Think Small.

There was a book review in Friday's "Wall Street Journal," and 72-hours after reading it, I still can't shake what I read. That very notion--of writing that stays with the reader--seems lost today.

Today, at least in advertising, we prefer peppering a reader with lots of Lilliputian bug bites rather than with a round-house punch that leaves a mark. On the rare occasion I see an ad I like, it's usually gone from my memory by the time its last electron flashes before my eyes. Most everything, except forever chemicals and bad policy, have the longevity of an etch-a-sketch.

I've read probably one-thousand books on World War II. The very subhead pasted above promised a re-evaluation of 999 of them. What could the writer possibly mean "ideological conflict was not the cause of World War II." And what does any of this have to do with modren life and the ad industry?

Here are the sentences I can't shake from Simms' review. And I'll admit--my thinking on this isn't done, so what I'm about to type is a little inchoate, and maybe stupid.

[Hitler's] main concern was the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon and plutocratic behemoths of the British Empire and the U.S., whose power threatened to strangle Germany....The struggle against the U.S. was Hitler’s primary concern even before he plunged the Reich into a disastrous war with America.

This matters because Mr. Hellbeck is therefore blind to the link between Hitler’s opposition to international capitalism...

American factory production and dead Russians--30,000,000 (not counting the ones killed by Stalin)--won the war, producing, depending on the type of weaponry, more than the rest of the world combined.

Hitler derided American production, of course. Not realizing the United States could transition from building ice-boxes to building bombers and machine guns and bombs and howitzers. 

What's interesting for me in all this though, is the aftermath, or World War II--ie today--and how it pertains to advertising today.

If you look at DDB's early Volkswagen advertising the Beetle was anti-American. The Beetle was built in "opposition to international capitalism." 

1. It wasn't trendy.
2. It was well-built.
3. It lasted.
4. It didn't go out of style.
5. You didn't need a new one every four years.
6. It was practical, not flamboyant.
7. It was technologically advanced.
8. It was 'slow and steady,' not 'fast and capricious.'

Today's advertising--its economics, what we produce, and its deportment--look like the apotheosis of American capitalism. Most of what the industry produces lasts about as long as two-shakes of a lamb's tail. Very little does what DDB's VW did half-a-century ago. That is build enduring brand value. 

In other words,

1. It's trendy.
2. It shoddy.
3. It ephemeral.
4. It looks old after two-days.
5. You need a new one every four weeks.
6. It's impractical and flamboyant.
7. It was technologically unsophisticated.
8. It's 'fast and capricious' not 'slow and steady.' 

What's more, from a mass-production point-of-view, the modern advertising industry has built vast production lines, not unlike Ford's mile-long Willow Run assembly line. (Rich Siegel calls the interior design of most agencies "The long table of mediocrity.™" We produce masses of undifferentiated rectangles that dot roadsides everywhere with heaps of junk that, using cars as a metaphor, breakdown quickly and don't hold their value.

At GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, though I'm Jewish, and oddly for today, I have no Nazi tattoos, we try to follow VW's production sensibilities and philosophies.

We focus on what works.

And we work to make what works work better.

If you want 3200 ads a day to pester people and follow them forever like the Herpes virus, GeorgeCo. is decidedly not for you.

If you want something with enduring value that trades in truth not hype, please give me a ring-a-ling.

It's a philosophical choice.