Priest. And Desist.

Because I read widely and voraciously, and without supervision, or even people to discuss things with, I probably arrive at a lot of stupid conclusions. A result of my limited knowledge, limited intelligence and leaps of logic. That's ok. Sometimes the best starts are false starts. And at least I'm not merely parroting things I've heard some talking head somewhere say.

Lately I've been thinking about language and literacy. I'm thinking about it because in the era of AI, or Quantum, or whatever we want to call it next, the only people the potentates of government and industry will consider literate, or intelligent, are those who can read, write and think in AI.

I suppose we used to say that about HTML. Or English. Or before that, Latin or Greek, Mandarin or Aramaic.

From a long-history point of view, humankind, from our earliest permanent settlements about 12,000 years ago, has always had a priestly caste.

These are people, usually, who can see things, read things, understand things, decipher things that ordinary people can't. Again, 12,000 years ago, they might have been able to tell the populace what a red star in the skies meant, or a two-headed fish, or a white raven. These things were signs that resonated and had to be explained. Often they were used as metaphors for larger predictions. Like the Roman emperors who saw a cross in the sky and quickly said, "In Hoc Signo Vinces." 

In this sign, we will conquer.

We've always had people who could compel us to believe in the power of what they could see and we couldn't. When I was a little boy, Robert McNamara, JFK and LBJ's Secretary of Defense, was able to look at rows of numbers and convince us that we were winning in Vietnam.

The priestly caste is alive and well. 

Today, many of them live in Silicon Valley, have private jets and islands and are helping ru(i)n the country. Their names are Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Cook.

They're priests.

They have the ear of the gods (technology) and can propitiate the gods--that is, placate them, because they have access to the gods that those of us not in the priestly caste don't.

From their digital pulpits they give their Sermons on the Mount. Their views that they in their enlightenment have and you in your darkness are too dumb to see.

The world has always been led by Priestly classes who have and keep power because they can read languages the rest of us can't. In most of Europe until the Reformation, or the King James Bible, or the Enlightenment, the word of god, the preaching of god was only available to the masses (that's you and me) through priests as conduits. The Christian Bible was written in Latin. And only priests and a few learned people could read Latin. That extra knowledge is how priests stay in power.  The minute knowledge becomes "democratized" they change what knowledge is important.

It's how the priests and the elite stay above the people. Like a banker at Goldman Sachs or a wily baseball coach. They know what moves to make because they see things we can't.

Right now, AI is the language of the gods. It's the language that will reveal the future and make it.

We know this because the people who invented AI tell us this about ten-thousand times a day. In advertising, data is the language of the gods. The few people and agencies who can read the future in the entrails of binary code will win the big pieces of business and become the head of a holding company.

But...Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or Quis custodiet ipsos datades? Who will guard the data?

False gods, prophets, leaders always have and always will be with us. The tablets from on high, Mao's Red Book, the Ten Commandments, the Tweets of rump, will be as off as often as they're on.

The uniforms change. The teams really don't.

A lot of people ask me about AI. I was involved in it early on, participating heavily in the launch of IBM Watson. I derive most of my not inconsiderable income from companies selling or using AI. Since those heady IBM/Ogilvy days when it looked like conquering cancer, cleaning air, stopping crime etc etc were just around the corner, new and smarter AIs have been introduced by new and smarter priests. Deep Seek. ("That's not funny, it's seek.")

We're told how great it's all going to be, usually accompanied by a warning that AI could displace us and in some metaphorical way "eat our heads."

When people tell me this, how X will improve Y, how AI will make customer service better and AI-enabled chatbots will ease getting my cable-bill reduced and streamline everything I do (the same sort of things advertising people say about data) I usually get a glassy look on my face. Like Phyllis Diller about twelve-minutes after rigor-mortis takes hold.

Why haven't I seen it, I ask.
Why does everything suck?
Why, never in my life, have I never gotten the right message at the right time right how I want it?

If it's all so splendid, where the fuck is it.

