in which writing a novel becomes publishing one

Just pressed the send button on final manuscript for novel accepted by Simon and Schuster. Off it goes to the publishing gnomes who will read, rearrange, come up with covers, blurbs (hopefully) and (if I'm lucky) a marketing campaign. It's a story set in Adland (where else), Mad Men thirty years later, when a copywriter in her 40s tries to stay relevant as walls literally fall down around her. A coming-of-middle-age tale of a woman and a business. How surprised (thrilled, actually) I am to see that, though it's barely left my computer, it's already got a pub date (March 19) and a listing on Amazon! Title is "Making It: A Millennial Tale of Madison Avenue." Unless you can think of something better.

steve frankfurt brought creativity to new medium: TV

RIP Steve Frankfurt, a real-life Mad Man who helped transform television advertising from the talking-head medium it was in the 1950s when radio scripts were simply read to camera to the creative playground it became in the 1960s. He joined Young & Rubicam's television department in 1957, straight out of college when most of advertising's revenues came from print and no one quite knew what to do with TV. Because of this, "kids" like Frankfurt were given a lot of freedom.

"Television was a toy then," Frankfurt said in 1983 when he was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame. He became a leader in making use of all aspects of the medium: he used the of a beating heart for Excederin ads and a strobe-lightlike effect for Band-Aids. He broke another boundary when he became president of Y&R at age 36--top ad agency execs in those days were usually plucked from the ranks of account executives or copywriters.

A New York Times article announcing his promotion in 1968 noted he kept his office on the creative floor, not the "sixth, top management's bailiwick." He spread his talent to Hollywood where he was hired by producers to create title sequences for films including Rosemary's Baby and To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1965, the BBC profiled him in a documentary series called Insights into the Lives of Individual Americans. He was billed as "The Quiet Persuader."

Here's the footage, kindly posted on youtube by Steve Emmerling, a former Y&R copywriter. It's a wealth of 60s styling details like closets hidden behind wallpaper, wrought ironed balconies, pipe-smoking in offices and men sitting around conference room tables as secretary discreetly serves each freshly brewed coffee in cup and saucer and Don Draper-esque men in three piece suits say things like "We need something pictorially to symbolize fresh!"

 

how to get a book deal

1. Write something that isn't advertising.
2. Trash it.
3. Repeat.
4. Daily. For years.
5. Assemble 65,000 words you don't hate.
6. Spell check.
7. Spell check.
8. Describe #5 in a sentence. The most important product copy you'll ever write.
9. Embed #8 in a letter to a few excellent agents.
10. Spell check.
11. Repeat #9 and #10 until someone is kind enough to request #5.
12. Wait.
12. Wait.
12. Wait.
13. Realize that timelines in Publishing are way different than in Advertising.
14. Discover the five stages of rejection.
15. Repeat #14.
16. Until, one day, to your astonishment, an agent falls in love with your work.
17. Which makes you fall in love with the agent.
18. Happily, she'll take it from here.

how to sell a movie before it's made

Had the pleasure of speaking about social storytelling last night at Storycode, premiere meet up group for transmedia, at Lincoln Center where @BettyDraper shared the stage with creators of fascinating twitter campaign for forthcoming film Saving Lincoln. Two of the creators were still in LA but that didn't detract from their ability to answer questions via Skype. (Isn't technology bliss? When it works.) The film isn't coming out until later this Fall, but twitter campaign for it was aptly launched last year. The film portrays Abe's life through the eyes of his (real life) best friend who tweets @SavingLincoln in the voice of an 1860s soldier. What interested me is how they're using the twitter feed to flesh out stories that couldn't be included in the film. Tweets are ostensibly from his private diaries and are archived in an onsite "anthology" of stories that makes for pretty engrossing reading.

What also interested me was the mechanics of twitter campaign production. The twitter writer (yes! there's a twitter writer!) actually storyboards tweets in a serial comic strip format which can be sent to producer for review and edits. Finals are pre-posted onto Hootsuite, about 4-8 tweets a day, each day forming a story "beat." Story tweets are posted together, to keep the stream "clean", response tweets are posted later. No sell is put into tweets--the movie itself is rarely mentioned. The sell is offloaded to the Facebook page. All this might sound easy and no-brainerish, but that's because they (with no template) have figured it out.

@bettydraper hooks up with Abe Lincoln tonite

In a remarkable mash-up of 60s eras, @BettyDraper (1960s) will be joining @SavingLincoln (1860s) to talk about bringing characters to twitter. Tonite, 7 PM, Lincoln Center Amphitheater, 144 West 65th St. Hosted by Storycode, that awesome community of immersive storytellers. Disclosure: January Jones will NOT make an appearance. And neither will Abe.

i'm baaaaaaaack

To those who've noticed: apologies for the hiatus. I switched to anti-social writing for awhile, aka: finally finishing a long-ago-started novel. And starting another. Great news this week, which I'll share in a later post after contracts are signed and advances distributed. I'm a staunch believer in waiting til Fat Ladies Sing.

notes from my sxsw session

Thanks to Craig Carter for live blogging my SXSW session last week. If you missed it and want to catch up on how brands can use social storytelling to enhance the fan experience, his excellent notes can be found here. Or listen to the SXSWpodcast here.