To the Dogs.

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As I enter the 68th month of my busy season, a neighbor's two-year-old golden retriever, Izzy, has had a sleepover with Sparkle, my 15-month-old golden retriever.

On January 14, 2020, having just worked through the alleged Christmas holiday hiatus--writing a speech for a CEO because "I was the only one who could write it"--I was fired. Fired though I made the agency much more money than I cost. Fired though the CEO said to me she cried.

I was fired.

Impersonally. Robotically. Un-caringly. Bull-shittily. Un-fairly. For no reason other than they didn't want people with high-salaries around. It was bad for morale. Theirs. 

Then I was maligned by the CEO of the entire holding company who said that the people who were fired "harkened back to the 80s." Whereas he himself, who makes 300 times what his median worker makes, harkens back to the 1880s, that is, the Robber Baron Era.

When I started GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, I had a simple aim. I said to myself (the only one who listens to me) "I'm not starting a new agency just to act like an old agency." 

I also thought of a line I wrote about my parents and my upbringing. "No one is totally useless. They can always serve as a bad example."

In other words, I would not just start a new agency, I would kick my old agency's ass.

Today, as I enter year six with GeorgeCo., my revenue, my margins, the quality and the quantity of my work way outstrips that of my Alma Mater. I'm not only bigger and more profitable and better than Ogilvy, I'm more viable. I have more upside. I'm more important to more CEOs, and I'm attracting more business. 

And I don't even practice borderless creativity.

One of the reasons I've been able so quickly to swamp the old scions of Madison Avenue is that I am not impecunious. (That means cheap.)

Yes, I don't like spending money. But I do when it works to get more work done, better work done, and when it helps my clients and me in the process.

Let me get to the pith of my post, or the post of my pith.

Now that Ogilvy are calling their workers back to their cramped and unlovely offices four days a week, I am further convinced that Ogilvy itself, and maybe the entirety of WPP will be about as viable as Stellantis, Intel, Kodak or Gateway computers. 

They don't make anything anyone wants.

Part of that is because they just parrot trends without actually thinking about what's good for their people, their clients or their work.

I started this post talking about having two golden retrievers over during my long busy season. I quickly thought about all the corporate ass-wipe-itudes telling us for years about the efficacy and the creativity of having an "open-plan" workspace.

No one in the entirety of the advertising industry said anything like "We save $1,000,000 on rent. We can spend that money on salaries where it will be put to better use." No. They just stuffed people into cramped hot-desks and repeatedly lied about that work arrangement.

Now look at the video above.

That's what it's having an eight-page manifesto due tomorrow and having to write it in an open-plan office.

That in a nutshell is the wisdom of Holding Company Madison Avenue.

Feral unintelligence.

Woof.