dangerous word in advertising. Preoccupied with originality, copywriters pursue something as illusory as swamp fire, for which the Latin phrase is ignis fatuus.’ Mozart said, ‘I have never made the slightest effort to compose anything original.’ I occasionally use the hideous word creative myself, for lack of a better. If you take the subject more seriously than I do, I suggest you read The Creative Organization, published by the University of Chicago Press. Meanwhile, I have to invent a Big Idea for a new advertising campaign, and I have to invent it before Tuesday. ‘Creativity’ strikes me as a high-falutin word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday. A few years ago, Harry McMahan drew attention to the kind of commercials which were winning the famous Clio awards for creativity: Agencies that won four of the Clios had lost the accounts. Another Clio winner was out of business. Another Clio winner had taken its budget out of TV. Another Clio winner had given half his account to another agency. Another refused to put his winning entry on the air. Of 81 television classics picked by the Clio festival in previous years, 36 of the agencies involved had either lost the account or gone out of business.