We’re idea generators. Content creators. Perception manipulators. Brand resuscitators. Call it what you will, but in the end, what we do in this business usually comes down to what we can fit inside a rectangle. My first boss, John Mezzina, once said, “If you can’t communicate it quickly in a billboard, you don’t have an idea.” He was right. And a billboard is a rectangle.

Advertising is a conversation that mainly takes place inside a rectangle regardless of whether your rectangle is a fixed space or a kinetic space or even a performance space. Find a huge insight that leads to big ideas and you can change, shape or extend a consumer’s frame of reference by smartly engineering your ideas inside the frame of your given rectangle.

Yes, we’re told to “think outside the box.” But isn’t it funny that most of our out-of-the-box thinking still has to fit inside the rigid frames of a box? You know, like that of a magazine ad, or flatscreen, or billboard, or website, or brochure, or iPad?  Advertising as we know it isn’t dying. It’s only getting better because there are more rectangles to play with than ever before.

Just like this blog. – Glen