When I first came to New York, I spent several years working in “sports promo”. You know those little ads at the top right corner of the USA Today’s sport section? That used to be my job! I would download pictures from a stock photo site, one player from this team and one from the other, and drop them in to ads designed to look like the they where about to eat each other’s spleens.

Unfortunately, any type of conceptual ad or headline was next to impossible to pull off. Usually it would end up being something like “Rumble in the Big Easy” or “Come On, Feel The Heat!” This was because we couldn’t't focus on any particular athlete. If someone became injured, or sucker-punched a fan, or killed a bunch of pit-bulls in a backyard dog fighting ring, we needed to have alternate images to swap out at the last minute. That way we wouldn’t run an ad that would garner bad publicity for the event, or show an athlete who wasn’t actually playing that night. On occasion, these changes would be made several hours after the newspaper’s “drop dead” deadline.During hockey season, we would occasionally have to go to our fourth or fifth alternate.

Fashion runs on a totally different time-line. Back in my sports promo days, I would look at people working on fashion and cosmetic accounts with serious envy. These people might be working four, five, maybe even six months in advance of their deadlines. By the time the fall season was here, the ads for the following spring season where already of being retouched and polished up. For an over worked, ulcered guy like myself, that sounded like a huge improvement!

Now, I’ve never worked for a fashion magazine, but its  easy to imagine that they work on a similar time-line. So I guess it isn’t so surprising that a coked-up jail-bound drunk with her career firmly in the crapper is gracing the cover of one of the nation’s most prestigious fashion magazines.

As I walked to work this morning past the ritzy section surrounding Carnegie Hall, I noticed a phone booth ad proudly displaying the September issue of ELLE magazine. There, in all of her freckled glory, was none other than Ms. Mean Girls herself, Lindsay Lohan. One might think that ELLE is taking risks by placing a human lighting rod like Lindsay on their cover, but I tend to think that decision was made a long time ago. Back before her May drunk driving arrest or her stint in rehab. Before her latest movie tanked or her July re-arrest. I’m talking way back in the salad days when the lovable star of Parent Trap was starting to show herself to be a true movie star.

Perhaps ELLE could learn something from the USA Today sports section.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio