This article really got my attention so I thought I’d share it.
Katie Notopoulus of Business Week and Kayla Iu of the Daily Free Press recently witnessed a small crowd taking to the streets of Boston to protest, holding signs, chanting, with one person even appearing in full costume and face paint. The protest took place in front of the Back Bay headquarters of insurance company Liberty Mutual. The protest was not against some sort of corporate malfeasance, political, or even a social justice issue.
They were protesting the existence of Liberty Biberty, the new fuzzy yellow mascot that appears in the insurance giant’s TV ads.
People, for some reason, really hate the Liberty Biberty puppet.
There’s a Facebook page with over 40,000 people devoted to hating it. There’s TikToks. Reddit threads. There was even a depicting of the spherical character being fed into a meat grinder.
The concept of the ads is surreal and self-referential. Liberty Biberty is a yellow puppet who has appeared in a few TV ads so far. In one, he appears on someone’s car and tells them about the benefits of auto insurance, and then is carried off by a hawk. In another, he chats to a bored bartender, and then meets the aforementioned hunky actor prone to malapropisms.
Liberty Mutual is well aware of the, ahem, passionate response.
“We’re encouraged by how strongly people are engaging with him, whether they love him or feel differently,” Jenna Lebel, Liberty Mutual’s chief marketing officer for US retail markets, told Business Insider. “We’ve been encouraged by the early results, including independent testing that shows Biberty performing above average on attention and brand attribution.”
Insurance companies’ advertising strategies for the last decade or more has been focused on a series of recognizable characters like Flo from Progressive, Jake from State Farm, and “Mayhem” from Allstate. Let us not forget the forefather of them all, the Geico gecko. Liberty Mutual has also had Doug and the LiMu Emu, as well as a hunky actor prone to malapropisms — hence “biberty.” (Don’t worry: Doug and the LiMu Emu are still active, Liberty Mutual’s PR person assured. Some complaints about Biberty were that people thought it had replaced the popular human/avian duo.)
Young people are watching less and less linear television, and so see fewer traditional ads, with one big exception: sports. Most of the people I talked to mentioned seeing the Liberty Biberty ads during baseball or football games, week after week.
The repeated exposure to the ads seems to be getting under people’s skin.
“I think Liberty Bibberty is just a disgusting little creature,” Connor Harvey, the organizer of the protest in Boston, told me. The 19 year old content creator from New Hampshire said that he considers himself a “sucker for weird advertising,” but that the fluffy yellow orb seems to be intentional ragebait — purposely meant to be annoying.
“The new Biberty campaign has definitely sparked a conversation, with a wide range of reaction and opinion. We’re listening to all of it,” Lebel said.
Zach Johnson, 40, manages a machine shop in North Carolina and was inspired to start the Facebook group “Liberty Biberty Hate” after seeing the ad multiple times while watching TV with his wife one night. “It’s a terrible mascot. Plus, they have more mascots than I can think of,” he said.
The over-the-top hate towards the mascot is certainly a bit tongue-in-cheek; although some people may find it genuinely annoying, it’s not offensive or tone-deaf.
Does that mean all that hate may actually be a good thing for Liberty Mutual?
“I think there’s a real opportunity right now to jump in and have fun with this moment in a way that, frankly, a lot of brands would absolutely die for,” said Simon Bruyn, ad industry vet and co-founder of the marketing strategy firm Significant.
“For that Gen Z and younger culture, who might be starting to get into insurance decisions, you suddenly have a very clean crossover into an internet nascent brand that feels like something you could really, really have fun with and play and own that idea of faux outrage,” Bruyn said.
Harvey, the protest organizer, isn’t in the market for home or auto insurance — for now. “I’m on my mom’s insurance,” he said.
Sadie Denty, a 21-year-old college student, said she traveled from Maine to protest because she doesn’t usually get to partake in many “fun internet things.”
“I get the ads constantly, and there’s been talks about AI generation which I personally don’t support. I think we should go back to having more fun ads,” she said. “I just think we need to reset what we see on our ads and on our screens.”
Denty said the protest was about more than just the mascot.
“I think we live in a really divisive time,” she said. “And sometimes silly things like this are a great way to bring a real community together.”
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
The “Ultima Thule” Daguerreotype by Edwin H. Manchester 1848;Reproduced from a copy daguerreotype, ca. 1860;Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society
Bestselling author Lyndsay Faye discusses Edgar Allan Poe and his use of loss and negative space in compelling fiction.
After I read LYNDSAY FAYE’s take on Poe’s fiction, I thought it appropriate to share given my recent post about Poe’s death anniversary.
Here’s what Lyndsay had to say:
I stand before you in defense of nothing! Charles Seife wrote in Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea, “The biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and eternity, the void and the infinite, zero and infinity.”
Therefore how natural that every form of art makes use of both what is and is not visible. Pauses in music … blanks on canvas … stillness in dance. And since transforming inert words into three-dimensional motion, sound, imagery, and feeling is undoubtedly an art form, the writer must therefore also attend to not only what is set down, but what is omitted.
