Note from Tom, 21 December 2023. Hello and Seasons Greetings! I wrote this post back in November but chose not to post it on ThomasBoston for what will become obvious reasons once you read it. And no, we are not closing but rather, pivoting to providing fashion consultation and shopping for executives and their adult children. We are now creating new strategic alliances with highly regarded brands and retailers and will post here as we make progress. Stay tuned.
But for now, my repost from the November Defector™–Everything Happens all of The Time™. Peace, T-
Straight From The Heart
I might not have guessed it would come to this, and maybe the concept is more “evolved to this,” but as an older dual-brained adult I find myself at a funny crossroads of my life.
My metric/analytical side pushes me to make money, a pragmatic goal given my 401k kept us in home and college tuitions during back-to-back health challenges now a decade past.
And my creative side refuses to stop creating, albeit very differently than in the days of my agency roles.
Not that I’ve wanted to stop creating in an agency or brand function; I’d love to make money writing copy or blogs or even tech writing for clients as I have most all my career.
Here’s the thing. The cosmos says no. Just no.
And not just to me but to far more talented former ad agency writers than me. My friend Dan Brown, erstwhile of the then great Golden Age Boston ad agencies in the 70s-90s comes to mind. His ad stuff was so well-crafted it made me want to cry. But even his desk is bereft of ad work.
A Charmed Professional Life. Knock-Downs & All.
I began my career at the tail end of the Mad Men Era like Dan. And it shaped me in ways that both drove my ambition and helped me shoot myself in the foot, and more than once. But for the most part I was lucky getting back up (with lots of help) and managed a career during a time when only us agency folk knew how to create the concepts, copy and art, all based upon disciplined and marvelously well-crafted marketing communication strategies and tactics that drove consumer, tech, and professional adoption of value-packed brands.
Fact is, I’ve had the incredible good fortune to work on greats such as Velcro™, Boston Whaler™, and Thermo (Electron) Fisher Scientific™ brands (a brand name is an adjective modifying a generic noun), and perhaps lessor known powerhouses like Ovation Benefits Group™ whose brands enriched the cultures of those acquiring them.
I’ve loved it. Even dealing with those sometimes difficult RISD-inspired creatives. And those less-than-jovial bean counters looking for ROI back in the days when it wasn’t readily measurable as it is today.
It was days when “doin’ art” was left to those trained to create it. When headline photo-type breathed life into a story even without a photo; and when those doing the type setting didn’t accept lazy auto-kerning (the space between letters that keep a word together as a design element) of today’s common WYSIWYG commercial art softwares. In fact “auto kern” wasn’t even a thing.
Not that I bemoan the democratization of graphic arts software. I’ve long accepted that good ideas can come from anybody and anywhere.
But it leaves me on a funny position. As in: what is it I do again?
Though apparently this is not an uncommon thought with current day agency Creative Directors, one of whom who couldn’t succinctly tell me what his agency did while we spoke at a recent Sylvan Esso Concert at the MGM Music Hall in Boston.
Seems it’s just data, data, data.
It appears I escaped that world at just the right moment.
I Ain’t Your Daddy’s AI
Of course who needs a writer when you have AI to do it for you? I’ve been playing with Google’s Bard AI, and it’s lots of fun. Though it could well be a parlor game such as “spot the incorrect information in this article.” But using AI concepts just doesn’t yet feel right to me. I mean, if I have Bard create a rough draft and then edit the document to my specs, can I rightly claim copyright to the piece? (Or even: does Bard require a byline?)
And do I want to? I mean, won’t it get caught by search engines? And won’t Google, today handling a reported 90% of searches worldwide, recognize it and penalize my SEO? A classic damned if you do/don’t.
Huh. Maybe there’s still hope for me, an older adult who enjoys branded and technical writing. In fact, I’ve enjoyed writing this piece after a long hiatus of avoiding ‘brain churn” common to my writing process in the day when writing ad, tech sheets, and package goods (CPG) copy was one long endless project list. And, yeah, I love the pace and zen of it now as I did then.
So I’m going to keep trying. In the meantime, my strategy is to look to my muse, rather than my profession, for creative inspiration. Simple.
Even if it means writing meaningless drivel like this exercise, which will be infinitely repeated and lost in the “so what?” category of the Internet.
You see, for me writing is much like walking or any of the chores I do to keep my log home standing. I always have to keep on top of it; and there’s always something to do. I can see how with inaction it (and I) could fall down, a condition I’ve seen in too many of my peers. As my dad loved to say, “you don’t wear out, you rust out.”
To which I only can say: “fuck that.” You know, with feeling.
Thanks for the exercise. Peace, T-