Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Apologies.

I was shaken yesterday when I read the Ad Contrarian's latest post, "Everybody Wants My Feedback." It was so good, so smart and, well, about advertising--and about the increasingly ridiculous world we live in.

Of late I've been having a harder and harder time writing about advertising. Maybe because Bob Hoffman (the Ad Contrarian) does it so much better. Maybe because I am 3,000 miles away from the bubbling fleshpots of Madison Avenue and haven't even seen an ad--on broadcast or in print, since I left New York on December 23.

And maybe because I've become too self-indulgent in this space and I've strayed from its original purpose. Ad Aged has become, I suppose, through the ten and a half years I've been helming it, less about the business, and more about me. Like I said, self-indulgent.

So, I write about baseball. About the New York I knew, the New York that's disappeared. I write about a small, secret uptown bar--a former speakeasy, that hasn't closed for a minute since it originally opened in 1924. And I write about my irrepressible Uncle Slappy, and his helpmeet, the formidable Aunt Sylvie.

Yes, occasionally, something happens that brings me crashing back to the Avenue's metaphoric asphalt. I'll write about a terrible spot, or some gross abuse of holding company power, or the group-think that terrorizes that most precious of all human qualities--honesty.

But there's less and less of that. Try as I do to bring more of it to the forefront.

So, reading Bob's post yesterday, I felt like a fraud. He writes a blog about advertising, and a brilliant one. 

I don't know what I do anymore.

Just write, I suppose, about what hits me on any given morning.

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