Thursday, March 3, 2011

Chronic traumatic adkillopathy.

There's been a lot in the news for the past couple of years about football players, hockey players and boxers--you know, people who get hit in the head for a living--and an ailment called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a progressive degenerative disease found in individuals who have been subjected to multiple concussions.

Just last week a former NFL star, fearing the manifestations of that disease killed himself.

In advertising we suffer something similar. I'll call it chronic traumatic adkillopathy. Clients who, willy-nilly, kill ads and expect you to come back time and again with new ads. And quickly.

For the 30 years I've been in the business, my ability to come back with new ads has been my greatest strength. I've always believed that "the best revenge is a better ad."

But, to quote Preston Sturges, "A man works all his life in a glass factory, one day he feels like picking up a hammer."

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