Letters - Stop the 'Whining' in Anti-Smoking Spots

Regarding the "I care" American Legacy Foundation spot featured in Best Spots [Creative, Sept. 23]:My mother smoked. My father smoked. My grandparents smoked. I tried Gauloises in France, hated them and never smoked.Which proves … I'm not a smoker. Smoking is gross, dangerous, foul-smelling, expensive and politically incorrect. It is also, sadly, still legal. It's not so much that smoking kills. It's that smokers choose to kill themselves. All the whining in this campaign won't change that.Cigarette addicts blaming the tobacco companies for their habit are akin to alcoholics blaming the distillers for theirs.Some diseases come out of the blue. And when that happens, it's tragic. Tobacco-induced cancer is not one of them.Susan BodikerCreative directorOrion AdvertisingWashington, D.C.Work Ethic Counts, but What About Teamwork?I 'll agree with 93 percent of Sally Hogshead's column [A&C, Sept. 16]. She never really touched on the fact that yes, we do knock it out of the park (more often than not) in that crucial purging first stage. With that said, teams all work differently. Some lock themselves in offices with tissues and Sharpies. Others leave work and go home to play with their new beagle puppy. Some do it, as Hogshead mentioned, according to the rules that creative director Bill Westbrook preaches. I've done a little of all of these with partners over the last 13 years. Well, my first year, I was a hack and prayed someone would rescue a bad idea if it had a glimmer in it.I had a boss who would push us to "do more." I don't agree with that all the time. If you have your presentation down, read the brief (and got it), by the time you show your creative director the 15-20 ideas you have, the two you really like better be home runs. To say "do more" when you really have tossed away 100 average ideas shows a lack of management skills, assuming the ideas were great. In the end, it all comes down to a team effort. A killer creative presentation might fall on deaf eyeballs if the team isn't right there with you. I have been in presentations where the warm-up got all mucked up and we never had a snowball's chance.Scotty NosenkoCreative directorRoust + PartnersHampton, Va.Small Town Is Award City For One CreativeI just wanted to say how refreshing it was in Lorraine Duffy Merkl's article "Late Bloomer" [A&C, Aug. 12] to hear someone speak for the masses rather than the elite for a change. I suspect there are many more of us toiling in anonymity than there are lunching with Cameron Diaz at Cannes.I spent the first half of my career working at great places in great cities, but what ended up working for me was moving to an agency no one has ever heard of in Fort Wayne, Ind. That's right, Fort Wayne. Since then it's been multiple Best of Shows at our local Addy awards and, just this year, a trip to New York City to accept my first Obie award. Even better than the awards is the fact that I report only to the owner of the agency. Big fish in a small pond is definitely what worked for me. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that the article spoke to me and I enjoyed reading it.Sean RodmanCreative directorRiley + CompanyFort Wayne, Ind.For the Record: In Best Spots of August [Creative, Sept. 23], the name of Brian Flatow, copywriter on The Ad Store's JetBlue spot, was misspelled.

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Letters - Stop the 'Whining' in Anti-Smoking Spots

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