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Considering a Career in Advertising? A Few Warnings.

7/31/2019

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Having found my first job at an agency at 41 years of age, I’m an extreme outlier. These days most  get into the business straight out of school, whether a university with an ad program or an ad school. That glorious time of shiny, thick hair, the ability to drink till 2 and then drag your ass to the office at 8, and health insurance is like, yeah whatever.
 
Before my first agency gig as a copywriter, I got acquainted with the ad business when working at a big university’s marketing department where I met graphic artists and designers and began perusing CA and One Show Annuals. 
 
Once ensconced in an agency, I started paying closer attention to the business. It became clear to me that the ad business was interesting, fun, crazy at times, wildly subjective, and lucrative. 
 
It was also a place where an English major could make a living, not to mention artistically inclined souls who could draw or paint or make things look lovely. Without getting into the account service side of the show, why not go into the business if you have a creative bent? None I suppose — but with some caveats.
 
1. Plan on finding another career after you turn 45ish or older. The creative side of the business is ageist. Finding a copy or art guy who’s over 45 is pretty tough. This is just a fact. Don’t believe me? Check out this, this, or this.
 
But when you’re 25 or 28 or thirty-something, you’re thinking about getting ahead, getting into CA, winning a One Show Pencil, and making VP or SVP money. Nothing wrong with that. But if you are pursuing this career, start your plan for the day when you get laid off — because odds are you will be. Several times.
 
Oh, you’ll be told the account you’re on was lost or the client was looking for “new” directions or overall billings are going away — and so is your job. You’ll be told it’s got nothing to do with your age. You’ll be shown a list of people younger than you (with less experience, talent, and moxie, too). In this pile of bullshit, there may be a kernel or two of truth — enough to keep the lawyers happy anyway.
 
2. Save like crazy. Advertising can be pretty lucrative after you put in some time as a junior and “leadership,” the account people, and your creative bosses decide that you have what it takes. But when the day arrives that the account you’re working on goes away and they “have” to let you go, you will need savings to lean on. But don’t plan on spending too much of what you saved. 
 
If you’re lucky (or not depending on your POV) you will get old. Sixty or 70 or 80 something. Money will be tight since you’ll be spending more and more of it on healthcare. And we all know where those costs are going.
 
3. For writers, you need to get really good at actual writing. Grammar and knowing how to write for laypeople will matter when you are freelancing and forced to edit your own stuff and aren’t being paid to be charming or fun or entertaining — when the money comes from being straightforward, simple, and often painfully obvious without being a bore. So, when those long-copy gigs show up, grab them. That 200-page website? Grab that, too. Sometimes getting good at what you don’t like doing will serve you well. It’s called work for a reason.
 
For art folks, never pass a chance to make a table or chart, clean up a photo, edit the leadership team’s annual video, organize and graphically present mind-numbing statistics, work with multiple-paged documents, and know all the Adobe Creative Suite like you programmed it.
 
4. Do something else. Advertising draws people to its hallways for the money, the coolness, and all the glib, stupid shit one takes from Mad Men. Life at most agencies can be a crushing grind lots of the time and a total blast some of the time. I'm guessing the same holds true for almost any profession.. A career is a long time. Choose wisely my friend.
 
© 2019 John Hofmeister. For my other take on the business, check out this. And I am in the habit of recommending the guy’s blog. Check it out. 
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WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO KILL CANCER?

7/22/2019

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 One in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetimes. Having seen both young and old fall victim to it, I ride 100 miles in a local fundraiser, Pelotonia. Killing cancer in all its forms will take ingenious, dogged researchers and lots of money. 100% of every donation goes to research — ALL the overhead is donated. Join me in the quest to kill cancer at Pelotonia.org/hoffy And thank you! hashtag#cancersucks hashtag#donate
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DO OVERS

7/16/2019

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It's a rare life that’s empty of regret. Rarer still is the soul who has none. Outside of sociopaths and narcissists, each of us carries some misgivings. The note not sent. The word not spoken. The thank-you never to be heard. Little things for the most part. Things we can amend when our hearts find the time and means. 
 
What we cannot have back is a career; a childhood —either our own or our children’s; a dream unlived; a road not taken; a future squandered. Do overs —a popular and sometimes belittled expression (with reason) — lend themselves to golf or a friendly game of chess.
 
