Ad Aged--Will Madison Avenue Become Detroit?

How can this be?

2009-12-04T13:43:00.002-05:00

Working with one of the biggest financial services firms in the country. Their offices are palatial, with amazing views of the NY Harbor and downtown. Their walls are festooned with Lichensteins and Raucshenbergs.

How is it these titans of industry need instructions on washing their hands?

Let's talk about print.

2009-12-04T06:56:00.003-05:00

There has been a lot of talk of the last couple millenia about the death of print. Over the last few years, this talk has become increasingly loud.

Let me be clear and unequivocal here. Print isn't dieing. It's killing itself.

Here are a couple examples. (And yes, I am angry.)

The changes that our industry are undergoing and have been undergoing for the last decade are seminal. In our center-of-the-universe way of thinking, these changes are every bit as large and fundamental as those previous generations went through when we were undergoing something seismic like the industrial revolution. In other words, these are big changes.

Now, if you are an inveterate reader of the traditional advertising trade press, that is Stuart Elliot, Adweek and Adage (and maybe a few others I am omitting) you would think that the biggest advertising issues are things like tweeting, or a client pulling Droga5's latest fake commercial or a $3 million account shift.

All these things are advertising gossip. And the aforementioned members of the trade press are the advertising equivalent of gossip magazines.

Look, it's this simple. My guess is that some former pillars of Madison Avenue--Y&R, O&M, JWT, McCann have probably fired something on the order of 50% of their employees since 2000. I might be off by a few percentage points--and sophisticated accounting practices employed by the holding companies might massage their headcounts--but this the sort of news serious journalists--and there seem to be none in the advertising trade press--should be covering.

I happen to think that serious business leaders (which usually correlate to people with serious money) would read serious news coverage if there were serious news coverage to read.

Instead print media is so dumbed-down that only dumb people read it. So the publishers and writers pursue the dumb with coverage that's even dumber driving more people out of the readership fold because coverage is dumb.

Print media is in a vicious dumb circle. That's why it is dying.

What it's all about.

2009-12-03T16:10:00.001-05:00

I just read this headline in The New York Times "Robert Degen, Had a Hand in the Hokey Pokey, Dies at 104."

It should remind you that even the headline of a death notice can be funny.

A non-tological question.

2009-12-03T07:09:00.001-05:00

What would possess anyone
to become a fan of WPP
on Facebook?

Five rules.

2009-12-03T05:17:00.004-05:00

Recently I read a commencement address by a scholar, a wise and intelligent one at that, called Samantha Powers.

She's a Professor of Human Rights Practice at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and won a Pulitzer and a National Book Critics Circle Award for her book "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide.

Powers' address did what a lot of graduation addresses do. It laid out rules for 22-year-olds. Reading the address made me think that Powers' rules are worth thinking about if you work in an agency or run one.

First, as you figure out your path in life, try to follow your nose. Don't try to be an award-winning creative. Don't obsess over getting to Cannes. Focus on doing work you like, and a lot of it. Good things will follow.

Second, be sure to create quiet time so you maximize the chances you will be able to hear your gut when it speaks to you. Slow down and think. Take a walk around the block. Read a book.

Third, by far the most important quality one needs in life is not in fact talent; it is resiliency. I've been fired twice now. Quit two different jobs without having another. Each time, I think I've come back better.

Fourth, find friends who have your back.

Fifth and final suggestion be a good ancestor.
In other words, help young people. Take the time to listen to them.

Your call is important to us.

2009-12-03T04:41:00.002-05:00

Three centuries ago, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote "Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

That's always seemed right to me. Our job is to promise something to viewers--whether it's youth, getting the girl, quenching your thirst, or eternal cool-osity.

Now here's where our industry jumps off the tracks. Promises have to be true, or at least within the realm of truth, or people simply don't believe you any more.

Yesterday I saw an ad for Buick that made a promise so obviously a lie that is made my blood curdle. "Buick. The new class in world class."

How do you ascribe truthiness to that sentence?

