencies need some good PR or a few pieces of acrylic. That leave self promotion and why not? Self promotion puts you in complete control of your creative product. Don’t like something? Change it. Don’t think the layout is exactly right? It’s your baby - go to town! Don’t have the budget to do it right? What are credit cards for if not this? This is an investment in self, both literally and figuratively. Sure, there are those of you out there saying, “but creative directors don’t respect self promotion?” True, some don’t, but are you sure you want to work for a creative director who will judge something based on its category rather than its creative merits? And don’t just do this if you’re getting ready to turn in your notice. Do it the moment you start to feel stale. I, for one, actually love my job, but doing creative exercises like this one lets me be better at my job. This profession can chew you up and spit you out if you let it.. heck, even if you don’t let it. Every little trick and exercise to stay fresh can only help. This is just one of mine I thought I’d share.

Years ago I saw a standup comic declare that the best thing advertising people could do for society was to commit suicide immediately. We are perceived as liars, cheats, scoundrels, exploiters and criminals. We’re as reviled as lawyers without the paycheck and politicians without the power. Will Rogers summed it up as “Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” Our clients think we are pampered and care about nothing but awards and glory, completely aside from selling their products. So called pure artists and writers declare us to be sell outs, lacking the skill, instincts, commitment and/or talent to truly make it. What’s more, spend any time in creative department during a lull and you soon discover that the two key past times are computer games and complaining. (NOTE TO I.S. AND H.R. DEPARTMENTS-SOMETHING TO CONSIDER BEFORE STRIPPING GAMES OFF THE SYSTEM.) So why is the advertising recovered from Pompeii considered to be one of archeologies most important finds? Why did Jefferson say, “The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper?” Because advertising often delivers more truth, than anyone wants to admit. We’re called exploitive, but our job is to sell and to do that we condense the truths and visual language of society to deliver that message as effectively as possible. That means spicing up beer ads with sex. That means playing off frustration, arrogance, lust, envy and every other part of the human condition that might be considered a deadly sin. As far as truth is concerned, one producer I knew who had come up as a news producer often said that advertising had to have far more substantiation than news articles. A contention that more than born out in books like John Stossel’s book, Give Me A Break. In it, he describes how news is often considered too good to check. In advertising the liability level is too high to ignore. To the pure artists out there, advertising helped pay the bills of Toulouse Lautrec and Norman Rockwell and more writers than want to admit it. Plus, compared to the academic positions many purists find themselves adopting, one has to wonder who truly has made the compromise. To the hardcore business people, one just has to look at what happens to firms who stop advertising or worse start being heavy-handed and formulaic to see why the creative, entertaining and stylish side of advertising is so important. Consider for example, the case put forth in Linda Kaplan’s Book, Bang! In it she described how AFLAC did not dramatically increase their spending when the duck campaign came out, it was just that the previous advertising had been so heavy-handed it was invisible. And finally, to my fellow advertising people, I think the harshest criticism of advertising is actually our own self criticisms. Sure, everyone needs to blow off steam, but the thing to remember is that angst is like alcohol. It can be good to spend some time with, but it’s just as addictive. True, advertising is a hard profession that worships youth, competition and fads. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. The thing to remember is that if you love the process as much or more than you love the external praise that may or may not come, than you have something more than a job that will grind you down… you’ve got a sick twisted love affair with your work. And all things considered, that’s more fun than most people get in their lives. And finally, one last quote. “Advertising is the most fun you can have with you clothes on.” Bill Cosby

“Twix: Two for me. None for you.” “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” “Go Dark.” What do these statement have in common? They are slightly evil. They are very funny. They sell. Plus, they prove that as Billy Joel said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinner, than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun!” Over and over again we hear it, “Make the product the HERO!” As creatives we generally recognize that this means the product is be the motive force of the ad. It’s the product that makes the events or improvements possible. Unfortunately, for some clients and account executives “product is hero” has come to mean the that product is always to be shown as the best thing to mankind since the invention of fire and that the product is, of course, enjoyed by a saintly target market who live in a world of perfectly sinless grace with no foibles to be made light of, because they might be offended. Guess what, consumers are human and you’re never going to be able to please everyone. However, if you hit your target market with a message that makes them laugh and makes a point generally good things will happen…Those good things being sales. True, not everything can be sold with humor, however it’s amazing how when you’re laughing your arms get moving and pretty soon you’re even reaching for you wallet.

