Thoughts

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- Advertising in its purest form connects buyers with sellers, and vice versa.

- Propaganda is as old as human speech — portraying a point-of-view, not necessarily as it is, but what the author wants it to be.

- Good advertising, characteristically, is relatable and/or appealing. And, there's no substitute for good taste.

- Effective advertising helps seduce an audience toward an opinion or action, and helps drive business growth.

- It's been said before — the most "important real estate" is a share or a piece of a person's mind.

- Often paired with Public Relations, Advertising is the "persuasion" business. Think AMC's Mad Men and a Vance Packard

book from the late 1950s like The Hidden Persuaders.

- The idea of brand can go beyond convenience, selection and value — to the emotional, impulsive,

and in rare cases, transcend to an amorphous, undefined, and even supernatural state.

- Most important rule in business — never run out of money.

- We live in an imbalanced world where malcontents have a huge, instant voice led by snap judgments to shape opinion.

- This is both an age of "distraction" and of "surveillance".

- The business world has always been defined both by making order out of chaos and building trust.

- The worst sins in business are lying and laziness.

- We should aim to keep client success and satisfaction high by keeping the excesses in the name of "creativity" in check.

- I started and cultivated my career in the right place at the right time. I had the privilege of working at Advertising Age's

Agency of the Decade beginning in 1988 and learned from at the foot of the master impresario himself: Jay Chiat.

The BLA motto: Make excellent work, friends & money.