If you were born a middle child, as I was, and a child of two perpetually-warring parents, you might have, like me, often assumed the role of conciliator and peace-maker.
In other words, you work to help resolve conflict, to make combatants meet in the middle.
What's more, if you were born with what today is called an eidetic memory, you can recall with some acuity something you read early one morning before the rest of the office was in, and then only for four minutes.
These are two sides to me--two sides that people who know me see, but very few others do.
All that is to say, that back in 1984, I read an op-ed in the New York Times by columnist Flora Lewis, that I think we would do well to re-read today. You can, and should, read the article here. But since you probably won't, because invariably you've got better things to do than to read a 39-year-old op-ed recommended by a slightly daft aged copywriter--let me paste the "SmartPart™" here, complete with George-Selected highlights in yellow.
Lewis writes:
"What I call the Tiffany model, conceived when waste of resources was the major concern, offers a way of reconciling both the need to conserve materials (which will return with recovery) and the need to provide humane work. The key is quality.
"Real quality requires craftsmanship, hand-finishing. Historically, it was reserved for the rich. The second industrial revolution can be used to provide it for everybody, just as the first made possible mass production and distribution. That was achieved by an economic model based on great quantities of cheap goods. Henry Ford's assembly line made the automobile everyman's transport. The robot can now replace low-skilled workers. The next step is the equivalent of a Rolls-Royce for everyman, by bringing back the artisanship of finish that makes the big difference. Of course, the price would be much higher. Consumer credit offers a solution. If a car were so well made that it only began to wear out in 20 years, would people mind taking 10 years to pay it off? Would they really prefer plastic plates to good china, plywood to fine furniture, if the cost in terms of yearly outlay were about the same? Making good goods that last would leave the base work to machines, save material and employ more people in the rewarding task of adding quality by individual taste and skill. The popularity of do-it-yourself reflects humane values to be won. This would mean a revolution of marketing concepts from the throwaway society to the make-it-better society. Mental and social adjustment would be required on the large scale, but that is inescapable if the new industrial era is to fulfill its promise of a leap ahead rather than a plunge to new despairs."
While I run an advertising agency, GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, I am no longer in the advertising agency business. When I started my agency I started with the same impetus Richard Branson and Steve Jobs had when they started their businesses.
Do a better job making __________ by getting rid of all the crap traditionally associated with making __________.
For me, it was: do great work without all the shit that comes from making work.
Today, of course, the lip-flapping in the advertising industry (which is cost-reduction-focused not creatively-focused) is all about AI replacing people in traditional creative roles.
Many of my friends, who freelance for a living, have seen 2023 start off slow, and already they're blaming AI for their enforced idleness. Agency chieftains (and I had dinner with a few on Friday night) are worried about how they'll handle the effects of AI. Will that "giant sucking sound" be clients taking their high-volume, low-value work in-house, thus eviscerating the revenue streams of the few agencies still standing.
This is where Flora Lewis re-enters my mind.
Why can't agencies blend mass and craft? Shouldn't we be able to sell the notion of work that's as good as human-made at a price that's only a trifle-higher than computer-made?
I haven't worked out the logistics of it. But the thesis is simple. AI should be Augmented Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence. It should do as technology does, make humans more efficient.
I realize I shouldn't offer help to my competitors who remain in the agency world. But a lot of those competitors are my friends, or at least people who have tolerated me for forty years.
Some smart agency somewhere will combine the rapid-framing and foundation building of machines with the wit, humor, intelligence, discretion and irreverence of humans. They'll combine computer and corpuscles to get a unique, plussed-up offering.
Almost as fast as a computer alone yet with human acuity and flavor. I've written a lot in this space about semiotics: the language of signs.
For instance if a business puts up plastic ropes and makes you make 17 turns to walk up to a teller or to get on a plane, they're not just treating you like cattle, they think you are cattle. We endure such indignities about a dozen times a day. If you're not already bored by all this humanizing, you might want to look at this seven-minute film on the tearing down of the old Penn Station and its replacement by urine-scented linoleum.
The Yale University art critic, Vincent Sculley says something that I think has pertinence to us in the humanity business. You can listen for it in the film: "One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat."
In every bit of work I'm involved with--no matter how tangentially, no matter how much my client won't understand what I'm flapping my gums about, I ask this simple question. How do we want to treat people? What are we saying to them? They're rats? Or they're gods?
I believe we can do better than machine-made work, or bots, or customer-service. And the bean-counters and people-cutters say we can't afford human-made. Why can't we find a middle-ground. A third way?
I think that's the blend we should be looking for. God-like rat-pellets.
Here's a five-word summation of what I mean--I'd guess a computer couldn't be this succinct.
Machine-speed with Human-creed.™
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