As a copywriter, it’s interesting the variety of writing you get pulled into beyond the confines of pure advertising. In addition to print ads, television, brochures and radio, it’s easy to find yourself writing Powerpoints, annual reports or worse yet mission statements and vision statements. For those who are lucky enough to be unfamiliar with vision statements and mission statements I’d like to seriously congratulate you on being blessed by whatever deity or cosmic entity you recognize. First, there’s the mission statement. This was at one point to be the clear statement of what the company’s goals are. Over time and thanks to committees doing their level best, soon many of these statements included phrases and words like: * Synergy * Service * Prioritized * Focuses * Core Competencies * Paradigm Shift * Qualitative * Collaborative * Solutions * Parity * Competitive Environment * Opportunity * Empowerment The presence of these words is not a bad thing, but they seemed to exclude words that actually described what the company does to earn money. For example, you have a leading cosmetics company’s mission statement that never included the words, “cosmetics” or “make up.” Just look at Mary Kay Cosmetics’ statement “To give unlimited opportunity to women.” or the Walt Disney Company’s “To make people happy.” Laudable, yes, but how about Disney at least mention animation, films, TV, amusement parks or even the aggressive marketing of teen pop stars, i.e. Britney Spears. Any one of these would bring a flair of meaning. When faced with this challenge to logic and good sense, did someone take up the sword to save the mission statements from becoming either New-Speak committee Frankensteins or over simplistic balloons of vapid intentions? No, are you kidding… And have to become a committee chew toy as you loose your last bit of sanity. Instead, the vision statement was created, seemingly to do the job that the mission statement was meant to do, but was now too busy to do after passing through committee. And as vision statements seem to walk into the fate that afflicted their mission statement brethren, the next generation of competitive statements, vision declarations, business mantras and corporate affirmations are swelling to take their places. True, as a writer, my heart weeps at words being rendered meaningless as they are imprisoned in a tide of ever growing corporate gibberish, but also as a writer I need to make a living, put food on the table and a roof over my head as I work on more book-worthy projects. And that is my own personal mission statement.

Sweet November, Thirtysomething, Bewitched, Bosom Buddies, Crazy People, Picture Perfect, Melrose Place, Felicity, How to Get A Head in Advertising and Nothing in Common-What do all these television shows and movies have in common? Take a guess. If you said all of them make lame attempts to pretend to be about advertising than you should reach around and pat yourself on the back. Of course, the second to last should have been a pretty clear hint. True, this is only a fraction of the films and shows with advertising mixed into their plots, but what amazes me is how wrong each seems to go. I remember once sitting in an interview session with a college senior as she described the advertising career path as she understood it from Thirtysomething. “You start out as an art director. Then you become a copywriter. And then you become an account executive.” What was saddest about this whole event was that it took place at a respectable university. The other thing that amazes me is how little work actually seems to get done in any of these films or TV shows. It’s as if advertising isn’t a real profession. Rather advertising is an entertaining backdrop for people who are eagerly and dramatically stabbing each other in the back, as they jump in and out of each other’s exploding beds. The saddest thing about the whole situation is that the films which in my opinion actually come the closest to being about the profession are the nearly pure comedies, like Crazy People and Nothing in Common, where at least there is some indication of idea generation and work being done, even if it is done with sarcasm. The thing is years ago, when Truth in Advertising became an internet sensation, I was dumbstruck that something had finally come close to the truth of our profession after so many film and television shows had missed the mark. Now after having caught a late night showing of Barbarians at The Gate, where they turned a hostile takeover into a combination of high art and high comedy, why can’t anyone do the same for advertising? Imagine it, Where Suckers Moon, THE MOVIE! And Then We Set His Hair on Fire, THE MOVIE! Hell, even Ogilvy, the Man, the Myth, the Legend would do. I have to admit, I was hoping that Donny’s The Big Idea, might offer a true perspective on our industry to the world, but once I had seen every member of the caste of Las Vegas, with the exception of Jame Caan, on the show I realized that wasn’t the direction he was going. In summation, advertising is a dramatic, interesting, engrossing and invigorating profession with all the drama of financial thriller like Barbarians at the Gate, all the deciet of Shattered Glass and all the intrigue of any of the numerous Enron documentaries and dramatizations, so why can’t anyone in Hollywood see our profession is something more than a colorful backdrop for Jennifer Aniston or Keanu Reeves?