But for things that matter, there are no do overs. Ask yourself if there is something you would like to do over. Then start doing it. A career can end but another can begin. A childhood ends but its shortcomings await what your grown child may set aright. Tell those you love, you love them. Tell those you cherish, that you do. Sometimes the telling and the doing are the same thing. There are no do overs. Only do rights.
 

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Brands and the Cross

6/19/2019

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After a career in advertising (which continues as I freelance my way into life’s twilight), I’m a bit torn about my feelings about the business. As a kid in high school and college, I hated advertising, believing it got people to buy stuff they didn’t need or want. Of course, that’s sometimes true. But more often than not, advertising is just trying to persuade people to buy something whether they need it or not — and oftentimes they do. There’s no arm twisting of the sort one might experience on a used-car lot. There’s just a company with stuff to sell that needs some help selling it to people who need it or who might otherwise do without it. And ad agencies are there to help. Themselves and others. They helped earn me a living, raise a family, pay my mortgage, buy stuff the fam needed, and get by.
 
Advertising, actually branding, has been around ever since one human tribe encountered another human tribe who had goods or game they needed but didn’t have. When one tribe did have a surplus of grain or pelts and then found a way to trade and make up the difference, modern-day capitalism was born. And if that arrangement didn’t work out, they could always fight over what one had and the other didn’t — which, as we know, they did with some regularity. Over time, the clunky bartering in grain for pelts or whatever was replaced by money, which has taken all sorts of forms, everything from salt to cocoa beans to beer to gold. Gold, which to be honest, serves no real physical need, but which its status as a rarity (not to mention its sunny brilliance) allowed it to serve as common means of exchange. But I digress.
 
Advertising and branding are necessities in a world of competing items that bear no significant differences. Pepsi and Coke. Nike and Adidas. Infinity and Lexus. Lays and Ruffles. If we’re upfront about things, either of these alternate brands would fit the need they actually serve: something sweet to drink, something to cover one’s feet, something to get from point A to point B, something salty and greasy and fattening and therefore delightful. Naturally, their brand followers would insist on some difference, but marketers know better, seeing as how they readily jump from one marketing division or ad agency to another with some regularity in the interest of advancing their careers and increasing their salaries.
 
Advertising by itself lost its heft to communicate discernible value a while back. Nowadays, when it comes to mass-market products, advertising is nothing but the promotion of brands. The old tools of advertising — sales, couponing, today-only, two-for-one deals, no interest till the Pope marries — still have their place. But the real business of advertising (the advertising people talk about at Cannes and that fills award-show books) is the promotion of brands — products with comparable alternatives — brands that need to attach unknowable, indiscernible, and unquantifiable value to a company’s products or services.
 
Today we are enamored of brands. And for many, they have replaced longstanding attachment to church or party or country club. As a kid, I knew dudes as a Chevy or Ford guy and somewhat later as a Nike or Adidas or Columbia or North Face guy. And in these raucous times, I also know rightwing or leftwing nutjobs — Trumpeters and Berners or whatever — but those aren’t brands, just secular religions whose gods will, like all gods, eventually die. In some ways, the very idea of branding and how it works is, at best, a cataloging schema. It’s the sort of schema that Russian, Chinese, Facebook, and Instagram, and the world’s varied brand trollers rely on to influence your purchase or your vote. If we can put people in a brand box, it’s just fucking easier to get them to do shit, whatever that shit might be.
 
For descendants of Western Civilization — civilization being a generous description of the last several millennia seeing as civil is its root meaning — a long-running belief in a life hereafter has been replaced by a life right now. We want to be cool right now! We want to be envied right now! We want to be wearing the brand to die for right now! This is leading to all sorts of problems, not the least of which is the depletion of the ozone, ocean fisheries, fresh water, and landfill locations, along with the appearance of Pacific islands of floating plastic three times the size of France.
 
The lost love of the Cross and its replacement by the gauche idolatry of stuff — basically the replacement of a willingness to forego want for a better hereafter with I want shit now— doesn’t bode well humankind. None of this is to say that branding and buying and having stuff is evil. It’s just a plea for moderation. Once the race figures out how to live within its means, things will improve. But whether it will or not is something the current want-it-now crowd doesn’t give a fuck about. The secular crew I share faith with live in hope, hope being the only brand that gets me through the day.
 
© 2019 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. 
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Go Tribe!