I'm sorry. I know since we own GM we're probably supposed to want to see it rebound. But any company that can so blatantly lie to consumers, that can so obviously ignore its past, that can so bombastically proclaim itself great deserves to die.

This isn't about the actual quality of the car.
It's about how you speak, how you treat and respect your customers.
You have to earn the right to make a statement like "the new class..."
And Buick has earned no such right.

Brand Manager for Tab.

2009-12-02T07:33:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine sarcastically lists as his previous employment "Brand Manager for Tab." When I asked him why he laughed and explained, "when you're brand manager for Tab, your only job is to sell less tab than you sold the year before."

The funny thing about that is that it's not funny. I once worked at a vaunted San Francisco agency who hired as its savior a new president whose main career accomplishment was that she was the brand manager for Oldsmobile. In case you've already forgotten, Oldsmobile was so dismal even GM agreed to kill it before they were forced to.

Our industry is rife with stories like this. A former Chrysler CMO who somehow rises to the top at another company. What?

Maybe it's my ignorance but that seems like hiring the Captain of the Titanic to run the Staten Island Ferry. "Well, he's handled big ships before, he's perfect for the job. And what a great smile he has!"

I realize that CMOs are like lawyers. They create jobs for other CMOs.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record, but I have a feeling that a lot of the world's troubles, stock-market crashes, endless wars, political corruption, bad agency management could be avoided if key people kept an index card posted near their desks.
An index card that reads "What have you done?"

Tonsorial commentary.

2009-12-01T21:51:00.001-05:00

Tools vs. toys.

2009-12-01T07:37:00.002-05:00

There's an article in today's New York Times about Cormac McCarthy retiring his Olivetti typewriter that he bought in a Knoxville, TN pawnshop in 1963 for $50. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/books/01typewriter.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=cormac%20macarthy&st=cse

McCarthy has written an estimated five-million words on his typewriter and along the way established himself as one of the world's foremost writers, having picked up a Pulitzer, a National Book Award and an Oscar. It strikes me that there might be a lesson lurking somewhere in this story.

What makes McCarthy great is his ideas and his expression of those ideas. His Olivetti (and the one he bought for $11 to replace his old one) are just tools of his brain.

Today, of course our tools are more sophisticated than typewriters. We can do sophisticated motion graphics and editing at our desks or on a plane. We can make type dance like Isadora Duncan on LSD. We can compose and record music. We can buy a $49 video camera and shoot stuff.

These are all things Mr. McCarthy can't do on his Olivetti. But they don't make us better than McCarthy. Because Mr. McCarthy's trade involves ideas.

So far no one has built a desktop app that produces those.

My father gets a gift from Mae Clarke.

2009-11-30T21:19:00.007-05:00

One day when I was about 14 my father decided he needed to tell me a story about Mae Clarke’s pubic hair. According to my father, I was 14 and coming of age, and stories like this were important for me. They were part of becoming a man. So my father piled me into his 1949 Studebaker—a car he kept not because he liked it but because my mother didn’t and we went for a ride.

My father’s drives were a lot like my father’s moods—they were impulsive, almost autistic in their focus. He decided he wanted something, or wanted to do something and that was his complete focus until he got that thing.

Once it was salt-water taffy from the boardwalk in Atlantic City. It would start simply enough. “When I was a kid,” my father might say, “me, Herbie and Peacock used to hitchhike to Atlantic City and try to meet girls.” (This was the Atlantic City of the early 1940s—a lower middle class beach resort about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia where my father lived.) Twenty minutes later my father might say, “Damn, I loved the salt-water taffy they used to sell in those little shops along the boardwalk.” At dinner that night, after finishing his meal, he might belch, “You know what would cap off a meal like this one? Salt-water taffy.”

Then, the next morning he was still at it. “You know,” he might say “the salt-water taffy they sell around here is terrible. No flavor.” An hour later, he might turn to me and say, “I bet you never even had real Atlantic City salt-water taffy. Never had real salt-water taffy.” An hour after that he might utter, “Store-bought salt-water taffy is just like plastic. Not the real thing.” A little while after that it was, “It’s a tragedy, not having real salt-water taffy." Before long we’d wind up in his Studebaker, heading down to Atlantic City at 80 mph for salt-water taffy.

