RFP: Request For Perplexity

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It’s tough not knowing. As you craft the response to an RFP (request for proposal) on behalf of the creative agency or event-management firm, you wonder if you are competing on a level playing field.

Sure it’s sweet when you know. You’re told by the branding agency that the potential client has let them know on the sly the job will be theirs. The RFP process is a mere formality.

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Know When to Shut Up

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As a copywriter you have to know when to keep your words to yourself. Sadly, there are great pictures and layouts that can speak for themselves, with only a little  support. These are ads created by Chris Hoy of Rivet Design for Ballentine Construction, a cottage and home renovation company based in Point au Baril, Ontario. Virginia MacDonald‘s photographs of cottage interiors are so gorgeous that the rooms speak for themselves. I merely report what they say and add a tagline.

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The End, My Friend

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A feature that I wrote for the relaunch issue of Applied Arts Magazine, featuring a new editorial focus and design.

In the beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble . . .
—T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets”

This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
—Jim Morrison, “The End”

In the beginning, advertising made a choice that it would one day regret. In 1877, former bookkeeping clerk James Walter Thompson bought New York-based Carlton and Smith, which sold advertising space in religious journals. He paid $500 for the agency, and $800 for its furniture, and renamed it after himself. After starting to place ads in women’s journals, JWT came up with the bright idea of developing creative content for clients, so he could sell more ad space. Creative services, acting as a kind of loss leader, became part of the agency’s offering.

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