Cartoonist Hugh MacLeod - Almost Famous - WWED Reporting for The Morton Report

Was it talent, perseverance or just the ability to spot assholes that made Hugh MacLeod a success? Maybe all of the above . Read all about it here at TMR.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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How Writers Write

I didn't write this today. And I didn't write it on a keyboard. I wrote it in my head over the last couple of months and just typed it today. In a very serious way, it wrote itself. I'm just the vessel for serving. I call it passive, intuitive, cognitive analysis and composition - or - the art of gathering ingredients, throwing them into the soup, and letting it all simmer on the back-burner until ready to serve - as opposed to defining a problem and sitting down to deliberately solve it in a logical and mathematical way on a piece of paper. Yes, of course I have logic and mathematics in the mix, but they've been thrown together with art and passion, serendipity and whatnot and we just have to see to what height they rise in the mix when it's all finished. And as much as you may like the soup, that's no guarantee that you're going to like seeing what goes on in the kitchen during the making.

A few months ago, I had a client who required that I write in his office. I agreed because he was already a fan of work I had done for his company - clients had complimented both my client service and writing skills. Little did I see that making him privy to the daily ravages of actually doing it would be the issue we couldn't resolve.

One day, after a staff meeting, he asked myself and another staffer to stay for more specific instruction. He then declared that our smoking was a cause for his concern, not from a health standpoint at all, but because the time we spent away from our desks was taking valuable time away from his work and costing him money. So he announced that our pay would be docked 10 minutes for every cigarette we had, and that the receptionist would write it down when we left the building. Childish I thought. He actually believed that the time I spent behind the computer was the time when I was actively working. He didn't understand that those few minutes with a smoke, or a walk around the block were as productive or possibly more productive than sitting with a digital chisel and trying to carve the stuff out of stone. This guy had liked my writing because he said it was funny - but let me tell you, you won't get funny when the boss is standing over your desk with a whip. You'll just feel funny. And so we parted ways.

Last month I wrote 4 new business presentations in one week, but in reality, I only typed them. One had been brewing through conversations with a number of clients for quite some time. Then it came out as an email, which ended up as a blog post, which ended up accruing one client - but not the one it was meant for originally. Another was written while having coffee with someone and yet another had been written long before I even met the man to whom it would be presented. It was a collection of thoughts, already thunk, but just waiting for the right audience. I wrote one entire presentation for a client whilst attending three marketing conferences in one week. I listened, I participated, I ate, I drank - but all the while, I was really writing. I already had a skeletal idea of what I wanted to say, but the conferences helped me fill in the holes and put things in order, by not doing it logically - but just letting things fall into their natural positions in the back of my head.

I don't know a lot of writers per se, but I do know a lot of artists and creators, and I can tell you this: They are working all the time - even when they don't seem to be working. My friend Hugh MacLeod , on reflecting on his 20 years in the working world, figured that, "1/2 of his working time was unpaid". I think that's a generous assessment. I suspect it is much more than half the time that we are thinking, but not on the clock. And that's how I think writers write. The time at the keyboard is just typing -- and editing (?), is something completely different, entirely.

Celebrities and social networking: Now you're famous. We hate you!

I had a meeting with a person yesterday who can legitimately consider himself a celebrity. He has an eponymous business, has written a book and currently hosts an international television show. Our conversation centered around solidifying his online presence. There's a website, a Twitter account, Facebook, LinkedIn and any other number of other sites who may comment and contribute to his online personality - and not all always in a positive way. Once achieved, a level of celebrity can also bring a level of discontent in a certain number of online wankers. I did a post about meeting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and immediately received a raft of comments from people laying claim to some sort of 'founding' with Wikipedia as well. People who don't like Jimmy Wales. True? Not my job to validate or invalidate those claims - but it's everyone's job, anyone with any online presence at all, to make sure you manage that presence in as positive a way as possible.

And you don't think you're a celebrity? I don't either, but in the last few weeks this blog has become the #1 Technorati rated blog in Vietnam and I have been called out and treated as someone who has done something in otherwise normal social situations. Just on the street last week a guy yelled out at me, "Yo! Wild Wild East!". At another basically normal business meeting on another day the MD brought in a staff member and said, "She's a fan of your blog". Geez, a blogging celebrity? But the thing is - it's entirely possible, and in my case, oddly true. Do you think a lot of people sit around in their house at night and think, "The next big business idea is the Wild Wild East Dailies?" But I did.

