SapientNitro: Anatomy of a Culture Cult

Some moments after I sat down with SapientNitro’s Worldwide Chief Creative Director Gaston Legorburu and Creative Director John McHale, I got a hard sense of what our time together would be about.

“Our secret weapon is our culture,” Gaston said. And the culture is bred and nourished with conscious attention.

They reflected that they've never actually discussed this with the press before, and maybe because of that, they sat and outlined the entire blueprint.

Read the rest of this (EPIC!) nummy num-num on Yahoo! Scene, for which I'm doing Cannes Lions coverage this year.

Top Reasons to Go Into Advertising

Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere.

In February, I asked agency professionals what their top reasons were for going into advertising. I also asked whether they had any thoughts for college students with moon eyes for an ad career.

Read their responses (two pages' worth of insights!). But here's a taste of some really good stuff:

Don't get bogged down in what is and what isn't the "right" way to do things.

Once we solve the problem, we need the next one to move on to, if it isn't there, then we go in search of it. I don't think it's overly surprising that there are a lot of gypsies in this business.

It [struck] me that one probably actually gets paid for doing this advertising design thing - in other words not beerless - and maybe even bourbonful, which indeed it was (this was 1964, folks!). So I changed schools and majors. I liked the program, and I love the job that came out of it. Now I get to manage a small agency and some creatives who are just as easily upset by client changes as I was (I am over that now - jaded, I suppose), and I am having fun designing bourbon packages. Is that amazing or what?

The ad biz has taken me all over the world, from NYC to Jakarta Indonesia. Along the way, the friendly folks at JWT, BBDO and a few other agencies have been generous enough to pay me for creating ideas. It’s been a good gig.

Learn a foreign language. Preferably Chinese, Indonesian, or Spanish.

There is NO good reason to go into advertising.

I got tired of all the insipid ads on both TV and Radio. I wanted to provide a creative, (notice the word creative) instead of the simple repeats of someone elses idea for promotion.

For account service, an advertising degree is great, but really - if you have some great internships and experience your degree can be in basket weaving and it won't hurt you.

The opportunities on the interactive side of things are endless. There is a huge shortage of talent in a category that is growing daily. Programmers, designers...pretty much anything having to with the interactive side of things is marketable in many arenas.

As one of the previous posters stated, the most important thing is experience. Intern, intern, intern.

Why did I get into this? Like many others, I fell into it.

A Little Help Here, Please?

One of my biggest pet peeves is bad spelling in the professional world. Words on an ad, in books, in official documents or on any other traditional media riding the wave of public view possess an element of sanctity that's totally obliterated when a typo is overlooked. I never forget it. It's like trauma.

I'm in Southern California for a conference. This afternoon in desperate pursuit of coffee I halted my sassy walk and choked on a cashew when I saw a large banner reflecting the day's break-out sessions.

I can't even quite remember what it said. All I recall is the word PROFFESSIONAL. All huge, all extra-extra, in all its pre-fab pop-up synthetic print glory.

Please spellcheck your creative before blowing up 20 copies and slathering them from end to end of a convention hall. Particularly if you're an education association that shall not be named because I am nice like that.

Ugh. No wonder high school students can't read.