On communication, professional and otherwise.
1. Work in the White House, doing any kind of writing for any length of time for any old U.S. president. At this point, you are probably getting too old for that shit.
2. Win a Cicero Speechwriting Award from Vital Speeches, which happily just issued our 2013 Call for Entries. All speeches written in 2012 are eligible and the deadline is Feb. 15.
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.
Well, you sort of have to, because like it or not, he's the chairman and chief judge of the 2010 Cicero Speechwriting Awards, which has just issued its call for entries. The fee is only $99 per entry, the entry procedure is effortless, the deadline is Jan. 15 and the chairman is is dead sexy.
Or at least, in his publicity photo, he appears convinced that he is.