Flop Sweat

There's a wonderful term that comics use to describe their physical reaction when they're bombing -- flop sweat.

Everyone in advertising who has to make presentations to large groups -- especially creative presentations -- knows the feeling.

You're standing up there. You've rehearsed your presentation. You've prepared a few gags. You're going through it just like you imagined. And you're getting nothing. Just stone faces.

Then, at some point, someone in the audience turns to someone else and gives him "the eye." You see the exchange of "the eye" and you know you're dead.

They don't just hate what you're doing, they're making fun of you silently.

You start to perspire. It's a cold, drenching kind of sweat. And you still have 20 minutes to go.

You make a vow to yourself: I'm going to quit advertising and take a job in a hardware store.

Hysteria Update
Despite all the hysteria in the trade press about ad agencies being behind the curve in digital advertising, our readers disagree. According to a fabulously unscientific poll conducted here earlier this week, agencies are more enthusiastic than clients are about online advertising by a margin of over 3 to 1.

By the way, you can place this in the archives of interactivity. In my experience, about 5% of visitors to blogs take part in polls, even if it only requires one click. Interactive, my ass.

The Long News
Good friend Kirk Citron (founded Citron Haligman Bedecarre, precursor to AKQA) is now writing an interesting blog called The Long News which is hosted on The Long Now Foundation website. The idea is to identify and make accessible news stories that are likely to be of long term consequence to us.

Less Talk, More Yelling.
Great post over at Chronic Fatigue on one of my favorite subjects, the "conversation."