I've written more than once about the demolition of the Beaux Arts masterpiece, Penn Station and it's replacement, a low-ceilinged sump of urine-scented linoleum bathed in a frizzy fluorescent crackle and homeless puke.
The tearing down of great buildings and replacing them with ugliness is about architecture, of course. But more, since great building are usually commissioned by giant corporations or governments, their buildings semiotically tell us how they see the people they're supposed to serve.
The Yale architecture professor and critic Vincent Scully said this about Penn Station, new and old.
I care about this because I think the same denigration is happening with the work our industry produces.
It's usually sloppy, badly-designed and it doesn't treat people with respect. It doesn't respect their time, their intelligence, their desire for uplift.
The one metric for creative work today is cheap.
If you can shoot it on an iPhone, ok.
If an algorithm can make it, even better.
If it's free, farty and fatuous, even better still.
What does that say about how we see our customers? Our employees? Our selves?
Our industry, which once built brands of grandeur and granite now screams "buy one get one" and talks down to everyone and everything. Our industry's work is pandering. Base. And is judged solely on its cheapness. If AI can do it, who care if it's vile. It's purportedly cheap.
I can't prove this.
And in a better world, wouldn't even have the urge to. The logic behind what follows is so obvious it should need no ballast behind it.
Treating people well is good for business. It's probably also good for farm animals--they are probably more productive, more nutritious and fetch a higher price when they are cared for with dignity.
Even, surprisingly, Walmart seems to have learned this "golden-rule-based" lesson. (amerika looks at itself as a christian nation until decency costs money or means being fair to people with dark skin.)
Treating people badly eventually destroys businesses, brands, corporations, countries. Treating animals with disdain has poisoned our food supply. One in eight amerikans is diabetic. That's almost 40 million people.
Again. In advertising we have to make a decision. Treat people, including those who work for us as we want to be treated, or treat them so that you can optimize your profit while minimizing your expenses. Thus, destroying everything while enriching a few.
The holding companies have made their decisions. Maybe they'll get away with it because like so much else in the world today they've consolidated wealth and have monopoly power.
Maybe they'll win. Besides, they're rich and I'm just one person.
Etiam si omnes, ego non.
Ict Nicht.
Not I.
How it started:
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