Here's Why Talented Creatives Are Leaving Your Agency

We don't often repost articles on this blog. But I thought this one on Digiday was worth sharing. It's a London-based product designer's take on why agencies are bleeding young talent while startups are picking them up. The author's litany of condemnation for big agencies:

1. You won't stop taking on shit work.
2. You don't innovate, even though you say you do.
3. You keep hiring dead weight (and do nothing about it).
4. You don't stop taking on projects that can't be delivered unless we work 12-hour days.
5. You don't give staff any credit.
6. You don't buy us decent equipment.

Not all large agencies fit this dire mold. But I've worked at one or two that did. It's good to recognize the bad  out there so you can avoid it. And it's go to recognize the good, so you can run towards it. Read the full article here.

Look for Opportunities

I heard this interview on NPR last night about how the City of Omaha is taking advantage of Peyton Manning's relentless use of their name on the field.



Omaha's tourism department is busy scheduling media interviews. Omaha bakeries are selling Go Broncos cupcakes. Omaha breweries are crafting and labeling special Manning beers. Even one of the new penguins in the Omaha Zoo was named Peyton.

I love that so many people in Omaha began thinking, "How can we make this work for us?"

How are you taking advantage of popular culture? What are you doing with what's right in front of your face?





Happy Accidents

I don't usually post my own work on this site. But this one comes with a point, and a good cause.

About a year ago, I began doing work for Volunteers of America. They're a 117-year-old national charity that had never advertised before.

We ended up producing print, online, outdoor, and TV for them. But my favorite spot was never scripted, never presented, never even concepted. It was just a happy accident.

While we were shooting in Los Angeles, our director wanted to get some extra footage. So he rolled down Skid Row with his camera hanging out of the van door. Then his producer ran back down the street and gave some cash to have the people he filmed sign release waivers, just in case. Some of this footage made it into our final spots.

But when we were in the editing studio we were looking at that shot, and thought it was kind of amazing. We wondered how could we share it?  So we started playing around with it. We slowed it down. Wrote some copy to serve as supers. And sampled a few demo tracks. (We ended up recording Jennifer Perryman to sing an original track.) We showed it to the client, and were lucky enough to have them approve it. Here's the finished piece:



Gold Lion at Cannes? Nah. But does it help the client get their name out there? Yep. Am I proud to have it on my reel? Absolutely.

So be open to happy accidents. Find a way to make them work. Play with them. Get them in front or your clients and champion them. And everyone will be a little better off.

(If you'd like to donate anything to Volunteers of America, please click here. They're amazing people who do amazing work.)

The Importance of Editing

In "A Note to Student Art Directors" by Hal Curtis (originally published in CA), he gives this piece of advice:

Become a closet editor. Other than music, it's the single most effective way to impact a piece of film.

Last month, Variety published "Why Editing Nominations Predict the Best Picture Oscar" with some of these interesting factoids:

Only 9 films have won best picture without at least a nomination for editing.
Of the 61 films that have won Best Picture, 32 have won Best Editing.

Jay Cassidy who co-edited American Hustle says, "There's no such thing as a good scene in a bad movie...If filmgoers are moved by the story and emotion in the film then it's probably well-edited."

If you're not familiar with how editing works, or why it's important, start learning. Here's one of my favorite scenes from The Social Network, for which Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall won the Oscar. Notice how the edits begin to match the pace of the athletes. The cuts almost become their heartbeats. That's not just a happy accident.


The Social Network "Henley Sequence" from a52 on Vimeo.

Of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture, here are the trailers for the five Best Editing Nominees (but don't confuse film editing with trailer editing - they're done by different people):










The Many Tellings of a Story


When you have a story to tell, you usually just tell it. But in advertising, you have to tell it multiple times—to your partner, to your team, to your client, to your director—before you finally tell it to your real audience.

If those first tellings don’t go well, that final telling will never happen. So don’t overlook those first tellings. Give a lot of thought to how you’re going to bring the story to life for your client, in particular. They should be as engaged by your telling of the story as they will be by the final execution.

Too often I see ideas that could be great fall flat in meetings because nobody gave any thought to how to present the idea. Or maybe they didn’t think the idea needed anything more than to be read from a paper. Ideas do not sell themselves. Stories sell ideas. So tell a good story, each time you tell it.

Our 2013 Book Lists


Thirteen years ago, Greg turned me onto an idea that has become one of my favorite annual traditions. He and I (and anyone else we can convince to do it) keep reviews of every book we read. Then at the end of the year, we release a list of everything we read that year.

Here are our lists from 2013.

Greg's 2013 Book List

Jim's 2013 Book List

What great books did you read in 2013? The Best of Makin' Ads? Anyone? Anyone? [crickets]