Magic. Or Tragic.

I often see people on LinkedIn talking about the business books they read. I'm such an inveterate reader that it's not unusual for people to ask me if I've read such-and-such about management, about unlocking people, about whatever and whatever. 

I always reply the same way.

With a "no" and a short explanation.

I don't read business books. I read books about the world and apply them to business. 

I won't explain that. I'm not sure I could if I wanted to. And I don't want to. So I'll leave it at that. I just happen to believe that I'll get better writing advice from someone like two-time National Book Award-winner Robert Caro than I will from someone who writes about something as limited as advertising. As Alexander Pope said so many centuries ago, "The proper study of mankind is man." I might parrot that and say, "the proper study of advertising is life." So, as Melville said, "A whaleship is my Yale College and Harvard," I look to life and literature for guidance. (I'm no Melville.)

I just now read in The Wall Street Journal a book review of a book shown above called "Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future." You can read the review here. And buy the book here.

In fact, the subhead of the review above, brought it all home to me in a lizard-brain flash. When I read that, I said, "this is about advertising." The rest of the review was just frosting on the Ding-Dong.

Advertising has become a system that excels at obstruction. Bullshit protocols, rigamarole, best-practices, data science and algorithms. 

Advertising during my life in the business has transmuttrophied from making to quaking. From steering clients to fearing clients. From creating to masturbating.

When advertising works, it is run by creatives, aka, engineers, people who make things. People who understand "storyboards and spreadsheets." Not one or the other. Both. Always. Without fail. Every day.

Wieden. Kennedy. Droga. Hahn. Dusenberry. Lubars. Riney. Goodby. Silverstein. Hayden. Scali. McCabe. Gargano. Bernbach. 

The list of agency creative leaders goes on.

Now, draw a parallel from these sentences in the WSJ's review: 

"the American elite is 'made up of mostly lawyers, excelling at obstruction,' the Chinese state is run by a 'technocratic class, made up mostly of engineers, that excels at construction.' 

China is 'an engineering state,' Mr. Wang observes, 'building big at breakneck speed,' in contrast to the United States’ 'lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.' 

(America, Mr. Wang notes, has 400 lawyers for every 100,000 people, three times higher than the European average.) China versus U.S. is therefore 'a contest between a literal-minded dragon and lawyerly weenies.'"

Today the agency elite is made up mostly of accountants, excelling in squeezing, not pleasing. The old time agency world was full of over-deliverers who pushed clients ahead. 

Here's just one example you can draw your own conclusions from:

"In 2008, both China and the U.S. initiated the construction of a high-speed rail link of some 800 miles, the former between Beijing and Shanghai, the latter between San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

"China opened its line in 2011 at a cost of $36 billion. California—paralyzed by Nimby litigation, pork-barrel politics and soaring costs—has so far built only a small stretch of track in the Central Valley, and even that won’t be operational until at least 2030. The latest cost estimate? $128 billion."

I dunno.

I think ad agencies should be run by ad people. Ones who make ads. Not just talk about them. Or who squeeze "margin" out of them.

Ones who embrace logic and magic. 

Without magic advertising is tragic.

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BTW, 

Somehow this, which I stole from Dave Trott is a good way to end a post about substance.