One of my strengths as a writer or, stretching it a bit, a creative person, is my gift (or curse) of metaphor. Professionally, I'm often charged with explaining difficult ideas or solutions. Metaphor often answers the bell. That last bit in itself is a metaphor.
Even as a father, you're faced with similar obstacles. Often, the best way to make something complicated understood is by comparing that complication to something people already grasp.
Not long ago, I wrote this about the fleeting nature of a technology advantage in business.
When I was a boy, I taught my baby sister the rudiments of fractions using the different sections of a Hershey bar to explain the different pieces of a whole number. (I haven't had a Hershey bar in a while. In those days a nickel bar was divided into 16 pieces.)
In short, I'm good at metaphors.
Almost as good as I am at dad jokes. Like the one about the guy who's taken up two new hobbies: taxidermy and explosives. He once made an otter you can't defuse.
Even at the doddering old-age of 67--just three years from the Bible's "three score and ten" -- I am still trying to figure out how the world works. Like Dashiell Hammett's Flitcraft in his great novel "The Maltese Falcon," I am still trying to take the lid off life and “look at the works.”
Metaphors help here, too.
Just now I read a book review in "The Wall Street Journal," of a new book called Unreliable: Bias, Fraud, and the Reproducibility Crisis in Biomedical Research" by Csaba Szabo.
Reading the review, I couldn't help but wonder if the book's title could "metaphored" into "Unreliable: Cheating, Fraud, Fakery and the Demise of Advertising Efficacy."
In particular, I saw in these two passages from the Journal's review, parallels to the industry's-awards-mania.
The WSJ writes:
Ad Aged rewrites:
The WSJ goes on:
When Advertising worked, advertising worked. Rolled up its sleeves and worked. (BTW, I once had a fight with an ECD telling me to add a call to action. I said "the whole ad is a call to action. What will adding "learn more" do besides muck it up?" I was fired from that job for being insubordinate. But do any of these ads need a learn more button?
Famous agency brands were built on the advertising work they did to make real brands famous. The best agencies had a certain "inextricable-ness" with the best brands.
They had no "one-offs." There was no, as mentioned above, "reproducibility crisis." Day after day, year after year, team after team, ad after ad, brands (and agencies) were built. Yesterday I saw some work hailing the ugliness of oatmeal. It's a stunt and a one-off. And if it ever ran in the wild, I'd be shocked. We are writing academic papers so to speak, for our peers, that make no difference outside of our closed loop.
Whereas:
DDB--VW.
Scali--Volvo.
Ally--FedEx.
Chiat--Apple.
Wieden--Nike.
TBWA--Absolute.
Ammirati--BMW.
Leo Burnett--Kellogg's.
DKG--Talon Zippers.
The list is long.
The list was without fakery and awards' jockeying.
Today, agencies seem to be places brands go to die.
I can't think of anything today (excepting Apple/TBWA and Nike/Wieden) that comes close to anything like these.
Ads that built brands and agencies. That didn't need to fake results.
(h/t to Brian Burch for his efforts in posting great ads.)
