The blue, underlined titles below link to assets I’m happy to share. If you have any feedback — positive or negative — pass it along. Whether or not we agree, alternate points of view pressure test ideas, making them stronger, so thank you in advance.
VIDEO CONTENT: IT’S JUST NEUROSCIENCE
These days, more clients recognize how to leverage the power of video content for their messaging. Advertising is a sales platform; video content is a communication platform, and increasingly, the preferred one,
5 THOUGHTS ON ADVERTISING COMEDY
During the nine remarkable months when Mike Fetrow and I explored our entrepreneurial side with Fetrow Ryan & Partners, we assembled our thoughts and created a website on Advertising Comedy filmmaking for a potential client.
UNLEARNING BROADCAST
This is a powerpoint presentation I’ve made a number of times, explaining how I navigated the changing landscape of the advertising world. You could distill this down to one two-word admonition — “EMBRACE CHANGE!” — but that would make a horrible hour long presentation. It may take a few minutes to download from Slideshare because of the embedded video but the ppt file contains the explanatory commentary.
ON WRITING FOR VIDEO
I wrote this nearly twenty years ago when the thirty-second television spot reigned supreme. The sheer volume of work and the extraordinary production partners taught all sorts of lessons on improving scripts for both sales and production. Copies of this were given to everyone in the the creative department at J.Walter Thompson Chicago.
BRANDS ARE OPINIONS / 20 Essays
When it became clear that broadcast television’s dominance was fading, I began to aggressively explore all sorts of industry innovation I had ignored. This blog helped me set up the second half of my career and began my understanding of the importance of embracing change, as difficult as that can sometimes be. Looking back at these ten year old opinions, some seem rather quaint (Twitter=today’s CB radio?!), but the constants of emotion over data, earning attention, and creating relevant, memorable stories were there even then. Which is reassuring; after all, they’re supposed to be constants.
THE ELEMENT79 BOOK OF BELIEFS
Element 79 was one of the great privileges of my career. To be invited into a start up with $350 million in billings for amazing PepsiCo brands like Gatorade and Quaker was an amazing experience. From the moment he first talked to me, Brian Williams, our President and CEO, made it clear he considered character paramount over all. After our first meeting, I wrote this booklet outlining values and that document, more than my reel, my resume, or any interview, probably sealed the deal for him to hire me. Best of all, we lived these values. Element 79 was an amazing agency filled with good, driven people of great decency. Which made it exceptional.