10/25/2018

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​They’re not social networks. They’re tribal networks.
The advent of social networks began, as their name implies, as a great big hug among friends. Announce baptisms, birthdays, betrothals, graduations, and promotions! Pass along gift ideas! Share all that lovely bonhomie with all your pals everywhere! 
 
Yet none of us live in a purely friendly, social collective. We all know — and are probably related to — perfect idiots whose understanding and intelligence is and has been forever suspect. Those folks who account for eyerolls at holiday gatherings when they say something found to be accountably, obviously, and refutably stupid with a basic Google search. You know, people who don’t read. People who rely on Facebook for news. People who watch and listen to one network to tell them what’s going on in the world. Forgivable offences would they not affect the future of our democracy.
 
Of course, calling social networks “social” grants them a kindness that they don’t deserve. There’s nothing social, a term that implies conviviality and friendship, about these networks. They are, as time has shown, nothing more than gossip mongering among like-minded lovers and haters of whatever we love and hate. The social sharing we seek is invariably subject to the heartfelt cares of Aunt Martha who thinks we need to know about the Second Coming, Donald Trump’s twitter feed, and the easily-refuted fictions barked by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News. Martha means well but her sources are a bit suspect.
 
Imagine a network absolutely free of political discourse. An awful place to be sure, but one that doesn’t ask us to parade our politics or religion or sexuality for whatever reason people want to parade such things. It seems that the Internet has allowed us to return to our basest of instincts — to believe without facts, to accept without caution, to herd without thought, and to run off the cliff to our perdition and embrace the unwitting yet gleeful approach to the bottom of our worst selves.
 
Go Tribe!
(I know this expression too well and recognize that its only saving grace for me is its gut-wrenching hurrah for an unhappy baseball team in Cleveland whose fans have waited since 1948 for a World Series win. What can I say? It’s October and my Tribe is, as ever, in mourning.)

​©2018 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. 
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When Followers Are Fans or Sheep or Just Onlookers

8/29/2018

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When Followers Are Fans or Sheep or Just Onlookers
 
The sheer numberof followers of Trump or Obama or Katy Perry has led me to wonder about the difference between sheep and followers. Trump’s Twitter account boasts some ridiculous number of “followers,” a number we are led to believe is an indication of his popularity. I wonder though. How many of those followers are just news junkies, reporters, pundits, and content aggregators searching for information or simply something to fill their content holes? And let's not forget all those foreign agents trying to worm they way into Trump's favor and always on the lookout for a juicy tweet to incite Trump's love. If nothing else, Trump has simplified news gathering. He’s a content gifting machine that never stops giving. Still, I imagine a fair number of Trump’s followers are the social equivalent of gawkers who slow down to see accidents or the crowds one invariably finds around dumpster fires and Confederate monument topplings. LikeChauncey Gardenerof Being There, some people just like to watch. And no one likes to watch more than Trump.
 
The number of Trump’s Twitter followers doesn’t necessarily indicate approval, and while some might be Trumpians, many are not. Twitter followers of politicians, unlike those of entertainers, might be politically aligned with the guy or gal they are “following” but a good number are just interested onlookers. People who follow Katy Perry actually like her for the mostpart, otherwise why bother? The same I suppose can be said of brand junkies, those crazy high school football players, for example, who come to believe that Nike or Adidas or Puma are the killer brand to wear and so veer towards college programs that sport the right logos. These are the tiny diehard band of brand followers one finds on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest with whom their respective marketers are swooning to have brand conversations — about what I can only imagine. Arch support? Hi-top or low? Velcro or laces? Mitigating shoe stink? Etc. And I’m quite sure with the right scholarship offer those footballers (perhaps at the behest of mom and dad) would find a way to sport that other guy’s logo. Money talks. Brands walk.
 
It's certain that Trump has politicized social media with lots of help from industrious troll farms in Moscowand Beijing or that 400-pound guywho Donald talks about. Of course, Bernie and Hillary and Obama relied on social media to share their beliefs and amp up support, turnout, and donations. All’s fair in love, politics, and hacking. Yet as we turn our personal social media into echo chambers, our ability to think cogently will continue to wither. And with no shared public square, a place where truth is actually truth (no matter what Rudy Giuliani thinks), the ability to have meaningful conversations about how to govern ourselves will disappear. We will return to our most basic of instincts to tar the other, mistake our foolish prejudices for facts, and surrender our better angels to the demons of division. Like sheep to the slaughter, many will go happily while some small few will look on, hoping for better days.

