Advertising stuff of the year, according to me

National ad blog of 2008: I keep thinking about deleting AdPulp from my feeds. And then I notice that I bookmark it constantly.

Denver ad blog of 2008: The Egotist wins this one in a walk. They're so far ahead of everyone else that the only thing I can do is nitpick at the things I wish were different. (I wish the blog's multiple anonymous authors had different pseudonyms, so I could tell them apart. I wish the comments were threaded instead of flat. I wish there was a troll-rating system.)

National agency site of 2008: The Barbarian Group. So rich. So cool. So smart. So useful. So, so elegant.

Denver agency site of 2008: I don't know. The cool ones are hard to navigate. The elegant ones don't capture my imagination.

Local agency blog of 2008: Pure's Pure Thinking. They post frequent and interesting content. At times, they're they only agency that seems to be trying.

Blog I wish I wrote of 2008: Barbarian Group head of planning and strategy Noah Brier writes a blog much better than my own. It's sort of about advertising, sort of about the Internet, and mostly about whatever he wants.

Cool ad-like idea of 2008: See a cnn.com headline you like? One click and it's a t-shirt (not to mention a walking ad for CNN). This genius brought to you by - you guessed it - the Barbarian Group.

Cool spot of 2008: "Fate" is a statement about life's glory and inevitability. Nike, David Fincher and Wieden + Kennedy put a lump in my throat that I don't think will ever go away.

Creating a great viral video is mostly like creating a great video

So there I was, watching The Feed Company's list of 2008's top 10 viral videos on ReelSEO, when I realized that there wasn't anything necessarily "viral" about them. They were just great videos, released in an easily sharable media. If they'd been shorter, many of them wouldn't have looked out of place on TV.

If you want to make a video that goes viral, make a video that kicks ass.

Life in twilight

The Greek and Roman myths are filled with narcissistic sissies prancing around in their underwear, slaying big scary beasties, and flitting through oak groves. My ancestors were different. As Edith Hamilton writes in her classic Mythology:

The world of Norse mythology is a strange world... No radiancy of joy is in it, no assurance of bliss. it is a grave and solemn place, over which hangs the threat of inevitable doom. The cause the forces of good are fighting to defend against the forces of evil is hopeless. Nevertheless, the gods will fight for it to the end. Necessarily the same is true of humanity... The heroes and heroines of the early stories face disaster. They know they cannot save themselves, not by any courage or endurance or great deed. Even so, they do not yield. They die resisting.

Many of the Norse texts went the way of their gods. What the Christians didn't destroy, time did. (Don't build statues out of wood.) But where the Greeks and Romans found illusionary glory in temporary victories, the Norse found permanent dignity in futile struggle.

Even the greatest achievements are washed away by history. And your children - and theirs and theirs and theirs - are all you have as a hedge against death. And yet you fight the fight. Not for a doomed world or a doomed future. But for its own sake.

Your will to battle towards a unpleasant and certain end is the most important thing you have. My ancestors knew this. And I know it too.