Okay since time began there has been one role almost universally reviled in society, middlemen. Middle managers are seen as unnecessary. The Middle-class is often despised as “bourgeois” and bears the brunt of the tax system. And more and more often we hear how removing the middlemen will either save us money or make us money, depending which end of things we find ourselves. But, what none of these views really take into account is the greatest value of the middleman. THE MIDDLEMAN IS THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON AT BOTH ENDS. Middlemen have a unique position as far as being enablers and catalysts. They make introductions and, when they do their jobs sincerely, they ensure quality. So as with my columns in the past, you may be wondering, “what the devil does this have to do with advertising?” Simply this, everyday small and medium-sized agencies are confronted with a marketplace where clients are approached by newspapers, radio stations or cable companies who offer to do an ad for them just for buying space or time. The clients are told they will save not only on creative costs, but they can avoid the agency commissions. What’s lost is the value of powerful creative. What’s lost is the bargaining power of an agency who buys media in quantity, power that can actually reduce costs. And most importantly, what’s lost is a client advocate with the experience, creativity and insight to not just save the clients money and ensure quality printing and broadcast, but create communications that will make the clients money. Likewise, as a creative I’ve been told how other sorts of middlemen are unnecessary. “You don’t need a headhunter. They are just middlemen.” “You don’t need a director. They will just get in the middle and take all the credit.” “You don’t need a web designer, an account executive, a traffic manager…” And the list goes on and on. But guess what, you do. True, your work, direct relationships and reputation are your greatest assets when looking for work, but you can never know everyone. For headhunters, it’s their job to know the openings and the talent. Like matchmakers of old, they build their reputations matching the right people with the right opportunities. Ignore either end and their reputation suffers. So when a headhunting resource is able to staying in business long enough to build a reputation, it’s a resource to be respected and valued. And most of all it’s a darn site better than offering a $3000 kick back to anyone you who’s email address you can get. Likewise, directors are just as much glory hounds as we creatives are. And why shouldn’t they be? If your director didn’t bring something extra to the table, you wouldn’t want them to be involved in the first place. But going without one, is to deny yourself the insights that their specialization can offer. Because that’s the value of middlemen—specialization. If they are good, each brings with them skills and resources that you might be able to duplicate, but not without distracting you from your specialization. So the moral of the story is this—the next time someone tells you how removing the middleman will improve things, remember when you remove the guy who’s stuck in the middle generally you end up taking his place with clowns to left of you and jokers to the right, but, unlike the song, you’re all by yourself.

Okay, what I’m about to write probably has so many worthy exceptions, there will be a flood of comments on it as soon as Monday rolls around. (A guy can dream can’t he?) However, I still think there’s enough truth in it that it deserves to be said. And that is, be careful of agencies where the principals have named the place after themselves and they are still in the building. I’m talking about last names here, not just initials. Aside from the simple, “It sounds like a law firm” factor, there is a real issue of identity. At some point a business, just like a person, develops an identity of its own and if it needs to be different than how the principals see themselves you run headlong into the dreaded “But it’s my name on the door” response. This is not a true argument since it really translates into “I know you have a point, but I don’t see myself that way so I can’t see my business that way.” Imagine having a child who always introduces himself as “Mark’s son,” instead of giving his name. At 5 this is adorable, at 12 it’s worrisome and at 31 it’s time for electro shock. Now there are many, many, many exceptions to this, just as there are exceptions to any red flag. For example, Butler Shines, Weiden Kennedy, Cliff Freeman, Crispin Porter, Richards Group and Goodby Silverstein have all evolved real identities, but I can’t help but think that organizations like Modernista, Rethink, Gyro, Creative Energy, Red7e, Drugstore and the like gave themselves a true identity advantage right from the start.

