It’s 10 PM. You’re at home on the couch, staring at a brief that’s as inspiring as a sack of dirt clods. You sigh and stare down the white bull that is your blank Word doc. Grasping for a shard of illumination, you pull out Crispin’s retrospective tome, ‘Hoopla’. It reads like a compendium of new millennium advertising. Each page sparkles like a semi-precious gem.

A garter-clad chicken-man subserviently awaits your every whim (minus dick stuff). A dwarfish British motorcar challenges your preconceptions with iconoclastic urgency and hipster idealism. A mute king sidles up beside you with the gift of flame broil and vague threat.

This is the stuff, you think. This is the kind of irreverent, post-post-modern advertising that transcends the usual Carl’s Jr.-y dreck. Why regurgitate pop culture when you can create it?

Suddenly, you’re inspired. You’re in the zone. You’re conceiving new worlds: A Tourettic fan boat captain. A country-clutter cutter. A webisode called “Ginger Beard House.”

Next level stuff.

Just then the TV seizures and chirps with cheap synths and fluorescent flashing, snapping you out of your revelry. It’s a spot for Old Navy – a Crispin campaign you’re vaguely aware of, but now regard with laser pen precision. A Kim Kardashian clone vapidly sings about her “Super C-U-T-E” jeans while prancing from one choreographed scene to another, instantly darkening your mood.

Is there a wink to it? Is it meant to be ironic? No. It’s simply the worst of pop culture distilled down to 30 seconds of bubbly saccharine sludge. Ever a glutton for punishment, you turn to Youtube to dredge up some more Old Navy bile. Bad move.

This time a group of gal pals are at bowling alley singing “Only in My Jeans” to the tune of Debbie Gibson’s “Only In My Dreams.” Your eyes twitch.

In the next one, another group of girls sing “I’m Wearing a New Blouse” to the tune of Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now.” Your serotonin ebbs.

Next, Bootsy Collins churns out boots in a Funnovations factory, because – as the people of Crispin are fully aware – puns are the pinnacle of comedy.

And, finally, with the onset of “Don’t Jiggle It When You Wiggle It,” you close your laptop in soul-crushing defeat.

Contemptuous and a little dumber, you wonder what machinations are responsible for such an abomination? Surely, there must be an explanation. So you hit the bottle and devise a few theories.

Theory 1: Metal Machine Music

In 1975, Lou Reed released “Metal Machine Music,” arguably the most unlistenable album since the advent of the phonograph. Devoid of melody and rhythm, it’s comprised entirely of over-modulated guitar feedback – like an autistic Yngwie Malmsteen playing a chainsaw. The justification for the album remains a mystery, but you speculate that it was as a calculated backlash to the sycophantic reverence that was thrust upon the Velvet Underground during the 60s. Such rarified air can contaminate. Whether it’s delusions of grandeur or self-sabotaging hubris, Lou’s story was not unlike Crispin’s – that of a meteoric rise and tragic fall (an arc favored by films featuring blow and/or Marky Mark dong).

Theory 2: The Mentos Method

Mentos ads were an ugly anomaly. The weirdly foreign, hobo-cheap ads featured an absurd array of life-altering candy consumption that made us collectively shudder. But like depression-era circus pinheads, a freakish spectacle attracts a crowd. Consider Rick Astley’s ghastly resurgence, or those two girls and that cup, or Carrot Top’s physique (which, incidentally, can be attributed to his Napoleon Complex that was brought on by his roundly ridiculed androgynous-prop-comedy-ginger-clowning).

But you digress.

You have a hard time believing that Crispin has succumbed to the Chinese model of churning out cheap plastic crap, but the Schadenfreude side of you kind of hopes so.

Theory 3: Bogusky’s Exodus

With a creative vision not seen since Lee Clow (and bangs that could shame Kevin Sorbo), Alex Bogusky wasn’t just Crispin’s creative leader, he was the Adonis of Hawking Wares. The Swayze of karate-guy bouncers (and/or ghost pottery).

And, lo, like Icarus (another ego-drunk demigod), Alex flew too close to the sun. In a desperate effort to rediscover his life’s purpose, he abandoned his agency and retreated to a cabin in the woods, like a handsome Thoreau or a tenor Bon Iver.

Resigned to grumpy old men status, Sam Crispin and Chuck Porter fell victim to stereotype. Their fleeting attention spans were focused more on the Floridian shuffleboard/smorgasbord circuit than irreverent computer-y advertising. Sadly, their heir apparent, Andrew Keller, dropped the baton in favor of his crimper. And thus the soul of the Crispin machine was vanquished. Not even Ted McGinley could save this sinking ship.

