Thursday, April 16, 2009

This morning I ran headlong into an allegory.


I am fifty-one years old and there are days--weeks maybe--when I feel like all my advertising experience, training and expertise are excoriated and dismissed by the poseurs and posturers and the picayuned penised who, like locusts, infest our industry.

This morning, Thursday April 16th, on the street near the gutter I saw a Christmas tree someone had finally gotten rid of almost four-months late.

It had outlived its usefulness. It was no longer needed. I identified with it.

4 comments:

Teenie said...

I think you're the voice of reason in a lot of fashionable blah-blah, Geo.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

george tannenbaum said...

Ah, thank you, Teenie.

As I have written on Ad Aged before (or have quoted GB Shaw before) "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Unfortunately, the industry is today all about reasonable-ness.

jeaves said...

I feel anymore that we like rooting for the underdog, love stories about the small guy winning, but when they are at the top of their game, we take greater satisfaction in watching them fall. Britney Factor I would call it. Is there a defining time or event or social swing where you can say "I remember the day we started down the other side of the hill."

I don't profess to know very much about the advertising world so I was just curious on your take. It seems to be a common theme where ever I read.

Tore Claesson said...

Tan⋅nen⋅baum   [tah-nuhn-boum; Eng. tan-uhn-boum] Show IPA
–noun, plural -bäu⋅me  [-boi-muh] Show IPA , English. -baums. German.
a Christmas tree.
Origin:
lit., fir tree