My friend, Hugh MacLeod, a certified blogging celebrity, notes in chapter 35 of his book, 'Ignore Everybody' - "Savor obscurity while it lasts". Because once you hit the Internet, that clock starts ticking on what Andy Warhol termed, "Your 15 minutes of fame".

The most interesting thing about my recent celebrity meeting, and all the previous meetings I've had with such folks, is that that they all need to define what part of the person goes into the "Brand" of Oprah, Elvis, Tony Bennett, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Jimmy Wales and even Hugh - (and yes, I have met them all in more than a handshake capacity) to figure out which part needs to practice the art, clean the toilet, mow the lawn, have a romance, a family and as normal a life as makes them feel comfortable. My Monday celebrity simply wants to be able to do the work that made him famous and not have to dick with Twitter too much. God knows it hasn't helped Brittney or Lindsey Lohan too much.

And once you sort that out, you're on your way to being a celebrity as well. Like me! But I still have to pay for beers in bars.

Desperate Measures

Remember that.

I'm finding way too much complacency in Vietnam today. Because of a protected economy and people just loving even the worst of jobs and situations entirely too much, just because they're afraid of wanting better - they don't work hard enough. It makes them lazy. It makes them boring. Even some of the expats who work here. I liked Korea after the Asian economic crisis of 97. They were hurt. They were hungry. They were fucked. But in the end, it made them better. It made them what they are today. Wealthy, confident and kicking ass and taking names. Like America used to be.

A Good Start

"What's 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? - A good start." Yeah, we all know that one. But what's a good start for your business or your business initiative? The answer is going to be different for everyone. Two and a half years ago I started this blog with a Technorati ranking of 1,614,138. Today, we're ranked at 26,105 - so 1,614,138 was a good start for us. This week I heard a business associate worry that he had only invested $25,000 into his website when other people had put in millions - but $25,000 is a lot more than zero and I've seen the number "$0" in people with big ideas as well. $25,000 is a good start. Another associate complained that his company's YouTube video only got 5000 views when others got tens of thousands or more. So what's a good start?

A good start is something you begin. The trick is not to quit once you've started. Last week in 5 days I made 4 distinct business proposals to 4 different clients. Maybe one of those will play out, maybe more - but I got a good start. As I quoted my good friend Hugh MacLeod in a post the other day, "Money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue." Have a good start.

A Smarter Conversation

A few years back, my friend, Hugh MacLeod, did a blog post about companies having a Smarter Conversation with their customers. A few months ago my friend George was curious about how to get people talking about his company's work. A few days ago I recommended to another company that they begin to use their blog as a communications tool that controlled all their other social network activity. All these instances have been about having smarter conversations, and the new word for many companies here, is 'conversations'. In an older day, companies didn't converse with suppliers and customers. They dictated and lectured - but social media has changed all of that. Now, if you don't talk with your customers, they talk about you to others, and maybe not always in the nicest of ways. Here are some key points from Hugh's Smarter Conversation post.

"Social Media allows you to cheaply and quickly begin a smarter conversation. And once you get it going, that conversation starts bleeding out into all other areas of your business- including advertising, PR and corporate communications."

"Start today. It’s never too late to begin a Smarter Conversation. Like I said, money or time is not the issue. Making the decision is the issue, and only you can do that."

I'm recommending to another potential client today that they start having a smarter conversation with their audience. Making that decision will be 90% of the battle won for them.

Post 400

Welcome to post 400. No candles. No fireworks. No band. No nothing. It's just work. And joy. And dedication.

That's what people don't understand about the Internet and social marketing. It's called do the work, shut up and sit down. If I had a dime for everyone who asked me how I do what I do, I'd be a wealthy man - but all I can tell them, is if they only did 10% of what I do, they'd be in a whole lot better shape than they are now. (and yes, they bitch and moan about that). Babies.The Wild Wild East Dailies is now rated #29,626 in the world - and in a world of over 100 million blogs we feel good.

