A Post Fahdah's Day Repost.

 

One-hundred years ago this week, Yankel Tannenbaum or Tennenbaum or Tanenbaum or Tenenbaum (everyone in the family spelled our last name differently, part obstinance, part bad translations) my grandfather--my father's father-- stepped off the Hamburg-American liner, SS Leviathan and became the first, however it's spelled, Tannenbaum, to set foot on Amerikansche terra firma, soon to be pronounced in the Queen's Bronxian Latin, terrer firmer.

Yankel, just thirteen at the time, had lied about his age, claiming he was eighteen. He boarded in Hamburg, the SS Leviathan alone--though he called it the SS Limburger, being unfamiliar with Roman letters. He quickly found a hammock in the deck two decks below steerage, the decks well-below the waterline on the ship, where every crash and rattle and belch of the mighty engines, every shovel-full of coal, spewed out a Stygian effluvium of magma-heat onto the rotten rope of his swinging, stinking accommodations amid one-thousand farting men.

Yankel lost ten pounds on the three-week voyage, having eaten nothing but water they called soup and the soup they called water. He hadn't yet learned to get soup last--the bottom of the pot is where the potatoes lay--but as recompense, he stole three suits of clothing from other woebegone passengers and stuffed them all into the single rope-secured bundle that he hoisted on his already-bent Sisyphusian-back and he stumbled down the rickety gangplank and onto the beaten schist of Ellis Island.

He called it Smellis Island.

Appropriately.

Official gentiles with officer's hats and clipboards inspected him, looking at various papers, greasy from wear. They poked at his ears, his eyes and his mouth. They scrunched his scrotum. And then they pointed him to line three, gate four, the longest of the lines of wretched refuse on our teeming shores and Yankel, like a soldier in the Bataan Death March shuffled over under the weight of his bundle.

He saw an official eating an apple, about to drop the asymmetric core to the dusty, grass-deprived grounds and Yankel, always on the lookout for an opportunity or an angle, sensed one.

"Schexschuse Schmee, Your Schexcellency," Yankel spat. "Jew want see wut I can do mit der apple."

The tall, be-whiskered gentile handed Yankel the masticated core. It was already browning in the humid heat of a New York summer a century ago and tiny gnats had already arrived on the core. The air crackled with heat--it was not much cooler then than today, miserable and cornea-cracking.

"Vatch dis," Yankel said. "Jew see dat schmeegull ovah deah on duh piling?"

Yankel had noticed a fat fowl four-hundred feet away standing on one leg on an algaed post. 

"Your Highness," Yankel mustered, "Vatch me bean him."

Yankel had learned a pidgin of Hanglish listening to American sailors down in waterfront bars in Hamburg.

The official smiled and tucked his clipboard under his arm and nodded to Yankel.

"That's gotta be faw-hunnert feet," he mocked. "Like from centa to home at duh new Yankee Stadium up in duh Bronx."

"Yankee Stadium--I'm Yankel Stadium," my ancestor said. He then twirled his licorice thin right arm like the sidewheel of an old Mississippi River boat, lifting his left leg for power and torque and let the apple core fly.

It ran straight like an old Junker aeroplane and knocked the unsuspecting bird's legs out from under him. The bird tumbled into the viscous water, came up for air and screeched in anger. He spread his wings, drying them in the sunshine then flew high and circled over the people below, looking for someone to shit on in retribution. But by that time Yankel and the custom's official were walking arm-in-arm toward the processing center some one-hundred yards away.

"O'Malley," the official said shaking Yankel's calloused paw. "You've got an arm on you like Lefty Grove. And wit da Yankees not six miles away, I gotta getchu in for a tryout. You sticks with me. What did you say your name wuz?"

"Yankel. Yankel Tannenbaum. Schmere didja say you were takin' me, Yankel Stadium? Whas dat, schomewhere duh Jhoose like me-self schmives?"

"Noyadumbbell. Yankee Stadium. It's where dey play baseball, d' American past time. It's up in d' Bronx. D' house that Ruth built?"

"Like Ruth 'n Esther? That Ruth?"

