Babbling Point

Two Young Creatives of Equal Talent by David Lubars Executive Creative Director of BBDO North American Originally published in Communication Arts July Illustration Annual 2001 You and your buddy are just starting out. You’re a couple of juniors from ad school, or wherever. You both have killer books; maybe you’ve scored in the One Show college competition. You’re excited and juiced. You have tons of potential. Flash forward fifteen years. One of you has become the creative director of a brilliant agency. The other is brain dead in Punxsutawney. A fascinating scenario, and one I’ve tried to make sense of in the twenty years I’ve been at this. If you’re a kid, this is written to try to help you avoid the mistakes some of your talented but misguided predecessors have made. Here, then, are nine attempts at understanding why some people fall off the face of the earth: First, it seems that these people somehow get i