The quality of creative work coming out of small and mid-sized independent agencies keeps getting better, often rivaling or surpassing what comes out of agencies many times their size. Here ...

Anyone who has worked in the agency business long enough has learned one of its odder truisms: the most effective creative ideas are often the riskiest ones. Higher-risk creative tends ...

A lot has been said and written about the value of an agency doing genuinely great creative work. The debate runs from agency to agency and client to client. Some ...

Over the past two decades, there has been an enormous shift in defining the work and the role of agencies and design studios. Years ago, the two entities did similar ...

Writers, and advertising writers in general, sometimes say they've run out of story ideas. The question comes up constantly: "Where can I get the seeds for wonderful tales that ...

Many clients in the advertising and marketing business genuinely envy agency people. Agencies tend to avoid suits and ties, operate with more creative freedom, and work in environments that look ...

There has been a great deal said in recent years about how AI and automation would change the agency business irrevocably. In many ways, that is true. What gets lost ...

Agency principals often sense a gap in their creative department before they can name it. Is it another art director or designer they need? An idea person? Some combination of ...

There is a certain kind of creative director who refuses to bring any discipline to the process. Ask how an idea came together and the answer is always some version ...

Bill Bernbach, the founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, once said that for advertising to work, it has to leave the recipient of the message a little happier. In other words ...

We need to "hack" human behavior to succeed in advertising.

It's a word that gets thrown around in creative circles, and for good reason. "Hack" in this context doesn ...

Break pricing into three phases, tied to the three stages of development below, with payment due at the start of each phase or at specified milestones. Estimate the application of ...

…Or, ten reasons why your copy editor needs medications (and how to make it all better). Now I am not making light of any medical conditions; to the contrary, I ...

Jeff Welch, principal of Mercury Advertising in Bozeman, MT, tells us how his agency started very, very small (just Jeff and co-founder Jamie Hurd) and grew to 25+ employees largely ...

If you are a marathoner, “hitting the wall” can be very bad. But in reference to the creative community, the “wall” we refer to is a tool for brainstorming.

The ...

When what we invent, imagine and create are our primary products, it is important to create an environment that fosters imagination and exploration. One great, but frequently overlooked, method of ...

One of the most efficient tactics we've learned here at Second Wind is to give creatives some decent “groove” time each day, enabling them to become more productive. Instead ...

Differing priorities, work methods and viewpoints generate conflict. And that is all to the good in a creative agency looking to use all of its employees to fuel agency creative ...

Well, SELL, like, literally is, by the law of the letter, four letters long, but figuratively, it’s just the opposite. In my mind, “like” has become a four-letter word ...