I am currently accepting select freelance copywriting and strategy projects for businesses that value real results. Want to work with a 30-year veteran instead of an algorithm? Drop me a line.
There is a serious, quiet weirdness afoot in the business world today. Across almost every industry, a surreal new management template has taken root: People are being hired into roles
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What a road-crossing turtle, a breast-pumping nurse, and a house on wheels taught me about the death of the human operating system. Lately, I’ve found myself reminiscing about 1970s graphic
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When I launched The Cranky Creative in 2018, I thought I was starting a support group for frustrated creatives. I thought our biggest enemies were bad briefs and confused clients.
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It’s over. I’m done. For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to vent about the decline of the advertising industry. I’ve complained about the lazy concepts, the idiot creatives, the
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Marketing used to be about connection — understanding what people wanted and selling it with style. Today, marketing has become a megaphone for progressive politics, preaching woke ideologies that alienate
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A phallic shadow. The word “SEX” etched in ice. The American public has been bombarded with subliminal messages for decades, and the practice continues to this day. In 1957, researchers
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Oh, advertisers. It didn’t have to be this way. Once upon a time, consumers might have liked to hear from you. They might have eagerly awaited your TV commercials to
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If you only watched TV, you might think that white people (including fumbling, bumbling white males) are a minority in the United States. Depending on the commercial break, you might
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Am I the only one noticing that everything is turning to crap? Crap ads. Crap science. Crap food. Crap music. Crap movies. Crap people. Crap software that you “subscribe” to
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Is the advertising industry dying because creatives are lazy, or because audiences are too dumb to care? For years, I’ve used The Cranky Creative to document the slow-motion death of
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A thinking person’s guide to surviving the $8M-per-30-second brainwash. Welcome back, Cranky readers, to the $1 billion psychological experiment we call the Super Bowl. While the “normies” are bawling over
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If your “boldness” requires a permission slip from the HR department, you are not a pirate — you’re a parrot. WARNING: explosive post ahead. In the ad world, we worship
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They told you it was “progress.” They called it “equity.” But if you look at the cold, hard numbers, it looks a lot more like a targeted demolition. For a
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Trading the flu for something worse? They’re at it again. For more than a week now, my Facebook feed has been inundated with “news” channels from around the country posting
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A reader named Terri recently asked if I’d seen the Amazon holiday ad, “Joy Ride.” It features three elderly women looking wistfully at a snowy hill where young people are
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Well, folks, let’s toast the end of the year with one final, satisfying roast of the modern advertising industry. Why bother trying to pinpoint the worst TV commercial of 2025
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