Controversy.

Ok out there. Are you scared, what? I still have hardly heard from most of you. Trying to avoid locking into a story? What? What? I'm calling you chicken. So go write an add for Church's or KFC. Get the world fat, and artery-clogged, be cruel to live-stock, support world deforestation, and global destruction. Go ahead. Cash your pay-check, go home have your yucks and forget about it, the jokes on somebody else, right? It's all just fun and games, right?
Or is it? How will this moral relativism and situational ethics pervade into your life. Into your soul? Into who you see in the mirror? Or do you just not give a damn at all? Did you never rail against The Man and the status quo when you were younger? Did you ever think you were going to be the Man's speech writer? His messenger. His minister of propaganda? His lap dog for carrying home the almighty dollar?
If you remain silent, I must assume that all the worst is the case. John.

Great ads.

Great ads push the boundaries of the medium. Say for instance, the caveman ads by Geico. The caveman ads explore the sensibilities of metro-sexualdom, while gently poking fun at political correctness and sensitivity to stereotyping. It's a micro-cosm of social trends created at the exactly right moment in time. It's smart. Way smart and hysterical. When a new installment of the campaign comes out, people talk about it like a new film release as in: Have you seen the the new caveman ad, yet?
Or, you could take the big brother campaign of Apple that launched the mac. Huge. This ad is so iconic it resonates as one of the great representations of the individual triumphing over the totalitarian state in all forms of media.
Ads like these cross over into entertainment, social commentary, and into the great art category. In this light, an ad writer or art director, is an artist, a film maker, a social commentator. I would be proud to be one of these. These are things I have always dreamed of doing.
I guess the acid test becomes- how good am I? Can I make ads that rise to the stature of expanding the medium? Can they be original and great enough? Maybe my expressed reluctance over all of this is a form of cop-out. Am I afraid I can't do great ads? That somehow I won't have the capability or the opportunity to really do it on the highest level? Hmmmm. As bugs bunny would say, "hmmmmmmm, might be."
John

Never Fear--the Book is getting nearer.

I hope I have not gotten anyone worried with my posts about the woes of putting my book together because I am doing fine. It has been a struggle and at times I have been a bit overwhelmed, but I am making progress. I have ironed out some art direction issues and have started the actual layout process. It is key for me to remember that I am putting together a book as a creative, not as a straight up writer or art director. That is the only way my book makes sense. There is some really KICK-ASS work in there, if I do say so myself.

Depressed.

I am bogged down in working on my book. Some snags that may not be fixable have popped up. I have been getting depressed and anxious at the same time. Very unpleasant. Writing in this blog is frustrating because I don't need to demotivate myself any further by writing it. If I start thinking negatively about advertising in general, it spreads to my current efforts on my book. It just gets harder and harder to do what needs to get done.
Maybe I picked a really bad topic for my blog, or at least a bad topic for the time being. It has been suggested that this blog could be used to help me find a job, but I would be scared to show this to prospective employers as a marketing tool because they may see it as a lack of desire or reluctance to be in the field. They could end up seeing this as that I would not as hard as someone with no reservations whatsoever. It looks like a lack of commitment in a field where people are climbing over each to get in. The blog could be a positive to some employers, I do believe, but it's really risky in my opinion. I think it might turn more prospective employers off than on to hiring me. That is my motivation for keeping it sort of on the down low. Y'know? Keep it mostly in the fam. PC family that is.


On an unrelated topic, some anti-advertising web sights compare the omnipresence of advertising as defacing the world similarly to graffiti. It makes me wonder, though. Graffiti is art, right? If ads really are graffiti, than maybe they are art in a round about sort of way. Advertising has the power to far surpass graffiti, though. The neon hologram of Tokyo at night comes to mind. It is beautiful. Incredibly artificial, surreal, and disturbing, but beautiful. People somehow normalize this seemingly alternate reality and go on about their lives. It's Blade Runner, already. Either make the hologram, or be made by it. John

Depends. Break thru. No! A good break thru!

I have been working on my campaign for Depends. Yes. Those Depends. I really had a break through on it. My ad is about taking away people's shame over the product. It is about getting back to being active and having a full life, in the face of a problem. There are estimated to be 18-20 million people in the US suffering from incontinence. My ad has the tag line "Declare your InDEPENDence." The ads include a scroll made to look like the Declaration of Independence that include positive affirmations for the reader to make. They mentally "sign" the affirmations.
My concept could really help people! Wow! By looking at the product from the eyes of someone who suffers from the condition, I made an ad that could really help people feel better about themselves. Holy Shii.....Oooooppsss! Ha Ha!
Maybe no one else would have thought of it this way! Damn! I really am surprised at this, and myself! Maybe I can do good with ads. This could help so many people. Wow. Wow. Now I just need to send this to Depends as a spec commercial. John.

Here are some cool ad blogs:

www.adrag.com
www. saatchikevin
www.adscam.typead.com
www.adland.com
www.adverblog.com

I have been working hard on my book. Do you guys see big differences between advertising and design? Is design more of an art? Are they equally commercial?