We are not speaking of edits. This art of negative space goes far beyond our sacred advice sometimes the delete key is your best friend (sometimes a delete bulldozer is your bosom comrade, which I discover novel after novel by scrapping at least 20,000 words from the first draft). Our focus here is rather on what the Japanese term ma: the possibilities tingling within emptiness—the lack that makes the reader crave—the eclipse delineating the sun.
The cavity from which Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s most renowned early authors, drew his greatest effects.
My favorite Poe short story launches its gleeful nightmare straight from the maw of negative space. Indeed, “The Fall of the House of Usher” relies so heavily on nothing that the estate’s shattered relics are literally swallowed into the tarn in the infamous conclusion. But let us instead study its opening lines, the words Poe selects to set his largely empty stage:
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
From the curtain’s rising, we flounder in a blank atmosphere: Rather than lightning-streaked portents, we are given dull darkness; instead of thunderclaps, the afternoon is altogether sans noise. Clouds obscure the skies, our hero is unaccompanied, the countryside is bleak. Yet every word of this non-description of setting is precious, for how unnerving is it that there is nothing of significance to describe at all? While our traveler practically drowns in vacancy, we as readers are strangely intrigued, next to be treated to “vacant eye-like windows,” arguably far more uncanny than eye-like windows watching our hero’s every movement.
Lest we forget: I must refer to him sideways, as “the protagonist,” or “our chronicler,” since the narrator is never graced with a moniker. The nameless raconteur battles the missing throughout this classic work. His friend Roderick Usher, who called for aid? “His reserve had always been excessive and habitual.” The Usher line itself? No branches, no in-laws, just a matched set of spectacularly uncheerful siblings. The estate’s servants? “a valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence…” And Roderick’s problem? “I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror … in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
We know the moral that there is nothing to fear but Fear itself: In Poe, however, while “The Fall of the House of Usher” is clothed in the same argument, another critically apt reading would be that there is nothing to fear but Nothing. Poe’s poetry is famous, not to say infamous, upon this subject—what doth the Raven quoth so tauntingly but nevermore, nevermore? But myriad other examples are relentlessly woven throughout his prolific canon. I particularly love the miniature ode to loss at the opening of “To M—,” published in 1829:
O! I care not that my earthly lot— Hath—little of Earth in it— That years of love have been forgot— In the fever of a minute—
Or consider, equally preoccupied with the want of key facts, “Ulalume—A Ballad”:
Our talk had been serious and sober, But our thoughts they were palsied and sere— Our memories were treacherous and sere; For we knew not the month was October, And we marked not the night of the year—
What so touched Poe about negative space? Famously, his personal missing pieces were myriad and transfiguring. The author lost his father in infancy when David Poe, a traveling actor like Edgar’s mother Eliza, abandoned his family. The fatal drowning in open air to which so many succumbed—tuberculosis, or the “White Plague”—robbed Edgar of his mother merely a year later, and in his mid-20s the same disease cruelly stole his beloved child-bride cousin Virginia.
It is tragic that Poe lacked family, but they were hardly his sole want; he lacked affection from his foster father John Allan, not to mention official adoption papers; he lacked steady employment, often; he therefore spectacularly suffered a lifelong lack of money; he frequently lacked the acclaim he felt was his due. Naturally, we find these themes of holes riddling the work he so frenziedly produced attempting to forge a career—to create from nothing a place in the early American literary pantheon.
My eighth novel, Raven, is not a pastiche of any particular Poe work (though it is structured according to “The Fall of the House of Usher”) but rather mingles the tragic horrors of his entire canon with the aching losses of his biography. Capturing the emptiness he both battled and sought to capture was thus crucial for me in writing the antebellum biography of Raven Helen Allan—like Poe an unwanted orphan and addict of self-destruction. She writes at the opening, “I died a fortnight ago this coming Thursday. It was a terrifically unpleasant experience—being murdered, I mean to say.” Her posthumous autobiography (or is it?) proves rife with losses, and when she is forced to take employment as a paid companion in the foreboding woodlands outside of Baltimore in a disintegrating mansion, she risks everything to tear aside the masks she encounters and reveal the Legrand cousins’ harrowing secrets.
Fascination with the void was of course not new to Poe. Saint Augustine, trying to conceptualize the chaotic pre-Creation abyss in his Confessions, described, “It was not absolute nothingness. It was a kind of formlessness without any definition … True reasoning convinced me that I should wholly subtract all remnants of every kind of form if I wished to conceive the absolutely formless. I could not achieve this.”
Neither could Edgar Allan Poe, nor did he attempt to—nevertheless, it is in his adoration of the unreachable that we find some of his truest writing. Perhaps the finest example of his reverence for the intangible is found in “Ligeia,” when he wrote in the year 1838:
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of the mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact—never, I believe, noted in the schools—in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
Thanks, Lyndsay! My thoughts: Even though Poe had his mind and imagination somewhere in another universe (Twilight Zone, perhaps?), he is still regarded as one of our most creative and mysterious writers of all time. Time and circumstances permitting, I wish I could have met him. That would be one hell of a conversation, especially over a glass of cognac!
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Author’s Note: This is my latest addition (#19) to my short story compilation. It’s a tale of our time-traveler hero going into the future while on vacation and his unexpected encounter with a pirate named Hook (no, not that one) and a smuggling ring of fine jewels.
