I'm cleaning. I'm cleaning my office, myself and all the loose ends on my websites, or at least trying to.

I've removed the contact page from this one for example, as it was never used for anything but spam and the occasional lost soul from Adland who thought this was the place to ask things like "where do I find X ad" or a recent favorite: "I have a great idea for a commercial how do I sell it?"

Disregard that I don't like being contacted on my personal site about Adland, since Adland has it's own contact form, and lets forget that adland has a specific adforum area for those "how do I find X commercial" questions for a moment, the recent mass of "how do I sell my commercial idea" is quite odd. Last night it culminated in a strange phonecall.

A bloke from the UK calls, I can hear that he's in a rather noisy spot, cups hitting tables and chatter in the background and he tells me that he has a blockbuster idea for a commercial that would sell every unit of Levis (or whatever) brand they had. It's that great, it's so great he almost doesn't believe it himself, he's got three outrageuously good commercial ideas and two great ones, and he wants me to tell him how to get them sold.

For a moment there, I was sure that someone was having me on. Possibly my old prankster DJ friend Michael. Or Perhaps Steven Hanson. Or even Alex Paton. Yeah, those guys are nuts. A brief second there I envisioned a Youtube video animation of this call being passed around the web forever. I didn't know what to say to the poor chap who "saw my company on the internet at this internet café and thought I could possibly help him with contacts to sell his commercials".

It is a bit odd that this questions has been asked at least once a week recently. My reply is the standard; "animate it, stick it on youtube, hope you get lucky." The people asking this sincerely believe that one hit commercial might make them rich for life, a bit like those people who dream of doing one novel and retiring. The truth is, a career creating commercials or novels never relies on one or three good ideas, but hundreds of thousands, and you have to work really hard for a long time before you get anything done. Ever. There are no shortcuts, lest they start some version of "Idol" called "Adol" where hopeful contestants compete to become ad-men (and women). Maybe here already is such a show.

To make the call even more uncomfortable, it was late, and my office is next door to this:

So, forgive me if I don't fancy giving random strangers career advice at ten thirty in the evening. Or any time at all, for that matter. I am not the ad wikipedia - and there is no tried and true method of "selling a commercial idea" apart from - *gasp* - having a job in advertising where you get paid to conceive of such ideas in response to a brief. Getting one of those gigs usually involves going to college first, pounding the pavement and working really hard. There are no shortcuts.