"No, ya' stoopid Yid. Babe Ruth. The Bambino. The Colossus of Clout, the Behemoth of Bam, the Maharajah of Mash, the Mammoth of Maul, the Wizard of Wallop, the Rajah of Rap, the Vizier of Vector, the Caliph of Crash, the...the...the Sultan of Swat."

"Yer onny cornfusing me," Yankel said with barely a spit. "I have no ideer who this Ruth lady is."

"He's only duh greatest baseball player in the forty-eight states. And he plays up in da Bronx for the Bronx Bombers. I think wiff an arm like yers, I can getcha a tryout for d' Yankees. With an arm like yers, you could be making $5000 per annum, easy."

"$5000? Schmy wiff schmoney like dat, I could bring my twenny-nine bruddahs and sistas and aunts and uncles and muddahs and faddahs over. An all twenny-nine of us could share a room anna quarter with a cold-water bath just seven flights up and four blocks ovah."

"Dat's d' ticket, Yankel me boy. And wiff me taking only 125-percent of yer money for me agent's fee, you'll see that the streets in Amerika really iz paved with pickle juice and cel-ray."

"One-hunnert and twenny-five percent of ev'rything I schmake? So, I makes five thousan' and you takes sixty-two-hunnert and fifty dollars? That izza bargain! As soon as I learns t' schmite me name, I'll schmign on duh dotted line."

"Yer right as rain, Yankel, me boy."

And that my friends was how the Tannenbaums came to be in America.

Follow up questions (these may be on the test):

Did Yankel ever make it in amerika?

And what of officer O'Malley's 125% cut?

Were the streets really paved with pickle juice and cel-ray?

Was Yankel able to bring over his "twenny-nine bruddahs and sistas and aunts and uncles and muddahs and faddahs?

Being Accessible is a Big Mess-able.

When I talk to other humans about advertising (this happens about once every three months) if they're on a wave-length similar to mine (this happens about once every three years) we often wonder why jingles and mnemonics no longer hold any sway in the advertising we see (that is, if we see advertising at all.)

Most of us of a certain age remember rhymes and ditties from ads that have kept a rent-free place in our brains for half a century or more. Many of those ads, we remember with fondness--though we likely haven't seen them for half a century or more. 

The Brits were always better at these things than amerikansche were. Beanz Meanz Heinz takes the legume. Or the cake. But at one time, there were agencies and people who worked in them and people who worked for brands who practically demanded memory devices in their ads. 

As soon as I get home from school

I ask Mum ‘what’s for tea?’

And hope that she says Heinz Baked Beans

’Cos they’re the beans for me

There are lots of ways to eat them

You can have them on your toast

I like to eat them with fried eggs

Or with a Sunday roast

I like them with fish fingers

With sausages they’re great

The only time they’re not is when

They’re on my brother’s plate

Sometimes when I’m feeling sad

My mum will read the signs

She knows the thing to cheer me up

And she knows that Beanz Meanz Heinz

We've convinced ourselves, against all common sense, that advertising clutter or message inundation is a new thing. Actually clutter is a tale as old as time, as is needing to do something memorable to a) overcome clutter or b) punch above your weight.

Late last week, I stumbled across this obituary in The New York Times.

I'm a better amateur historian than I am professional copywriter but I remember exactly two things about John Tyler. 1) He became the first vice president to become president when William Henry Harrison died just thirty days after being inaugurated. 2) Harrison was called "Tippecanoe" because he killed a bunch of native amerikans there. His campaign slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." A damn good rhyme.

Rhyming works. As the Economist notes in the article that prompted this post: 

"...the brain is “hardwired” to notice rhymes, says Samuel Jay Keyser, author of “Play it Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts”, a new book. Other things reveal this too, such as the sheer ease with which you can detect rhymes in a text. A rhythm can be hard for you to see. That last sentence, for example, was in iambic pentameter, but you probably did not notice. Noticing rhyme in text is easier: if it’s got it, you can spot it.

The first commercial I remember I probably last saw in 1961 when I was three years old. And now, roughly 64 years later, I still remember every word.

