Let me start out by saying that I loved being a creative director. On most days I probably felt like I had the best job in the world. I start out by saying this because I imagine a lot of what I write will seem to the reader like I’m describing a negative situation or a hardship. And I guess for most people insanity probably would be a hardship, but we creative director types are not normal. Not even a little. You might even hold the illusion that you are normal. I know I do. Yet even though for I have described myself as very, very, normal person for years and years, I have not been able to generate much agreement in this area.

To be a creative director is to be paid to be insane. A sort of professional Schizophrenia. And there is a huge distinction between professional insanity and amateur insanity. The former pays much better than the latter but there are other distinctions too. Otherwise you could just scour the sanitariums of the land to find creative directors. Which contrary to what most account people might think, won’t actually work. The difference between the pro and the amateur is the ability to turn it off and on. I guess mostly to turn it off. It gets turned on pretty much automatically.

Usually by other people. Who need you to think about their ideas. And there are a lot of these people. They’re mostly but not exclusively called art directors and copywriters.  They have so many ideas and they like them all. And their ideas fill your head. They insist on it. If you’re really busy and there are a lot of assignments flowing through the shop, it seems like you can go a week without having any thoughts of your own. It’s not that you don’t think. You think all the time. But you think about thoughts that weren’t born in your head. Strange and wonderful thoughts that your brain may not even be capable of having are cohabitating with hundreds of other thoughts that might all be in direct contrast to each other. Fighting in your head with your own damn thoughts taking both sides.

Now if you had a lot of time to do this thinking it may not be so much like insanity. It might be described with lofty terms like philosophy. And I do believe all good marketing and branding is essentially philosophy. Create a philosophy and express it. But it’s definitely philosophy light. And the thought process is more similar to schizophrenia. With each thought never in your head for more than 15 minutes and with each thought carrying the exact same amount of importance.

You’re not supposed to have your own thoughts. You learn to discount your own thoughts. It’s not fair to the people who work for you. You don’t want to compete with your art directors and writers. You want to build their ideas. So if you do have an original thought (and it does happen) you better to give it to somebody else so they can warp it and give it back to you.

Now I haven’t described anything any decent psychotic can’t do. But here comes the professional part. You take all these voices and find a compress them all into one. Some have to go away some have to combine and other have to wait until later.

Oh, and when it's all done you just have to present all this insanity to the client like it is the sanest idea anybody has ever had.

ShockingBarack.com is a labor of love. Hopefully all of your labors in life are filled with love although sometimes they’re filled with money, too. But Brammo is still a very small company and their advertising budget is essentially zero. What they offer instead is brilliant minds and progressive thinking that’s just amazing to be around and that’s worth a lot.

About three weeks ago, Dave Schiff and his partner Alex Burnard came in and told me they thought we should give a Brammo to the President because he needed to know that America's most energy efficient vehicle was being made in Oregon by a scrappy bunch of electric vehicle visionaries. I bounced the idea off of Craig at Brammo who loved it and suggested we retrace the path that the American car company CEOs took when they recently visited DC. This was exciting because now I had the chance to break the news to Dave that he would be putting his money where his mouth was and so he’d be making the journey with Brian, the head designer from Brammo. If you look at the site Dave is the guy in the impossibly dorky brown helmet. He actually rides to work in that helmet most days.

With a budget of zero we knew the only way to make the journey would be to rely on the kindness of Americans along the way to get us there. So the guys will be using couchsurfing.com to recharge their bodies at night and asking for donations of electricity to charge up their bikes. (Each charge is about 35 cents so we’ll actually pay folks if we don’t have donors ready at a given stop.)

We’ll also be looking for help in meeting President Obama. We figure somebody must know him or know somebody who knows him so we can schedule a good time to present him with the Brammo. We don’t want to surprise him since that kind of thing probably gets you face down and spread eagle with a secret service agent kneeling on your back. But we want to shock him with the fact that without any bailout money these enterprising and innovative dudes at Brammo have a homegrown solution to our country’s transportation crisis. And it’s not theory. It’s for sale.

The guys leave in a couple of days from Detroit, and they’ll be shooting video along the way to post each night. They’ll be tweeting and blogging from the road. Although I think a lot of what happens is going to be weird and hilarious, I can’t help but be very curious if there is a possibility that social media can actually get these guys and this company an audience at the White House. There is no doubt social media is helping a new breed of politician get elected, but does it go the other way when we need their attention? We shall see.

www.shockingbarack.com

Tweet them @shockingbarack

Brilliant! From http://theoatmeal.com/comics/twitter_stop#