Then I ask the priests, where's the EZ-Pass effect from AI? When EZ-Pass took hold, I kept no more change in my car's ash-tray, no more waiting at toll-booths, no more delays. It made things faster in reality, not just in promise.

Priests, if you're out there, where's mine?

I hear about seamless experiences.
I hear about my needs being anticipated and met before I realize I have a need.
I hear about a veritable heaven on earth.

You get that inside information and have told me so.

Just like Armageddon, or the Elysian Fields, or Valhalla, or tip-toeing through the tulips. It's all gonna be great--any day now.

This is not to say that all priests are false prophets or that no good has come from AI and other advanced technologies. In fact we need advanced tech to help us overcome the problems of advanced tech. And some people, I suppose, spread truth, light and joy--though I suppose all prophets are false prophets to someone. As Jagger pointed out, Every cop is a criminal/And all the sinners saints. Most things good/bad/peanut butter/jelly are open to interpretation.

But look before you leap and leap before you look.

Clip 'n Save (yourself).

A Knockout.

One late afternoon late in the summer way back in 1975 when I toiled under the unforgiving sun as I manned third base for the Saraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League, I was getting dressed in my warm-ups. Hector walked over to the worn wooden bench underneath the dripping pipe above my cubby. I was lacing up my black leather Riddell spikes which I had brought in my duffle all the way from New York.

"Jorge," Hector said, "Buentello is feeling sick. He said he is dizzy."

"He's not always dizzy?"

"You have a point. But tonight, he is more dizzy than usual and cannot catch."

Gonzalo Bustamante had just joined the team from the Yaquis of Ciudad Obregón, a lesser team in the Mexican Pacific league. Hector had shifted me to right field and put the newcomer at third. After eight games, Bustamante was batting an even .400 and had already amassed seven RBIs. 

"I would like you behind the plate tonight."

"What about Gordo," I asked. Gordo Batista was our backup backstop and our full-time bus driver.

"As a catcher," Hector said, "Gordo is a good bus driver. I will put either Andrade or Cervantes or Ibarra in for you. Whoever hits the ball best when we are warming up. And you will be behind the plate. Yturbe is pitching. He is steady."

"As a catcher," I answered, "I am a good third baseman."

"It is only for this one night, until Buentello recovers his balance."

Hector left my side and brought me a spare set of teal-highlighted catcher's gear. 

"Tonight you will wear the tools of ignorance."

"I didn't know it showed," I said, adjusting the straps to my left shinguard.

As much as I hated catching, I hated it less than playing in the outfield, where Hector had stuck me since Bustamante joined the squad. I hated being away from the center of the game, far away from the action. At least catching had me in the center of things where my mind had less of a propensity to wander. 

Right field was a notoriously lonely outpost, the Alcatraz of the baseball field. Xavi Liberto played there at the start of the season until his batting average fell below his weight. One night to pass the time he hid a small parakeet he had captured in his glove so he had someone to talk with. When a line drive was sent his way, without thinking he grabbed the ball and in the process crushed to death the small yellow bird he had hidden.

As most games did that long summer so long ago, this one faded into the ones before and the ones to come. Though Yturbe was strong that night and we were up by two going into the ninth, he faltered just when we thought we were home free. 

With two down, the Olmecs put two men on and their next batter hit a long one to right that took a hop over Ibarra's head. Two runs were in when Adame, in short right, relayed Ibarra's throw to me, unfortunately about two or four feet too high.

I leaped to catch it, and that's the last I remember until I woke up in the red leather  front seat of a white Cadillac convertible that belonged to Don Jorge Torres Casso, the owner of the Saraperos. The Olmec's runner had crashed into me, safe. And I went flying to the wooden backstop breaking through two of the old, dry planks, and was knocked out for a good fifteen minutes.

We had no ambulance at El Estadio de Francesco I. Madura, so the boys dragged me to Casso's car and Casso drove me to the hospital in his car, cursing me for my dusty uniform against his clean leather seats. Dr. Jesus Verdusco, our backup shortstop, who was a third-year medical student in the off-season at   Tecnológico de Monterrey, held my hand from his place in the seat behind me.

