I love the casting in this.

All of you bring good points. I don't think what sakibafridi describes can be compared to a concept portfolio piece, and if it has run it's not really a scam ad either as long as the client has signed off on it. I've done many campaigns that way that became successful. However, it is backwards,since one should work off a brief with a strategic objective, not come up with ideas and slap logos on them.

What Bittertruth points out is important, why am I doing the work backwards? Because frankly, someone else in those agencies is not doing theirs. We would get briefs that we spent time on and it turned out that the whole strategy was exactly what the client did not want, wasting our and their time. It was frightening how often a creative teams gut instinct on what would be right for the brand and client was correct, and the account executives swore that the client would never do that. Thankfully, I am no longer at that agency, the moral of the story is that a good account exec that is creative and understands the client is worth his or her weight in gold, and they are such rare birds.
I'm now at a company where I work off briefs that are correct at the start, and it really shows in the work. Everything we produce here is much better already on the napkin level. We may not score big in Cannes but the level here is much higher in general on all work and I'm proud of it.

Bittertruth has it right when he described that Art directors and Copywriters only have their book to show for their career. But decent teams do more than just write words and make things pretty, we are the account execs and planners rolled into one. I've had this sneaking feeling that if we made teams of four (ad, cw, planner and account) rather than two arty types locked away in a room alone, we'd all work a little harder in getting the great ideas sold to the client.

Perfect.

It wasn't.