But not that good. Our Technorati ranking is at 125. Okay, let's give that some perspective. The Huffington post is #1 at a ranking of 935. Seth Godin, a certified marketing guru and ten times published author gets 757 and my friend, Hugh MacLeod, a one time published author, scores a 535. Do I feel bad? No. Most blogs don't bust above a five. We're on our way. Happy 400! Want to score? You do the work. And I'll work on getting that book published.

Joy, shit, art and inspiration: How much of one not to take to get the others.

After almost two weeks of work straight, say 12 hrs a day+ with just short breaks, I finally came up for air. I got to a point at the end of the stint where I wouldn't even have the TV on or listen to music because I was so concerned with getting everything I needed to get done for a publication that had a rotating deadline and a constantly shifting list of "things to do". In a world where change is the only constant, this work played true and the only thing that wasn't changing was my fee.

As an employee one can do little about this syndrome and when one's employer guarantees a certain level of security and hopefully fair pay it is really our responsibility to just suffer the work and get it done with as few complaints as possible. But as an independent contractor the rules change a bit. We do our best to estimate the time involved, the work to be done, our competence at said work and a reasonable rate of pay. And then the nose goes to the grindstone. If one has been briefed relatively well by the client, then one's estimate should be fairly close. But if not, one of two things will be true: Either you've estimated poorly, or the client has not been completely honest with you. In my case recently, it turned out to be the latter - and that doesn't necessarily mean the client was not honest - more logically it seemed as if the client was not particularly good at estimating himself. In any case, the job swung wildly out of control in a way that I hadn't seen since the very beginning of my career. Nothing at my company in Korea had ever become this far gone, nor at Leo Burnett or any of the major agencies I have ever worked for, so it fell back to my early career experience to figure out what to do.

Concern, issue, problem.

In order to let people know what level of severity a job might be it, the above diplomatic language was explained to me to describe just how deep the shit is in any crucial work situation. It works like this: When the boss says he has a 'concern', that's the first red flag - something has been brought up and it's your job to address it. But concerns, if not addressed becomes 'issues', the second red flag - And issues, if not resolved become 'problems', usually the third and final red flag, - and that usually means that something is now costing somebody money - maybe a lot of money.

When you're an employee this system needs to be understood from the top down - meaning that if your boss uses this graduating scale of severity to impress upon you, your responsibilities, you better hop to it. But if you're working as an independent contractor and the client requests become well outside the original agreement, this scale can be reversed, and used to let the client know that things are getting squirrely. 'Concern, issue, problem'. Don't use it at your own peril and you'll loose a ton of sleep and money.

I used it for a week this last week and made sure that people were aware of a situation getting worse. It didn't effect their behavior much, they were still late and disorganized, but at least it made me feel better and put me in a position to say, "I told-ja-so", later. CYA. It reminded me how much I dislike a lot of the defense mechanisms I learned in a corporate culture

Having finished a bit of a 'a few weeks in hell', I set about understanding my home again - not the bunker I has established for my month-long+ writing war. The place with a full ashtray everyday, a grimy computer, tons of magazines and books and notes and rubbish all around. The place that looks like a war room. So I cleaned the fridge.

There's something so thrillingly liberating about remedial tasks. I remember having a job at Avis Rent-A-Car when I was paid to sweep a large garage every week on Saturday. It took four hours. And took all my cares away. In four hours, sweeping mostly in one direction, around antique cars under shrouds, with one rolling garage door up and the sunlight shafting through and casting a wide dusty widening stripe across the oil stained concrete floor, I was able to daydream and think and create and put my problems into the background for the afternoon. I loved it. And that's what cleaning the fridge, washing the dishes, cleaning nasty surfaces and making an actual meal did for me today. It helped me think. It helped me clear out my email. It helped me remember what is important in life - and that, I remembered, was balance. And I seem to have been out of balance for quite some time now. Out of understanding that the reason we work is not just to pay the bills, but to get to spend our money in a way that is enjoyable and meaningful to us every day. Isn't that why you work? Having music around makes me feel this way.

