Stroking It

(This week will be completely devoted to my Swim to Africa campaign to aid disabled veterans. To find out more details, see the blog entry dated May 26, 2011. To date we are more than halfway towards the stated goal. It is not too late to sign on for this worthy cause.)

Memorial Day, May 30, 2011.

It's 10:38 PM. I've just returned home from the pool from the second of my mile swims today. Two miles down and ten plus to go. I'm not going to bore you with details of the swim. Frankly I can't imagine anything more boring than writing about swimming. Other than actually swimming.

You see while covering this distance presents a physical challenge, it's the mental challenge that is more daunting.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
More than 70 times to cover just one mile.

Of course, it does afford the mind time to wander. And today I couldn't stop thinking of an assignment I was recently working on. Before I actually put pen to paper I was handed an extraordinarily wordy, not to mention complicated, brief. It was chockful of communications strategies, branding strategies, digital strategies and executional strategies.

To be quite honest, after 20 years in the business, I still can't tell you what any of those terms actually means. Frankly, all I hear is, "can you write a funny commercial about burgers or beer or cars or computers?"

Did I mention that in between these indecipherable strategy documents, there were charts?

Lots and lots of charts. I suppose people who think quantitavely assume people who don't think quantitavely will somehow benefit from these pie charts, bar graphs and vectoring arrows.

We don't.

The truth is they confuse the issues rather than illuminate them. Particularly for someone of my advanced age.

How can I explain this?

Oh I know...