Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

As much as I crack up at a lot of advertising blogs that amount to variations on the theme of youradssuck, ihateyourdumbassads, and adsby morons4morons, it's refreshing to absorb Jim Riswold's thoughts in the March issue of Creativity (the Ad Age supplement I still get even though my subscription lapsed, but don't tell them).  Riswold describes himself as having had a "fairly prolific creative career".  Yes, and Barry Bonds has been a fairly prolific hitter, even pre-juice.  But I digress.   Riswold's against-the-grain approach to creative gave us the pairings of  Bo Jackson and Bo Diddly, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, Spike Lee as "Mars Blackmon", and the advertising that made you look  pay attention and look forward NIke commercials.  If only TV programming could have been as entertaining.  In Riswold's words, advertising that fails, meaning just  about every commercial message that assaults us, is advertising that strives first and foremost to not be wrong.  To be safe.  Result: advertising that's "boring, wooden, self-important, hollow, familiar, overwrought and instantly forgettable".   The way out: coming to agreement with the client that advertising isn't important, which paves the way for truly useful, productive, high ROI, memorable stuff.  Or, as Riswold puts it, "advertising that dares to be more than not wrong".   And it all goes to give further credence to the old truism:  great clients make great agencies.  Corny, but true as ever.