The only reason I wrote this is to attract new copywriting clients, but I’m betting you’ll read it anyway.

Did I lose you? No? Well, you’re far from the only one.

Does that surprise you?

After all, that headline is a big hunk of truth. I’m giving up the game before it even starts, revealing exactly what my secret hidden agenda is. Most people would say that’s kind of stupid.

But you see, that’s exactly what makes it work: surprise. No one expects truth in advertising, so when you use it, it’s like a secret weapon, catching everyone off-guard.

There’s just one catch: It has to be interesting. It can’t be just any old boring truth. And that means you can’t be lazy. You have to dig and dig until you find the truth that’s surprising, or disarming, or unusual and novel enough to get noticed.

This is what separates the pros from the amateurs. Amateurs might have a one-off idea that they think is clever, maybe involving a celebrity or a pun, but the tough detective work it takes to find that one special truth requires patience, persistence, and interviewing people with whom you share little in common.

But, you know, that’s what writers get paid for.

And if the one needle you’ve found in that haystack is sharp enough, that’s all you need. A whole campaign can come out of it, a campaign that will be far better than ripping off trendy fonts, photography styles or PhotoShop filters from the latest award winner, because it’s true and speaks to an actual human need.

If you don’t have that surprising truth, surprising either because no one wants to say it or no one truthfully can say it, then you’ve got a cute little dog-and-pony show designed to entertain yourself and your clients, but nothing more.

Let’s take the recent Groundhog Day Super Bowl ad that’s getting so much buzz. It’s truthful in so many ways. First of all, it literally ran on Groundhog Day because the Super Bowl happened to fall on exactly that day this year. Kudos to whoever tripped over that truth, which might have seem meaningless until they made the connection between the holiday and the famous movie.

Secondly, it speaks truthfully to the reason people buy Jeeps, their versatility. You can say a lot of stuff about Jeeps, their MPG is truly bottom-of-the-barrel, but one thing they do well is let you go wherever you want, and take whatever you want.

And thirdly, it’s got Bill Murray who as an onscreen presence is always deeply truthful, oftentimes to the point of making you cringe, since he was trained in the Second City tradition which values honest acting over cheap laughs.

If it weren’t for those three things, if it were just “let’s put an aging comedy star in a Jeep ad and put it on the Super Bowl,” you’d have nothing. And that’s what so many amateurs don’t get.

Do your homework.

Be a pro.

Be truthful.

Dave Dumanis is a San Francisco Bay Area creative director, copywriter and content strategist with decades of experience bringing complex B-to-B concepts to life. He specializes in daring, idea-rich cross-channel campaigns that get noticed and get results.

Video killed the creative star: Why the insane race to go viral is destroying your creative team and budget

A few months ago I interviewed at a super-hot startup. Among the five or six people scheduled to grill me that morning was the company video specialist.

This is a fairly new role popping up everywhere, apparently based on the information that video radically boosts the chances of social posts going viral.

The person lucky enough to fill this role is usually a fanboy who thinks he’s Tarantino because he did a five-minute short in college, or maybe an ex-radio jock or TV news reporter. He–it’s always a he–has access to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive video hardware and software.

Well, I didn’t get the job, and I have a feeling it’s because the video guy gave me a lukewarm review. He asked me about my video experience. What he didn’t ask me about was my thinking experience.

Let me be very clear about this. Video specialists have no business having such a heavy hand deciding who’s going to be on the creative team and who isn’t. They have no idea what a concept is. They throw around words like “story” and “narrative,” but when push comes to shove, instead of taking the truth and making it fascinating, as a good filmmaker should, they make hackneyed PR videos with a few lame jokes thrown in.

The results are predictable. The videos get no traction, amusing though they might be to a few people around the office.

Now why is this? It’s because people are short on time. They want answers to their business problems. Answers that a jokey, goofy PR video won’t give them.

This presents a conundrum because only enormous companies like Adobe and IBM can afford to continuously produce the kind of content-rich videos that really go viral. It takes a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of knowledge, and frankly a lot of real interest in the subject matter that your average film buff can’t fake.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to produce the videos you post. You just have to find them. And there are relevant thought leadership videos out there that your audience wants to see, I assure you. They’re produced not by your competitors but by nonprofits, universities, think tanks and other organizations.

Save yourself a few hundred thousand dollars and post those videos, okay?

Oh, and that startup I mentioned? They just laid off half their staff. I wish I were lying.

Dave Dumanis is a 25-year San Francisco Bay Area copywriter, creative director and advertising veteran.

Creative agencies and departments, take this hint from Finland

Sanna Marin, the 34-year-old prime minister of Finland, made news this week when she recommended that her government seriously look into the benefits of a four-day workweek. (To be clear, this would be four days for the same pay as five days right now.)

