Here's Project Leader Grace Tarrant grace-ing (hahahahaha, I slay me!) us with a terrible joke.

Welcome to the first installation of a new series on the FiveWords blog: Bad Joke from a Good Person. Our first hard-working McKinneyite with a bad joke is copywriter Reid Hultman.

The best brands can be summed up with a single word. That used to be the wisdom about branding, but these days with media fragmentation and too many cooks in the kitchen, too many brands try to be too many things to too many people.

Like Volvo. For years and years and years, Volvo meant "safety." And some damn fine advertising came out of that brief.

Then, I don't know why, they started moving away from that message. Not that I can remember a single ad for Volvo in the last several years. I looked around online and found a bunch of stuff with running footage, pretty songs and people happily piloting twisty roads in their ultimate driving machine...Oh wait, wrong ad.

So I was heartened to see a Volvo ad the other day with Volvo's brand strength once again the centerpiece -- albeit, in a slightly different way than the past.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Edward Cullen drives a Volvo.

In case you haven't read the Twilight series, Edward Cullen is the impossibly gorgeous, scrupulously moral, incredibly rich vampire who is obsessed with protecting the delicate, fragile, mortal love of his life, Bella, from all manner of danger, from the undead or otherwise.

He drives a Volvo in the movie, but more importantly, he drove one in the book. I'm assuming Stefanie Meyer didn't write Twilight with product placement in mind, so why did she choose a Volvo as Edward's ride of choice? Perhaps she, like pretty much every consumer in the Western world, associates the brand with that single word.

Glad to see Volvo capitalizing on the brand association in a way that makes real sense.

Of course, some people might dismiss this as a mistake, marketing a luxury car to a teenybopper audience. But those same people probably don't talk to the same professional women I do, women who have the money to buy a Volvo and passionately embrace, with complete earnestness, everything about a pale vampire teenager who sparkles. And the campaign website features not only the bigger (and pricier) XC60, but also the more attainable C30.

Can we expect a Volvo cinema ad when New Moon premieres on November 20th? I'll be there to find out.

Before I became a copywriter, I worked as a social worker, less than a mile from where the agency is now. Part of my job involved walking two blocks over to the Urban Ministries of Durham and talking with people hanging around outside, getting to know them and trying to convince them to come in for mental-health evaluations.

Sometimes they would agree to come in. More often they wouldn't. Sometimes it took people a while to open up, but once they realized I really wanted to know, the stories would come pouring out. I talked to a family of five who were all living in a tiny car. I talked to guys who had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, then dropped off in front of the shelter as soon as they were stabilized. I talked to women went without eating so their children would have clothes that didn't mark them as poor. I talked to people who had tried crack once and discovered that once was all it took.

More than anything else, the people I spoke to told me about feeling invisible, about feeling like the world didn't have space for them anymore. So, when we had the chance to develop a campaign for the Urban Ministries of Durham, that's where we started.

Hey GM:

There was once a pretty successful advertising guy. His name was David Ogilvy. He said a lot of smart stuff. Including this: "The consumer is not a moron."

You must have missed that little bit of advice. Otherwise, I can't imagine you'd ever produce the "reinvention" commercial Jeff mentioned in this entry.

If these spoofs are any indication, looks like you're learning it the hard way.

Ogilvy also said "If you tell lies about your product, you will be found out." These spoofs are being passed around precisely because they speak so clearly the truths your smarmy commercial was trying to hide underneath a bunch of montages with butterflies. Oopsies.

Sometimes I think all the hype about new technologies and emerging media platforms makes it easy to forget the basics. But I believe the old wisdom still applies: Find the truth about your product and go from there.

Maybe the truth doesn't always work. But, hey, it seems to have turned out pretty well for these guys:

When ideas get killed or don't come out the way we want or never come in the first place, it's easy to blame everyone else. I mean, it feels good to be the shining light of creativity that's always getting stomped on by people with no vision.

But I think we gain more from facing the ways we might have screwed up. In that spirit, here are ten ways I've screwed up in the past. (Maybe you will relate to some. Maybe you won't. Maybe you will even add your own items to this list. Maybe I would like that.)

