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 above.
Verbatims from my presentations:
Speaking Topics
Social in 4 Steps. (Sometimes 3, Maybe 2.)
(Revised from an earlier post.) “Don’t do an ad. Do something interesting.” This is one of the best and most basic pieces of advice I have for my students and, for that matter, anyone in the communications industry. Because when you follow it, you’ve pulled yourself...
Friday’s webinar on a new way to think about social. (And about advertising in general.)
“Don’t do an ad. Do something interesting.” This is one of the best and most basic pieces of advice I have for my students and, for that matter, anyone in the communications industry. Because when you follow it, you’ve pulled yourself out of the old world of...
Working with Creative & Account Teams
No matter how accomplished an company’s creative department is, it’s valuable to hear the opinion of an outside creative resource. I typically meet with the teams running two key accounts. We walk through the work and look at creative or strategic improvements.
That Sucks. That’s Great.
In this speech/workshop, attendees will use current advertising examples to rate, rank, and discuss what elements are in play, and then conclude with best practices.
Being Naughty
A brief look at how complete and total disobedience results in better work. We’re talking about Dru’s “Disruption” model but on steroids.
The Virtues of Simplicity
In this talk we discuss the art of reductionism and how taking away everything that isn’t a “load-bearing beam” always improves the work. https://vimeo.com/30688422
How to Suck Less
We creatives can complain about bad briefs all we want, but at the end of the day there’s nothing we can do about some things in this business. This talk is about the things we can control. It’s about time and energy management, about craft, about making things way...
Managing Creatives to their Potential
In which we explore the unique issues around managing creative people, who don’t like to be managed. Participants will leave the session with short- and long-term solutions to optimizing the creative output of their organizations. (Particularly appropriate for account...
Authenticity
With a half-century of over-hyped claims, the ad industry has created a nation of eye-rollers. Which makes claiming authenticity today especially tricky – because we marketers do have an agenda: to sell. In this session we’ll discuss how brands can stake out...
Leveraging Cultural Tensions To Improve Creativity
A talk in which we explore how to use tensions in our culture as well as the polarities in life to create more ideas and better ideas.
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Suggested Reading
Recent Tweets
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A Goodbye Video To All My Wonderful Students. (It's on my LinkedIn https://t.co/kYfVaKDHCd ) https://t.co/xfetv9H6v6
4 weeks ago
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RT @nickjr: So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 https://t.co/O8NOM2eRjy
1 month ago
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RT @AccountableGOP: Introducing the superheroes for COVID: #CovidFriends https://t.co/YNhzQIkxl0
3 months ago