stratscraps_v108

The DMZ between art and commerce

Apr 17, 2023

More digital escapism in the past week than usual. As such, full post may be cut off in email. See substack platform for full thing.

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

As a result, I’m gonna do this up top:

I am currently open for 1/2 time freelance projects and starting in a few weeks will be completely available.

Let’s work together on something deviant.

alex@stratscraps.com

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

Continuing my effort to give a shout out or recommendation to somebody doing cool shit, Matt Klein’s ZINE has been nominated for a Webby.

Matt wrote a nice little piece on why this means so much.

Strat Scraps is largely a publication abstract curation. And Zine is a big source of thought/content. If you’ve received value from Strat Scraps, you’ve likely received value from Klein/Zine.

Consider taking the time to go vote.

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

I came across this list of useful and overlooked Skills, and linked at the bottom was an even more interesting article called “Skills vs Behavior”

“…That’s different than a skill. The ability to drop what you’re doing, learn something new, and prosper again, is a behavior.
Behavior, in business and investing, is the art of putting skills to use. It’s probably the hardest part of this game. It’s not analytical. It’s often counterintuitive. But it’s the secret ingredient most of us are after. Skills should be praised. But skill without the right behavior often has a ceiling and an expiration date.”

An excerpt, but I’d recommend reading the whole article.

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

Dead simple while still being sharply clever.

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

WHAT HAPPENED?

Looking at old ads, I often think to myself “will advertising ever be interesting again?”

On one hand, it has to swing back around, because we’ve built an entire economic system around attention and ad supported media. Ads cant go away, or everything falls apart. People can’t afford to subscribe to everything.

But on the other hand, it cant go back to being consistently interesting…

This is the basic agency/client workflow for any given project.

In the middle, originally, it was just an art director and an “account man.” Soon the middle grew to be;

Creative Director + Art/Copy Director + Planner(s) + Account + maybe production

Which is easy to look at and see the challenge.

Especially when the process now looks like this:

C.S. = client service (account). C team = art+copy creative duo

But what about the outside parts? The client?

Three layers of hierarchy is a laughably optimistic

Inflating middle management (bullshit jobs, a mandatory read IMO) has killed the possibility of truly great advertising.

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

This is the one of those things I find weirdly interesting:

➣☛➲➬➪➫⇨➾➳⇉⇶⟿⇴↝⟶⇰

Creative Brief: Complete Owners Manual

I truly do not know how this has escaped my grasp until now. An overview of the creative brief that looks at it in context of the bigger process and the role it is meant to play – not just the information it is meant to contain.