Marin, a member of Finland’s parliament for four years and most recently the Minister of Transport and Communications, is hardly a novice when it comes to getting more and better things done in less time. Despite her youth, she’s deadly serious.

It pays to remember that just over a hundred years ago, really no time at all in a broad sense, people were regularly working 70, 80, 100-hour workweeks, and some of them were children. This was considered normal at the time, as was working on Saturday. If your boss was religious, you might get a break on Sunday.

What does all this have to do with creating for a living? Well, if you’re forced to stare at the same four walls and the same open plan office and yes, sometimes even the same faces for five nine-hour days straight, you might run into writers’ or artists’ block.

This is how we get campaigns that all look the same, even though they were created at different places by different people.

Instead of basing their work on problem-solving, and the inspiration that comes from getting to know your audience and your product, desperately bored creatives are forced to turn to the latest trends, scrolling through Ads of the World, Adweek, Ad Age, or that Super Bowl thing your client said they liked from five years ago.

Inspiration needs time.

Inspiration needs a chance to breathe, rest and refresh.

Inspiration needs a four-day workweek.

PM Sanna Marin proposes a four-day workweek for Finland. Smart creative groups should follow suit.

Dave Dumanis is a 25-year San Francisco Bay Area copywriter, creative director and advertising veteran.

Marketers need to stop ostriching on climate change

Many years ago, when my hair was mostly brown with a few gray strands instead of the opposite, my wife and I took a vacation in Asia. We went to Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and, because my wife wanted to see Bali, we stopped in Indonesia as well.

In order to get to Bali via the deal my wife wangled, we had to go through Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta. I have to say that at the time, it struck me as unbelievably banal and boring, one of the dullest capital cities I’d been in.

I wish it were as dull and boring today. Instead, it’s rapidly sinking underwater. The cause? Melting polar ice caused by climate change.

If you’ve never been to Indonesia, I don’t expect this will mean much to you. You’ll probably file it away in a mental folder called “Things to be concerned about when I have time.” But if you have, it’ll be very real to you. A place that used to be land is now sinking under the ocean.

Now: What the hell does all this have to do with marketing?

As marketers, we’re in denial, to one degree or another. Our rationale up until now has been that we have to be, in order to survive. We have to think about billings, clients, briefs, quarterly goals. There’s only so much room in our brains.

But now, faster than we know, the situation is flipping.

Now, in order to survive, we need to not be in denial.

For example, if you’re in the marketing department of an airline that flies to Indonesia, its sinking into the ocean is a pretty big deal that’s going to cut into your business. The same is true if you work for an international company that markets to Indonesian businesses or consumers. Are you a designer, art director or copywriter for a concern that makes things in Indonesian factories, like clothing or sneakers? You might be in for a bumpy ride.

Because now, global climate change isn’t something we can ignore, or donate to once a year, or pay lip service to with products named Rainforest Renew and Coral Reef Sparkle.

It’s something that should factor heavily into every decision we make, every day.

Our survival depends on it, not just as marketers but as human beings.

Dave Dumanis is a 25-year San Francisco Bay Area copywriter, creative director and advertising veteran.

Sunlight is born.

A few short years ago, I came to the conclusion that advertising is really just a bunch of noise unless it also involves helping our rapidly unraveling planet. It could have been the urge to make a better world for my teenage daughter, or just the daily news about penguins and polar bears, but I wanted to do my part.

It was around that time that I came up with the idea for Sunlight: An advertising and marketing organization–”agency” is too strong a word–focused entirely on marketing renewable and green technology to a world that needed a little kick in the rear to adopt it.

The timing wasn’t right then, but maybe it is now. Hence, a new virtual marketing group. A collaboration. A collective. An idea: Sunlight.

For now, I’ll continue to pay the bills via contract work. I’m lucky to have some great clients who encourage me to push boundaries and do what I do.

Meanwhile, more and more roofs are going solar. Teslas are everywhere. People are commuting to work by electric bike, electric kick scooter, electric hoverboard.

Maybe this whole alternative energy thing isn’t as crazy as it sounds.

We still aren’t adopting it fast enough, so there’s a lot of room for a group with a strong voice to do effective work. And while much of the work done is still nonprofit, more and more profitable companies are emerging on the backs of these technologies, making a a marketing agency a viable proposition even when social media companies are sucking up most of what used to be ad media revenue.

Over the years, my own work in this area has included ridesharing, solar panel and electric car doohickeys such as analog-to-digital components, software that automatically turns off huge numbers of computers, and paperless agreement technology. But the (petroleum-free) ride has just started.

Get in touch if we should talk.

Dave Dumanis is a 25-year San Francisco Bay Area copywriter, creative director and advertising veteran.