And so, in my shuffley, scroungy, no program cleaning day, I stumbled across this illustration by Seth Godin. (above) This illustration that juxtaposes graphs on joy, hassle (shit) and the inverse reaction one has on the other. Going through Seth Godin's stuff is sometimes difficult because he explains things too much. But this one is simple. The less shit you get, the happier you will be. And this, I needed to remember. The thing that told me that when the stress of the job outweighed the joy that job gave me, that maybe it was time to do another job. Or simplify the one I had and let the client know that things had become, a problem.And so I did, and tomorrow I will find out if that argument hit any paydirt with the client.

In Seth's writings I also found the following quote, which I like very much. is says: "A is for Artist: An artist is someone who brings humanity to a problem, who changes someone else for the better, who does work that can't be written down in a manual. Art is not about oil painting, it's about bringing creativity and insight to work, instead of choosing to be a compliant cog." (from Linchpin). And I accompany this quote with a drawing from Hugh MacLeod. A drawing that exemplifies what we all should be working towards. Inspiration. - In my life I have gone above and beyond the call of duty for different reasons at different times but always in pursuit of something that was well above average. Yes, I have done it for money, and certainly I have done it for love but it's far more important to do it for art and inspiration. Stan Richards said to me once, "Do what you love, and the money will follow." I just keep believing that every day, and that way, I do something I love every day, and sometimes, get paid very well for it.

Love Matters

Courtesy of Hugh MacLeod at Gapingvoid.com

Accused of dreaming...

Recently, I have been accused of drinking and smoking, both true, and being a perfectionist, sometimes true, and dreaming, always true. And all by a person who has never had a dream come true or smoked. I find that sad. And I like this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod that explains it in more rational terms.

Those of us in the creative arts do what we do because we love what we do, and hate doing what we don't like to do. And that is that. It is simply worth so much more to suffer through the down times in business to live and see the day where ideas are born, produced and enjoyed by others, than it is to work in mediocrity forever buying boredom and unhappiness.

I don't know anyone in the business who ever got into it for the money, but I've seen quite a few people (including myself) make a bit of money in the process and then the challenge becomes keeping ones bearing. What's more important? The process or the profit?

So have another dream. And keep the strength to make it come true.

From The Loose Canon Manifesto

Dreams are persnickety and fickle things
living totally in space, untethered to anyone
And if no one shares them with us, they go away
Dreams take confidence
Dreams take planning
Dreams exist
Dreams keep us going
Dreams pervade our waking hours
but without trying to realize them, are worthless
Dreams have no use for the conflicted
Without love, dreams die
Dreams are not selfish
they invite us all

wHAT's wRONG wITH mY sOCIAL nETWORKING I: Well, visually it sucks for starters...

Part I in a II part Series: For Part II click here.

Please take a few minutes with this video. (Pause the podcast in the sidebar first) This is Kseniya Simonova a Ukrainian artist who works in a sand painting technique using a large light box and a pre-recorded soundtrack - but what's interesting, or what I found interesting here, is not the technique particularly but how she is able to stimulate emotion and visual learning throughout the eight minute film. Look how the audience reacts to her work as she paints. Their vocalizations. Understand how you went into the piece and how you forgot your logic and your bearings about two minutes in - because you didn't know what was going to happen next. That's what happens with visual communication through media. It engages our suspension of disbelief. It takes fantasy and makes it part of our reality for the time being. Because reactions to visual stimuli are part of our natural intelligence, not something we've learned so much as something we've acquired - More nature vs. nuture in a visual sense. Alphabets and organized aural communication are learned and nurtured later - but nobody needs to tell us what the meaning of 'scary bear' is or how to cry or scream at the sight of it. That's natural, at any age - as is your reaction to Keseniya's hand painted story. That's our visual learning gene kicking in. So when are the social networking sites we all use going to start taking advantage of this innate human sense we have and are actually yearning to use, the same as we use everyday in real life? And why are they largely ignoring it in what they all trumpet as their "attention to user experience"? Have they forgotten that our eyes can be used for so much more than reading - and that it's a whole lot more than me just having a Star Wars skin as the background to my homepage? Or are they just at a stage where it's a natural progression to go there next. The latter is where I think we are now.
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"Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the cra­yons away and replace them with books on alge­bra etc. "

That's Hugh MacLeod from his book, Ignore Everybody. Last year Hugh managed to hit both the Amazon and Wall Street Journal Top Ten Lists for business books with a book of what? Well, cartoons for at least 1/2 of it, and smart ideas about creativity for the second half. And do you think anyone in New York was looking for a business book with cartoons in it before Hugh? Well, of course not, but he hit a nerve that had probably been long under-tapped in that his book managed to combine both words and pictures in a way that spawned new ideas - and a valuable following of readers and social participants as well.

