Ad Caulk

There’s never been a better time to do creative work than right now. You can get stuff started. You can get it out to people. And you can turn it into a business if it’s decent. And there are more ways to get work to material. And it’s easier to get work. We are at a peak. Everything about our country is going to hell. Our politics, industry — like this is the one part of America which is actually going great.

—Ira Glass

I couldn't help but be inspired by this interview with Ira Glass. Not only is he down about the future of his profession, he doesn't care. Because when things are coming to the end, when things are changing dramatically, that's when creativity is not only accepted, it's required.

Sure, there will be people that always stay the course. People who try to hold onto the last shreds of What Once Was. But while they do that, people like Glass (and, hopefully, you and me) laugh and ride off on some new creative (ad)venture.

When things are going wrong people look for something to latch on to, maybe that something will be yours.

(via)

I was flicking through a copy of George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone today and ran across this quote. It might be the most insightful definition of humor I've ever heard.

Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to. The comic is the truth stripped of the habitual, the cushioning, the easy consolation. An "auditorium filled with two thousand men and women eagerly awaiting a night's entertainment" could also correctly be described as "two thousand smiling future moldering corpses" or a mob of bodies that, only hours earlier, have, during the predressing phase, been standing scattered around town, in their underwear."

It's The Ad Contrarian's "The Universal and The Transient in Advertising."

The basic gist of it is this: current and future advertisers should know the history of their field. But there's a lot more than that and it's really well written.

During my first internship I started to realize a lot of the problems we think of as new today are the same problems they faced decades ago. The platforms have changed and the field has gotten bigger but if you look at the rhetoric of the past you will see how closely it resembles the present.

It should stand that the most important thing we can do today is learn from the past. Don't obsess over it, wish that things "were the way they once were," decry all new technology. But learn from it. Even if it's learning about the names dropped in Mad Men that's a good place to start.

Pick up a book, or an e-book, and learn some history. It's a great investment in yourself.

Here's a comment I really liked from that post:

If past experience holds true I will probably write an hour a day—and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying what I'm going to write   about not writing.*

Often times the most difficult part of any assignment, assigned by yourself or another, is getting started. We worry that we won't be able to develop anything good. Or that our ideas have all hidden together in some far off place. So we sit there and don't do anything.

Even the best writers and artists feel this way (this video of DFW being just one example of that). But what makes them the best, what makes them productive artists, is getting over the fear. When you put pen to paper, or cursor to screen, you're reminded time and time again that this is hard—but it's not that hard.That's the key to success.

And not doing anything because you're afraid you won't have anything is the only way to prove yourself right.

*Quote comes from about 3:30 of the video.

EDIT: Somehow my brain convinced me the quote was different what it actually is, funny how brains work, As pointed out in the comments it's not about worrying WHAT you're going to write. It's worrying about not writing. That strange paralysis where you realize you haven't written anything in a week, two weeks. Worrying that you may never write again. That's a different kind of fear, but it does fit more with the headline of this article.

Sorry for the misquote.

At times it seems like everything is stacked against us:

There's too many people.
Not enough clean or fresh water.
Too much pollution
Not enough food.
Too much sickness.
Not enough energy to go around.
And everything seems to get more and more expensive.

We worry that these things will lead to more problems, more strife, more struggle.
And that may be true.
Untreated and unmet these problems will spiral out of control.
That makes the future looks awfully bleak.
But there are times, like today, that my faith in the future gets restored.
Here are three items I came across this week that show solutions to our problems.
They help remind me that problems, no matter how big, can be fixed by the effort of one person.
Of course people need to buy in to the solution but each solution starts with one goal by one person.

Nest thermostat. Changing the way we consume energy in our homes.

The device that turns saltwater into freshwater, using only sunlight.  (Thanks Pat)

How to deal with having as many people in the world as we do. It's not a problem of space, it's resources. (Thanks, Angela)

Here's a really interesting op-ed posted on Agency Spy today. The comments are shit, so don't bother reading them, but the post is really interesting.

The guy who wrote it was involved with the recent Kenny Powers MFCEO work and seems to know his stuff (he worked at W+K before moving to Sunny). He's touching on the importance of The Big Idea but in a slightly different way. He thinks, rightly so, that great ads should be able to be stretched out into a great film.

Of course this isn't always the case—it might get a little boring to watch 90 minutes of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like or Most Interesting Man In The World, although those are great ads. But it's a pretty big indication of whether or not your campaign has "legs."

So go read "Nice ad, but would it make a great movie" and start thinking of your own ideas.

The Best The Internet Had to Offer, This Week.

• Exploding Room, Frozen in mid-air! (And Disparity.)

• The most awesome agency self-promotion kit. Ever.

• Science can go to hell. "The Periodic Table of Swearing" is the Periodic Table for me.

• Like caffeine pills! Dave Trott's "Advertising That Doesn't Let You Sleep."

• Why your proudest moments might be little moments.

Gaddaffi Search Story

Creepy/Cool cartoon mashup

Yes. The iPhone 4s takes amazing video. (via)

It's really easy to get attached to buzzwords. Everyone is throwing them around and it sounds like so much fun.

So the occasional "engagement", or impression, or "iPhone killer" slips out in conversation. Then those words increasingly become the goal of your work. Selling the product becomes secondary.

That's wrong. We probably all know it's wrong. But it happens.

Martin Weigel, Head Planner at W+K Amsterdam, wrote an excellent post reminding people that engagement ISN'T the goal. It's long but it's a really good dose of reality for the Ad Industry.

Read it here. His entire blog is actually quite excellent and deserves a spot in your RSS feed.

Thanks to the rest of the internet posting this for me to find. Namely Ad Contrarian, Sell! Sell!, Escapology.

FF to 2:19 to skip the rather dry and boring intro.

It's a shame that so few people watch videos like these. Less than 3,00 combined views is realitivly nothing in the world of youtube. Instead, people in and out of advertising choose to watch mindless virals day in and day out. And the wisdom in videos like these gets left behind*.

Maybe it's strange but I really enjoy watching videos like this. My mind always seems to wake up after watching an informative or exciting talk. While I listen I can't quite help make connections that I wouldn't make otherwise.

It's not as though Sir Hegarty and Sir Robinson are saying anything groundbreaking. But it's the reminder of these things that makes the videos powerful. It helps re-frame, at least for me, what I am doing and what I am doing it for.

Half of success comes from knowing more than other people. Half comes from how you apply that knowledge. And the last half is determined by ability and drive. (I've never been very good with numbers.

*Of course I have watched my fair share of viral videos but I also try to make time for videos that have a bit more depth.

Starting this week I'm slightly changing the structure of Weekly Linkly. It occurred to me that I was posting a lot from the same sources and, although those sources are good, you should already be following them and don't need me to tell you what's good. Instead I'm going to feature the best things I find around the internet in any given week. It might be a bunch of videos, it might be a bunch of pictures, it might even be some blog posts. I think this will keep Weekly Linkly fresh and keep me more interested in it. Let me know if you like the change or think it should revert to how it was.

What's good this week?

• 
  This little doodle from @dabitch of Dave Trott. It's from a seminar 20 years ago but the wisdom is still good.

• Beardslap! (via)

•  Hemingway's short, fantastic, Nobel Prize speech.

• "Stories come in all shapes and sizes, and they have for a long time" <-- what inspires Pete Shelly. (from my favorite blog I found this week)

• 
  This. From a larger series.

• End of the world ideas are not the way to start your career.

LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and what he fears about the future of music.

Feel Cuba. (via)