Some good writing I fell prey to.

I am reading a book of essays called "Creators" by a scholar named Paul Johnson. It's brief accounts of creative courage--and how great creators, "From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney," got the stuff to do what it is they did--change the world. It's a book I can recommend--it's even marked down at the Strand from $25.95 to $9.95, so it's a bargain to boot.

Right now I am reading Johnson's essay on Shakespeare, perhaps the most profound creative force in the history of the world (though I always enjoyed Chaucer more.) So I just came upon some words from The Tempest, and at 8AM on the C-train, I laughed out loud. They conjured up real images of people and agencies I can't stand. It's a fairly high writing-bar, and if nothing else should stoke your ambition to come up with fresh words, images and ideas. Here goes:

"What have we here? a man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fish-like smell;..."

Of course, there's another line from The Tempest that also reminds me of agency
life: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." But that, I suppose, is besides the point.

A joke HR would hate.

So two gay men are standing on the corner when all of a sudden this absolutely stunning blonde in a low cut, clingy dress walks by. She is drop-dead gorgeous and oozing sex.
One gay man turns to the other and says,
"It's times like this I wish I were a lesbian."

A final word on HR. And the agency you work for.

Think of your agency while reading these two quotes by Kerouac. Then you'll know if it's time to leave.

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

A bit more on HR.

Don't get me wrong, some people in HR are nice. I enjoy their company. But the nature of HR is to promote a certain amiability and gentleness. And creativity, most often, does not come from such circumstances. Therefore, as HR grows increasingly powerful in agencies (because law-suits become increasingly more expensive) more and more agencies and people are put through the blanderizer.

To cite George Bernard Shaw again, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him. The unreasonable man attempts to adapt the world to him. Such is the source of all progress and creativity." For clarity's sake, I'll toss in a little Henry Ford, "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse.'" By that I mean, conforming, listening, catering to, adapting to prevailing wisdom is stultifying. That's the culture most agencies seem bent on creating.

I am not advocating mean-ness. But I am advocating tolerance of those on the far right of the bell-curve. The ones who might not pass Rorshach tests or who might pose a question like, "what's the difference between a duck?" Not logical. Not answerable.
Not anything but provocative. And in creative organizations, provocation as in--you're provoking me--is what is often needed. Otherwise you're fastening bolts and doing the prescribed, which is a prescription for sameness and mediocrity.

Finally, please permit me a rant that I'm aiming at the newspeak that infects agencies often through the offices of HR. "People of color." Fuck you. I have a color. I am not pale or transparent like the visible man models we had as kids. I have color. I am colorful and I don't like being segregated as one of those un-colored. And then there is the word "Diversity." I always took diversity to mean a mixture of different people. Now it is code for black, hispanic, asian or something else. "We're looking for diverse candidates" means we are looking for people who are not white. That means white people are all the same? That is racism of the lowest and most offensive order.

Somehow this reminds me of HR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDTVzWtsMD0

People managing people who manage people.

The bane of the world, or, more accurately one of the world's many banes, or one of the world's most banal banes, is HR. I hesitate to say HR people because that term, "HR people" is an oxymoron.

They're not people because they have no soul. They're not people because they would rather speak in coded language, and have you do the same, than tell the truth. They're not people because they are essentially lazy and dishonest, rarely returning calls, rarely being there when they're needed and, most egregiously, rarely being honest at all.

Here's why I'm outraged. For whatever reason--I guess the avoidance of litigation--HR has assumed vast power in most agencies. There are Chief People Officers. HR people who are EVPs. HR people who seem to rule the roost. Once I decided to fire a lousy copywriter who happened to be of Indian (sub-continent) descent. HR tells me she's a minority. I respond, "There a billion and a half Indians in the world and 12 million Jews. How are they a minority and I'm not?"

Another time, I tried to fired my assistant. This took me six weeks though she was on probation when they gave her to me. "Why do you want to fire her?" I was asked by HR. "Because she's dumb," I replied. "You can't say she's dumb. You can say she fails to meet your needs. She doesn't anticipate. But you can't say she's dumb." "Listen, she writes "ciao" on emails and spells it "chow." Her learning curve is actually a negative slope. She's dumb." But no, candor is not allowed.

Finally, HR people, whether they're real or pixeled, don't return phone calls. They're too busy.

I worked for a very tall man once who said creatives should be evaluated thusly:
Do they come through?
Can they handle a tough client?
Can they command a room?
Can they win new business?
Can they win awards?

HR hates shit like that. They'd prefer a form that takes two hours to fill out and will tell you nothing about the person.

Hey, it's Truck Month!

Chevy just said so, or they said truck month has been extended into November. I better go out and buy one now! I don't want to miss out.

No one lives in this agency, really.

You, dear reader, have heard Ad Aged decry the decline of the English language. I reckon the error below is just a typo, but it does make me a little nuts.

I pulled this from Adweek today at 1:15 PM. Typo in bold.

"Initially, Brooks and Bennett, who will share an office, will focus on integrating the two staffs and establishing how they will operate as one. "The type of integration we're talking about is really as complete as integration can get, where you literally have no boarders and you have people sitting by function," said Bennett."

The car you have ignored.

The October sales of the heavily advertised--blitzed, even--Chevrolet Impala are down 5.4% from October '06. Meanwhile sales of the Toyota Camry are up 17.1% and the Honda Accord's sales are up 26.3%.

As much as I hate the Impala's advertising, bad ads alone aren't the reason for Chevy's continuing decline, just as good ads aren't the impetus behind the continuing surge of Japanese manufacturers. The essential point is this: for Chevy advertising is not the problem. The problem is a deeper one. One of trust and credibility destroyed. If the resurrection of Chevy and other GM brands is ever to take place, it must be accompanied by a radically different approach to getting their message out. Gags and puffery about the un-ignorability of a sedan ain't going to ameliorate literally decades of bad product, bad service and over-hyped sell.

Some have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again and expecting a different result. Chevy expecting a boost from a couple of :30s just might fall into the insanity camp.

Even if it doesn't, if I had $5 billion to spend on marketing (as GM does) I would apportion some of it to doing something different.

Advertising and election 2008.

I just went to the websites of the top six candidates currently vying for their party's presidential nomination. Mitt. Barack. Hillary. McCain. Rudy. Edwards. With the exception of McCain's, they all asked for the viewers' name and email address (and in many cases, a donation of time and/or money) before you even got to their site. On McCain's site, money and information is asked for alongside the landing page's key visual.

This frightens me and I don't think I'm overreacting. It frightens me because it is about candidates taking from us as opposed to doing for us. It also is evidence of a profound lack of understanding that the president is not meant to be an imperial presence, rather, an exalted public servant. In other words, where is the value exchange here? Direct Marketing 101 would tell you that you shouldn't ask of the customer without promising something to the customer, ie. "I'll give you my email address in exchange for a coupon." Quid pro quo is missing from these sites. Semiotically that augers ill.

Here's what I wish the sites did.

"This I believe." By Candidate X.
1. I believe that the global war on terror will exist as long as we are dependent on foreign oil.
2. Therefore I believe we must spend a dollar amount equal to half our current defense budget to find a non-polluting, regenerating energy source. Not corn, which is the pawn of the Agri-business lobby. Not coal which is deadly. Not nuclear which is deadlier. We will do this before my first term is done in 2012.
And so on.