welcome to ad-versary.

Hi - my name is Will and I’m here to introduce my new thing. It’s called ad-versary. And it’s here to make your life easier by telling you things you don’t want to hear. 

I’ve been working in advertising for 25 years, give or take. I’ve gone from being the only guy who knew what the Internet was, to being the person who propped up a legacy business WITH the internet, to the internal marketing guy. 

I’ve helped build big teams. I’ve helped build small teams. All are built to be agile and intelligent.
But every team I’ve ever built has had two problems: 

First, they’re dependent. 

They’re dependent on getting their boss’ approval. They’re dependent on their client liking the concept. The copy. The image. The design. The idea. Whatever. 
At the end of the day, the strategy of the idea gets well-separated from the idea because of the yearning for acceptance..  

Second, more often than not, these teams are dependent on a business that thinks they understand marketing but don’t. 
Maybe they watched all forty-seven seasons of “Mad Men”. Maybe they wrote a good tagline in their head for a Super Bowl ad while sitting on their coach between Missy Elliot and Eminem. Maybe they just fucking woke up this morning and decided they were marketing geniuses. 

I dunno - but alot of people think that what we do is easy. And that’s a little insulting. 

So - I’m starting ad-versary for two main reasons. 

The first is to help teams get beyond the desire to placate, by giving them the substantiation of hearing from their customers and the experts who truly know better - so when they’re in that pitch they have outside references to lean on and the confidence that yes, their farts smell that good.

The second is to help those teams communicate with their leadership, whomever they may be, why what you’re delivering is right and whatever amateur ideas they have bouncing in their head are misguided. 

At the end of the day, we’re delivering the discipline of having someone check your work. That someone is your customer and experts that have nothing at all to do with you, your boss, your friend Steve, or anyone else remotely related to you.

We’re nobody’s friend. But we’re nobody’s enemy. We’re here to make sure work is great and to help teams get to great work. 

Hit me up to chat. 

PS - The Red Hot Chili Peppers haven’t released a good album since BloodSugarSexMagik. Tell me I’m wrong.