Right now there’s a new book out on Shakespeare, putting forth yet another theory about how a noble man wrote all the work and that Shakespeare was just a fraud or mouth piece. These theories are nothing new, they are born out of the basic disbelief that the son of a glove maker and part-time wool smuggler could revolutionize a language and change the face of literature for all nations, especially in a world where there were so many noblemen trying and failing to do so. Similarly, there are those who can’t buy the idea that two bicycle mechanics from Ohio and working in North Carolina could have invented the first airplane, especially when you had so many learned men ending up looking very silly, very dead or both, in their attempts. While these theories are laughable, they have always bugged me and I was never able to put my finger on what about them bugged me until I saw an otherwise forgettable documentary on possible alien influence on the Pyramids. In it, an Egyptian archeologist was asked what he thought of the alien theories. He turned to the camera and said simply, “Why do you Westerns have such a hard time believing we did this?” The power of this question struck me, since he was right. Currently, his part of the world, known more for unrest than scientific achievement, had had a proud past and it was largely Westerners with their alien theories who were trying to explain away the achievements of Ancient Egypt. There is a basic instinct among suits especially that everything should be predictable, derivative and formulaic. When this premise is challenged, it defends itself by either discounting the clear evidence as in the case of Shakespeare and the Wright Brothers or by creating even more outlandish reason as in the case of the Pyramids. And what the heck does any of this have to do with advertising. Simply this, new ideas can and do come from anywhere. Unfortunately, there is an instinct to try and explain away the pure insight factor of problem solving. Great ideas are not arrived at by a + b = c, and we as creatives have a responsibility to ourselves and the creative process to give credit to simple insights, because at the end of the day the best brief and the biggest budget, don’t mean a thing if you aren’t willing to let yourself be unpredictable and go a little crazy. And when you do you might just discover your inner bicycle mechanic or glove maker waiting to come out.

This may seem like an random posting, but, does anyone else remember how in college marketing classes, we were told that calculating advertising people were putting images of butts in ice, naked women in background wallpaper and all sorts of other subliminal placements? Well, at this point in my career I’ve worked for agencies large and small, and in a variety of different markets, and I have yet to see any creative ever put a single sublminal sexual image in anything. Not that we wouldn’t or anything, but we just don’t have the freaking time–client deadlines being what they are! This isn’t a moral declaration or a invitation to misbehave, but I just thought it was worth bringing up.

Inspired by Chris’ posting “Jumping the Shark,” for more or less fallen campaigns, I thought it only appropriate to remember fallen agencies as well. After all, I remember years ago laughing out loud at the web film, “Reach and Frequency,” the brilliant comic film created by Elvis Bonaparte, one of the Northwest’s most dynamic new agencies of the internet boom. Now the film and the agency have both disappeared, victums of the internet bubble. Similarly, the first agency I ever worked for, Long Haymes Carr, has long since been absorbed into another firm – its previous identity all but washed away. So whether the agency was absorbed, went bankrupt or just disappeared into its own navel and ascended to a higher level, I thought it only appropriate to take a moment to take our collective hats off in silent salute to the once proud names of the agencies who have gone before. Please feel free to post the names of those you would like remembered. This isn’t meant to be depressing, but a kind of off-the-wall closure thing. Give it a try. You’ll feel better. Here are two to start us off: Long Haymes Car Elvis Bonaparte

Years ago, while visiting a friend in New York, I asked about a mutual friend of ours and was told that he was “totally GU.” The way it was said it was as if he had joined a strange religion or caught some disease. No, he had performed the cardinal sin of not living in Manhatten and still presuming to be a New Yorker. Yes, he was terminally Geographically Undersireable. I don’t know, but I hope in the years since then the stigma of Non-Manhatten GU addresses has faded, but there now seems to be a new equivalent to GU address - the “dot net” internet address. Though there are some rare exceptions the “dot net” address seems to say that you had a really clever idea and someoneelse beat you to the dot com - but being trooper you are you’re doing it anyway. It might just be me, but “dot net” seems like it should be an option of last resort… like skateboarding on the freeway or performing open heart surgery with finger nail clippers. But hey, that might just be me.

