Bert Dean

“If it don’t sell, it ain’t creative.” My maternal grandfather, D.J. Morris, was a serial entrepreneur who dropped out of school in the third grade to go to work, so he could help take care of his siblings when his mother died. He ran a very successful general store/service station in the small country village I grew up in (Morristown, NC). I was sharing some “clever” advertising ideas for bundling lunch meals at a modest discount for tobacco workers and logging laborers. When he rejected my brilliant concept as “unworkable”

When I started my career in advertising here in Augusta, developing a comprehensive media plan was relatively easy. You could choose from three local broadcast TV stations (WJBF-TV, WRDW-TV, or WAGT-TV) and the four leading radio stations (WBBQ, WGUS, FOXY Radio, or WZZW). And if you wanted to advertise in the local newspaper, you basically had one clear choice—the mighty Augusta Chronicle. Today, the media landscape is bewildering to behold. We now have four local broadcast TV stations (the original three plus FOX 54), a myriad of cable and satellite