​©2018 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. 
 
 
 
 
 

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EPIC

8/23/2018

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EPIC. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

Few days pass that I don’t see a ridiculous post like this:
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There is nothing epic about this. At best it’s little more than a typical martial arts fight scene that shows some cool Audi technology. But epic? A little visit to dictionary.com gives this meaning of the word:
 
epic
[ep-ik]
Adjective. Also epical.
  1. noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
  2. resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.
  3. heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
 
Mediocre advertising and lazy writing in general has turned the term epic into a cheap expression that means “awesome shit” or whatever cliché one might dredge up to describe something that is generally ordinary. And when placed in a headline, it’s either a lie or what Huck Finn would call a “stretcher” at best. I wonder how many writers who seize on epic — struggling for that headline that will draw eyeballs and likes and reposts — even know who Homer was. If asked, the likely answer would be the dad in the Simpsons, not the blind poet who passed along Western literature’s greatest epic poem to humankind.
 
The Audi ad has no epic qualities. It will be forgotten by the end of the month. Maybe sooner. I am already having trouble recalling its particulars. And calling the martial arts mayhem in the ad epic isn’t even a stretcher, given the range of scenes that might compete for the title, Uma Thurman’s role in “Kill Bill” being an obvious example. And let’s not forget Bruce Lee.
 
Robbing the power of words to connote their true meaning makes all of us poorer.
 
When everything becomes epic or awesome or heroic, virtually nothing is. Awesome, like epic, in common use bears no relation to its meaning — that being, inspiring awe. Heroic long ago lost its heft from overuse.
 
The laundry of lazy writing and writers could fill a bajillion laundromats, which, if one knows the meaning of bajillion, is fairly likely since you can’t find laundromats as readily as we once could and whose steady disappearance from the landscape mirrors the likes of gas stations and phone booths. But bajillion is simply a term that denotes an extremely large number — and readers know that. Use it at your leisure to describe big numbers with some freedom, knowing that everyone knows you’re just talking about a lot of fucking stuff.
 
So, when might epic be used to reveal its true meaning? There might be some value in using it in writing about global warming or describing James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Other than that, writers ought to give it a rest. An epic rest, that being an impressively great and epically long one.

©2018 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. 
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I'm Done With Facebook. And Someone's Going to Make a Ton of Money.

3/22/2018

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It takes a while and rooting around to figure out how to delete a Facebook account — which I have decided to do because I don't trust Mark Zuckerburg and Sheryl Sandberg farther than I can throw them. I will miss the simplicity of seeing what friends and family are up to, but they know where I live and what my street address, email address, and phone number are. Plus I have my own website where anyone can leave me notes — I'm at jhofmeister.com. So if it really matters, they can reach me (unlike knowing where my friends are having dinner tonight and at what restaurant — which they like sharing for reasons completely unknown to me, but hey, who am I to say what to share?).

Most interestingly, why does it take 14 days to permanently delete my account? It would take less time to have my house painted and my roof replaced. These are COMPUTER-BASED systems — you know, the kind where you press delete and shit goes away.

As to politics, Facebook is nothing more than an echo chamber for one's political beliefs. It doesn't invite thoughtfulness — only mindlessness. It exists mostly to let people sell me stuff. When I need things, I shop for them. If there's something I didn't realize I needed, how could this be a need in the first place? Businesses are forever trying to alert us to unknown needs. I'm happy to keep my unknown needs unknown, but thanks anyway.

In the end, deleting my account might actually foster my sending personal notes to real friends, that handful that I actually interact with on a regular basis. For all the extended circle of friends who won't see my posts or I theirs, accept my holiday, birthday, graduation, wedding, First Communion, Confirmation, and lost pet wishes and know that your LIKES in this regard would have been one larger had Mark Zuckerburg decided to let me opt-in as to whether I want to be sold stuff or have my data shared with anyone, anywhere. It's not that hard, Mark. There are algorithms and everything for stuff like that. Ask your coding team.