Okay, I admit it. I like reading and listening to business books. From “The Millionaire Next Door” to “Good to Great” to “Freakanomics” to “The Tipping Point” to “Think and Grow Rich” to “The History of Modern Economics,” I’ve read quite a few and I’ve enjoyed most. I even found a reason to laugh at “Who Moved the Cheese,” one book that never gets around to answering its title question. Plus, it’s fun to be a creative who can jump in on those suit conversations. It throws them off just enough to keep things interesting. That said, I was working my way through “Often Wrong Never Doubt,” the new book by Donny Deutsch. It was going along pretty well until I got to the part about layoffs. The author starts talking about even when you are laying off someone solely because of an economic down turn you’re providing a great motivator and in certain circumstances you may be doing them a FAVOR. Now, I’ve heard this before in “Good to Great” and a few others and it always strikes me the same way. I want to ask, “who exactly do you think you’re fooling?” You see I know I’m really outside the target market for most of these books. The target market is really business owners and managers who want to reassure themselves and get a little advice. Telling them what they want to hear on this issue costs authors nothing and makes the readers all the more agreeable if, or when, the authors then lay out their other theories. But, while firing for bad acts and incompetence is one thing, layoffs caused by bad economic or market forces are somethingelse entirely. As someone who has seen more rounds of layoffs than I care to think about and been touched first hand on two occasions, I know layoffs are practically a right of passage in advertising. (And if by some chance you’ve been in advertising more than 8 years and never been laid-off, than hats off and congratulations, you lucky freak! No, really congratulations.) Don’t get me wrong, I understand that layoffs in some situations are absolutely unavoidable and I also believe firmly that it’s never a good idea to burn a bridge. In fact, I take great pride in the fact that I was able to stay on very good terms with both places that laid me off, and from one I was able to get a steady stream of freelance work. And yes, I also know of the reality of the lemons-to-whiskey-sours factor, where by people like Modernista’s Lance Jenson turned his layoff from his first job into an incredible opportunity. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then go listen to “The Naked Career” podcast by Sally Hogshead and Talent Zoo. It’s an inspiring story and it’s on iTunes.) All of that said, layoffs still suck. They still hurt. They still sting. They still bite. What gets me is that the way these books talk about it, you’d think that the laid-off people should be throwing a party for their former employers. It’s as if you should get up and say “Wow! Golly Gee! Thanks boss! I’ve always wanted the chance to learn about the state unemployment system! Wonder if I’ll be able to afford health insurance before my COBRA runs out?” Also, employers who swing the axe too often run the very real danger of the repeating learning-curve costs and mistakes as either new people are brought in or old people have their responsibilities expanded. You have to wonder what kind of message you send to clients when high-turnover means they keep on having to introduce themselves to the new account and/or creative team members - who are now spread thinner than cream cheese on a jumbo bagel. While layoffs are a necessary part of business, let’s all do ourselves a freakin’ favor and stop trying to pretend that they are something to celebrate. After all, there are enough things out there legitimately worth celebrating. Win a new account - celebrate it! Have a banner year - celebrate it! Get approval on a TV spot - celebrate it! Renew a client retainer - celebrate it! Open your own business - celebrate it! Show up for the first day of work at a new job - celebrate it! Give out raises or bonuses to your staff - celebrate it! Now those are worth celebrating. PS I’ll write more on “Often Wrong Never Doubt” later. But, overall it’s a very good read. Also, to be fair, there is a great section on being generous to your employees that all employers could learn from when it comes to company morale.