Whatever the reason for the agency’s creative demise (or hiccup), one thing is clear: If ‘Hoopla’ is the Gospel According to Crispin, then the latest chapter is the ‘Book of Mormon’ – a preposterous sequel in which Jesus Bootsy appears in America to pander to ignorant savages tweens.

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Chris Elzinga is a freelance copywriter in San Francisco. He is also the founding father of Prudism and Gimpressionism.

Originally published at >a href="http://thesfegotist.com">The San Francisco Egotist

Giving students a jump-start to their career, college programs provide many aspiring creatives an opportunity to get some real-life experience through an ad agency internship. This is when young creatives learn fast that working in the biz is nothing like the textbook or bubble test said. It's actually much more interesting and fun. But knowing what it takes to make the leap from unpaid (or poorly paid) volunteer to a junior level employee who earns a paycheck starts by knowing what to soak up during that two-three month adventure.

Here are the seven things I think are most important for interns learn:

1. If You Don't Ask, No One Will Help You. 
Not the last thing a creative will do, but low on the list is checking on an intern. Many professional creatives are wrapped up in their own world of "make the logo bigger" crises. Don't be afraid to bug someone or ask them to get coffee, lunch or an after-work beer just to talk shop. They'll probably welcome the break. The result is that creative pro will label you as a driven individual. Should a higher-up ask about you, he/she will now have something positive to say. During your chat, put your ideas on the chopping block, ask "why" and milk his or her mind for all it's worth.

2. Go To Meetings That Have Nothing To Do With You.
Meetings ... boring, yes. Valuable for an intern, definitely. You'll pick up lingo and understand the DNA of the agency. You'll also discover why certain people are stressed and why so many agency workers drink moderate to heavily. There will be presentation documents, creative briefs, short brainstorms and client feedback. These are all things you'll never see in a classroom setting.

3. Your A+ Thesis Paper Has Nothing To Do With Creative Copywriting.
My first creative director told me: "Clients don't pay you to write or for me to design. They pay us for our minds." It's true. Think about it this way: everyone thinks they can write and/or design (until they actually have to). But thinking creatively on a highly strategic level is a skill few possess. It's what separates us from our clients and their brand team - we are their brand's thought leaders. It's not about writing a clever headline with a pretty photo, rather it's about writing a clever headline and designing an ad that meets six brand objectives while still clearly communicating to a human being. Forget writing essays and designing your cousin's band poster, the creative side of the biz is based on intelligently communicating with people in creative ways. Learn that or at least show a spark, and you'll be valuable.

4. Jump In On A Pitch.
Many ad students get to participate in the AAF competition through "Campaigns" class. They have four months to come up with a large creative presentation for a national client, where they'll compete against other college student teams. In the agency world, that same process happens in about 10-14 days (sometimes less) instead of 120 days. You're guaranteed to hear the word "RFP" (request for proposal) while interning. When you do, do what you can to get involved. Even if it's just gathering photos, proofing or binding. Pay attention to how the team brainstorms. Study how the copywriter writes up the ideas to be sold. How the art directors design comps to communicate the idea. Figure out why the creative director and account director wanted it in certain order. It may not be a flawless process and final product. But this is your chance to finally see how the sausage is made. "Just Do It" wasn't sold as just a clever line - the agency went through a pitch process, creating a strategic deck book that made the idea of that famous line shine.

5. Keep Building Your Book, Even If It's Not "Real" Work.
In some situations, it can be difficult as an intern to truly own a project. If you have that chance, save every PDF and file, and make it the showpiece of your book. Unfortunately for many, you'll dabble here and there, but may feel uncomfortable claiming a finished piece as your own. Don't let that stop you -- now that you understand a brand better than ever, go ahead and design your own campaign. Show what you can do with total creative control. Have a reason for everything you do and say in the campaign. In your upcoming interviews, creative directors are going to be looking to see that you can think and execute creatively and strategically. The ad doesn't have to be printed in Time Magazine. Good creative is good creative.

6. Be Digital Or Be Left Behind.
You know the vehicles: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Now get active and learn everything you can about them. Pay attention to what brands and marketers are doing with them. Connect with others in the industry through it. Know how to talk about social media in simple terms. Need practice? Try explaining Twitter to your grandparents or crazy uncle. While interning, ask if you can participate in speaking for the agency through their social media channels. Contribute to the agency blog. Be seen, be heard and know what you're talking about.

7. Be A Writer Or Designer. Never Both.
If you say you can do it all, no one will believe you. If you really can excel at both writing and designing, more power to you. But for most, it's crucial to pick one path and become as great as you can be at it. Creative directors and agency heads want to know that you're "our writer guy" or "our design gal." Don't get me wrong, having cross-over skills is great -- just don't sell yourself as such. At least until you reach the level of Creative Director.

With the ultimate goal is landing that first job shortly after the internship, remember the process is all about luck, timing, skills, your book, drive, resiliency and intangibles... plus a bunch of other things.

