Six Things the Internet (and Holding Companies) Don't Understand.

About two times a year, the great publisher, Taschen has a sale that's really a sale.

So many sales today start with artificially high-prices and knock them down to meh. Or, they trumpet products that are always on sale. Either way, they're phony. Their ginning up some excitement to get you to act.

Taschen, to me, seems different.

When I get their emails announcing a sale I am fairly agog. I don't know what Balboa looked like when he first saw the Pacific. Or Ada Lovelace when she unraveled the mysteries of computer science. But when I get notice of a Taschen sale, I jump onto my phone and look to tell every friend who might care that "it's here."

It's an event, the Taschen Sale.

Unfortunately, I know virtually no one who cares about it as much as I do. As my therapist of 40 years or one-million-dollars says, "I need to widen my circles."

A lot of book mania has been superseded by the wonders of the Internet. And the Internet, for all its cockeyed, sold-to-the-highest-bidder search mechanisms is wonderful. Like, here's a site that lets you page through and zoom into a Shakespeare first folio. That's downright amazing. And brings to mind this, also from Shakespeare: 

But back to Taschen and the six things no longer understood by nearly anyone.

For under $200, these six books just arrived at my Connecticut cottage. A 1,500 sq. foot shack girded with eight statute miles of bookshelves.

You can find all this stuff on the internet, I suppose. But not so large. Not so touchable. Not so vivid. Not so organized. Not so mine.

I'd say about 99.7-percent of all people in the advertising industry are more "creative" than I am. But 0-percent are more curious. And (high-end refrigerator joke) sub-zero read and remember more than I do. Finally, maybe 0-percent work so
sedulously. 

I might never reference a single of these books in an ad, or a meeting, or even having a drink with a client. But they help me, nevertheless, think different. They're synapses made legible. 

When ad people get together--I get together with some doyens of the old school once every few weeks for a casual cholesterol infarction--the conversation often turns to the dearth (and death) of creativity left in the business.

I betcha it's directly correlated to the dearth (and death) of agency libraries.

If you don't learn, you can't lead.