Casso, driving blindly, cursed the 15 minutes to the hospital. "My seats," he said. "You ass and your dirt on my seats. Why did they not put down a towel on the upholstery?"

He cursed me and so reminded me that the world had kept on spinning though the spinning of my head made it seem like it had stopped while I was blacked out.

After that night, I never again caught, not even batting practice.

Like I said, as a catcher, I was a good third-baseman.

Getting a New Job.

I get a lot of calls from people who have lost their agency jobs.

Mostly, I don't know these people directly. I know friends of theirs or an ex-boss or someone suggested they call me. You know, for an encouraging word or for advice on how to get back on the agency horse.

If there used to be a stigma around getting fired or being out of work--especially if you're over 40, that stigma has over the last decade or so, wholly disappeared. Give me about twenty minutes and I could put together a 75-person agency that would have a greater assemblage of talent than probably any agency in the country, with the possible exception of Wieden. To be quippy about it, I like to say that these days 'the best people in the agency business no longer work for agencies.'

Even so, when out-of-work people call me, I usually take four minutes and check out their portfolio sites. I hold to something Ogilvy Vice Chair Rory Sutherland said a couple years ago around the time of a WPP-personnel-hemorrhage. Rory said, "if someone's lasted til 50 in this business, they're probably pretty good."

I think that's fair. If they've survived 25 years, they can probably handle a shoot, a tough client, a terrible brief and, even worst of all, holding company politics. Over two decades or a quarter of a century or longer, you've attained so skills that are hard to come by.

When I get "how do I find a job calls" from these people, I'm inclined to believe they don't have a problem with their portfolios.

I thought about that myself when I got fired from R\GA at 56 and Ogilvy at 62. 

If my portfolio isn't a problem, I thought, maybe my problem is that I'm relying on my portfolio. I'm showing work I did months ago, or even years ago to show what I can do. Work that's gone through 37 rounds of client revisions and 370 rounds of internal revisions. Work that shows what I did. Not work that shows what I can do. Now.

Usually, when I get an assignment, I don't get to get used to the water in the swimming pool. I've got to show work often before I know where the men's room is--even if I'm working from home.

Clients or agencies aren't buying work I've done in the past, they're looking to buy work I can do today. As the old joke goes, don't tell me what you've done, tell me what you've done lately. 

This conceit might be ratiocination on my part. I think people who are looking to hire people want to see evidence every day that you're hireable. That you're fertile, fast, funny, and fucking good.

That's what I tell people, anyway. 

I don't think it's about leading with your portfolio anymore. I think it's about leading with today. 

If you get a call to start working at 9AM, what can you have done by 10AM?

That's why, every day, I show what I can do.

I write a blog post--my week's worth of posts gets about 80K views.

I often write a funny ad for myself. They get between 5K and 50K views an "insertion."

And I write dopey little jokes on Twitter. 

Maybe these aren’t directly transferrable to writing a :30 or a manifesto. But I've got a site full of those things.

The "extras" I do are what I can do now. 

They're little things to tell a world where it's all-too-easy to forget that I'm alive and well.

You can sneer at this and say, "that's easy for you, George. You were born prolific." 

Except I wasn't. I've practiced. I've found a way to exploit and advertise the few strengths I have. I've found a way to show the world my USPs. I've found a way to differentiate myself.

Sorry if I'm being a fuckhead about all this.

Showing your strengths and USPs and differentiating yourself is what advertising has been about since the earliest days of advertising. 

During the Song Dynasty around 1200 years ago, the Liu Family advertised its needle shop with that strategy. 3000 years ago, the ancient Greeks ran ads trying to capture their runaway slaves. And in Pompeii, 2000 years ago, every respectable brothel had an ad explaining its services.

They all said this is what we offer now.

Not this is what we did in the past.