America is not a machine. It’s not a cold assembly line filled with widgets and driven by gears and grease. It is not intended to provide ROI for a board of directors. America is a bubbling ocean of human emotion and experience containing billions of conflicting ideas. The only concepts that ALL Americans align with are liberty and justice. That’s it. That’s all. And that’s everything. Back in the 90s, I was coming out of a dogmatic stupor as a southern republican and ended up voting for a…
This is a blog post to all my old friends and family who have let “politics” get in the way of real and burgeoning relationships. I love you. I do. And I know you’re probably tired of hearing me talk poorly about our current president and his administration, but I still can’t believe you actually fell for this guy. I also get that you’re tired of the smugness of the liberals and progressives. I totally do. They’re educated urbanites and…
Last night at some point I went onto Facebook to see people raving about an ad for 84 Lumber that caught everyone’s attention. I’m a big proponent of advertising that’s different, and this one was. It was beautifully shot, directed, acted, and scored–it was an Oscar contender. But … it was a cliffhanger. You had to visit the 84 Lumber website to see how the story ends. Only, the site crashed due to traffic. Do you mean to tell me…
Art is born on fire. A miraculous spark. A divine appointment. Its only desire, release. Art is beast that lives in your chest, clawing to get out. Best to accept this inherent truth and let it run to the farthest corners of your heart, nearly out of site, where wonder lives. Then have the courage to let it live outside of you amid the chaos where it will take root in another— encouraging similar release. Art…
You realize they’ve convinced us that we’re our own enemy, right? We MUST coexist between conservative and liberal. Must. We cannot allow one ideology to rule the land. It won’t work. This is America, land of baddest motherfuckers on the planet. We’re all different. And we like a good fight. Trying to force one ideology on everyone will NEVER work here. We have no choice but to figure this shit out. And it must begin with the acceptance that they’ve turned us…
I never show clients what they want to see in the initial round of branding copy. My job as a copywriter requires that I be two people. One is to think tactically about goals, benefits, target audiences, and so on. The other is to be completely disconnected from the brand. It’s an absurd way of thinking. And yeah, as you can imagine the process can get weird with two contradictory voices in your head. But the results are almost always…