With him it was never a yen or a hankering. It was an obsession. Which of course brings me to my father and Mae Clarke’s pubic hair.

Clarke was a 1930s vamp, a putative film actress, the poor man’s “it” girl. Her most famous role was in “Public Enemy,” when she’s shacked up with Jimmy Cagney and Cagney violently pushes a half-grapefruit in her face. But even in that role, Clarke was uncredited. I guess you could say that even though the grapefruit scene made her somewhat iconic, Clarke never really crashed the big time.

By the time Clarke reached her 30s, she still got work, but bit parts and no film credits. Toward the end of her career she had a small part in the TV show “F Troop.” I guess that qualifies as bottoming out.

Like my father, Clarke was born in Philadelphia. Her real name was Violet Mary Klotz and I guess you can safely say she never really transcended her Klotzness. Despite looking pretty good in a tight sateen flapper-style gown and having had some critical success, she was really never anything but two-bit. She never became the star she wanted to be.

By the time my father started cavorting with women—say when he was around 18, Clarke was already crowding 40 and the bloom was off her rose. She had already been married and divorced three times and was spending less time in Hollywood as Mae Clarke and more time back in Philadelphia as the former Violet Mary Klotz.

My father starting dating Clarke around then. It wasn’t really dating to hear him tell it, because all they really did was schtup. That was the word my father used, schtup. “We’d schtup for hours,” he’d tell me, “have breakfast in bed the next morning, then schtup some more. Then I’d run off to school or to work and maybe not see her again for a month or so.”

There aren’t many 18 year olds who can be discreet when they’re schtupping anyone—much less a woman who used to be something of a film siren. My father couldn’t help but brag to all his friends that he was Mae Clarke’s gigolo. “Mae who?” they would ask, and my father would reply, “The blonde with Jimmy Cagney and the grapefruit in Public Enemy.” He’d then, to hear him tell it, break into his purported dead-on Cagney, “You know, I wish you was a wishing well. So I could tie a bucket to youse and sink ya.” And then he’d pantomime the smash.

At this point in my father’s story his Studebaker had just about reached the corner of Broad and Walnut in Center City Philadelphia. The Bellevue-Stratford stood there, still a few years before it became notorious for something called “legionnaire’s disease.”

“The last time Violet and I were together was right here. This was a grand place, a palace,” my father told me. “She said to me, I want you should always remember me and she gave me a sealed small blue envelope. It was too small for money—which I wouldn’t have taken anyway. I stuffed it in the inside pocket of my jacket and ran off to school without even opening it. I was late for class, and was more worried about getting there on time than the envelope. I always figured I’d see her again.”

My father pulled his Studebaker to a stop in front of the old hotel. Next to all the newer cars it looked old, beaten. “You know back in the 30s, the sex goddess of her day, Jean Harlow died suddenly when she was still in her twenties. Kidney failure or something. She was the original platinum blonde. More than anything else, Violet wanted to be Jean Harlow—Jean was the star in “Public Enemy.” The one Jimmy Cagney dumped her for.

“Now there were always rumors about Jean, gossip I guess. How she put ice cubes on her nipples before she’d shoot a scene. Or how she never wore panties. Or how she dyed her pubic hair platinum. Some pretty nasty ones about the number of lovers she had. And after she died, how she had given one of her lover's, some gangster, a lock of her pubic hair. That’s what Violet had given me. A lock of her pubic hair tied up with a violet grosgrain ribbon.”

We drove in silence pretty much the rest of the way home. My father was talked out. Me afraid to say anything.

When we reached our block it was already late. My father shut off the engine of the Studebaker to “let her coast home.” “Your mother,” he told me “found Mae’s gift in my wallet about fifteen years ago. She never said anything to me. Never asked about it. She just threw it out.”

He got out of the car, slammed shut the door and went up the walk. I sat there for a good twenty minutes in the dark.

Breasts.