Pirate ship bow with Jolly Roger flag flying in stormy open sea near rocky coastline. Adobe Stock
Just last week I read in AdAge about recent developments in the industry to deal with current trends and news-making discussion. Thanks to Ewan Larkin, Gillian Follett, Brandon Doerrer, and Jon Springer for putting this article together. I felt it appropriate to share with you for reading pleasure and knowledge.
Advertising Week New York returned to the Penn District last week with a bevy of creators, the same dizzying lines and crowds and, at least in intent, less AI conversation. Agentic media buying was a hot topic, too, with executives mulling over how much control software should have over the process. Key takeaways below.
The push and pull of AI
One year after ChatGPT trucks swarmed the conference, Advertising Week tried to turn down the volume on AI. The push started before the event, with a campaign promoting face-to-face interaction. This week, event staff wore T-shirts urging attendees to “give AI a break,” a message that also blared on screens during panels.
“I’ve been to eight conferences this year and this is the first one where the panels and conversations were not completely dominated by talk of AI,” said Tom Morrissy, chief growth officer at media agency Noble People.
That could also be because some of the AI conversation shifted to other marketing conferences held this week. Former WPP CEO Mark Read brought his new invite-only, AI-focused event series, Prompt, to Manhattan on Tuesday. On Wednesday, influencer marketing platform Statusphere hosted its inaugural Status Summit, centered on how AI is reshaping the customer journey. And on Thursday, marketing leaders including Ulta Chief Marketing Officer Kelly Mahoney and PepsiCo Beverages U.S. CMO Mark Kirkham took the stage at Zeta Live, the annual conference hosted by martech company Zeta Global.
Still, plenty of Advertising Week programming focused on AI, from agentic commerce to how brands compete in the world of large language models. There was a good deal of tech on display, too. Kovio, which sells ad space on humanoid robots, had one stumbling through the building, waving and blowing kisses at the many passersby it drew.
Celebrities, big crowds and a change in venue
The Female Quotient’s FQ Lounge was one of the hottest spots, consistently packed from Monday through Wednesday as attendees sought out CMOs and brand executives.
Trevor Noah drew a long line for his Great Minds Stage session focused on brand partnerships and YouTube. Attendees also crammed into the small Marketplace Stage room to see Terry Crews and leaders from Ogilvy and Creative Artists Agency discuss AI and protecting creator and celebrity likenesses. TikTok star-turned-entrepreneur Alix Earle was on stage Tuesday morning for a conversation about the creator economy.
Creator marketing has outgrown the sponsored post
Conversations around creator marketing have officially evolved beyond best practices for brand-sponsored social posts. Several panels instead explored creators’ growing influence on everything from AI search to Hollywood.
On Thursday, creator Dhar Mann took over the main stage to host Advertising Week’s first “Creator Day,” where CMOs, creators and other attendees participated in games and challenges inspired by reality TV formats. A session called “The Masked CMO” (inspired by Fox’s “The Masked Singer”) had NFL CMO Tim Ellis, Blizzard Entertainment CMO Monica Austin and Wendy’s newly installed CMO Tariq Hassan don cloaks and masks and describe what they’re seeking from creator partners.
“Facilitating the environments where creators and marketers can be together in the same room is something I think we need to do more often,” said Jessica Williams, CMO of financial services app OnePay, who spoke during Mann’s Creator Day. She said she’s focused on establishing more direct relationships with creators, particularly those who work with the brand on larger, longer-term campaigns, rather than routing everything through agencies.
“I have so many creators now that I can just text [to ask] ‘Hey, what do you think about this? Do you have anyone who might be interested in this?’” Williams said. Earle made a similar point during her main stage appearance, saying she’s currently in group chats with two brands she’s working on campaigns for and values being directly involved in those discussions.
Blenders Eyewear took that philosophy a step further in July, when it brought creator Jordan Howlett into the C-suite as the brand’s first chief content officer. On stage at Advertising Week, Howlett and Blenders CEO Jack Gray discussed how the partnership goes beyond a typical ambassador deal, giving Howlett a say in the brand’s content strategy and product development.
“We’re reaching such a transitional period, where I think a lot of people—creator, brand or otherwise—are realizing that the previous [creator marketing] model … has run its course,” Howlett told Ad Age. He expects that more brand-creator partnerships in 2027 will resemble his relationship with Blenders.
Another recurring theme was marketers allocating bigger parts of their creator budgets to creator-hosted events and experiences in 2027. Scott and Alexis Fisher, co-founders of Creator Nation, the newly launched, Live Nation-backed creator management venture, told Ad Age that helping creators organize and host live events—from stadium tours to mall meet-and-greets—is a major priority for the firm.
“We want to bring back that fandom and the fan experience that really drives creators,” said Scott Fisher, who founded talent firm Select Management Group in 2010. He recalled that in the creator economy’s early days, “our clients would show up to a mall, and the fire department would get called” when the crowd inevitably got too large. “If you have fans, then you have a business—a long-term business.”
Creator-hosted events are emerging as a bigger priority across industries. OnePay’s Williams and Carlos Wigle, chief creative officer at personal-injury law firm Morgan & Morgan, both said they plan to partner with creators on events next year. “In a world of AI, people want those real experiences,” Williams said.
