Ad Aged: Priests.

Back in 1980, newly minted with a Masters Degree in English Literature from Columbia University, I was plumb out of money and even plumber out of parental support and encouragement. Rather than keep studying the eddies of Moby Dick and the like, with rent fast coming due in a dangerous city, I had to find myself a job.

Mind you, at this point, I had only ever worked as an aluminum-sider, a game-room attendant at a seaside penny arcade and a cashier in a liquor store. I was also the "assistant dean of students" for Barnard College, the women's school of Columbia University but that was a gussy-up-the-resume way of saying "night watchman."

The first job I took had been classified under the heading of copywriter. I was hired to write catalog copy for the shoe division of the Montgomery Ward catalog. It paid $225/week and I was promised a raise to $250/week if I lasted six months.

During my time at there, I probably wrote 300 catalog pages a year, and I stayed two-and-a-half years. I then went to work in the advertising agency within Bloomingdale's. There, I wrote ten ads a week fifty weeks a year. I stayed at Bloomies for two-and-a-half years as well. So, by the time I arrived at Marschalk for my first agency job, I had written about 2,000 ads.

In the 42 years since then, I've probably written another 8,000 ads, including the thousand or so I've written to drive my own agency, GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, forward. In all, to be generous with myself--something I'm not very good at--I might have written 10,000 ads.

I know when I've done a good job. When something has stopping power, wit and is memorable. But I in fact, though I run about an ad a day for my business, I have absolutely no idea which ads I run will gain "traction," and which ones will "lay there like a lox."

Last week I ran something I thought was very smart and clever. As of this writing, it's gotten fewer than 500 views. Another ad, I posted just minutes later, which I wrote in about twelve seconds and typeset in about twelve more, was much more "successful." In fewer than 26 hours it's gotten over 6,000 views.

Now, I'm not a computer. I don't spend my days poring over reams of data. But after having written and produced about 10,000 ads, I have a confession. I have no idea which ads will "catch on." And which ads will be blah.

I don't think anyone does.

Here's where the point of today's post comes in.

The whole point of our modern-technological era is the promise of If-Then-ness. In fact, predicting what would happen was why Eniac--perhaps the world's first computer--was invented in the first place. The army wanted to see the effects of large explosions, particularly atomic ones. They created football-field-sized computers to calculate what would happen if you exploded one.

If we dropped a bomb on Moscow, then this would happen.

Just as "pentagon" thinking spread through government ("we had to destroy the village to save it") it's spread through our entire world. If you read the sports page today, both the Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Antonio Spurs will show you statistically how they defeated the New York Knicks, though the Knicks beat those teams 4-0 and 4-1.

Continuing, the if-then-technocrats quickly took over the advertising business. They started with "if these dopey creatives can get rich by writing Miller Lite commercials, imagine how much we can make with our brilliant business acumen." That's an easy sell to investors.

There's an apocryphal story about Albert Einstein and a chorus girl. "Suppose we had children," she said. "With my looks and your brains." Einstein asked, "what would happen if the kids got my looks and your brains."

The Einstein-Chorus-girl scenario was played out at the best agency of the 1970s and 1980s, Ally & Gargano. They merged with account powerhouse MCA, hoping to get Ally's creativity and MCA's punctiliousness. The opposite happened and in short order the place went belly-up. As the entire industry has, today.

Nevertheless, the if-then-technocrats sold to clients causality. If you put a click now button here, if you re-target, if you inundate you'll be wildly successful. Now, they're selling (with about 2% margin) if you game the AI-algorithm you'll rise to the top of search and targeting. Then you'll be successful.

For as long as there have been humans the priestly-caste (today, technologists and private equity nabobs and consultants) have been selling their ability to predict the future and therefore guarantee success.

AI (augmented intestines) circa 2000 BC.

Examining the liver of a slaughtered ox, the entrails of birds of prey, even the way a feather falls through the air and wafts to the ground. They were all meant to be unfailing portents that empowered those who had the secret knowledge to understand them.

When King Croesus of Lydia asked the Delphic Oracle if he should attack the Persians, he was told if he did he would "destroy a mighty empire." So, attack he did, thinking Persia would fall. Instead, the mighty empire that was destroyed was his own.

Or 2400 years ago Philip of Macedon and the Spartans had an exchange almost the same as that between tump and the Iranis. Give up your wealth, your nuclear ambitions, your oil, if you don't I will destroy you. If, they Iranis victoriously replied.