2009-11-30T07:05:00.006-05:00

There's a full page ad in The New York Times today that struck my eye. Mainly because it seems like someone interpolated an oddly-shaped mammary and pasted it (nipple-less) on the woman in the ad.

There's a lot I don't understand about the world and the science of marketing, I suppose, and this, somewhat unfortunately adds a new chapter. I can only imagine the discussions among the MBAs that promote Kristina Train.

"My research says her album will see more if we add a breast."
"Right, CB, but diamond shaped breasts pull best."
"That's right, especially if we tack it onto her clavicle."
"Middle-aged Jewish men love clavicle-breasts."
"It's settled then. Kristina Train gets a new frontal caboose."

And so it goes.

I expect over the next few months we'll see more and more companies hiring breast consultants.

Which can only lead to one eventuality.

Chief Tit Officer.

--
Actually, I just heard from the president of PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Teat) and she claims they are looking into this affront.

Hale Smith.

2009-11-29T17:49:00.002-05:00

I just read an obituary in The New York Times of a composer who "mixed classical and jazz," a man called Hale Smith who played, arranged and composed for Chico Hamilton, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/arts/music/28smith.html?ref=obituaries

Mr. Smith called himself "one of America's most famous unknown composers." As you might have guessed, I couldn't find much of his music online, but I did find one composition, a 12-minute piece performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta called "Ritual and Incantation." It's well-worth the download.

You have to make something.

2009-11-28T17:11:00.003-05:00

I finished Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" last night and one of the last stories, "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale" concerns alchemy--the pseudo-science of turning base metal into gold.

As I read this wonderful story I couldn't help but think of Goldman Sachs and the like. They are modern-day alchemists who turn nothing into great amounts of wealth then disappear before anyone figures out they are perpetrating a flim-flam. As long as there are people who are buying what they are selling the scam goes on. Once greed is suspended, even for a second, there is collapse.

Now, there is a report on the radio about the collapse of Dubai--the indoor ski slopes, the skyscrapers half a kilometer high. It appears people might stop buying what Dubai is selling. Then, of course, I started thinking about advertising agency holding companies. Have they any reason for being? Do we really need the Chief Risk Officers they provide?

My question for all of these sort of entities is: "What do you make?" What value do you bring?

Today I went to see Vermeer's "The Milkmaid" at the Met. It's quite a painting. A living breathing thing that seems almost luminous. It is only 18 inches tall, and probably about 14 inches wide. But I could see what Vermeer actually created and in my own simplistic way, I could understand its value.

Goldman's CEO Leonard Blankfein claimed that bankers do "God's work." I suppose Blankfein would say the same of advertising holding companies. After all, a few people have gotten quite rich by them.

But neither have left behind anything like a Vermeer.

More on story-telling.

2009-11-27T12:26:00.003-05:00

We hear a lot about story-telling in the business and most of it seems to me to be so much blather. People--that is, clients, don't really want stories, they want brand litanies--copy points--masquerading as stories.

I think a lot about stories. About the essential elements that make up good stories whether they were written five thousand years ago like "Gilgamesh," seven hundred years ago like "The Canterbury Tales," or even a story I've just watched "Bang the Drum Slowly," which was written nearly sixty years ago.

Criterion (criterion.com)are film archivists who do a great job of preserving and propagating great stories. They have just released and I have just begun watching a box set called "The Golden Age of Television." This three-disc set includes "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Marty," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Requiem for a Heavyweight," and others and looks to be fabulous.

"Bang the Drum Slowly," stars a 31-year-old Paul Newman and is the story of a young ballplayer dieing of an incurable disease. It was shot as a stage play in the early days of television and on the cheap. There are about four sets. No special effects except lights turning on an off. And a lot of looking at the camera and talking to viewers directly.

Paul Newman wept at the end as he performed his lines. I've read the book a dozen times, seen the DeNiro version a few times and this version a few times as well. I teared-up anyway.

It is a great story.

Now, come on.

2009-11-27T09:21:00.001-05:00

For the last time,
It's not Black Friday,
It's
"African-American Friday."