Agentic media buying questions remain
Leaders from brands and agencies discussed the potential for AI agents to take over more of the media buying process, and questions remain about how much control advertisers are actually willing to hand over. Several sessions explored the technology needed to automate media transactions, connect agents across buying platforms and shift more investment decisions away from humans.
A Thursday session presented by Vistar Media—featuring Maureen Bosetti, chief investment officer at Omnicom Media; Bruce Williams, CEO of dentsu X; and Danielle Sporkin, senior VP of media and marketing services at Ferrero—examined the risk of prioritizing faster media execution at the expense of strategy, creative and a meaningful understanding of audiences. At a Wednesday panel hosted by Snowflake, Jason Dailey, North American agency partnerships lead at Meta, and Mike Treon, head of connected TV and video strategy at PMG, stressed that agents still need a deeper understanding of brands’ businesses before they can be trusted to make those decisions.
Dailey said agents need three things to make useful media decisions: context, constraints and an understanding of consequences. That includes everything from a brand’s budget and margins to seasonality and restrictions on where it will advertise. While AI models have become more sophisticated, connecting them to that information remains challenging.
“The models were really never the hard part,” Dailey said. “The hard part was, how do you take those three C’s and then actually get that into the ad system?”
Meta announced new capabilities for its AI business assistant that provide more memory of advertisers’ past campaigns, goals and seasonality, along with tests of tools that allow advertisers to create campaigns, adjust targeting and change budgets through conversational prompts. Meta is also expanding its Model Context Protocol server, which allows advertisers to connect outside AI tools to its ad platform. Actions prepared by agents can be transferred into Ads Manager as drafts, with explicit advertiser approval required before campaigns go live.
For now, adoption remains uneven. Dailey said some agency partners are restricting access to agentic tools to a handful of employees, while others are making them available across their organizations. The degree of autonomy varies as well, from allowing agents to retrieve campaign information to permitting them to make actual changes. Those decisions depend partly on each organization’s technology investments and appetite for risk.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
After reading about this commercial and then seeing it, I felt it worthy of sharing, especially for those who may not be aware. So listen, watch and read about it. I think you’ll be impressed as I was. Enjoy! Thanks Tim Rudd of AdAge for your share.
Apple’s effervescent three-minute accessibility spot “I’m Not Remarkable” won the 2026 Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial on Sunday—the tech giant’s third Emmy win for best commercial in the past four years and its second Emmy win partnering with Somesuch director Kim Gehrig on an accessibility message.
The five other nominees this year included another Apple spot—the holiday story “A Critter Carol”—as well as the Adidas World Cup spot “Backyard Legends”; Coinbase’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “Your Way Out”; Levi’s 2026 Super Bowl spot “Backstory”; and Nike’s “Why Do It?” anthem from last summer.
“I’m Not Remarkable,” made in-house by Apple, rolled out last December. Set to the Kittyy & The Class track of the same name, the musical piece follows Deaf and disabled students through classrooms, dorms and parties at college. The lyrics reject the usual narratives portraying disabled people as extraordinary, arguing instead that they simply use different tools. Apple features including Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access, Accessibility Reader, VoiceOver, AssistiveTouch and Live Captions appear throughout the film as students juggle lectures, friendships and deadlines.
Gehrig also directed Apple’s accessibility spot “The Greatest,” which won the Outstanding Commercial Emmy in 2023. Apple also won the award in 2024 for the holiday spot “Fuzzy Feelings.” (Uber One interrupted Apple’s streak last year, winning for the spot “Brian Cox Goes to College.”)
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
After the Cannes Festival ended a few weeks back, I read an interesting interview with Richard Edelman about trust. Below are just a few questions slightly edited for clarity that I think you’ll find enlightening. The interview was conducted by Jeanine Poggi, AdAge Editor-in-Chief.
Trust is a recurring theme at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year, and Richard Edelman, the CEO of Edelman, thinks the challenge runs deeper than declining trust in institutions or the rise of AI-generated content.
Consumers are becoming more insular, relying on smaller networks and trusted voices to make sense of the world around them, Edelman argued during a conversation with Ad Age. The impact for marketers, he said, is a shift from “we” to “me”—from broad messages designed to reach everyone to more personal connections that make consumers feel seen, understood and represented. That shift has major implications for how brands communicate, who they partner with and what it takes to break through.
Edelman, who has led the agency since 1996, shared his views on why creators are becoming more influential than celebrities, what marketers are getting wrong about audience connection and why he believes brands need to stop talking at consumers and start meeting them where they are.
Jeanine Poggi: How do you build trust today?
Richard Edelman: The first is, we have to do information from the bottom up. Bottom up means we have to talk to friends and family, we have to talk to people like pastors, pharmacists. It can’t be top down. That’s change No. 1.
Change No. 2 is brands have to do something, they can’t just say something. So if you want to be successful, you need to be in action mode. Some of it can be fun action but you can’t just get attention. You can’t just be living in culture.
Third is, and that’s why I think our research at Cannes is important, we have to recognize that people are in a very insular mindset, that their groups have become very small. And that if you’re insular, if I see you selling to people who are different than me, I’m going to reject your marketing. So I’m gonna say you’re not for me.
Poggi: So then how do brands build broad appeal when consumers are becoming more insular?
