I believe you’re absolutely correct. When I worked at ad agencies, our work for the first year or two was spectacular. (It is, after all, the honeymoon period.) But as time went on, we creatives would start hearing “the client won’t buy it” or “can we be more straightforward? I can’t show this to the client!” This from the same account people who couldn’t wait to show the creative that actually won the account.

It was this type of thinking that convinced me to start freelancing. As an individual, I didn’t have to worry whether the client would buy my ideas or not — I was free to show ALL of my thinking. After all, the client paid for all of it, right? In almost all cases, the client chose the most creative concepts. And even if they went for something “more straightforward” they virtually always had a reason — usually some factor that was new, or a situation that had changed.

Again, great article! I’m going to reTweet it!

If they were selling the young model in the ad then I would have to say they’d get lots of buyers. But nothing in the ad makes me think that I’ve got to get a Palm phone.

It would have been better if they had implied that using a Palm phone would make me attractive to women like her!

I know nothing about video production, Larry — what do you mean when you refer to silos?

My point, usually, I don’t look at television commercials (especially in this age of Tivo/DVR). This is a commercial that not only caught my attention, but kept it and I even remembered the product.