You see, Hugh's book isn't just a book, it's more just the tip of an iceberg of a philosophy and a business that includes active participation in his blog and his web community of "Crazy Deranged Fools"- many of whom buy art and wine and other things that are part of Hugh's total product mix. I've known Hugh for twenty years now and I can tell you, he has never been able to work in just words or pictures alone - he has always required both. And I think a great many of us are the same way. It's just that the Internet, or at least the social networks have not found the value in addressing us that way yet. Now we want our crayons back. We want to be able to communicate in the way that is most natural to us. We want our communication and indeed our networking to be well, easier, more comforting.

This whole train of thought for this post started for me weeks ago and it has occupied a number of A4 sheets of discarded printer paper of which I use to keep errant notes for blog posts although many of the ideas have been drawn from my life in communications and percolating for years. This iteration began by seeing Mark Pincas on The Charlie Rose Show, followed by Director, Tim Burton discussing a retrospective of his artwork at MoMA in New York. Mark Pincas is the founder of Xynga games and for those who don't know, that is the company responsible for the Mafia Wars and FarmVille games, most popularly seen and played on Facebook. But that was not what interested me, nor the supposed 15 billion dollar market in virtual games of which he said 1-2% of the players actually pay for. What interested me, is that these are primarily 'visual' concepts, as is online Poker - and I couldn't think of very much that was visually driven about the primary social networks I have been involved in. I'll get back to this idea a bit later because I think I know why.

So I needed to take a look again and see what these networks were missing. (For those who will wonder why I haven't included Second Life in this comparison consider this: When the US, Japan, most of Europe and China open embassies on SL, I'll consider them part of the same market. Until then, their level of suspension of disbelief is just a boatload higher than most people are willing to go for a real social network. You wanna hire my Avatar? I didn't think so. But apparently you can sleep with it. More of a pure game, albeit a social game but way far out of reality's scope here both in concept and excecution.) On the left side of this page, you'll see screenshots of my Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter and Friendster accounts. And on the right side, you'll see the leadpage shots of the website from probably the most awarded advertising agency in Germany, Jung von Matt. Notice any difference? I thought you might.

Starting with Facebook, it has always perplexed me why the thing needs to look so boring. Blue, like Windows classic blue. Icky. Sure, you can run around the program and get special 'skins' from third party suppliers, but as I understand, they either have a short shelf-life, as Facebook keeps changing their codes, or only work for your computer screen whilst everyone else sees the same boring blue screen they have always seen - so your skin change is not communication at all, just some king's new clothing for you while everyone else gets to see you naked - as usual. And all the other third-party apps? Most of them run as stand alone things and don't integrate into your workflow in the system. Oh, they'll send you a ton of crap later but visually they don't play nice with your homepage and require you to gotto 'apps' and activate them. Clumsy, I think. Much like the way they handle groups. Why don't I get a cool little audio/visual ding-dong when someone adds something to my group (the ones I moderate)? Could be insightful.

Moving along to LinkedIn and Xing (I categorize these together because they are both 'business' networking sites), we get - well, surprise - more blue or teal and green in Xing's case, just a slight rotation of the colour wheel. Now here we mean business and it's pretty obvious from both sites lack of personal colour choice that we shant be messing with business by painting it like a Grateful Dead album cover or god forbid Daft Punk or some sort of other electronica rot like that. No siree. In fact, a quick Google for LinkedIn skins or Xing skins gives you well, nothxing. And neither site offers anything in the way of helping yourself - so forget it. If you don't want to work for IBM, go away. Big Blue rules here as well.

