If you’re Pat the Baker, purveyor of Ireland’s favorite bread, what do you do when you develop a new loaf specifically for toasting? You call up the ad agency bloom, in Dublin, which then cooks up a campaign featuring portraits of famous Irish writers, a campaign in which toast is not only the message, it’s the medium. Along with W.B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde (above) is paid lightly scorched tribute, which brings to mind his maxim that “biography lends to death a new terror.”

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As most every media outlet on the planet has reported by now, Apple launched the latest iteration of its iPhone last weekend. Although it doesn’t boast the most evocative name Apple’s ever originated (it’s called the iPhone 3GS, where “the ‘S’ stands for speed”—yes, and “L” stands for lame), more than a million units were sold by the end of Sunday, matching the pace and volume of last year’s iPhone 3G launch. There were also about six million downloads of the new system software last weekend, which Apple made available independently of the new phone, so existing iPhone owners could add some of the 3GS’ new capabilities for free. And while we’re doing the numbers, let’s remember that there are over 50,000 apps available in Apple’s app store, and that there have been more than one billion downloads of these apps onto the nearly 40 million iPhones and iPod Touches Apple has sold. So when Apple says, as it does in its current crop of TV ads, “there’s an app for that,” you can believe that there is. And that someone you know has probably downloaded it.

So, then. Where’s your app?

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Celebrity photoshoots are not for the faint of heart. The high pressure and high stakes—not to mention the larger-than-life egos—can make even the bravest photographer weep like a small child.

Which is why we turned to Richard Ustinich for a recent session with someone who, if not an actual celebrity, then at least presented some similar challenges. You see, Richard is as cool as the proverbial cucumber, no matter who or what he’s shooting. And he has decades of experience putting every kind of subject at ease. Most important, at least in this case, Richard has a knack for breaking through even the most expressionless and protective of personas, to reveal the essence of the person beneath.

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“No one reads the copy.” This particular running gag has been heard at least a few billion times by every copywriter who has ever toiled in our image-centric industry (which goes a long way, I suppose, toward explaining our hardened, jaded hearts). You’re especially likely to hear it at the end of an hours-long struggle to find just le bon mot for some obscure product benefit or to coin a fresh turn of phrase that will indelibly imprint the brand upon the reader’s imagination. Glassy-eyed but glowing in triumph, you announce your hard-won success to your art director partner, only to be reminded, “no one reads the copy.”

The remark was funnier, I think, in the days when people still read things other than advertising copy. But now, when you hear report after report of declining literacy, when you’re told that in any given year most Americans don’t buy a single book—not even a cookbook—overlooked and forgotten advertising copy is a foregone conclusion, part of a much larger and sadder tale.

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I remember watching commercials as a kid, wondering about this enigmatic “other leading brand” to which products were always being compared. It showed up everywhere, contending in categories from detergent to toothpaste, but each time cloaked in secrecy. Sometimes, there was even fake packaging designed to represent this nameless, generic, abstract stand-in for the competition. It baffled me: Why not identify this supposedly inferior product? It would certainly make the advertiser’s claims more believable. (The fact that I gave this much thought to TV ads while still in kidhood was probably not a healthy sign.) When I asked my mom why no one just came out and said who they were talking about, her reply only added to the mystery. “It’s against the law,” she said.

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