Still thinking of Billy Wilder.

2009-11-26T17:50:00.004-05:00

Lest we think focus groups are a recent affliction, Billy Wilder told a story about audience reactions to a film he wrote with Charles Brackett,"Ninotchka" which was directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

Wilder, Brackett and Lubitsch are sitting in the back of Lubitsch's limo and are reading the review cards from an audience nearby Hollywood. Wilder decided this was ridiculous and unbeknownst to Lubitsch decided to write his own cards.

The story goes that Wilder wrote a lot of cards, but the funniest was probably this: “This movie was hilarious. I laughed so hard I peed into my girlfriend's hand.”

Thanksgiving Special. How to artificially inseminate a female turkey.

2009-11-25T14:27:00.002-05:00

Probably a bit late for this year's feast.

Quotation of the day.

2009-11-25T11:37:00.001-05:00

I adapted this from Bruce Mau.

"Cool is fear dressed in black."

How will the world end?

2009-11-25T06:55:00.003-05:00

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

There's a thoughtful movie review in today's New York Times of two movies that portray the end of the world, "2012" and "The Road."

It starts this way: "Bang or whimper? Fire or ice? Happily, holiday moviegoers interested in pondering the end of the world can select scenarios far more elaborate than those simple, traditional choices."

The review praises "The Road," based on Cormac McCarthy's grim novel but chides the movie for being sentimental when it could be more real or chilling. The movie review ends this way: “The Road” is engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause?"

It's the last two sentences that get me vis-a-vis the advertising industry. So often it seems to me we pull back from the genuine and visceral (so as not to offend) and we wind up with the communications equivalent of a processed cheese-food product. It might look like something but it tastes like nothing and has no nutritional value. You know, the type of work that gets polite applause, a gentle chuckle and touches, moves and motivates no one.

Lincoln: "Four score and seven years ago...
Focus group: "Too complicated.
Lincoln: "87 years ago...
Focus group: "That sounds, like, so old...
Lincoln: "A long while ago...
Focus group: Still old...

Thinking about Billy Wilder.

2009-11-24T20:53:00.004-05:00

I know most of my references date from at least a few decades ago but that's who I am so, as my teenage daughter reminds me just about every thirty-seven seconds, get over it.

In any event, I've been on a bit of a screed of late because I am working on a financial services account and half the people in the agency are trying their damndest (and their lamest) to make the brand cool. The last thing the world needs right now is a hip financial company. Honest. Stalwart. Even old-fashioned may be more appropriate. But these youngsters--or unsophisticates were weaned on the rancid mother's milk of solipsistic award shows (when I get really angry I roll out my vocabulary) and know one thing about advertising: they know what wins awards.

So, they attempt to do work with that heavily practiced and artificial insouciance, that da da da stoner surfer attitude that seems to carry the day when the golden calves of ad idolatry are doled out.

They know one attitude. One set of cliches. One kind of joke.

Of course, this makes me think of Billy Wilder.

Wilder won a total of seven Oscars, including one for lifetime achievement. He was nominated for 15 more. He wrote great comedies. Great love stories. Great noir dramas. Great war stories. Great social dramas. Even a great comedy involving suicide. In short, he was versatile.

My guess is that if agencies and holding companies were really serious about "optimizing new business practices and modalities," they'd get rid of the one-trick ponies and bring in some Billy Wilders. Then again, maybe not. Doing so probably wouldn't test well.

Horror, terror and Christmas.

2009-11-24T10:00:00.003-05:00

OK.

I get the message.

Jesus Christ put on a red suit trimmed with small white animal fur, was nailed to a cross, was freed by a red-nosed flying reindeer, came down a chimney and was met by singing chipmunks in a manger with his virgin mother, Mhyrr.

I get the point. I'll buy a ton of shit I don't really need for people I don't really like.

Just shut off the fucking music already, willya.

A couple more things that drive me crazy.

2009-11-23T10:29:00.002-05:00

I've written before about some of this but like most things I say, it bears repeating. (Not because what I say is important, but because no one listens.)