But how much sense does that make when the agency on the right handles work for Mercedes, Nikon and Deutsche Post? Is the post office cooler than a business social networking site? Maybe. But it needs to be remembered that business takes many forms and many shapes and colours as well. Just think about all the logos and companies you already know about and how different they all are. Companies all have their own language of visual communication - and even Jung von Matt knows that. The work they do for their clients doesn't look at all like the leadpages on their website. That's just their way of representing themselves in this particular instance. And that's how it should be. Visual communication, as opposed to verbal or written communication, is like the thousands of characters in the Chinese alphabet compared to the 26 characters in the Roman alphabet or 24 in Korean. It's a world of pictures out there to the Asians and those quicker to realize and capitalize on that will be further in their user community's minds than the next guy. With Twitter, Xing and Friendster on the rise, Facebook is looking like the next guy, and already blocked in China.

Next up Twitter. Need I say more than 140 characters? By restricting our BS, Twitter has allowed us to create 140 character novels, post pictures and even have clever little skins and widgets that personalize and communicate along with all the terse verse we can compose. But we get to do it with a wee bit of style in keeping with their wee bit of philosophy. Fair enough.

And finally, Friendster. Never heard of Friendster? Well 100 million other people have and a lot of those people are Chinese. Compared to 90 million on Twitter, 55 million on LinkedIn and a growing but not quite there yet 8 million or so on Xing, Friendster is on the cutting edge of visual communication in social networking, but that really is not saying so much. The site was relaunched recently with intensified visual themes to more widely appeal to an Asian audience. They feature a ton of custom skins and decorations for your own pages - and like MySpace, everyone gets to see them. I've spoken before of how living in Asia can make the web a third world country when moving back to the west because the sheer activity, not to mention rocket ship bandwidth and speed in Korea and other fast ramping Asian markets, but so much because of the history and tradition of visual communication.

Remember, Chinese characters are pictures - not letters that mean sounds or syllables like other modern alphabets and whilst Korean 'Hangul' is a mathematical and phonetic construction, Korean newspapers still feature Chinese characters interspersed with their more modern (circa 1500s) alphabet because Koreans still know what a limited amount of Chinese characters mean and relate to them intrinsically. And since the Chinese invented paper and the Koreans preceded Gutenberg with movable type by 78 years in 1377 with Jikji (Which was originally individually cast Chinese Characters) these people know a thing or two about the written word in pictures - and getting it out. Think also of the Japanese fascination with Pokemon and it's later storm through a western kid's vernacular and you'll get where I'm going. Pictures speak louder than words. And mostly to the audience to which the social networks will be making all their money off of for the next ten or twenty years - unless holographic or 3D networking wipes it all out in 2 or 3 years from now ... Continued in the next post or click here for Part II.

For the entire series click here:

wHAT's wRONG wITH mY sOCIAL nETWORKING? I: Well, visually it sucks for starters...
wHAT's wRONG wITH mY sOCIAL nETWORKING? II: How Creative Direction can build Social Networks
wHAT'S wRONG wITH mY sOCIAL nETWORKING? III: Nothing Much Happened In München Today VII

"I'm gonna get medieval on ya!" - That means I'm gonna talk advertising for a bit here...

Remember the scene in the movie Pulp Fiction, where that line came up? Yes, there was a man in a more than compromising position with a black rubber ball in his mouth. That's how most people feel when you say you're going to talk advertising. Because as Hugh says in the cartoon here, when you talk advertising, people think you're going to talk like advertising, and they truly don't like that. With good reason. Advertising in the past has talked down to people, but now, slowly, with the advent of social networking and consumer conversations happening in a larger space than much advertising occupies, advertising companies are coming to realize that they need to be talking with people instead of talking at them. Thank god.

That said, and before people start to think that I don't like advertising, I'd like to say stop. I love advertising. In fact tomorrow morning I'm having a meeting with the head of possibly the largest agency in Munich. "I'm Lovin' It!" Advertising, that is. And every once in awhile I find something truly enlightening in that universe that just makes me sit up and smile. This week, I found three of those things.