Edelman: We have to stop having campaigns that are about we and be about me.
How do I benefit you? I benefit you because I see you, I’m helping you, I’m making you feel better, I’m giving you a chance to talk back to me.
I think, for example, science needs to have a new deal with society. Science was always just accepted—we have a polio vaccine. Now it’s well, were the clinical trials biased? People are asking different questions. And so we have to take information down to a level. It has to be not only in local market, but even the micro market.
Poggi: Are brands putting too much emphasis on celebrity influencers?
Edelman: They should be looking to creators. They should be looking to people who have feet on the street. We want trusted creators. We want people who speak with authority to smaller audiences, because it’s more credible.
That’s the job for PR, is to find them, speak with them, involve them with the clients and have 50 of them go to Korea and be part of the process of developing a foldable phone. And then they’re on the journey.
Poggi: What’s the biggest shift marketers need to understand right now?
Edelman: I want people on the brand side to understand that the glass mirror is shattered on the ground. And that we’re lots of little shards and we have to talk to the shards and we have to talk to people in the way that they want to speak. And that’s with ordinary folks who have experience with the product and who are therefore believable.
Poggi: What do you think CMOs are getting wrong?
Edelman: I think they have to play offense. I think they can’t play defense. I think they can’t hide. I thought the Super Bowl stuff, a lot of it, was not penetrating to me because it was not memorable.
I think what’s going to stand out is brands that really inform me and value me as a voice, and they do it in part by letting go of their power.
Why are e-commerce brands succeeding? They’re succeeding because it’s a person like me. It may be someone a bit more celebrity, but big brands have to disperse their power and can’t feel big. They have to act small.
And I’m nervous that brands go, “I don’t want to be in politics.” Fair enough. I don’t want you to be in politics either.
But I want you to be relevant, and I want you to listen to people—the fears, inflation.
The second is fear of AI. This is crazy: two-thirds of people think they’re going to be sacked because of AI.
And the last and most problematic is: people have no sense of what the truth is. And so they’re withdrawing.
The brand has to find that withdrawn person and say, “come out, let’s talk about what you care about. And here’s something that’s going to make you feel optimistic.”
Richard Edelman speaking at the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (Edelman)
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
A short story aboutCharity Hospital New Orleans and its aftermath from Katrina
Prologue
NOLA. Its spirit stays with you long after you’ve gone. The sights, smells, music and culture all linger, sometimes even after one’s memories fade. Those thoughts, dreams, even nightmares can embody your neighbor’s flesh and blood even when that neighbor passed away long ago. Caution: Some photos may be too unnerving or unsettling for some viewers.
A little history . . .
Charity Hospital of New Orleans, LA has long been the medical headquarters for many patients. Some of whom, it is said, never left. If that is so, how many souls stayed behind after the hospital permanently closed? What of them? When alive they endured many horrific events with Hurricane Katrina. Many a sane person would have gone crazy during those times, not able to rid themselves of the nightmarish memories they must still have.
I wonder, do souls have nightmares? Do they wander around aimlessly and body-less seeking answers? Do they seek revenge of some sort? Do they yearn to inhabit other living or dead bodies to continue life anew?
Seems like this would be the stuff of an episode right out of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. While interesting to ponder, the hospital sat empty and abandoned for a long time without anything being done to recessitate it. A surreal set of circumstances led to its demise and only in New Orleans could an old, empty hospital reemerge as a haven for lost souls. Spirits, ghosts, whatever you like all need a place to gather, a place to call home. In NOLA’s Charity Hospital, they evidently found it.
But the story doesn’t end here; it merely continues. To what end, you may ask. Well, we don’t know . . . yet.
Chapter One
It was a dark and gloomy night in the French Quarter so we thought we’d stroll down a few blocks and see some old buildings. We eventually got to the section of Tulane Avenue where one of the oldest abandoned buildings in the area has sat empty for decades-Charity Hospital New Orleans.
Staring up at the 1939 built 20-story Art Deco building, one gets a feeling that the intimidating structure is not too keen on the idea of letting visitors inside its hallowed halls.
Nevertheless we marched slowly but steadily onward to see what had been left behind when it was evacuated because of Katrina in 2005.
In a word, not much. Yet there was a lot that remained. Indeed, some rooms we passed looked like time itself had died that horrific day. Other rooms appeared as if the patient had hardly gotten out of the room before the flood waters rushed in. And then there was the Autopsy Room.
The turn-of-the-century flooded autopsy theatre in the basement of Charity Hospital. Reddit.com
“Administration” Photo by Michael Alford
We drew closer not believing what we thought we saw. The patient appeared to be the only “living” creature in the room. Then suddenly one of the “surgeons” unexpectedly looked up and floated in our direction. It was obvious that he/she/it wanted us out of the room – NOW! We didn’t hesitate except for me; I felt like my shoes were glued to the floor. I kinda shook it off a bit and yelled “we’re going, we’re going!”
“And the Sky was Grey” by Michael Alford
As if these images didn’t make for an uneasy feeling in us, we made our way down this one hallway to see what more could be observed. That’s when we heard it; a soft, eerie-sounding voice whispering “Get out. Leave us alone. We don’t want you here.”