Good luck and let me know what you think. Like the Dude says, everything in this post is just, like my opinion, man.

This editorial originally appeared in the St. Louis Egotist

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Eammon is a copywriter who's worked over eleven years in the ad agency business. He's won a few ADDYs, judged a few shows and worked on a variety of national clients. Find out all about him on his LinkedIn profile and feel free to follow him on Twitter.

Linkedin link:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/eammonazizi

Twitter link:
www.twitter.com/eammon

This morning I wrote an email to a kid I heard was in the dumps. Thought someone else out there could possibly use the same chuck-on-the-shoulder.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Hello ____, it’s me, Luke.

I hear “through channels” that those clients have had you on the ropes for the last month or so; got you a little down.

Been there, dude. I spent THIRTY THREE years in the trenches where you are now and I think I had one client, one stinkeen client who needed no education. One client in alllll that time who just kinda got it.

In order to survive 33 years of clients who either don’t or won’t get it, I encourage you to do what my big brother Kip did.

Kip was (is) a Harvard-trained lawyer who spent all of his professional life earning 1/100th of what he could have earned being a corporate lawyer. Instead, he spent years as a $14,000-a-year kind of lawyer who represented nonprofit clients, causes that couldn’t pay a dime, organizations that were busy fighting the good fight — standing up to big power companies that were turning off the power in the homes of poor people, causes like that.

And one day I asked my brother, “Damn, how do you keep from getting mad or depressed as you fight such people?” And his answer was, “I never let myself get over-the-top mad. I just keep my anger at a very low boil. Always.”

A low boil. NO boil means you’re close to giving up. You need to keep some fight in you. But boiling over? That leads to a short bitter career; probably a short bitter life.

I’ve always remembered my big brother’s answer. In order for any artistic soul to survive in a world full of number-crunchers, politics, and marketing people who just don’t get how cool and how effective advertising can be, we need to remember, LOW BOIL. I wrote recently in these pages, “The first duty of an artist is to survive.” You must make sure that the bright light you bring to the industry is not snuffed out by the first 85 bad meetings you have, and you’re gonna have ‘em.

If something dies, in fact, when the first 85 things die, soldier on. One out of 85 things surviving? Sad to report, but that’s pretty much par for the course in this business, which is essentially one of artists presenting things to scientists.

So, my young friend, let your defeats be funerals of short duration, but your victories? Celebrate any victory, large or small, with wild bacchanalia.

Your cheerleader,
Luke Sullivan

*********

Originally published here. Luke Sullivan is a copywriter. Always has been, always will be. He's the author of Hey, Whipple! Squeeze This. He currently chairs the ad department at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has recently published a memoir, Thirty Rooms To Hide In.

I “borrowed” that from one of those Demotivator posters. If you’re wondering why someone with my cynical outlook on life needs a demotivation poster, just remember that sad sacks love to wallow in misery. And oh, how I love the wallowing. It’s a great site for realizing just how fucked up so much of the business world is; and this comes from someone who worked in an office full of the original motivational posters that make you want to hang yourself with Roseanne Barr’s thong.

So enough of the horseshit intro; what’s this rant all about?

One word…opinions.

It was inspired by the recent lump of festering shit designed for Colorado Springs, an abhorrence that slid out of the puckered anus of local “design” firm Stone Mantel (sounds like something cold that supports crap from Goodwill…hmm, the irony).

When I first saw it on The Denver Egotist I thought it was a joke. Nice one! Even worse than the Fort Collins travesty, but there’s no way this malodorous boil is real. Good old Egotist, always one for larks and japes and…

…oh. Shit.

I wasn’t exactly expecting Pentagram quality, but this thing looks like the kind of rotten puke you see in student books; the stuff that means you have to break it to the hopeful brat that they’re better off flipping burgers than polluting the world with their lack of design skills.

Actually, it’s worse. And that’s because it reeks of design by committee.

This is one of the biggest problems I see with the advertising, marketing and design industries. And it’s also prevalent in movies (oh god, the shite movies we now have to endure), music, product design and almost everything else that we encounter on a daily basis. You can see the hands of wannabe artists, designers and writers everywhere, who sit behind a desk crunching numbers for most of the day. But when they get to review work, they get to show just how damned talented they really are.

Design by committee is rife in advertising and design, but could never exist in some professions. Here’s a quick example. Imagine a surgeon performing an operation, only he’s joined by a bunch of other people, including: his boss; a surgeon who hates his guts; an intern; the secretary; the girl from accounting who he’s been fucking at night; and the mailroom guy.

Just as the surgeon is about to make his first incision, there’s immediate opposition.

Asshole surgeon: “Whooah, is that the best place to cut? We need to discuss this at length. And that scalpel is all wrong.”

