Love your blog! It’s a perfect way to offer instant inspiration anytime we need it.

Keep up the great work!

Rita

I’m not a professional book critic, but here’s my review on The Houdini Solution:

http://multicultclassics.blogspot.com/2006/11/essay-1366.html

As for Ye Druids, they haven’t gotten this much press since,… actually I don’t think the band ever got press. No tapes exist either, thankfully. I do have some very raw recordings of a Leonard/Monahan band Ernie and I were in with David Lubars and some other ad guys. If I ever need some quick cash I’ve got some great blackmail material.

Re the blog context, although expect most posts to be quite relevant to advertising people, this will be an ad blog no more or less than about any other industry, as it’s about creative thinking in business, in a broader sense.

There are many excellent ad blogs (yours and Ernie’s among them), and, although I still serve many ad agencies and in-house departments, for this space I have a more general focus, highlighting creative brilliance or stuckness in a wide assortment of industries and beyond.  I plan to address issues I feel are common to most, if not all. Yes, even ad people. Besides, ad people keep telling me they need to look outside their own world for inspiration. Maybe this blog can be a vehicle (see benefits of perspective).
And, BTW the advice here is hardly free. You have to wade through my pontificating, ranting, raving and occasional hawking of my own company.

My name is David Wen and upon reading about Ye Druids, I was reminded of what Ernie said when I interviewed him a while back.
I think it’s the sixth question down.

Thanks for getting on the advertising blog bandwagon. Now people can get your creative advice for free.

Actually, a couple of years ago a creative director friend of mine, in response at some student critiques, actually said “you need to think inside the box first - only then, once you fully understand the inside, can you start looking outside the box”.

That really made complete sense to me, and to an extent I was already delivering the message to the students in that they had to completely understand the parameters, restrictions, politics of the brief, the audience, the budget etc. etc. - once they had a grasp of them, then they could REALLY go with the ‘Intergalactic thinking’ and try to arrive at an original, but appropriate creative solution.

So, thank you to that colleague (now in Austin TX), and thank you, Tom, for pointing me to this publication, which I will be buying for sure.

Gary