We all just froze. At first we didn’t know what to do or say, if anything. Finally, someone in our group said simply, “Let’s proceed anyway. I’m not going to let a strange voice scare me outta here.”
Well, we continued on, this time ascending two more floors. Alas, it was just as bad and desolate as downstairs. Some rooms appeared as if a bomb had gone off. Others looked like they had only recently been vacated.
Photo: Abandoned Southeast
Abandoned Southeast Photo (If one didn’t know any better, one might think that Housekeeping was running horribly late.)
Proceeding down the hallway we came to what appeared to be an operating room. As we peered inside we could see the patient on the table surrounded by ghost-like figures all dressed in surgical gowns.
Back in the hallway we all were grasping for breath and, yes, looking like we’d just seen a ghost! But before we had a chance to recover, approaching from the other end of the hallway were various other ghostly figures heading our way.
Adobe Stock
Upon seeing this, we wasted no time in locating the nearest stairwell and ran up, I don’t know, what seemed like several flights of stairs. We came out and were grasping for breath. At this point someone just spouted “to hell with the research, let’s get the hell outta here.”
“Okay, everyone, calm down. We’ve just had the wits scared out of us. If this were Halloween, it would be funny. C’mon, let’s proceed down this hallway and . . . “.
Chapter Two
Just then low screams came from a few doors down. When we got there we witnessed a shadowy figure sitting on the bedside with an ax and a pool of blood clearly visible on the floor with a severed hand laying in the blood.
“Oh my God,” blurted Selma. “Somebody do something! He’ll bleed to death,” she said.
“What makes you think he’s alive?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s not. He’s been that way for decades,” says a voice emanating from a nearby chair on the far side of the room.
This time, this ghost appeared more visible than his counterparts before. His features were distinctive but his body had an iridescent glow to it. He was there and yet he wasn’t.
“Excuse me, sir. Do you know this person?,” I asked. “Yes,” said the ghost. “He was my brother, Warren. He died years ago,” stated the ghost.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said I. “By the way, I’m Joe, this is Selma, Thad and Fred. We’re just exploring the hospital before it gets torn down. We honestly didn’t expect to come into contact with anyone here. But we have; at least we think we have,” I stated.
“My name is Walter. I died some years ago, too. As for meeting folks here, you have indeed come in contact with them. If they’ve seemed to be a little skiddish, they are. They’re not used to visitors especially when the hospital closed some years ago. Everyone in New Orleans thought Charity had been completely evacuated; alas, it was not, as you have seen.
“Oh sure,” Walter continued. “Every body was taken out of Charity but some of those died before being taken out. Those souls decided to stay and remain with the friends they had made while here.”
“So what about you, Walter?,” I asked. “Well,” he started, “I kinda look after this place and my friends. We’re not leaving as we have no place to go. Our families have accepted our deaths and have moved on. Why would we want to go back after all these years and disturb their peace? No sir, not gonna do it!,” Walter stated flatly.
When we reconvened out in the hallway we thought about what to do next.
We all thought it best to leave then so we began toward the stairwell. As we started our descent, we could hear in the distance jazz music from the downstairs coffee shop where a jazz quartet played . . . decades ago. All would be dead by now.
Chapter Three
As Selma led the way and was making the turn on that flat “transition” area between floors, she was startled by the sudden appearance of a cloud-like image swinging an ax and, in the blink of an eye, thrusting it into the mid-section of Selma’s body.
As soon as it began it was over, with the image disappearing into and through the wall. Selma was writhing in pain lying down in a pool of blood grasping for breath. There was little we could do. In moments she would be dead.
Walking down fifteen flights of stairs in a building without power or air conditioning is taxing enough. When you add on carrying a dead body under these conditions it makes for a grueling exercise.
The remaining three of us just knelt there beside Selma, all stunned and in shock. Before we knew it, Fred jumped up, hysterical, and screamed, “I’ve got to get out of here; we’re not wanted!”
With that, he jumped up and proceeded to run downstairs, from the fifteenth floor, but seemed to trip as he was rounding the corner of the stairwell, broke through the railing and fell to the lobby and to his death.
Thad and I exchanged horrified looks and just remained there, motionless and not saying a word.
Chapter Four
Then I stated as calmly as I could, “Ok, let’s proceed together, steadily down the stairs to the lobby. It’s just the two of us now, Thad; there’s nothing more we can do here.”
“But what about Selma? We can’t just leave her here; she deserves better.,” Thad remarked.
“You’re right, Thad, she does,” I injected. So we both picked her up as gently as we could and proceeded resuming our trek downstairs. I suggested we take a moment’s break on the tenth floor to gather ourselves.
We reached the tenth floor and rested some. We were both sweating profusely but had nothing to wipe the sweat from our burning eyes.
Almost there we thought. Adrenaline had started to kick in and traversing the next five flights wasn’t nearly so difficult as we suspected it would be.
We each winked at one another and allowed a wry smile on our faces; we were close to getting out of here. We then took a few more steps then stopped. Froze. We heard something that sounded like crackling wood. Before either one of us could say anything, the floor of the stairwell began to give and in a flash both Thad and Selma’s body fell the remaining five floors. If she was still alive she wouldn’t have survived the drop. Thad wouldn’t have either.
