Intersect this

If you’re wondering where the best place to meet up with your ad agency is, don’t worry. They’ll tell you exactly where they live. Spoiler alert: it will be at an intersection.

For all the creative minds working in agencies, somehow they’ve collectively decided to glom onto the word “intersection” as the word of choice to describe who they are, what they do, and what they’re bringing to the party.

And because agencies have never met a bandwagon they didn’t want to jump on, you can now find these roadmaps plastered across agency “About” pages all over the interwebs.

One agency wants you to know you’ll find them at the intersection of creativity and strategy. Kind of feels like the price of admission for an agency, but sure. Put up a sign.

Another will meet you at the intersection of creativity and technology. Welcome to the AI bandwagon. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.

Insight and imagination? There’s an agency for that.

Human behavior and technology? Apparently the robot revolution is already taking client meetings.

Some agencies have decided two roads simply aren’t enough. Their intersection needs an intersection. Culture, creativity and commerce sounds nice. Maybe not as nice as data, technology and creativity.

I’m sure there are agencies out there living at the intersection of curiosity, connection, disruption and authenticity. And I'd bet front row Springsteen tickets they're wearing black turtlenecks.

Personally, I think a lot of these agencies actually live at the intersection of bullshit and more bullshit.

Somewhere along the way, “intersection” stopped being a useful description and became an agency magic word that takes two expected agency job descriptions and makes them sound like they’re cultural insights no one else has ever thought of.

Chocolate and milk? Peanut butter and chocolate? Strawberries and yogurt? That’s just crazy talk.

Here’s the thing. Not every agency needs an intersection. And almost none of them need a manifesto.

Virtually every agency website shows work they've done and they're proud of. And if it doesn't, that's definitely not the agency you want. But if an agency has great creative that gets the job done, how about letting the work do the talking. It’s much more convincing than a paragraph about how your agency exists at the crossroads of human truth, cultural relevance, transformative possibility and whatever other words survived the edit.

I’ve written countless manifestos for agencies and clients over my career. (Pausing to laugh for using the word "career"). But in all those years and manifestos, I never once used the word “intersection.” Somehow I managed to describe what an agency did without pretending it occupied some mystical piece of real estate between two nouns.

Does that mean I live at the intersection of smarter and less hackneyed? Who's to say.

Tell ya what. Meet me at the intersection of modest and humble, and we’ll talk about it.

If the agency hasn’t rebranded that corner yet.

Culture club

You see a lot of sameness at Comic Con. Everywhere you look, there are people dressed up in costume, engaging in one of Merriam Webster's most recent word additions: cosplay.

For four days every July, the San Diego Convention Center is lousy with Stormtroopers, Ghostbusters, Jokers, Batmans, Supermans, Laura Crofts, Sleeping Beautys, Spidermans, Harley Quinns, Wolverines, Harry Potters, every character from Game Of Thrones and more. They are collectively all part of what the press likes to smugly dub "The Nerd Culture."

The word "culture" has become the go to adjective to describe large groups of people who generally share the same interests, have the same collective experience or do the same thing, together or separately. Much in the same way "-gate" is added to even the most minuscule hint of scandal.

There's a service culture. A truth culture. Modern culture. Art culture. Social culture. Fashion culture. Hero culture. I'm even part of one—blog culture.

Ironically, there's no yogurt culture. See what I did there?

Anyway, this label seems unnecessary. In many instances, it seems the word "community" would work just fine. Besides, practitioners of nerd culture are really just pop culture lovers with more free time, fewer girlfriends and less employment than the rest of us who enjoy the occasional Iron Man film or Walking Dead Experience.

This is my tenth Comic Con, and I've spoken to a lot of the people who attend over the years. Here's where I net out (pardon the ad lingo): if "nerd culture" means feeling confident enough to enthusiastically express how much you love a certain art form, having the freedom not to care what anyone thinks, retaining the innocence to believe there is still heroism left in the world and people are capable of rising to their better selves, then I only have one thing to say.

I'm all for it.