A message from your Creative Director, Lord of the Flies

I've never been one to buy into the rubbish that "character" doesn't matter in election of leaders. The divining of "Brand Character" follows the same metric for me--it imbues a moral sense into the practice of commerce and builds true customer loyalty. I do, however, disagree with those seem to portray character as blind loyalty or blindness to truth. Character is shown in the grace and humlity with which we all recover from our inevitable imperfections and failings. And, how readily we are willing to admit them, rather than gloss over them or commit sins of ommision. Anyone who practices "customer service" knows this to be Gospel Truth. And "Truth," as someone once said, "Will set you free.

Yes, negative advertising works. And, no, all negative advertising is not "Bad." But context--a moral calibration like the legend or mileage ruler on a map--must be ever present, to preclude your wandering from a central shared standard of decency. The challenge comes in what you are advertising against--is it narrow standards of ethics and interest and gain, or a broader shared standard of wrong and right.

Slate

Credentials and committees don't make you ethical. Principles do. Those principles have to make sense. You have to apply them consistently or rethink them if you can't stomach their implications. And the easier you make them, the less they matter. The slickest way to make yourself look ethical is to narrow the definition of ethics so that it won't interfere with what you want to do. But that won't make you ethical. It'll just make you an ethicist.

The problem comes when your country or your company ceases to function accountably and predictably because of the use of those tactics. You reap what you sow. Your ulcers and the permanent crick in your neck from looking over your shoulder are your legacy. You die an insignificant, petty failure when you'd really hoped for more. You "destroyed the village to save it." Ironic, huh?

Over the rest of the campaign, we're going to attempt to go for the jugular with words and pictures; to try and simplify things into their basest and most brutal essence. Neither side is immune.

That is all.