The Job of Advertising is Interestingness Management

30 years ago, I didn’t think of my job as interestingness management, but that is the job that I learned working for Jon Steel at Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Before I left my internship at BBDO (an office of wonderful, lively creative people hamstrung by a Boreplex of client inertia and disempowerment) and walked a few blocks up Front Street, a friend from the office wished me good luck before adding, “I heard they send you out with a gun and a single bullet and say, ‘Sell the work or don’t come back.’” She was half-kidding, of course, but that’s one way the Boreplex infects your mind, by whispering in your ear, “There must be a catch” every time you see interesting work from somewhere else.


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