1. Made it feel like work. Coming up with ideas for a living is pretty damn awesome. But sometimes I can turn it into misery, by bitching about the deadline or worrying about the competition or drowning in existential despair. Without exception, the work I'm most proud of is also the work I had the most fun creating.
2. Pooped on my partner's ideas. I love working with partners, but sometimes I can be a stubborn, close-minded asshole. That probably never happens to you, but in the unlikely event you find yourself saying "no" or "but" to your partners, check out Walker's post about the importance of "yes and." It's easy to write off other people's ideas as dumb. And maybe they are dumb. But take the chance to see where it goes and you can make their shitty idea your good one. And by "your idea" I mean both of you. That "my idea/your idea" bullshit just makes you look bad. Don't ask me how I know that.
3. Stopped short of the finish line. I have a short attention span. By the time we're in the final stages of production on something, I don't always pay as close attention as I should. If something's niggling me, I let it go. Too much hassle. Of course, when I'm not happy with the final result, I have nobody but myself to blame. Some people are great at staying focused over the long haul. I'm not one of those people. So I have to work doubly hard to keep myself in the loop.
   
   
4. Picked the wrong battles. Passion is a good thing. Creative directors want people who care about their work. But the line between "passionate" and "pain in the ass" is a thin one. Sometimes when I'm arguing for something, I realize too late that I'm just battling because I hate being wrong. Which is stupid. Not to mention exhausting for me and infuriating for everyone else. I'm learning to back off when something doesn't matter to me, so I have the right to stand my ground when it does.
5. Feared criticism. When I spend days with an idea I love, it's easy to feel like a mama bear protecting a perfect little cub. And heaven help the poor soul who tries to mess with my baby. But strong ideas get stronger when they're tested and poked at and picked on. When we see criticism as an indictment of our "perfect" idea, it gets weak and timid, like the kids locked in the attic in those creepy V.C. Andrews novels. But the good news is, you don't actually have to do what anyone says. You just have to listen. And try not to interrupt. If that's hard for you, bring a snack. Shove it into your face. Chew while you listen. It helps. Don't ask me how I know that.
6. Presented without preparing. For the big-time stuff, like presenting an integrated brand campaign to a client, I always prepare. But more often than not, I'll just wing it when presenting to creative directors or account teams. More than once, I've been halfway through a meeting with creative directors when I realize I don't have a freaking clue what the idea is about. Preparing forces me to figure out the logic of my idea before I have to explain it to other people. Which is pretty important, since a brilliant idea isn't going to live for long if nobody can get it.
7. Talked to myself instead of my audience. Many of my favorite ideas were killed by the client. A good number of them never made it past the CD. Maybe it's because they were bad ideas. But I prefer to believe they died because I didn't sell them well, because I made assumptions I shouldn't have and I forgot who I was talking to. For example, you know you're planning to add a call-to-action later. But unless you tell them, all they see is an ad with no call-to-action. And this might blow your face off, but our bosses aren't intimately acquainted with every project detail. Which explains the blank stares I get when I zoom through a presentation without giving them context first. Considering your audience is ever more important with clients. Maybe you get jazzed about a certain director or a new technology. Our clients get jazzed about seeing results. If you don't start by laying out the payoff for them, your work is dead. We make our living as persuaders. And that doesn't end with the work itself. If I'm not persuading clients or creative directors to buy my work, I'm not doing my job.
8. Stayed in my office. I love coming up with ideas. I hate meetings and conference calls and I'm not good about checking in on stuff. Which is why some of my best ideas have quietly died without me noticing. But I've seen that the really successful people are the ones who dive in and actively lobby for their ideas. They keep in touch with all the players. They worry about every detail, not just the ones that are in their job description. If they aren't invited to a meeting, they invite themselves. No wonder their ideas are more likely to live than mine.
9. Made account people the enemy. I'm pretty sure the entire Account Management department does not exist solely to make my life difficult. (Even though, on a bad day, it can feel that way.) While it's nice to have a scapegoat, if I treat account people like they're the bad guys, why do I expect them to fight for my ideas? What might happen if we start seeing them as our secret weapons? If we bring them into the process earlier? If we ask what they think and actually listen to the answer? It may not always seem like it, especially if you're one of my account peeps, but I'm really trying to find out.
   
10. Lost sight of the goal. I am not an artist. But I'm not just a salesperson either. What we do is art of a kind. But it's harder. Because art only has to entertain. Or provoke. Or intrigue. Or challenge. We have to do all of those things. And we have to do them in service to a brand. Yes we have to sell stuff. But that won't happen if the work isn't meaningful. If it's not truthful. If it doesn't have the same stopping power as a piece of art. This means I can't just do mediocre work that checks all the boxes. But sometimes I do. It also means I can't worry too much about impressing my peers or an award show jury. But sometimes I do. It's a struggle to find the balance between art and science. The thing I try to hold in my mind is this: My work has to do what I promise it will. And that means it has to provoke a reaction, but that reaction has to benefit my clients.
    
    Which is a huge challenge, yes, but that's exactly why I love this business.