Words.

I used to work for an ECD (when that was an agency's top creative title) called Mike Tesch. A brilliant man and a Hall-of-Famer, most famous for his work building the Federal Express brand. I remember reading something about him that he essentially believed that nearly any marketing problem could be overcome by writing a great TV spot.

That sort of thinking, I suppose, would be excoriated today.

Still, I'm of the mind that Mike was right.

It seems to me--after approximately 90 years in the business just this week--that most clients and agencies don't really know what they want to say or even what they're selling.

I dunno.

Every time I look at a car ad featuring some electronic gizmo in a car--like Chevrolet heralding that one of their cars can give you a wireless connection--I'm absolutely befuddled.

Chevy foisted 50 years of bad products and terrible customer service on America. Is the ability to tweet on I95 really their road to recovery.

Except of course, they're not recovering. They've gone in the last 50 years from 55% marketshare to 17% marketshare.

They seem content to be 1/3 as important as they were.

I guess this is one big digression, when my point was just the opposite.

Write down--in about a commercial's worth of words--what you want to do and what you intend to say.

More people should do that, or try to.

It would make work better.