Someone out there is getting ready to launch a really low-cost subscription site that does what we want Facebook for and nothing more. I'd pay a buck or so a month for that. What about you? Multiply that by how many people use Facebook. Some savvy entrepreneur is waiting to make a ton of money. If you're the person who's ready to do this, please contact me so I can help with the marketing and advertising. Or at the very least, give me an in for your IPO. You're welcome!
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©2018 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved.
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The Internet Just Saved Me $300!

2/9/2018

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There are lots of reasons to worry about the internet. The invasion of privacy. The trolling by Putin to influence elections. The echo chambers it builds for partisan politics.

But one thing's for sure, it's made it easier to comparison shop in all sorts of ways.
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Recently during a snow storm, I was driving down an unplowed street, and hit something, whether a pothole or some debris (a brick or whatever). And bang! My tire pressure gauge came on immediately. Long story shortened: I would need to get a new rim for one of my wheels.
 
I had my car towed to a Goodyear shop to assess the damage. I was told I would need a new rim. The dealer price for a new rim was $489. The rim the Goodyear shop found was a "reconditioned" one that cost $360 something. So I go online and searched by car, year, model, rim and found one for $104. Holy smokes I thought. Could this rim be as good as the rims the dealer and repair guy have found?
 
All the reviews (it was an Amazon store) said the rims were just as good as the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) product. Several different companies offered knock-offs. I went for the one with free shipping. Rims are kind of heavy.
 
So I ordered the knock-off. It shows up in two days. I take it to the repair shop. They were nice about my wanting to supply my own parts (some aren't, since they make money on this stuff). I got my car back with new, virtually identical rim and drove home, having saved over $300.
 
So next time your repair shop tells you the replacement part will cost X, divide X by 4.
 
Thanks, Internet!

©2017 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. So there!
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Ever Need a Whatchamacallit?

1/2/2018

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That a copywriter loves words goes without saying. So, why say it? Every post needs a hitch, and that was mine. You see, while I love words, I’m especially fond of words that people use when they don’t know the word they’re looking for. English is full of idioms that the forgetful or simply ignorant use to name things they don’t know the name of. Among my favorites is whatchamacallit. In googling the expression, I found that Wikipedia went with the obvious, that being a candy bar that Hershey makes. And there’s a Chardonnay with the same name — a bit odd for a category that prides itself on erudite taste. But the expression is older than the confection and the Chardonnay. Webster’s dates the first known use of whatchamacallit to 1928 — the candy bar wouldn’t show up for another 50 years. 

My mom and dad both used the expression, though I think my dad did more often as mom’s vocabulary was a bit larger. I use it, too. As I get older, I imagine I will use it more often since the names of common objects will elude me with growing frequency. Everyone knows those awkward moments when you want an allen wrench, three-prong adaptor, honing steel, or pinking shears but your memory slogs through the data banks so slowly you just ask for that whatchamacallit.

Whatchamacallit and its kin — thingamabob, thingamajig, doohickey, doodad, whatnot, gizmo, and widget — serve us well, saving us from admitting that we don’t know what we’re talking about, at least the name of thing we’re talking about. There are also spelling variations on these terms and some cross-pollination as in whatchamathing, whatchamathingy, whatchamajig, etc.

It seems to me that the premier term in this class of expressions is whatchamacallit since it can serve for any forgotten term. Widget and gizmo, on the other hand, generally allude to special function objects — and in the digital era — widget, in particular, refers to simple apps or strings of code, but it remains a generalized term for almost anything that’s produced in a factory or on an assembly line.  Thingamabob and thingamajig are usually used to describe a tool or object needed to fix or complete a task. Doodad and doohickey are used when referring to a small object required to make something work as intended. 

So, when you’re at a loss for words, remember there’s no shame in not knowing or not remembering. Shame attaches to not caring that you don’t know and not spending a moment to find out — the moment that finds you saying oh, so that’s what it’s called. 

©2018 John Hofmeister. Originally published at jhofmeister.com/musings
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    John Hofmeister

    When I'm not writing for clients, I write about things that interest me. Quite of bit of satire, a genre that has become increasingly difficult to work in since reality has become such a farce.

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Copyright © 2020 John Hofmeister • Freelance Copywriter • Creative Director • Columbus, Ohio. All materials on this website are presented exclusively for viewing by John Hofmeister clients and prospects. ​Any use of this website will constitute your agreement not to copy, modify, reformat, rebroadcast, ​or otherwise reproduce the work displayed here. Thank you.

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