The Brilliant Seth MacFarlane

I typed “The Brilliant Seth MacFarlane” into my search engine and 11,000 entries came up. So how brilliant is the creator of Fox’s hit show Family Guy? Not yet 40 and still looking like he’s about 15, MacFarlane is the highest-paid television writer in Hollywood. But is this what makes him brilliant? No. It’s the […]

Feeling Over-Stimulated

This morning I drove by my neighborhood Mexican restaurant to see their marquee now reads: “Our Stimulus Package: Buy One Lunch, Get a Second for Half Off.” A minute later on the radio, some car company was advertising “our version of the stimulus package.” And when I arrived at my destination, I saw a store […]

My Bet for 2009 Word of the Year

Most word nuts know Merriam-Webster named “bailout” its 2008 Word of the Year (for obvious reasons). I’ve got a leading contender for this year’s honor: transparency.   When I was growing up, I associated transparency with ghosts — usually the friendly kind. After I gave up cartoons, I learned a more negative connotation for the word. […]

How Waitressing Made Me a Better Business Person

An interesting topic popped up at a recent dinner party I attended: What was your worst job ever? While my summer as a waitress didn’t beat dodging bricks at the city works department, “refereeing” parents at children’s soccer games, or suffering repeated burns from an industrial-sized dishwasher, nothing has been more valuable. No, not for […]

Elements of Style: The Movie!

I’ve recently become obsessed with the TED talks. And if you don’t know what TED is, you’re in for a treat. Like the most delicious treat, ever. These 20-minute “genius lectures” (TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design”) take place at the invitation-only annual TED conference and are rebroadcast online at TED.com. To date, there are […]

The Lack of Super “Super Bowl” Ads? I Blame the Economy.

I’ll begin by saying that I am not a big sports fan. Or even a small sports fan. But I do genuinely look forward to the Super Bowl for two reasons: 1) Hot spinach dip, and 2) seeing the best ads of the year — or at least the most expensive. Well, this year there […]

An Old Friend, On His Way Out

Being a newspaper subscriber is kind of like owning a 15-year-old dog. You don’t know exactly when the experience is going to end, but you might want to hold off on buying another bag of kibble. I am by no means a Luddite. I’m an avid Internet enthusiast and, in fact, earn much of my […]

Burger King gets it right … but I still don’t want to eat there.

I’m not trying to be all high and mighty here, but I don’t eat fast food. Even if it didn’t give me searing stomach pains, everything about it just depresses me. The mindless trading of quality for quantity, the dull-eyed shuffle to the counter, the … oh, you know! I could go on, and as […]

Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them

My friend, colleague and strategist to the stars (okay, strategist to regular businesses) Rich Nadworny of Digalicious sent me this Seth Godin post, which seems very worth reposting. It’s 14 good rules about email marketing. I particularly like #14: “Just because you have someone’s email address doesn’t mean you have the right to email them.” […]

The Laziest Ad Copy Ever Written

Well, maybe it’s the spirit of the New Year, but today I actually bypassed the article on bad celebrity drivers for something that’s relevant to what we do here at The Hired Pens.  I felt an immediate kinship with the writer of “I Hate You, Blue-Tux-Wearing Viagra Guy!” Like Farhad Manjoo, I don’t have cable TV. […]