I AM THE CLIENT! - The first thing I found is a blog called "I AM THE CLIENT". This was forwarded to me by a pal at DDB and is positively the funniest agency blog I have yet to read. Yup, there go my readers. But I don't want to be just an advertising blog anyway so who cares. On to the story. I AM THE CLIENT is written, ostensibly, by a guy named Dave Knockles, who claims to be quite possibly the word's greatest marketing director - and it is a positive hoot. Here's an entry from a recent post:

"I got out of bed feeling so perky, I could have hung a week's laundry off my stalk-on. GOOD DAY TO YOU, WORLD! - Why such expansive morning wood? - Because today was my first day with my new agency. And I was so excited about telling them what the first campaign is going to be, I almost dry-humped the postman! - So, I breezed into the agency at 11am, virtually bang on time for my 10am meeting."

Don't think that's funny? You must be a girl. Whatever the case I do recommend you check it out. It's racy for sure, but refreshing in a business that could use a whole lot more good humour these days.

MEDIABLIPS - My next find was MediaBlips, a site dedicated to highlighting advertising and marketing blogs. I found this curiously from my Statcounter stats, as someone had found me through this site. Upon further investigation I looked into MediaBlips and found out that they had already found me and had given WWED a score of 108 - without me having done a single thing. So that's not so bad. You can check the box below and see if I've gone up or down from this post. They track Seth Godin as well and he gets a score of 158, so I'm just 50 points away from a guy who's written 10 best-selling marketing books. Hmm, there's an idea. I should write a book!

CarlsonCreative - My final discovery of the week was one of an old friend who was the first and best designer at CarlsonCreative, Inc. in Seoul, the first 100% Foreign Invested agency in Korea. Nam Mee-Hyun came to work for us with just about a year's worth of not very impressive experience and went on to not only get our agency into the New York Art Directors Show, but to help us win significant business from British American Tobacco, Samsung, LG, The Korean Ministry of Finance and many other clients. She had written me last week looking for a letter of recommendation upon her graduation from the Pratt Institute in New York with a Masters degree in Communications Design. Imagine that, an employee who wins an award from one of the most prestigeous creative shows in the world before she gets her degree from one of the most prestigeous design schools in the world. I was more than happy to write the letter - in fact, I was delighted. The poster on the left, with the New York and Seoul subways combined, was designed by MeeHyun to promote our agency's sponsorship of the New York Art Directors Show in Seoul upon the inclusion of our work. We were the only agency in Korea to have enjoyed that particular distinction that year, 1999. Exactly ten years ago. Happy anniversary, MeeHyun!

And cheers Adfolks! That wasn't so bad, was it? I've had a very nice week so far.

Review of WWED: Can You Spot Rejection? II

I had put this up earlier but pulled it down figuring the writer might be upset, but then I thought, well, I didn't write it...not really my issue...

There is a big difference beween you and Hugh Mcleod:

Ooh, that hurts. Hugh is a best selling WSJ writer and the reviewer knows I know him.

His book bases on cartoons: His cartoons, which are unique and entertained and not imitable. NEver. Form that point, his blog just delivers a platform to communicate that unique thing and can sell it and his cartoons.

And I am not a cartoonist.

You jump into the mass writer market, and your book bases on like or dislike, very controversal, and it makes you frustration.

I wish I had had this advice earlier. It could have saved me a successful career in the advertising business and a lot of frustration.

YOu blog is nice nice, basing on personal experience, a bit creative, nice nice, but not so unique like Hugh. Please wake up, you might be very talented but what you are doing with the blog does not make you unique. Neither content nor expression.

So the content and the expression suck. Is there anything else? Go shoot myself?

So, do you want to live with and depend on bad comments or good comments of any reader for ther est of your life and be frustrated everyday? When I see you, I dont see a confident man but a frustrated one?

Find me a person in the creative arts who doesn't experience frustration and I'll show you someone who's probably not very talented. Making any art is always driven by the feedback one gets from the consumers of that art. That's how it works. That's why it works.

Dont kill yourself that way. As a friend, I would like to tell you: Dear David, wake up. I learned on internet about jsut one guy who succeeeded with his blog so that it is integrated into a newspaper. You alone do not come fromthe journalism business, but a creative writer at adversiting companies.

These days I think having a background in journalism could be a liability. I'll take my chances.

So your book is exiting, has a mix of many things, complicated but for me not so deep in content if it shoud be the way of literature.

NO clear positioning, describing the nice story of a creative person going to the east...A travel book perhaps...But Many other personal stories are comparable: Success bases on like or dislike, but no big success.

