"This is a good business we're in."

That's something Monty said to me once. And I remembered his words on this sunrise shoot in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Sure I'd gotten up at 4 a.m. and was freezing my butt off. But so what? Just look at that sky.

Clients and the changing marketing landscape

In my interview with Scott Goodson, I expressed my opinion that agencies aren't the only ones who need to adapt to the changing communication landscape:

I'm always reading in AdWeek about clients who demand new ways to connect with consumers. But I haven't seen much of that here. Far more often, I see creatives intuitively going after business opportunities and being shut down by clients who want to know where their damn ad is. Maybe that's just a function of working in a mid-market city. I know we have problems preparing our clients for the idea that we might not come back with an ad.

So take my sentiment and make it way more eloquent and you have this must-read post on The Toad Stool:

I mean we can reinvent agencies all we want. Do away with traditional art director/copywriter creative departments as per Joe Jaffe’s recent suggestion. We just need to find someone who’s going to hire the resulting entity.

Because most clients aren’t set up that way. Bigger ones, anyway. They’re all about “hiring ‘best in class’ partners in every discipline.” Which may have worked 25 years ago, but now basically results in a bunch of overlapping vendors all stepping on each other’s toes and doing what they can to defend their own little piece of turf. So we can suggest changes in store design to our clients. But if they already have a store design agency, they’re not going to care what we think. Or want to pay us for it. (And if the idea does start to get traction, the store design agency sure isn’t going to be too happy about it and will do what it can to sabotage it.)

Go read the whole thing. Very worth it.

Confusion 4/23/08

Does the increasingly collective nature of modern creativity make charades like the Shave Everywhere credits inevitable? Am I suddenly sort of excited about Johannes Leonardo? Are Omnicom and Havas really posting nice profits? Did Scott Goodson just find a cooler search engine? Is Twitter on the fritz? Does the new Barabarian Group site kick ass (h/t Toad Stool)?

The answer to that last one is, "Yes." The rest are just questions buzzing through my head that I'm too busy to answer right now.

Ty Montague and Adam Owett join TD50 judging panel

If you're in the New Denver Ad Club's TD50 Facebook group, you already know that JWT New York CCO and co-president Ty Montague has agreed to join StrawberryFrog CEO and founder Scott Goodson and Modernista! head of planning Gareth Kay on the 2008 TD50 judging panel.

I recently got confirmation from a fourth judge. Adam Owett is currently the Executive Vice President of the Creative Group at SONY BMG Music Entertainment. Before that, he was the Global Creative Director at Grey Worldwide. His job description at Sony reads like this:

Head "everything creative except the music" for all Sony BMG labels... [Including] videos, viral, packaging, online, mobile, in-store, all advertising, some merchandise and media buying/planning.

In other words, he is creating big ideas for a big brand on the biggest stage you can imagine. We're honored to have him join the judging panel.

The ADCD call for entries is out

Download the PDF.

New Denver Ad Club announces seven new events for April/May 2008

See them all on the Colorado Creative Professionals page on Upcoming. Sign up for email alerts at newdenveradclub.com. And stay in touch with the group by joining the New Denver Ad Club's Denver 50 group on Facebook.

New work for ICON Advisers

Karsh\Hagan has new work launching this week for ICON Advisers, including a microsite, banner ads, email, SMS and callcasting.

I was the writer, Dennis was the art director.

I'm a guest on Scott Goodson's lunchtime chat

A week or so ago Scott Goodson, the founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, asked me to do one of his lunchtime chats. I asked him to repeat the question. Goodson's guests are almost always global advertising powerhouses and I wasn't sure if I really fit in. But he confirmed that he wanted the interview, so I went for it. How many times do you get a chance like that?

The intro identifies me as the "founder of the Colorado 50," which isn't quite the whole story. Many people from the New Denver Ad Club worked on the show, like Gregg, Bob and Brian. As I wrote in the chat, "I helped develop a new award show named The Denver 50."

Obviously I talked about Karsh\Hagan, and I mentioned the Cactus OwnYourC campaign, which is a cool example of the work being done in Denver.

You can read the whole interview on scottgoodson.typepad.com.

UPDATE: The interview has been cross-posted at Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.

UPDATE: Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it.

UPDATE: The Denver Egotist also discusses the interview.