I'm back. No one noticed I've not posted for several months. No tears. I'll continue talking to myself. I do that a lot anyway -- or so my wife claims.
I'm a collector of quotations -- probably because I've never felt accomplished enough to offer something stirring of my own. It's okay. I'm comfortable with that fact. In my office, I have several files full of advertising quotations. I review them regularly to stoke the fires of my creative idealism. Here are four that happen to strike my fancy at this particular moment.
From the 1957 Yale Baccalaureate Address:"Could a commitee have written 'The Odyssey,' or Warhol's soup cans been painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed by a conference? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals."
From Bill Bernbach, advertising icon and DDB founding partner:
"I have spent so much time urging freshness and originality, let me quickly add that doing it differently is not enough. The pre-eminence of creativity in advertising is not a license to be pretentious, or to put it as unpretentiously as I can, it is not a license to be phony, to do abstract acrobatics. Your job is to simplify, to dramatize, to use all your taqlents to make crystal clear and memorable the message of the advertisement. Yes, your ad ought to make noise, so that it will get noticed, but not a senseless noise."
From Jim Riswold, Creative Director at Weiden & Kennedy:
"Noise is nothing but shouting. Shouting has been, is, and always will be a fail-safe recipe for bad advertising; it's hollow, braggadocio, vain, boorish, rude and a complete waste of time. It doesn't care about the consumer. The best advertising is, if you enjoy fancy terms, a symbiotic relationship, or if you prefer simple terms, a friendship between a brand and a consumer."
From Thelonious Monk, famed jazz musician and "beatnik:"
"I take risks. The only cats who are worthwhile are the ones that take risks."
