"Writing is closer to thinking than speaking." Joseph Joubert

"The verbal and visual elements of modern communication are as indivisible as lyric and music in a song." George Lois

"Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees." Paul Valery

Today's image: The Picnic Is Over by Madison Guy. Fine shot. Thanks for sharing (Check out his blog, Letter from Here, here).

Big slowdown sets in for ad spending: A Media Life piece by Lisa Snedeker provides some perspective.

Universal McCann's legendary forecasting guru Robert Coen says "Marketers trusted their fears more than their hopes" by way of explaining the soft '07 numbers. Coen notes that ad spending as a share of GDP has fallen since 2000. The Universal McCann outlook for the '07 finish and Coen's '08 projections (national advertisers)...

2007 v 2006
TV Networks +2.2%
Spot TV -6.5%
Cable TV +6.0%
Syndi TV -8.0%
Radio -3.0%
Newspapers +6.5%
Yellow Pages +1.0%
Internet +20.0%
Total national +3.1%

2008 v 2007
TV Networks +5.0%
Spot TV +10.0%
Cable TV +6.1%
Syndi TV +1.0%
Radio +1.0%
Newspapers -1.0%
Yellow Pages +2.0%
Internet +16.5%
Total national +5.5%

Read Lisa's entire article here. Kudos to Lisa on a fine job!