I have a message for the readers of The Agitator:

Don’t waste your time by going to the SOFII Website.  Stay away from it.  Don’t say any good things about it.

And please let me quickly tell you why I’m sharing this negative reaction about SOFII.

It’s because, a few days ago, I received a call from Roger Craver, my friend and colleague of many years, asking me to evaluate the SOFII Website.

I had never heard of it, but I did know the founder of the project, Ken Burnett, who I consider to be one of the pioneers in this business.

So I went to the Website and dutifully clicked through the pages.  And then I told Roger, in effect, that I thought it was just a collection of old campaigns and nothing more.

Well, Roger politely turned my jaundiced comments into a positive review.  And as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.

Then, yesterday morning, I received a SOFII update, announcing that 16 new exhibits had been posted on their Website.  Hmmm.   New stuff?  I took a look.  Yes, it was new stuff and pretty good stuff.  I thought about a client who asked me to come up with an idea for XYZ project and suddenly, there it was – an idea totally worth swiping. 

Which proves the truth once again in Roger’s quote from George Bernard Shaw:   “The mediocre borrow. Geniuses steal.”   Not that I’m a genius.  Far from it.  I’m a thief.  Always have been.  Always will be.  I clone stuff.  I revitalize.  I twist a concept and make it my own.  I sell it to the client.  He pays his bills.  Ain’t life sweet?

But back to the SOFII Website.  I looked around the site a little more and I found another idea worth jotting down in my “To Do” file.  And then another.  And then another.

Face it, Huntsinger.  You were a bit hasty in your negative reaction to SOFII.  More than hasty.  You were stupid.

You see, I’m going through a phase that I call my “mature years.”  I don’t read the professional journals.  I don’t write any professional articles.  I don’t attend any conferences or conventions.  I don’t give any speeches or conduct any seminars.  Or yak, yak, yak on any panels.  I just look at mail when it comes to my house – that’s all.  That’s my research.

And that isn’t enough. 

But now I’ve found SOFII!  Good grief, as Peanuts said, “ Life is really nice  when someone else holds the football.”

But I don’t want my competitors or my clients or anyone else to see all this good stuff … so I’ve decided to launch a whisper campaign against SOFII.  And I’m sure that some of the folks who run conferences and conventions are going to share my concern and help me in this, because they are going to lose a lot of attendees when people find out that a one hour tour through the pages of SOFII will harvest more great ideas than three days of conventioneering.

Enough said.  Stay away from SOFII.

Jerry Huntsinger