Ego-alert! Fifteen bytes of fame.

David Wen, a hard working student at The University of Texas at Austin has a blog that he calls The Ranch. He also has the rather ambitious idea to interview ad-people on a regular basis, so far he's chatted to Ernie Schenck, Ignacio Oreamuno, Deborah Morrison and this morning, with yours truly. Keep it up mate!

Why do you think international advertising is more controversial/interesting than American advertising?

yeah, I always wanted to post international work, as the world wide web is just that and what happens on Mad Ave actually affects people in networked agencies in Sweden, so "adland" really is it's own land. It has no borders. Do you really think it's that much racier though? I don't know to be honest, you can show nipples in French ads, and Swedes wouldn't even care at the sight of a naked mans bottom, while in the states the bottom will be "blotted out" and a nipple can stop the super bowl. In the UK, I recall a soap-advert showing a nipple which everyone talked about, meanwhile page three girls show two every day. So, yes maybe ads in Europe in general can joke about sex - though probably not in the UK unless its a double entandre - while US ads stick to farting horses and chimps for their steady supply of jokes. I think it is just that the humour is different, and the grass is always greener elsewhere. No matter what country I worked in, I've always had some CD telling me that "You can't do that sort of thing here!". The US does have that puritan past deeply rooted into its culture though, this has a lot to do with it.