Wheeeeeeee!

Many years ago--actually, maybe three decades ago, Ogilvy's CEO at the time, Charlotte Beers, came up with a pretty damn good mission statement for the agency she led. 

It was broad, yet simple. There was no wordplay. Nothing about it that was too complicated. Yet, it was clear and memorable. Most of all, it helped define--for decades--Ogilvy's reason for being.

Even so, I doubt anyone at Ogilvy, or anywhere else for that matter (excepting maybe me) uses the line anymore.  I doubt anyone at Ogilvy, or anywhere else for that matter even remembers the line.

"To be most-valued by those who most-value brands."

If I'm wrong about its use within Ogilvy and if anyone at Ogilvy wants to write a rejoinder to this post, mi bloggo es su bloggo. You can write whatever you want in this space, and I won't edit a bit, except for obvious grammatical and spelling mistakes. And calumny. I am anti-calumny.

What's adroit about the line above is that it posits advertising agencies are to be valued. And the best agencies attract clients who value that agency's ability to enhance the reputation, the clarity and even the performance of the client's brand. 

There's a symmetry to the line, too. Not just semantic symmetry but a spiritual symmetry. To me it says, "We add to your value, that's why you should value us." Or, "Because we add to your value, you should value us." Often, the best relationships are built on equations and those equations are usually reciprocal.

When I first joined Ogilvy way back in 1999, I'm not sure if I ever heard anyone actually say Ms. Beers' line in a meeting or in passing. David Ogilvy's Ogilvy-isms were everywhere and were always a crutch you could lean on if you had to do a house-ad for some awards magazine. But somehow "To be most-valued by those who most-value brands" infiltrated my marrow.

Many times when I'm working with a client I'll bring it up. If, for instance, my client makes doorstops, I'll say to them that my goal in working with them is to make them "most-valued by those who most-value doorstops." Until I come up with words that are better than those, they serve as a pretty good proxy for a client's over-arching mission. 

If you're a client, try it right now with your brand. If a simple substitution doesn't in some form work, sue me. Or worse, ignore me.

I think it even works for being a friend, or a parent, or a spouse, or a creative director. 

The saddest thing I think about the advertising world today, which I don't think anyone would argue is not in a fairly precipitous decline, is that we don't examine the real reasons behind our current state. In fact, the decline is so steep it reminds me of a great line from the 1944 screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, "Arsenic and Old Lace." Cary Grant says something like, "Insanity runs in my family; it practically gallops!" In other words, the advertising industry ain't descending, it's practically plummeting.

We've come up with more reasons than you can shake an MBA at to explain our decline. The rise of holding companies, the divestiture of media agencies, the death of media commissions, the over-reliance of the magic of spurious technologies. There are probably hundreds more reasons you've heard and can think of.

But maybe the most foundational reason is the simplest. And maybe it explains the declines of so many institutions, brands and industries we used to trust and admire. 

We stopped dedicating ourselves to making people's lives better. And we stopped demanding respect for the important jobs we do.

We stopped being valued by clients at least in part because we stopped proving value to clients.

People stopped caring about advertising because advertising stopped caring about people.

A lot of people will look for magic bullets on technologies or creative processes or staffing models that they will claim will bring the industry back.

I don't have faith in panaceas. And people who promise them are usually charlatans.

I think step one, now and always is providing value to your customers. So your customers value you.

That at least deserves a moment or two of consideration.