"Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples' pasts and futures that
produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. You,
who can write better than anybody can, who are so lousy with talent
that you have to—the hell with it. Scott for gods sake write and write
truly no matter who or what it hurts but do not make these silly
compromises. You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for
instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any
feeling, except passing, if it were true."

via Letters of Note

"The basic rule you gave us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to
be effective had to convey something from writer to reader and the
power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of
that, you said, there were no rules. A story could be about anything
and could use any means and technique at all—so long as it was
effective.

"As a subhead to this rule, you maintained that it seemed to be
necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what
he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat
of a story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough
to enlarge it to three or six or ten thousand words."

Via Letters of Note

We've just finished working on this
for Powerade.

"But the basic principles of research are the same--that is, I still
don't have any basic principles. I just talk to lots of people and
hang around libraries and follow my nose and hope I come up with
something interesting."

The words of our ECD.

I think the "matey" tone of voice is getting boring now.

It started with Innocent. Then supermarkets. Now it's ubiquitous.

I'm a bit bored of it.

It too smug and knowing for its own good.

You are not my friend. You're a napkin.

Jim Riswold on how he makes ads and art.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will
ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without
caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine
times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C.S. Lewis

One of the things I talked about in my interview at W+K was the desire
to stay on a steep learning curve. The great thing about this industry
is that it has a restlessness to it. That's why I love it but it's
also something that needs to be carefully maintained and managed.

However, the trouble with staying on a steep learning curve is that
it's incredibly testing.

Over the past few months my approach to planning and strategy has
started to change in a some fundamental ways.

It's not been a smooth process but I'm sure it's going to be worthwhile.

No longer do I think planners should stand out. Nor should they be the
sole authors of the strategy.

They are collectors and curators of strategic conversations that
happen with clients, account people, in research and with creatives.
They're responsible for strategy but that doesn't mean they have to be
"the genius" behind the proposition. Their cleverness shouldn't be
expressed in the proposition but in understanding, simplifying and
articulating the problem at hand.

So rather than finding a clever way to write the proposition they
should find the simplest way to answer the problem.

In other words the most interesting part of a brief shouldn't be a
proposition but instead a new way of looking at the problem. A simple
proposition just falls out of this.

The planner's role isn't to lead the creative team to an executional
answer, it's to provide them with clarity about the task at hand and a
broad direction inspired by informed opinion.

The question though is how you do this.

I was reminded of all this by David Terry, our Planning Director who
has just got back from Ted. He talked us through the commonalities of
the most inspiring talks.

He listed out the following as being the key components:

1. Set-up a problem. The bigger and more fundamental the better.
2. Illustrate this with facts. Lots of them. This establishes you as an expert.
3. Explain what you've been doing to solve or understand the problem
and how you've uncovered new facts. Get personally and emotionally
involved. Truly live this.
4. Based on your findings ask a new provocative question. And if it
goes against received wisdom you're on to a winner.
5. Demonstrate and explain the implications of the answer to this new question.

That sounds like a pretty great approach to authoring an advertising strategy.

Taken at Paia Inn Hotel