When you gather so many people together, the importance of the meeting becomes exaggerated. When a meeting takes on exaggerated importance, participants become anxious. Clients can smell agency anxiety a mile away. It's contagious and it causes fear. Fear is the enemy of an open mind. The meeting becomes a medium for the creation of subtle power re

Great creative people are smarter than us. They will challenge everything we say, they will scoff at the pathetic strategies we come up with, and they will make trouble and annoy the shit out of us.

Da Vinci didn't need a strategist. Neither did Newton. Or Einstein. Or Gershwin. Or Hitchcock. Or Riney, for that matter. They just did brilliant things. They didn't need people chattering at them about what they should do or how they should do it. They just did it.

Actors: We tell them where

Of all the social sciences, economics is the one I have least confidence in. As George Bernard Shaw once famously said, ""If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion." President Harry Truman, tired of hearing economists say, "On one hand...but on the other hand..." asked if anyone knew where

you don't have to make good advertising to be successful.

Tetlock's book Expert Political Judgment:

As far as we're concerned, the philosophical underpinnings of a virtuous life can be summed up very briefly -- do it and shut the fuck up.

"The answer to this problem, when found, will be simple." No matter how complex a marketing or advertising problem seems to be; no matter how much research has been done; no matter how many conflicting opinions there are; no matter how many account planning insights have been concocted; no matter how many decks have been written and Power