Today's client cliche, boys and girls, is the phrase "story-telling," as in "the ad should be story-telling, it should tell a story about our brand."
Of course, when you go to speak to the client they insist on powerpoint, the antithesis of story-telling and they want spider-graphs and inverted pyramids and factored fractorials. They want a linearity which story-telling often avoids. Also, they want no humor, no jokes, no sex, no laughter, no tears, no emotion, no drama, no pace, no crescendo, no build. BUT THEY WANT STORY-TELLING. Of course, they want in in small space, with four products, six lines of legal and the word "new" in bold.
Was it David Ogilvy who said that an ad must be more interesting than the media it's surrounded by? If he didn't he should have.
In any event, here is a link to Maira Kalman's story about the inauguration of Obama.
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/the-inauguration-at-last/
A thing of beauty.
