R tick you lay shun.

Many years ago, back when Hector was a pup, I was working with an art-director who had never done TV. We had just sold a spot and she was nervous about her inexperience being "found out." I was older and more senior and I said to her, "You don't have to know how to do it, you just have to know what you want and be able to say that."

One of the horrors of the new-media era in which we live is that someone or some thing has pulled the tablecloth off of the cosmos with the dishes still on it. There are so many ways, means, tools and tactics that people in the direction-giving business, people who give assignments no longer have to articulate with clarity what it is they want.

They can say things like "I need something fast moving and cutty." Or "I want something edgy and viral." Or "I need a sizzle reel."

They don't really take the time to worry about the details, about what the creatives are to make sizzle. They feel like they've done their job.

Written communication began about 5,000 years ago, not as literature and poetry but basically as a way to keep track of how much grain would be needed to pay how many workers. Early writing was artless and utilitarian. And that was ok. Because it communicated.

Today we are crushed by the pace of doing things so fast that we often don't even know what we're doing or why.

It's pretty simple really: "If you don't know what you want, chances are you won't get it."