One is the phrase "Meteroic Rise" as in so-and-so enjoyed a meteoric rise in state politics. Well, the simple fact is this: METEORS DON'T RISE, THEY FALL. Plain, simply and indisputably. There is no such thing as a meteoric rise,

Second is the phrase "bi-polar." What is something that is polar if not "bi." There is a North Pole and a South Pole. Two poles. There are never more than two poles. So, if one's personality wavers between two poles, why are they considered "bi-polar," not merely "polar"?

The final one (for today) is Republicans who call, for whatever reason, the Democratic Party the Democrat Party. That's just asinine.

The world as explained by coffee.

2009-11-23T09:17:00.003-05:00

I had breakfast with a young acolyte of mine (if you're looking for a talented and hard-working young writer, let me know) at a mid-town coffee shop this morning. It wasn't one of those Starbuck's-like places--it was one of the last of the real Greek coffee shops, with a menu as compendious as the Mumbai phone book and a Babel of waiters and waitresses.

As we sat there catching up and figuring out where my friend might potentially find a decent job in the industry, every thirty seconds--literally, someone came over and asked to fill our coffee cups.

It occurred to me that this was yet another example of the polarization of America. You see this all the time in The New York Times. Headlines about poverty and looming mass starvation on the front pages, followed by ads for $17,000 ear-rings and 6.54 million-dollar apartments a few pages in.

The world we live in now can be further divided between the "precious-ites" (those who pay $4.75 for a cup of coffee) and the "utilitarians" (those who drink their coffee without needing to add cream, sugar and bullshit to it.)

There's nothing wrong with savoring a cup of Joe. But what smugness prevents the precious-ites from recognizing is that there is a relationship between raw materials and final costs. They prefer to pay for attitude and purported elan. They think nothing of spending $1K or more for a vinyl handbag or $600 for a pair of ordinary shoes. In other words, the precious-ites buy into the subject-object split--cool is the measure of all things.

In short, the precious-ites are responsible for the abject collapse of our world. For a world of $72 canvas sneakers made by Coolie-labor for 37-cents. A world of $225 blue jeans, $68 t-shirts. A world where everything has a logo and logos are the measure of a man.

Oh, lighten up, George.

Yeah, I will in second. But let me just say this, I like good-old Greek diners. I miss being able to see a ball-game for less than the price of a mortgage payment. And I wish there were still Army-Navy stores. (Though the Army and the Navy I could live without.)

Elaine Idoni on Advertising.

2009-11-22T12:49:00.004-05:00

As this hideous decade draws to its ravaging conclusion, a decade of wars, of stolen elections, of terror, of high-school, collegiate and fast-food-restaurant gun slaughter, of dying cities, of environmental meltdowns and havoc, as this decade is ending, Adweek is running a poll on a variety of purported topics. Among those topics is voting for Agency of the Decade and Creative Director of the Decade.

Poll Daddy, the service who are running this poll allows you to vote as many times as you wish for your favorite whatever. Right now, as I type this, Euro RSCG is leading as Agency of the Decade and their Creative Director, David Jones, is leading as well.

Apparently, management at Euro RSCG sent a memo out to their employees urging them to vote for themselves. I have nothing against Euro RSCG, though they're hardly whom I would have chosen. What I am peeved about is that a purportedly reputable advertising organ like Adweek will name an agency "Agency of the Decade" and a Creative Director "Creative Director of the Decade" with all the journalistic scruple of Pravda. The winners of those titles will puff out their chests, put those accolades on their email signatures, use them in new business and more. It's all bullshit.

This is a popularity contest plain and simple and it reminds me of Elaine Idoni. When I was ten or 11, Elaine Idoni was by far the prettiest girl in my school. Every year when we had elections for class president, Elaine Idoni's name would invariably be tossed into the ring and after some not-so-heated debate, she would win the election for no other reason than she was pretty.

This just in.

2009-11-21T11:26:00.002-05:00

Do you know the difference between a hamster and a gerbil?

There's more dark meat on a hamster.