Chapter Five
So now it was just me. Five floors to the lobby and exit. I was shaking so badly I could hardly stand. I managed to steady myself as best I could and slowly, holding onto the railing, got down to the second floor but I had to stop once more to catch my breath.
A few more steps and I’m home free, I thought. When I got to the landing area between first and second floors I just stopped again and thought about what we’d just accomplished. Just a few more steps . . . And then from behind I felt the unnerving sensation of being pushed. Before I knew it I was head over heels tumbling downward and unceremoniously heading for the first floor.
For what had to be only a few seconds, it felt like I was tumbling through infinity. Then, suddenly, I felt motionless, I wasn’t falling anymore. I guess I was laying on the concrete floor but I didn’t feel a thing. Didn’t even feel my heart pumping. My breathing? Don’t think I was. My mind was slowing down, now almost to a standstill.
Is this what it’s like when . . . you’re. . . dying . . .
A final thought to my story. Four new souls entered Charity Hospital to see what happened inside thanks to a wicked woman named Katrina. During their journey they met some very interesting residents, all of whom called Charity home. Never mind that the hospital has been closed for decades and that there are no living residents inside. As there have been since Katrina there are now only souls, the souls of Charity.
Epilogue
The historic Charity Hospital building in New Orleans is undergoing a massive $600+ million redevelopment with Tulane University serving as the anchor tenant and become the heart of Tulane’s Downtown Medical School. The iconic New Orleans hospital served the community for a century as the City’s safety-net hospital, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and training thousands of doctors and nurses. Old Charity will become the flagship building for Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, as well as housing for biomedical research labs, Tulane’s Innovation Institute and their School of Professional Advancement. The revitalized structure is expected to open around 2027.
The project is moving forward through a complex, years-long journey to revitalize the 90-year-old, 20-story structure that has been largely vacant since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The Vision: The billion-square-foot facility is being renovated to include state-of-the-art medical and life-science labs, approximately 300 apartments, commercial offices, and retail space.
Tulane University’s Role: Tulane has committed to occupying at least 500,000 square feet of the massive building for public health, biomedical research, and teaching purposes.
Funding and Politics: The redevelopment faced a major political battle when the New Orleans City Council allocated $20 million in bond/trust funds to help speed up the construction. Mayor LaToya Cantrell previously vetoed this ordinance out of concern for other city budget priorities, but the City Council successfully voted to override the veto to keep the project on.
Hurricane Katrina flooded Charity’s basement, shutting down the hospital and trapping roughly 360 patients and 1,200 staff members inside. Weeks later, a team of volunteers, contractors and the military cleaned out the lower floors to get the hospital “medical ready,” but it would never reopen.
For a closer look at how this monumental structure is being reimagined, you can explore the Charity Hospital Redevelopment Project or read about Tulane’s plans on the Charity Redevelopment page.
The 90-year-old, 20-story Charity Hospital building that has been vacant since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. (Photo by Lance Traweek.)
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Why the most valuable skill at work might be talking to strangers
Young charming woman talking to attractive stranger at the cafe. Adobe Stock
A new book reviewed by Michael Lee Stallard for SmartBrief argues that we could be missing valuable connections. Beyond career advancement, Sandstrom presents evidence for something even more profound: that speaking with people outside our immediate circle fundamentally changes how we think.
When we talk only with the people we already know — our team, our department, our usual lunch group — we tend to reinforce what we already believe. Our thinking becomes narrow and self-confirming. But when we engage with strangers, we encounter different experiences, different frames of reference and different ways of seeing the same problem. The result opens up the possibility of what researchers call convergent thinking, which is the ability to draw connections across seemingly unrelated domains and synthesize them into something new.
I think of this as “mosaic thinking.” Picture a mosaic, a piece of art composed of small fragments such as colored glass, stone or ceramic tiles. Mosaics dating back to ancient times can still be found in houses of worship in Italy, vibrant and whimsical mosaics created in the 20th century by the Spanish architect and designer Antoni Gaudí adorn buildings and park benches in Barcelona, and you’ll find mosaics on the walls of subway stations in Manhattan and the renovated LaGuardia Airport. Individually, the fragments seem unrelated, but when assembled, they form an image none of the individual pieces could have produced alone. This is precisely what happens in the mind of someone who is genuinely curious about the people they meet.
Every conversation with a stranger, therefore, has the potential to produce a “tile” — a small piece of new knowledge or perspective that, over time, accumulates into a richer, more creative, more innovative way of thinking. There may also be times when a seemingly innocuous comment someone else makes is the “aha moment” for you, and you recognize why a certain tile won’t fit, or you finally see how the tiles can come together.
In an era when organizations are desperate for creativity and innovation, this is not a soft benefit. It is a competitive advantage — and it starts with being willing to say hello.
A talking cat giving life advice to a confused adventurer Adobe Stock
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
The art world has succumbed to controversy via a graphic outdoor display of the menstrual period. Continuing education of health issues is in the public interest so why is this display so disturbing to some?
Singapore – Kotex has launched a global campaign highlighting the absence of menstrual blood in mainstream art, positioning it as a long-standing form of cultural censorship.
Developed with DAVID London and Ogilvy Singapore, “Art’s Missing Period” brings together works that were previously rejected by galleries or removed from public display due to their depiction of menstruation.