When I was young in the business I sold a print campaign to Nabisco about a line extension of A1 Steak Sauce called A1 Poultry Sauce. Back in 1984 people weren't in the habit of dipping food. My partner and I created a dozen or twenty quarter-page units that explained how to use the stuff. 

One of them read "How to inspire a fryer." 

A lot of people in the agency made fun of me for that line. "It rhymes," they mocked. How dare I do something potentially memorable.

Today's dearth of ditties, jingles and other mnemonic devices has always puzzled me. I knew they weren't considered "cool" by the industry's "awards-industrial complex." They could probably get you fired, in fact.

Just now, an article in The Economist explained why. They write:

At the start of the 19th century, around half the population was literate; by the start of the 20th, 97% was... In an era of low literacy the mere ability to read a poem set someone apart; as the era of mass literacy dawned, another marker of intellect was needed. It came in the form of modernism.

In the 20th century, many art forms became “more abstruse, inaccessible and difficult to appreciate”, says Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University, “possibly as a way of differentiating elites from the hoi polloi”. Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one. By the mid-century, rhyming lines had fallen by half.

Maybe, if we were honest, we’ll concede something similar has happened in advertising. 

We got too elite to create communications for the hoi polloi. Or as my mother might have said, "we got too big for our britches."

Very often I'll see a commercial that will say nothing and show virtually nothing. There will be a sullen woman driving in the rain. We'll follow a single rain drop down the pane of a window. The announcer will say a single word: "Confidence." And we'll cut to a logo. These things are shot as if by Sven Nyquist. 

As if we're making an art film. 

As if people care.

We're not. And we don't.

We're making commercials.

And we're acting like dicks about it. 

I repeat from above: Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one.

Maybe we should try to be enjoyable again.

Fun.

Laughter.

Empathy.

Not snobbery.

Hello, sports fans.

I just happened upon a list drawn up by ex-Major League baseball player, pitcher Don Carman. Carman pitched for 10 major league seasons for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Cincinnati Reds and in the junior circuit, the Texas Rangers. When he wound up his career he had lost one more game than he had won.

It seems that even a mediocre pitcher like Carman was still beset by sports reporters after the game, so in order to avoid having to answer their banal stock questions, he posted the following list on his locker:

"1. I'm just glad to be here. I just want to help the club any way I can.
2. Baseball's a funny game.
3. I'd rather be lucky than good.
4. We're going to take the season one game at a time.
5. You're only as good as your last game (last at-bat).
6. This game has really changed.
7. If we stay healthy we should be right there.
8. It takes 24 (25) players.
9. We need two more players to take us over the top: Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig.
10. We have a different hero every day.
11. We'll get 'em tomorrow.
12. This team seems ready to gel.
13. With a couple breaks, we win that game.
14. That All-Star voting is a joke.
15. The catcher and I were on the same wavelength.
16. I just went right at 'em.
17. I did my best and that's all I can do.
18. You just can't pitch behind.
19. That's the name of the game.
20. We've got to have fun.
21. I didn't have my good stuff, but I battled 'em.
22. Give the guy some credit; he hit a good pitch.
23. He, we were due to catch a break or two.
24. Yes.
25. No.
26. That's why they pay him _____ million dollars.
27. Even I could have hit that pitch.
28. I know you are but what am I?
29. I was getting my off-speed stuff over so they couldn't sit on the fastball.
30. I had my at 'em ball going today.
31. I had some great plays made behind me tonight.
32. I couldn't have done it without my teammates.
33. You saw it... write it.
34. I just wanted to go as hard as I could as long as I could.
35. I'm seeing the ball real good.
36. I hit that ball good.
37. I don't get paid to hit."

What occurred to me when I read this is how we in advertising can likely come up with similar lists. One set of lists would pretty much cover any meeting you might be forced to attend.

1. We're trying to start a conversation about the brand.
2. It's part of an integrated ecosystem.
3. We need to put the consumer in the center of things.
4. We're going to own the color blue.
5. Media has some slides on that.
6. This game has really changed.
7. We want a clean, simple, uncluttered layout.

And so it goes.