M and M.

I'm thinking this through as I'm writing it so it all may be a little inchoate, opaque, or even stupid. But that's one of the virtues of writing, really. Working things out, so you can decide, somewhat methodically if they're stupid or profound.

Cartesian, kinda. Escribo ergo sum.

This morning, a long time friend sent me an article about Interpublic Group (IPG) having fired another 2,400 people prior to its monopolistic merger with Omnicom--a merger I can't understand as benefitting anyone working at either company save for the sixteen or fourteen Brioni suits at the top, who don't need anymore benefitting.

I mentioned something to my wife, who was sitting across from me as we ate our oatmeal, "This merger is just a money grab." And then I thought of a Manichean dichotomy that pertains to so much of our world today.

This is, perhaps, the final round of a long fight between "Missionaries" and "Mercenaries." Between "Promise" and "Profits."

The "believers" and the "receivers."

The mercenaries have won. 

Hands down.

The ad industry, like so many other industries, used to be run by true believers. Maybe this is effete. Maybe it's just another attempt to find meaning in what is, so often, an utterly meaningless world.

But in the first twenty-years of my career, I worked for people and agencies who were missionaries propagating the mission of Bill Bernbach and Carl Ally. Their mission was to prove advertising could be done without being insulting to people or ugly or dumb. That you could give people information--service, so to speak--that helped them make better, wiser decisions. There was, in short, a certain nobility to our work. Our work was a mission.

This continued when I arrived at Ogilvy the first time. There, at least on the IBM account, most people were missionaries from the church of Chiat and Day. We strove to create and sell and win new business with advertising that was both culturally adroit and intelligent. Even David Ogilvy's dicta, "the consumer isn't a moron, she is your wife," follows this precept.

I don't know what life is like any longer in the agency business. When I was fired from Ogilvy almost six years ago, the missionary zeal had been clubbed to death. Life was no longer about leading clients, helping people buy, or doing something smart.

Those motivations had been replaced by "being part of culture," being "award winning," "being digital-first," being "always on."

Those criteria are mercenary. 

Since the beginning of recorded time no person outside of an agency boardroom has ever said, "I want advertising that's always on." Or "I want to have a conversation with a brand." "Or I need my music co-opted by a pharmaceutical that can conquer toe fungus." Neither has anyone ever said, "I'm buying brand-x, they won a titanium pupik at Cannes."

None of the modern measurements of advertising actually even pertain to advertising. They're about creating 728x90 banner ads by algorithm.

Here's a sports metaphor.

I like basketball and will read about it now and again during the off season. Earlier this week, I read this bit about the travails of the rebuilding Celtics squad as they face an uncertain future. 

Not only do I not understand it (or want to) it also has nothing to do with what had been a sport I once liked, basketball.

Just like reading an article on advertising has very little to do with good writing, design, human motivations and the like. Instead, this is the business today.

On Thursday night five of my ad friends and I got together at Great New York Noodletown on 28 Bowery. Since Covid descended, in an attempt to remain human, we've been getting together about every other month to have a chin-wag. (That was not a Chinese-food slur.)

We're all on the wrong side of sixty. But we're still working. We still love the business and lament what's become of it. 

We're all still missionaries. Or to rewrite General Douglas MacArthur's line after he was fired by Harry Truman, "Old ad people don't die, they just eat Shrimp with Cashew Nuts.