There may be a million better stories, but they're not mine - even the reviewer has a more interesting story than mine. All I try to do is write down, as best I can, the images and feelings I have. What happens after that is out of my hands. But what I can say so far, is that my good reviews far outnumber this one.

Hugh's book is unique: simple, full of cartoons, claer messege, easy to read. It is unique, clear unique, not comparable....

Yes, we already know I'm not Hugh. This is bordering on just plain cruel.

Dont kill your self, David. Success can be a grateful day, after David finishes his job to survive and writes in confidence, and bigger things will happen, step by step, in a apeaceful way.

Comments please. And please refer to my previous post, 'Can You Spot Rejecton?'

Interesting how some critics have never done much themselves, which might make it easier for them to tell us what we're doing wrong. One thing I won't be doing for sure is killing myself over this. This week the Technorati Authority for WWED jumped to 115 from 103 earlier in the week placing us at number 52,929 - and that's out of maybe 120 million blogs worldwide - so do I feel bad for my 21 months work? I could feel worse. When I first saw the review above I felt immediately the anger from the reviewer and of couse it bothered me. It hurt me deeply, not because someone trashed my art, but because they trashed two projects I care deeply about and pour a lot of emotion into. It was an attack on my hope. And if the people closest to you don't believe in what you are doing, why bother doing it? I'll survive. Maybe that person wasn't really so close to me as I had thought.

On the funnier side was this email comment from a reader: "I love hate mail", it read, "When you get it, you know you've done something right!"

Touche!

Depression - not the economic kind: Nothing Much Happened (XII) in München Today IV

Someone very, very close to me had a very, very tough week this week. And I can't help thinking that this is how she felt. Hugh's cartoons have a way of just finding me at the right moment with the right message and this one came very close to home because I know it is exactly how someone felt about so many things in her life this week. Probably exactly like this. -?- Now I doubt that Hugh was depressed when he wrote this but he's captured the essence of how a person could feel if everything they did seemed to not work, if even the best of intentions and actions seemed not to be appreciated, if - well, the world seemed not to matter. It would feel like failure. -?- And I know a bit about feeling like a failure these days as well. Imagine knowing a day when you were at the top of your game, when you were not only sought after but rewarded and moved up the ladder and then boom - it all went away - through no fault of one's own, and nothing you could do could change the way God was going to play things out. I know this feeling. And I feel I know depression as well. And so today I write. - ? - In days past I would have thrown myself into work. At university on the leaving of a girlfriend I hit the hitchhiking road and found myself on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale a few days later. That worked. Later, fired from a job and having a wheel spin off of my car on the freeway, I borrowed a hundred bucks from my buddy, ate some shit and got myself a job at the best agency in town. That worked. For my midlife crisis act I simply started my own company - And that worked. Inside of two years we were back in the New York Art Directors show and winning major multinational business. -?- And if Hugh were ever depressed I could make a very educated guess as to what he would have been doing. He would have been doing cartoons. And that has worked extremely well for him. - ? - The common denominator I have seen between people who may have had a hard time in life but have no intension of ever giving up is to also have something else - something that no one else can touch. A companion. Passion. Compassion. Love. Love of God or love of oneself - maybe love of oneself needs to come first. A project. A job. Or maybe just a hobby. In any case it needs to be something that you and you alone own and determine for yourself the terms of success. That no one can ever take away from you. After that, the rest of the world becomes a whole lot more bearable. Because the rest of the world doesn't matter didly-shit. What matters is that you are who you are and you do what you do on your own terms. - ? - Recently I've had someone tell me that trying to publish my book was a waste of time, and that the time I spend on my blog is worthless because it doesn't bring me any immediate income. But what that person failed to realize is that both of those things, no matter how futile, give me hope. And if I want to be the only lunatic in the world who believes in them, then that's my business. My business alone. And that's hope enough. - ? - But the other thing I've come to realize this year is that hope comes in people - and when you find those people, those people who believe in you when the rest of the world seems lost - you need to keep them and hold them close, then hold them closer and closer. Because only people can make our lives meaningful - and that makes the failures of everyday existance more than bearable. It makes them worthwhile. It makes them even successful.