Though putting the words “Zoo” and “Naked” this close together could be considered a big misunderstanding waiting to happen, this is the rare exception! TalentZoo.com and Sally Hogshead are just about to make Christmas come early this year, with a little help from Dick Orkin’s Radio Ranch. Say hello to Radio Talent Zoo and “The Naked Career.”” Every week Sally will be interviewing some of the industry’’s most influential and powerful executives. This is not your typical, lame question-and-answer session, but a much more “naked”” look at the career of each of these industry leaders. Lance Jensen, world class creative and founder of Modernista!, is Sally’’s first guest. And this is no garage production, they have gone to the experts with a parade of heavy hitters backing it up, including Eric Bickel, an engineer out of Nashville whose most recent clients include Allison Krauss, the Dixie Chicks, and Mandy Moore. So dump that ABBA, Samantha Fox and Yanni off your iPod and open up some room for one podcast show that will definitely have something to say.

I think every professional copywriter with more than 6 years of agency experience probably has buried within him or her at least 2 novels, 5 nonfiction books, 8 screenplays, 48 letters to the editor, 142 short stories, 326 really angry letters to companies to let them know exactly what you think of their products and/or services and 1 really, really apologetic note to be left on someone’s car explaining how sorry you are you dinged their car and telling them where to contact you. All of this said, I was not surprised when I heard that Sally Hogshead had turned her brilliant Creativity Magazine article into a book and I’m equally unsurprised that it’s a fabulous book with truths that can be applied beyond the advertising field. Part of this lack of surprise arises from having heard her speak years ago at the Portfolio Center when I was a student there. She had won the One Show student competition just a few years before for her Virginia ad. She was brilliant, witty and inspiring. Years later I saw her article in Creativity. It read like a brilliant cross between, Napoleon Hill, Ayn Rand and Alanis Morrisette, back in her Jagged Little Pill when she still had an attitude and something to shout about at the top of her lungs. The article was honest, clear, sharp and completely unforgiving. Fortunately, unlike Alanis Morrisette, who seems to have left her clarity and attitude behind, perhaps in luggage lost somewhere in Calcutta, Sally Hogshead’s clarity and attitude are very much intact. In Radical Careering, she not only presents brutal truths, but she does it in a way that’s has special resonance for those in the advertising profession—namely product placement. The book is sprinkled with eye-catching photos from Getty Images and more than enough website, executive and corporate plugs to plug all the leaks in the New Orleans’s levy system. That’s not a criticism, but a statement of fact and a subtle salute to a book that does more than talks about business savvy, it actually exhibits it. Lest you think that this blog is nothing but a pure shot of 1000,000 watts of sunshine, there is one last thing that bugs me. That is it’s a true copywriter’s book and that’s both a positive and a negative. As a positive, the burst-writing format of dividing the advice up to 100 easily digestible bits offers great copy examples. Put another way, since it is written in bursts about the length of a medium-to-long copy ad, there’s something to be learned from the style as well as the content. As a negative, the burst-writing format results in a feeling of incompleteness. While the insights are sharp and clear, there’s a certain degree of hit-and-run delivery. You’re left wanting more… more specifics, more discussion and more penetration into the topics. I almost wish that instead of 100 Truths, the book had been 25 Truths with more discussion of each one. True, such a discussion would probably have limited the book’s market slightly by making it inevitably less general and more specific to advertising careers, but nonetheless I still wanted to hear more. All that said, it is only one misgiving about an otherwise brilliant book. So the long and the short of it is, buy this book, read this book and, if you’re anything like me, hope that this book has a sister volume on the way that delivers the rest of the story. After all, something tells me the author has a lot more worth writing and worth reading. 10/18/05 Addendum: Hey two nifty things I didn’t know just came to light. First, according to my sources Sally Hogshead’s original Creativity article was at least partial inspired by a guest column she wrote for Talentzoo.com back in 2002. Here’s the link: http://www.talentzoo.com/content/guestcolumnist/article/115.aspx It’s an interesting read and true to the clarity and attitude of both her later article and her book. Second, tomorrow, Talent Zoo is launching a podcast called “The Naked Career”. Sally is the host, and Lance Jensen, founder of Modernista! is her first guest. This will be the first show of Radio Talent Zoo, a network of podcasts concentrating on the communications industry. To find out more about it visit talentzoo.com.