Steffan Postaer is the Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of one of the world's largest advertising concerns, Euro RSCG Chicago, where his clients include Barilla, Kraft, Valspar Paint, Beam Spirits and more. Steffan is responsible for their overall creative leadership and quality of the creative product.

A copywriter by trade, he is perhaps best known for his provocative work on behalf of Altoids, The Curiously Strong Mints. Other moments in his career include co-authoring the famous "Not your father's Oldsmobile" campaign for General Motors and penning a commercial for Heinz featuring a teen-aged Matt LaBlanc. He is the recipient of advertising's most prestigious awards including a Kelly Award, Best of Show at the Addys, and a gold and silver Lion from Cannes.

Additionally, Steffan is an avid writer and blogger. His blog, Gods of Advertising, is considered one of the best places on the web for candid, expert commentary on the advertising industry. Steffan has published two novels, including his most recent, The Happy Soul Industry, a book that explores themes of religion and materialism by asking the question, "What if God needed an advertising agency?" Steffan's short stories have been included in the 1994 and 1995 editions of New Voices in Poetry and Prose. His first novel, The Last Generation, was published by the Inkwater Press. Touchstone Television later optioned the story for TV.

Prior to joining Euro RSCG, Steffan was Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer of LBWorks (a Leo Burnett company), overseeing creative for their full client roster including Altoids, Handspring, Lexmark and Maytag. Prior to this position, he served as Executive Vice President and Executive Creative Director at Leo Burnett USA, and was a member of Leo Burnett USA's Creative Management Board.

How did you get into writing novels?

I started writing short stories in high school, where I worked for my high school newspaper (I went to Lane Tech, a public school on Western and Addison here in Chicago). At the University of Wisconsin I wrote for both the conservative and super-liberal papers, unbeknownst to either of them. I also wrote for the music newspapers. I took my classes and did reasonably well, but I really spent a lot of my time writing for newspapers and interviewing the bands that came through Madison. My dream was to be a writer for Rolling Stone.

The epiphany I had--I think that this is a fun story--came about from something that all critics are guilty of, which is when you review someone who is terrible and then find clever ways to eviscerate them. As a young, young man I was totally guilty of that. One night, a day or two after I published some rip on a band, I'll never forget what they were called: Whiz Kid. They had tights and long hair and sang 80's rock like Lover Boy and they were terrible. I made fun of them and then this guy in the band came up to me several nights later, he didn't want to fight or anything, he came up to me and let me know that he didn't want to play those songs. He told about how he had a kid and had to pay rent and said that he couldn't play his songs and expect these college kids to come to the show. He let me know that I had really hurt his feelings.

That was bothersome to me. I didn't want to be that guy anymore. At that point I went away from wanting to be a Roger Ebert or a Rolling Stones writer or any of that. Who was I to knock this guy for following his dreams? That's a true story, and I don't think I'm embellishing it. I don't think that I wrote another review after that conversation. That was the change, and that's what led to my becoming a copywriter and an author.

But I do all of it now. When I go home at night, I don't watch TV. Whether it's with writing for work or my blog or my other writing, I'm always writing or trying to either make content or sell the content I've made. That's what interests me now. Until I see my book at the airport in LaGuardia or I'm sitting on the couch next to Oprah Winfrey, I'm not going to stop. That's the way I channel ambition and keep my work ethic going. Writing isn't a chore for me. It can be at first, but it is sort of like a pool. Once you jump in it's chilly but once you're in it and enjoying it, it's the best.

So what compelled you to start blogging?

The first few months I was primarily doing it to learn about blogging and to sort of communicate to my troops without sending memos, which nobody does anymore. So for the first few months I had about 40-50 people, mainly from around the office. Then 70. Then 100. Then I wrote a controversial piece, it got linked and picked up and spiked to 450. Then 700. Now, my record is 1200 in a single day and I average about 400 knuckleheads daily that visit my blog.

Then I launched the Rogues Gallery, my second blog, which is a collection of art and writing from advertising people. It's what we make when we aren't making ads. And so the Rogues Gallery is a place for people to submit anything: their photography, art, poetry, fiction, and essay. It's not a beauty pageant. No prize. There isn't any editorializing. As long as it's not commercial and you are in the industry, I'm going to publish it.

So here you are, an advertising creative that has found this outlet in writing literature that has recently launched a website for other ad creatives to post their non-advertising art. Do you count yourself lucky to have been published and is this your way of providing others with an avenue to get their work noticed?

I had the idea about ten years ago to do a copywriters anthology; I wanted to call it "The Book," because we call our portfolios "books." I couldn't get a publisher interested, for obvious reasons....it's not very commercial or lucrative. We're a small business. Advertising and creative services isn't a big audience. Publishers would say, "Who the hell would buy that?"

So I let this fantasy go dormant. And then as I was blogging I had a minor epiphany, which was "Forget this format, I can do everything I wanted to do in the 90's but couldn't and I can do it all by myself." I didn't need underwriters or anything like that. It's pretty cool. I started out with some artwork by my brother and I worked out all the legal disclaimers.

I just started it and it's doing better then I thought. But it's never enough. When I read about some dumb-ass viral video getting a million hits, I'm thinking about how I think I'm a big deal when I get a thousand. There are a thousand people in that building over there, you know? It's nothing in terms of how many human beings are out there. I mean it isn't really about the numbers, if it was I would've been out of business a while ago.

