A very cool quotation from Faris Yakob’s cool book “Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for Digital World.”
“Working in advertising can make you cynical, but if you can aspire to look yourself in the mirror and see the kind of person your 8- or 14-year-old self would not hate – if you can treat people and customers and clients and vendors and the world with respect; not attack people nor their work; not be petty or cruel; if you can be open to the opinions of others and be willing to change your mind; not worship money above friendship or honor nor let your heart get hard; if you can stay in love with creativity; spend time working for the good of the industry, especially the young people; and if you can remain thankful there are jobs that let you have ideas for a living and wear jeans and T-shirts to work – then advertising is a fine profession and one to be proud of.”
I strongly recommend Faris’s book. You can get it here at amazon. This one excerpt really doesn’t reflect what the book is about, which is mostly about how to kick ass in a digital world, but I just happen to love it.
SCAD student helps me secure photo for chapter titled “Surviving the Digital Tsunami.”
Four victims of the digital tsunami.
In January, the fifth edition of Hey Whipple is gonna come out.
I asked Edward Boches (digital smarty-pants from Mullen and now Boston U) to contribute and add his deeper digital smarts to the book. And he did. And with a whole lot of other revisions and new stuff, the 5th edition really rocks (if I say so myself).
Anyway, weird story: I’m putting the finishing touches to it last week and found I needed a certain kind of photo to kick off a chapter titled, “Surviving the Digital Tsunami.”
My first idea for the visual was a boarded-up Blockbuster store, but there aren’t any here in Savannah. Then Edward threw out the idea of an old pay phone. Perfect. Started lookin’ around online and found this PERFECT image of abandoned, inoperative, destroyed pay phones (above). But couldn’t find who owned the rights, and even if I did, the publisher probably wouldn’t pay for them. So I shrugged my shoulders and drove around Savannah to find a few old payphones to photograph; but my pictures sucked.
Cut to cool part: So I took that photo I’d found and put it on Twitter and said, “Help. Anyone have an image like this that I can use?” And wouldn’t you know it, an old student of mine, the lovely Sophia Magdalena Curtis wrote to say, “I see that same bank of dead payphones every day here in Brooklyn. I just took this photo.Here you go.”
Day-um, you just have to love the interwebs. Thank you sooooo much, Sophia.
[Sophia tells me she recently left an agency job in Miami, and took a job as graphic/web designer at Sak Brand Broup in New York; said she “couldn’t be happier.”]
Top 5 Tweets from folks in Jacksonville. (Frankly, some of these people were just mean.)
Just got back from a fun speaking trip to Jacksonville and their AAF club. As always, I tell the audience I’ll send a signed copy of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This to the person who writes the funniest tweet during the talk.
And by funny, I told ‘em, hey, if you think I suck, post “heywhipple kinda sux. #overrated.” Really, any comment that’s mean-spirited or disrespectful will be received warmly.
Placing fifth in the race for the book (valued at nearly $16) was CS @JaxRunner who tweeted:
CS @JaxRunner Heeeeeeeey @heywhipple, would you squeeze a … tarantula? #deepthoughts
The judges chose this because, well, if you weren’t there at the talk, this tweet makes no sense and is in fact kinda creepy, in about four different ways.
Placing fourth was this:
Stephanie Mack @Smack_Talks @heywhipple knows a ton about reaching target audience through every medium except that tech bullshit. #wheresmytypewriter?
Clearly a cheap shot at the unavoidable I.T. problem I experienced, as well as at my advanced years. Judges appreciated the final jab in the hashtag.
Third place was this tweet:
Eddie B @EdwardBerrang The Matrix obviously wasn’t a fan of your dig on Part 2 & 3 of the series. No sound for you.
Right before having the tech problem with sound I did, in fact, have a few bad things to say about the second and third Matrix movies. Mr. Eddie B saw a causal relationship between the two events and astutely rode the coat-tails of Stephanie Mack’s earlier remarks about the IT issue.
(NOTE: Mr. Eddie B was the most frequent Tweeter and the judges are pretty sure he didn’t really listen to the speech.)
Runner-up, winning Silver, was:
Adjective & Co. @adjectiveandco @heywhipple, I am taking my A-team to see you tomorrow. You better not suck. – Taylor
Not because it was particularly funny, although the judges did give it good scores for its abusive undertone. Nor was the tweet sent during the speech, but the day before. No, the tweet placed because I know Taylor Harkey from our shared time at GSD&M. So it was nepotism and brown-nosing.
Our grand-prize winning tweet was this:
Kingsley Spencer @KingsleyPrints Lobby conflict: Why does Ruth own Chris? #heywhipple PS- thanks for the awesome lecture.
Two reasons Kingsley’s tweet rung the bell: First off, you’d only get this joke if you saw the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse sign that was sitting on a table in the hallway where they were doing remodeling. And the question has merit, people. WTF? What is the deal with that name? Yo Chris, why be Ruth’s bitch. Man up, dude.
Oh, also, it didn’t hurt that they said thanks for the awesome lecture. The judges appreciate being pandered to.
I had a blast everyone. Hope you enjoyed yourself. Kingsley Spencer, please ask my wonderful host, Aerien Mull, to mail that copy off post haste.
Toodles.
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Luke Sullivan
Author, speaker, and ad veteran available to recharge, reinvigorate, and refocus marketing, advertising, and branding firms.
I give a hugely energetic series of presentations on innovation, creativity, branding, and marketing. I spent 32 years in the trenches of advertising (at agencies like Martin, GSD&M, and Fallon) and I’ve put everything I learned into my book, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. But for me nothing beats taking the message out and speaking to living breathing audiences at clients, agencies, and conferences. You can book me on the button below.
