I often say that I'm a lot of clients second call. They don't call me first because I'm not a normal agency. Or not their normal agency. I don't have legions of texting account people setting...
I arrived, startlingly enough, in Manhattan yesterday afternoon ten minutes early. That's right, the Amtrak pulled in early to Penn Station, slightly ahead of the urine smell which was running fe...
It's sad to me that there are people who really really love movies and they don't know Preston Sturges. That's like loving theater and not knowing Shakespeare. Or admiring vapid and missing k...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-comedy-of-tragedy.html
For a couple dozen years now, advertising has been lurching. Maybe (since advertising is just a polyp on the colon of life) all the world has been lurching. It seems so much has changed so fas...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/05/lurch-not-about-addams-family.html
I grew up with something maybe worse than a dead father. I grew up with a dying father. He had a massive infarction when I was in fourth-grade, when I was just nine. And from that point on,...
Some years ago when I was playing ball, I ran into a bad stretch where I couldn't hit a grapefruit with a tennis racket. As a ballplayer might write, I think the start of my miasma is that for tw...
Life in the modern world--maybe life always--is an ongoing process of being bamboozled. Following this creed, this religion, this leader, this flag, will lead us to untold virtue and joy. Bamb...
I had never heard of Duane Eddy until, way back in 1996. I was in post-production on a spot and a producer mentioned his name. We used a track of Eddy's on the spot. Back in those pre-streaming...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/05/you-suck-thank-goodness.html
I've said this about 92 million times to 29 million different clients and about 292 million different people who claim to be in the advertising industry. It's obvious and to my eyes undeni...
Jim Nolan and I don't really know each other, though decades ago we worked at Ogilvy together, and we've been connected on Linked In for six years--which should have been longer, but we were eac...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/05/notes-from-writer-guest-post-from-jim.html
One of the issues with today's marketing world is the constant commentary you can find about anything and everything. And marketers' concomitant impulse to be always commented upon themselves. ...
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW'S WRITING HUT WAS BUILT ON A TURNTABLE SO HE COULD MOVE IT WITH THE SUN. HE CALLED IT LONDON. IF HE HAD UNWANTED VISITORS, HIS STAFF COULD SHOO THEM AWAY BY SAYING,...
About four years ago, I was spending a decent amount of time with a client who had developed a new technology, but was not having an easy time explaining what the technology did in a way sexy eno...
Unlike so many people I know, I am not a giant Godfather/ Godfather II fan. I like the movies. I'll watch them anytime I can, but my sensibilities are more moved by smaller movies like Elia Ka...
I had a row with a friend of mine not long ago. I pointed out that she's making the same money now that she was making over 18 years ago. But if you plug those figures in an inflation calculato...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/04/fraud-cried-maddened-thousands.html
I'm sure there are about 92 million podcasts, blogposts, webinars, seminars, ad courses, ad schools, pontificators and powerpoints that purport to teach people how to write. My simple realization...
We live in an HR-inflected era that quite often puts an emphasis or a priority on amity, congeniality, and collegiality rather than quality. As I've written before, "can't we all just get along,...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/04/shiv-not-lest-ye-be-shivved.html
I had a shitty week last week. A week way up there on the Olympus of shit. Last week my soul occupied shit's highest Pantheon. I wasn't as mad at the world as I ever was--I'm reserving that lev...
ht Nicole Yershon. There's a campaign running in people's feeds on LinkedIn for Coca-Cola. I doubt it's real in any real way. Rather, it's a contrivance spread and spread and spread by a vari...
As more and more people in the ad industry are no longer in the ad industry, as in matter of fact, now that the ad industry is no longer in the ad industry, I get a lot of calls from friends and ...
A couple weeks ago I met some advertising friends for dinner at the Old Town, an ancient, beery-bar down on 18th Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South. As the city has changed, the nei...
Remember how Google+ was going to change everything? Remember how Second Life was going to change everything? Remember how 5G was going to change everything? Self-driving cars? 3D printing?...
You wouldn't think about it if you were normal, but 350 years or so ago, pins, for clothing, for wigs, for god knows what, were a big deal. Pin manufacturing in the 17th Century (I say...
In logic , reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical arguments, is the form of ar...
I love cars. I used to love car advertising. Especially, work done at Carl Ally for Volvo, Fiat and Saab. At Scali McCabe Sloves for Volvo. Of course, VW at DDB. And especially at Ammirati & Pu...
http://adaged.blogspot.com/2024/04/an-open-letter-to-every-automaker.html