Coupla weeks ago, Jon Jaffe posted "Creativity in Advertising - who's the oxymoron now?" containing a link to a WashPost piece, "What happened to Creative Advertising?". It pretty much summed up the sucky predicament of the venerable ad biz in the New Millennium. Of course the smart shops, presumably run by smart people saw all (or most) of this coming, and that's why they approach the marketing imperative by asking this dumb question first: why should anybody want to buy your stuff in the first place? Not "where would you like your ads to run?"
More dumb questions I wish I would have asked supposedly smart people during my career: Who will buy this? What does this do that nothing else does? Why should anybody care? Are you geared up to satisfy demand? What promise are you making to people? How much are you prepared to spend on creating demand?
