Jim grew up in an Appalachian corner of Ohio where storytelling was a family tradition. He received his first formal training in writing from his uncle-a newspaper editor-shortly after learning to talk. His earliest memories include blue-pencil edits to his four-sentence essays, and he's had strong feelings about prepositions, the passive voice, split infinitives, and excessive adverbs (if you need two you have the wrong verb) for as long as he can remember. Like water flowing downhill, he studied journalism at Ohio University and fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Jim's advertising career began in Pittsburgh, in the 1980s. At HBM/CREAMER, Della Femina McNamee, and Henderson Advertising, he honed his copywriting, production, and strategic skills on clients such as Taster's Choice, Lean Cuisine, Spray 'n' Wash, and Hanes Activewear. In 1994, he joined with Art Director, Anne Peck (now Anne Peck Gibbons) to form Gibbons Peck Marketing Communication.
Today, Jim and Anne split their time between their 1910 Craftsman-style bungalow (a perpetual restoration project) in Greenville, SC and The Peck House (Anne's family headquarters) in Asheville, NC. In his occasional free time, he likes taking epic-length walks, studying and teaching the Bible, playing a small arsenal of guitars, ukuleles, a violin and a djembe, and reading and writing while listening to the sounds of the mountain.
Engaging:
I learned my most valuable professional skill-presentation-as a waiter. Twenty to sixty presentations a night will tend to hone your chops.
True:
Water beats rock. Eventually.
Relevant:
There's a big difference between facts and truth. Facts fill file cabinets. Truth changes the courses of rivers.