The campaign reframes the issue as one of visibility, arguing that while violent imagery involving blood is widely accepted, menstrual blood remains excluded.
Kotex revives banned art showing period blood
“Visibility shapes culture, and we set out to change both,” said Genevieve Gransden, Executive Creative Director at DAVID London.
“This is not just a campaign. It is a restoration of voices, narrative and art that deserves to be seen,” said Selma Ahmed, Executive Creative Director at DAVID London.
The campaign includes a short documentary directed by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Kathryn Everett and narrated by journalist Noor Tagouri.
The film examines how depictions of blood tied to violence are widely shown, while menstrual blood is treated as taboo, and features accounts from artists who have faced rejection linked to the theme.
Beyond film, Kotex has rolled out mobile billboards and street posters outside major museums, including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
The placements position the campaign directly at the doorstep of institutions central to shaping public art discourse.
QR codes embedded in these placements direct audiences to a virtual gallery hosting more than 40 artworks centred on menstruation.
The online platform, launched on April 6, 2026, will run for one year and is designed to provide a dedicated space for artists and exhibitions exploring the subject.
The campaign marks Kotex’s latest effort to address stigma around periods, shifting the conversation from product messaging to broader cultural representation.
Thanks to Sharona Nicole Semilla of Marketech APAC for contributing this article
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Creatives can lead in the AI era by reclaiming foundational skills such as editing, packing, lighting and overall execution. Adobe Stock
An opinion piece I found interesting and thought it best to share. Hope you find it worth the read.
The traditional creative process began with a client brief. From there, strategy was developed, and only then would the creative process start. Teams brainstormed, then collaborated with creative leads until a deck was prepared. Once the client approved the deck, there was a sense of relief: the idea was greenlit.
AI fundamentally altered this process. Now, once an idea is approved in a deck, AI sets creatives on a new journey—an extension of the original process.
What felt like the end is now just the beginning.
Greater need for clear vision
I won’t argue the well-worn territory that AI is just a tool and that people must lead creative processes. But having established the importance of humanity to lead, it’s important to determine where people fit in the new creative process for situations where AI will be used.
It’s been asked: Is our new role solely to be the very best prompt writers we can be, knowing that the output will be determined by precise inputs, phrased in a way the computers can metabolize?
I don’t think we simply become “creative prompters.” It’s not about being on a pedestal and giving direction; it’s about being where the work is actually shaped. This exciting shift makes us creatives more professional again, relying on technical knowledge rather than just intuition.
In the AI era, approval marks the start of a new creative process, where creatives need to become a kind of artisan again, despite using technology. Specifically, evolving creatives must know exactly what to ask for—providing references from art, cinema, fashion, architecture and advertising itself—to direct the AI.
Jarring? Perhaps. Beautiful? Indeed.
Precision and exploration
Traditional creatives are all about precision, while AI is about exploration. In the AI era, creatives must double down on precision while being open to exploration. That means rethinking the creative role altogether.
This shift requires creatives to adopt more than a sensibility; they need technical expertise and holistic vision. Here are the fundamentals you need to succeed:
1. Story fundamentals
Creatives must be articulate about what they feel and think in executing the approved concept: Clear story references, resources and vision that once belonged to directors or producers must now come directly from the creative’s mind.
To become true craftspeople again, creatives must be immersed in advertising history while studying modern techniques and resources. This forces you to rely on technical knowledge rather than just intuition, experience or criteria. Transcend the suggestion that creatives will become prompters. Go beyond that; it’s more than just giving well-referenced instructions.
In a way, this is where the terms “creative” and “creator” converge. With each iteration of instructions, the work is being shaped, changed, evolved and improved. It’s precisely about shaping the work as it’s being created.
2. Visual fundamentals
Creatives need strong visual literacy even more in an AI era. Studying other arts like photography, cinema, fashion, architecture and design is a foundation. Bring clear aesthetic references from the idea stage to define the original visual look. On a more technical level, understand and apply concepts like composition, lighting, tone, texture and more.
When creatives acquire these skills, they move beyond simply prompting visuals and begin shaping them. Each iteration becomes an opportunity to refine the idea. Again, creatives become both thinkers and makers, using AI not just to generate images but to actively build a distinct visual language as the work is being created.
3. Direction fundamentals
Finally, creatives need strong direction skills: the ability to translate an idea into vision, then vision into reality. It all comes down to what the audience sees. Creatives must speak the language of camera, editing, pacing, cinematography, lighting and overall execution details.
Refine this skill by thinking like directors earlier in the process. Move from proposing ideas to actively shaping how those ideas come to life. In this, AI becomes a collaborative execution partner; with each iteration, creatives can guide performance, refine tone and evolve the work in real time, ensuring the final result reflects a cohesive, intentional vision.
Amid the AI revolution, embrace your own renaissance. The traditional era’s end is your new beginning, too.
Because AI transformed creative approval, making the end the beginning, creatives must evolve from executors into true creative professionals. Reclaim foundational skills and you’ll lead in AI-driven execution. Clear references, resources and vision—what once belonged to directors or producers—now come directly from the creative’s mind.
David Castellanos is creative lead at Erich & Kallman.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