Everything we've talked about is a passion, a labor of love; the numbers don't necessarily support it. But you do it and you don't worry about things you can't control. I need these outlets. I don't relax well, and I like to be busy doing things that bring me satisfaction.

What part about being a Creative Director do you enjoy most?

Being a Creative Director and critiquing others work....it's not even in my top five things I like about this job. It's like number seven on the list. The "Good Ad, Bad Ad" aspect of the job is the price of entry. Anybody, all my lieutenants, are capable of saying, "That's a good ad. That's a bad ad. Here's how we can make this bad ad better." Everyone that aspires to this job has some kind of talent for that.

What makes this job worthwhile for me is building an esprit de corps, new business pitching, arguing for work, helping people manage accounts and creating momentum for the agency; things which proved critical when I first took this role here. Now we are good at these things and we are trying to be great. The economy has only hindered that, not stopped it.

There are many advertising creatives that had turned novelists: Joseph Heller, Elmore Leonard, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salman Rusdie, Augusten Burroughs. They share in their writing a common cynicism. Do you think that cynicism is a product of being a Mad Man?

I'm a spiritual person, though I don't define God in the traditional, Judeo-Christian sense. The thing is, in Happy Soul Industry, God isn't searching for an ad agency for cynical reasons, it's cynical because we believe that God shouldn't need an ad agency and that advertising is sleazy. We infer that based on the concept, and that's what I wanted to happen with this book.

Look at the seven deadly sins. Envy, Greed, Lust....all of them, that's what we do! Copywriters merchandise these sins. "I want that! I want to look like her! I want to be like him!" Everything is based on Greed, Envy and Lust. Everything I'm selling for my clients I'm trying to appeal to those sins. We make you want what you don't need.

It's like being in a rock and a hard place, but I don't lose sleep over it, partly because I put it into a story and explore that theme. I think it's a big theme for me personally but it's also an entertaining theme.

There are personal and professional things that happen in your life and create a pattern over time. The pattern for me became a very questioning and introspective look at what I was doing with my life. So I discovered with advertising that I was extolling these sins. Is that the legacy I want to leave behind? The answer? Yes, no, maybe so.

But really, in the book, all characters find redemption. Redemption is a big theme for me, and for all men really. You can't exercise those themes in copywriting; you can only do a really good job writing on behalf of consumer goods and services. But I love advertising! So I love something even though it has these defects.

Where do you stand on the importance of copy vs. art? There are those that believe that rich, well-written copy isn't that effective since the viewer's attention span is so short.

I'm even a victim of having a shorter attention span. I get impatient with my morning newspaper now. I've become so accepting of technology now that getting news from longer formats frustrates me. But with copy, we're just talking about a few sentences. People will continue to read good copy. If they desire what you are trying to sell, if it's feeding them in some way, they will devour what you write.

Advertising is very much popular culture. It's pop culture, but it's culture nonetheless. It defines our society, for better or worse, as much as anything else out there. Advertising is a great common denominator.

This is a difficult time for the advertising industry. How has Euro RCSG managed to persevere through this recession?

I'm a salesman and I'm totally comfortable being a salesman. Maybe not "totally," but more so than my peers, who will talk about anything other than how well their work sold stuff. They'd rather talk about how many awards it won or what their peers think about it, who the director was....anything other than the sales part.

I don't have that problem. I know I can compete against any other agency because of the single fact that I respect the skill set of copywriting as writing words to persuade. My peers try to spin that so that it satisfies their creative imperatives. I have those imperatives, but I have other outlets for that. I recognize that I am a salesman.

With the Altoids "Curiously Strong" campaign, I knew it was good and I knew it would be successful. The best award that came from that is that we established Altoids as the leader in the marketplace. Especially nowadays in a struggling economy, how do you justify winning an award for work that came from a client that went under or is near bankrupt?

Our agency has only been glanced by torpedoes. We haven't taken anything too hard and haven't had any significant lay-offs. We went right through the first year of this recession, I wouldn't say that we have been unscathed because that would be untrue, but relatively strong and secure. That's because I think that we are real about what it is we do.

If you talk to ten people that have my job, I'm pretty certain that, while they wouldn't disagree with what I've said, they wouldn't personally agree with it. They couldn't publically disagree with that because their clients would wonder what they are paying them for. But privately they wouldn't say, "I got into this business to sell cars. I want to make films and shoot pictures." All that vainglorious stuff.

In your creative career, you've seen the emergence of digital communications. I've heard creatives lament that digital is killing advertising creative as we know it. What's your take?

Digital is the latest, greatest screen. But it's still just a screen and we still have to make films that you watch just like the one in your living room. You have to be careful. A lot of clients scream and yell about digital, but they still want the 30-second TV commercial.

I think the best name for a band would be "Skip Intro." Do you want to read this ad or do you want to go to the site? You are going to hit "Skip Intro." Everybody skips the intro to everything. So what? Is that the future? A bunch of annoying ads that get in front of your websites? No. That's junk mail. Banner ads, is that what you mean by digital? Or do you mean branded content? Banner ads are just billboards on the Information Superhighway.

One final question... from The Proust Questionnaire: Who are your favorite characters in fiction?

When I was young, I identified with troubled superheroes, like Spiderman. Of course, that became very vogue later when the movies came out. I sort of identified with those flawed characters.

In college I liked Ayn Rand, there's no question that I was sucked into that. Howard Roark was a favorite character of mine.