Ad-vice

Without sound advice – advice that perfectly reverberates like a lone grace note traveling from bandshell to picnic blanket, French horn to French Dip – advertising professionals would be lost. The thing is, there’s no standard place to seek out and grapple with a reliably sagacious source. I’m contributing to the discourse by collecting some of the most compelling queries from my adoring fanbase.  

Should I stop speaking to my TV commercial loving friends?  

Yes. Friendships that can’t rupture from something as trivial as the flickering GIF within a pop-up window are probably too strong. How many times can you listen to someone drone on about the smooth edges of a cathode ray tube without logging a formal objection? I realize that few creatives show up to work with gavels and are forced instead to bang staplers to get their point across.

I haven’t done much in my career. Is it too early to start pontificating across various social media platforms? 

No. The more you’ve done in advertising, the less you have to say. Plus, there’s an inverse relationship between experience and confidence.

 

How much do I have to read to get ahead in the business?

Very little. Your mind should be stay fresh, nimble, loose. Most of the contrarians out there who use phrases like “your mind is a sieve” have never spent hours in the desert looking for fossils. Because if they had, they would realize that you can’t hope to find bones in the dirt without a sieve.   

What are the main problems of “in-house” advertising?

Here again is an issue with the imprecision of language. I see people all the time arguing for the merits of working in-house. Yet despite their obvious biases, they never once give credit where it’s due – the great Bob Vila. Where do these people work anyway? In an office or in a house? It's all so confusing. Smells like someone's been huffing deck stain.

Content? 

That’s a loaded question. 

Hungry?

Sure. You cooking?

Hiring? 

On a keyboard, any keyboard, the only thing in between the “f” and “h” keys is the lowly “g.” Firing, hiring – what’s the difference? One slip is all it takes. Imagine if the word for death was dife or the word for life was leath? I don’t know what that would mean, but it would be a lot like the sublime comingling of fire and hire.