Uncategorized | Writing Boots

An old trick, but it just might work

11.16.2009 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

My chief at McMurry, Scott Accatino, e-mailed me last week to warn me that he'd put a rather ginormous ad for the Cicero Speechwriting Awards on the Vital Speeches website. "You can still get the most important [editorial] stuff 'above the fold,'" he said apologetically.

Clearly, Scott forgot for a moment that I'm not just a editorial tyrant. I'm an editorial tyrant whose dad was an adman. An adman who used to tell of a technique for selling clients on ads:

1. You show the client you've thought deeply and broadly about his product and his customer.

2. You write and design a great ad.

3. You blow the ad up to "oh-my-God size."

This way, when you unveil the ad, the sumbitch is so big, the client exclaims, "Oh my GOD!"

It's a start.

Chicago’s best quarterback, Samantha Grisafe

11.13.2009 by David Murray // 2 Comments

With this picture, my photographic partner Bruce Bever captures what I spent several months learning and 1,200 words trying and failing to show: That for these women, football isn't some fucking novelty.

Intergenerational miscommunication is not new

11.13.2009 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

Some people make a living helping different generations communicate with one another. It's steady work, because though life may be short, it is long enough that we outlive the language we learned as kids.

True story. When she was in her 80s, Studs Terkel's wife Ida was talking with someone who was applying for a job as director of marketing for the Lincoln Park Zoo.

"Wow, that must be a big job!" Ida exclaimed. "All those animals to shop for every morning!"

(And of course I write this knowing that some percentage of my audience is too young to know why Ida thought "marketing" meant grocery shopping.)