Celebrate Your Failures.

During his discussion of Penguin's marketing strategies at the PSFK conference last week, Jeremy Ettinghausen made the interesting aside, "I could have shown the ones that didn't work but prefer to focus on the positive".

I think he should have done. I think everyone should. It would highlight the erroneous thought processes, the strategic cul-de-sacs and the creative indulgences, but the reverse engineering would surely also reveal some insights that had evaded you before.

Of course, when I remarked that such a thing would make an entertaining presentation, the advertising luminary sitting next to me responded that he'd need two time-slots to cover all his failures.

But I stand by my reaction. Anyone want to try?