I think that was one of Stephen Covey's seven habits of highly annoying people. Not sure. But it certainly applies to creative strategy. Whenever I look at a creative brief and see an objective like... run an spot on 93.5 FM, or create an ad...I become very frustrated. Now, that it is a radio spot or an ad is part of the strategy, but not the important part. Good strategies begin with the end in mind. Take hill 43. Increase sales by x percent. Make people love us. Stuff like that. Advertising ought to be about attitude and behavior modification.…

I think it's a great title for a book. At the very least, it's a great name for a biographical blog category, featuring little vignette | case studies of clients and the things we've learned from them. Okay, so there are funny things, like the senior executive who hated the color purple so much he turned purple when he saw it in a layout. But there are also really serious things, like the sales VP who taught us the principle of "moving next quarter's sales into this quarter." That urgency about moving a lead up the ladder and closing the…

We've launched a few social media programs lately. The whole process has been very influential on my functional vocabulary. I can't say I've learned new words, but I sure use words routinely I never thought I would. Like blog platform. And micro-site. And RSS feed (about which, I understand Facebook is pretty persnickety). I remain unimpressed, even as I have become a bit more aware of Twitter, tweets, tweet deck, and hash tags. But the word that rules the social media lexicon, at least around here, is "Like". It's kind of funny. For the first time since High School, I…