I know I dump on Big Agency marketing all the time. It’s not that they do a worse job than a lot of small marketing companies. It’s that most of what they turn out is crap, and there’s no excuse for it.
At the same time, they do produce brilliant work. Current reading is “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This”, by Luke Sullivan, a copywriter at one of the Bigs. He has a lot of good things to say about the creative process.
This – harnessing creativity – is the toughest part of the marketing game, because you can’t bottle it.
The difficulties are legendary. “Writer’s block” immortalizes the idea, but it applies to all the arts.
Ultimately, it’s the artist closeted alone with his soul, pleading for an Idea.
Any successful marketing company, to be successful, has to find a way to make this process work.