Oh wow. I just looked up the date of my last Getting Cre8tive blog post. It was a full month and two days ago.

That lapse violates every single thing I preach about social media. You can’t be a ‘thought leader’ if you aren’t consistently sharing your thoughts.

But there’s a good reason for this. Not only has it been a heck of an August with a family reunion vacation and the dropping off of my eldest daughter at college (sob!); it’s also the month that Spencer X. Smith and I are wrapping up the book we’ve been writing called…can’t quite say yet ;). Suffice it to say I’ll be trumpeting the title and its subject here, there, and everywhere on or about September 1st (2017.)

It’s been a labor of…labor. Anyone who’s ever written a book length work knows exactly what I mean. And that’s the real point of this post.

Sometimes going deep means you have to run silent too.

Fans of historical WWII fiction will recognize the literary allusion of this post’s title. It’s the same as a book by Edward L. Beach Jr. about two opinionated pros battling each other as they take on a much larger foe. I’m happy to say the collaboration between Spencer and I was far more amenable, but the foe (the book) was just as challenging—if less deadly.

Here’s a poster from the 1958 movie adaptation:

I guess that makes me Clark Gable. Spencer, I hope you’re ok with Burt Lancaster. And seriously, if you haven’t seen this classic of the submarine flick genre, check it out. It’s rated 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for a reason. 

We live in an age of the hot take, the snapshot, and the two-second shoutout. Everybody’s got a par-baked opinion about everything. There are several words that describe that kind of person; Opiner, Pundit, Gadfly. But what if you’d rather be recognized as a Thinker, Thought Leader, and Expert?

My advice: Run Silent. Run Deep.

– D.P. Knudten > Chief Collaborator > COLLABORATOR creative

PS: About the book. That wonderful curmudgeon Professor Scott Galloway of NYU’s Stern School of Business calls it “A book that starches the fluff from ….”

You didn’t think I’d spill the beans, did you? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! BUT…it’s so cool that the book’s not even out yet, and we got our first order for 60! Thanks @jimtubbs @darintessier @statebankofcp!

©2017 D.P. Knudten / COLLABORATOR creative – all rights reserved

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D.P. Knudten, the Chief Collaborator at COLLABORATOR creative, is a ~25-year veteran in advertising and marketing. Providing everything from custom copywriting; content marketing strategy, creation, execution; and his NonFiction Branding™ system, D.P. collaborates creatively to identify, craft, and tell the true brand stories of complicated products, services, and companies, and share his personal POV about all the above—and more—in speaking presentations to groups throughout the U.S.