Intern: “We should probably have coffee and look at these charts I pulled on the best place to make first incisions. It includes new data from focus groups.”

Secretary: “Do we even need to cut him at all? That seems harsh, perhaps we can massage the failing liver back to health and burn some incense.”

Account girl: “Statistically, we shouldn’t even go near this cut. The legal team says it could open us up to lawsuits, and that means more expenditure. We should probably go somewhere private, together, and talk this over.”

Mailroom guy: “Cut him now! Big cut! Let’s see blood!”

Boss: “I say we make a small cut in a different area, one less likely to cause visual trauma, remove a small part of the liver, put a small part of the new liver in there, sew him up and then put this all on the back burner while we wait for the results to come in. Let’s see how he performs.”

Surgeon: “OK…making incision.”

Asshole surgeon: “Hey, we need to talk about the shape of the incision, the depth and so many other factors. We should take this offline and run the numbers.”

You get the picture. It’s ridiculous to think of it in those terms, but it’s exactly what happens in advertising and design. And it’s not too much of a stretch to consider the client and their product as a patient in need of medical assistance.

Their brand is dying, their sales are on life support, they need a solution, and quickly. But opinions are allowed to grow and flourish from all sides. Everyone’s thoughts matter. Even people who have never created an ad, or wrote copy, are allowed to directly influence the copy and art direction.

“How about this headline?”

“Oh, yes Julia I like that. But maybe not so bold, and let’s add a call to action in there along with Justin’s idea about combining those two headlines from the other campaign.”

“Brilliant! Let’s get a focus group together for even more opinions!”

Clients, account managers, planners, they all have their place. But they rarely stay in it. Creative territory, and to some extent the strategic side of the business, seem to be fair game to everyone else. If a creative, like an art director, asked to see the fiscal projections for the next quarter, and supplied a spreadsheet with numbers that he or she liked, there would be hell to pay. But anyone, and I mean anyone, has a valid opinion when it comes to the business we’re trained in.

Oh sure, it’s sometimes disguised as self-deprecating verbiage, but you can see straight through that. How many times have you heard these gems:

“Look, I’m no copywriter but have you tried something like…”

“I’m not a designer, but I’m thinking we could try this color…”

“You’ll figure out how to make this much better, but what about…”

Before you know it, your sketch pad is filled with “suggestions” from the clients and your own management team, and you have to bite what’s left of your tongue, go back to your corner of the office and turn something great into something mediocre. And then repeat the process a few dozen times until everyone can agree that they don’t hate it.

It’s the equivalent of taking a car into the shop with a leaking engine, and picking up a completely jalopy with a new paint job after 3 months and $100k in expenses.

So, how do we solve this?

It’s solvable, but it requires an incredible amount of discipline and trust from both the client and the agency.

First, the client must have one decision-maker. ONE. And that person must be in the loop from the start. That doesn’t mean the CEO, it means one person responsible for signing off on the finished project. That means the CEO and the board has to go with that person’s decision. Like I say, trust. But really, if one retarded monkey had sat down with crayons and designed The Springs logo, and another retarded monkey signed off on it, would it be any worse than the one the fucking committee agreed to?

It also means that the agency must get a very specific creative brief, signed off on by the main decision-maker. And it means the agency must put its foot down when the client asks for god-awful changes. To put it bluntly, fuck them. They don’t know what they’re doing; if they did they wouldn’t need an agency. Steve Jobs said that he refused to test the iPad before it went to market. He knew people don’t know what they want and it would score badly. So he took the “fuck you” path and released it. It’s now the most popular tablet by a large margin.

Jobs also had to put his own money into the infamous 1984 commercial. The committee hated it. He loved it. And we all know how that turned out.

The agency must also put a limit on brainstorms between all kinds of people. A team is great, but I honestly believe three’s a crowd. Bernbach wanted the art director and copywriter to work together to formulate ideas. It worked great. I don’t ever seen great work coming from brainstorms with five or six people in the room. Too many cooks. Too many opinions. Ideas get left on the table because one person in the room isn’t keen. Other ideas get pushed because the group likes them. Generally, when we think in large groups, we play safe and the tepid ideas rise to the top. There are notable exceptions (Pixar), but not many.

If we want less of this Colorado Springs crap, we all need to start putting our own houses in order. Solid direction, one main decision-maker, small teams and no more of these big group brainstorms. Try it. You’ll save time, money and the sanity of the talented people around you.

Felix Unger is a site contributor, ranter and curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist. He’s been in the ad game a long time, but he’s still young enough to know he doesn’t know everything. If he uses the f-bomb from time-to-time, forgive him. Sometimes, when you're ranting, no other word will do. In his spare time, he does not torture small animals. He has been known, on occasion, to drink alcohol by the gallon. Do as he says, not as he does.