www.gapingvoid.com : Hugh MacLeod reminds me why I was drawn to Blogging in the first place with an extremely thoughtful rant on the advertising indsutry.

"I was talking to a banker friend (not a client) about bank & financial marketing.

'Money is a commodity,' she says, 'All the services are pretty much the same. Makes it hard to market the stuff.'

'Yeah, well,' I say, 'If they're buying the same stock photos of the same silver-haired couple playing golf and cranking out the same 'managing your hard-earned success' drivel as their competition, then they should expect the same crappy results.'

'Agreed,' she says, 'but still, it's a conservative market. Doing something edgy would scare too many people.'

'Well,' I say, 'if you can't be edgy, be lucid.'

'Lucid?'

'Yeah. You and your colleagues... you're all pretty smart, engaging people. When you guys talk about your work it's pretty interesting to listen to. How come your brochures aren't the same?' "