Upcoming: Q&A with The Richards Group

Instead of hearing from my boring self all the time, I'd like to invite you to ask questions to successful advertising pros. Just leave your question as a comment in this post and I'll post their answers in a future post.

The Richards Group is the largest ad agency in Dallas with scores of regional and national clients (Chick-fil-a, Home Depot and others). UT alums Mike Renfro, Group Creative Director, and Tina Johnson, Creative Director, are willing and ready to answer any type of question you may have.

Paper cutting to the max

We never did this kind of paper cutting in elementary school.

The work of Peter Callesen.

via Good Magazine.

How to write headlines and why your career depends on it.

I found this lengthy article by Suzanne Pope, a Group Creative Director at John St. in Toronto over at ihaveanidea.

I particularly liked this excerpt because it talks about meeting deadlines. As a junior level creative myself, I can say that learning to meet deadlines, with quality work too, is one of the first skills students should master because life is full of deadlines.

But you're not a wannabe art director. You're a copywriter. That's what you want to be. And if you really want to be a copywriter, you will be one. But that means learning to love words even more than you resist them. It means getting over your fear of the blank page. It means developing the confidence that you can write five decent headlines ten minutes before they're due.

Seems Joy is the topic. Who can deliver?

Talk about tying unrelated topics to a brand and making it relevant.

Re: The problem ad agencies have got at the moment

diagram from www.adliterate.com

Danny Nathan, a Texas Creative Ex in NYC, has posed this open-ended question of his fellow ad bloggers over at Beyond Madison Avenue.

"The problem advertising agencies have got at the moment is…"


"...that people who are in the industry care too much about advertising and people who aren't in the industry care too little."

-David Wen

update: Check out this Adweek Survey of perceptions of advertising.