There's a new spot for airing now for Prudential, the insurance giant. It was created by Droga 5, one of the hottest agencies going, so naturally it received, in the trade press, a decent amount of attention for a couple of reasons. One: What would Droga do? And two: Would Prudential's notoriously banal advertising become, suddenly, intelligent, interesting or less full of boasts and bombast.
Christopher Hedges, the brilliant Pulitzer-prize winning writer (who now writes for Truth Dig) wrote in his great book, "The Empire of Illusion" about the estrangement of academia from the real world. Scholarship has become so esoteric and effete it has lost meaning to anyone not involved in other scholarship. In short, it has become solipsistic and self-referential. It doesn't deal with the problems of our age, it deals instead with other scholarship.
The same affliction has affected advertising. If we want to win awards, work for hot shops, make gobs of money and cavort at Cannes, you don't do ads that move people or products. You make ads that appeal only to ad people.
The Prudential spot is one of these. Here is "Creativity's" synopsis of the spot: "Droga5 debuts its first work for Prudential, a montage of beautiful scenic shots tied together by a single sunrise. According to Creative Chairman David Droga, the entire film was shot in one day, within a three-hour window. Smuggler director Ringan Ledwidge set up 100 cameras across the country to track one sunrise as it rose across the country."
Here is the VO copy that accompanies all those rising suns.
"And just like that, it’s here.
A new day.
A new chance for all of us.
People.
Companies.
Communities.
To face the challenges yesterday left behind.
And the ones tomorrow will bring.
Prudential.
Bring your challenges."
In the words of my 10th-grade girl friend: puh-leeze.
"Creativity" is, of course, a complicit actor in the awards-industrial complex. They laud the small, esoteric and spec to the exclusion of real news and real trends and trauma in our industry. I'm a fairly knowledgeable viewer of spots. I couldn't give a rat's ass that the spot's director "set up 100 cameras across the country." That's the ad industry's equivalent of academia saying that Melville wrote "Moby Dick" with brown ink. Who the heck cares?
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Advertising lessons from The New York Times.
Last week I got an email from "The New York Times" entitled "The Story Behind the Story." In it, writer Alison Mitchell describes how the Times "scrambled to report on Osama bin Laden's death."
What follows is essentially a minute by minute account of reporters, rewrite people, editors, photographers, film editors and more, working to remake an edition of the Times so that one of the most important story in years could make it to the paper.
The Times literally "stopped the presses." They destroyed 7,700 copies of the paper that had already been printed. Though it was 10:30 on a Sunday night when it was announced that President Obama had an statement to make, Times people began flooding the newsroom. "Usually we're operating with a skeletal staff this late on a Sunday...[that night] We counted 103 people in the newsroom."
After Obama made the announcement at 11:30, all those journalists went to work. bin Laden's obituary was updated. Reporters were dispatched throughout the city. A rewrite person ran to Times Square for 20 minutes and "anchored a story about the spontaneous and raucous midnight celebrations that included reporting from colleagues at the White House and Ground Zero."
By 12:45 AM, the entire paper was remade and ready to print. While that was happening the Web News Editor was remaking the content on the Times' site. That was done by 3AM and a new crew came to continue the job at 5AM.
I think about this action in terms of the inaction that afflicts most agencies and clients. It takes us sometimes years to come up with an advertising campaign, longer sometimes, for things like websites.
I know comparing journalism and advertising is apples and oranges. But we can all learn a lesson from organizations that know how to get shit done.
What follows is essentially a minute by minute account of reporters, rewrite people, editors, photographers, film editors and more, working to remake an edition of the Times so that one of the most important story in years could make it to the paper.
The Times literally "stopped the presses." They destroyed 7,700 copies of the paper that had already been printed. Though it was 10:30 on a Sunday night when it was announced that President Obama had an statement to make, Times people began flooding the newsroom. "Usually we're operating with a skeletal staff this late on a Sunday...[that night] We counted 103 people in the newsroom."
After Obama made the announcement at 11:30, all those journalists went to work. bin Laden's obituary was updated. Reporters were dispatched throughout the city. A rewrite person ran to Times Square for 20 minutes and "anchored a story about the spontaneous and raucous midnight celebrations that included reporting from colleagues at the White House and Ground Zero."
By 12:45 AM, the entire paper was remade and ready to print. While that was happening the Web News Editor was remaking the content on the Times' site. That was done by 3AM and a new crew came to continue the job at 5AM.
I think about this action in terms of the inaction that afflicts most agencies and clients. It takes us sometimes years to come up with an advertising campaign, longer sometimes, for things like websites.
I know comparing journalism and advertising is apples and oranges. But we can all learn a lesson from organizations that know how to get shit done.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Yonkers memories.
When I was a kid, though there was professional football and basketball and hockey, our world revolved around baseball. Baseball took us from February, when the "Grapefruit League" started, through December when the major awards, the MVP and the Cy Young were announced.
We wondered, primarily, how the Yankees would do. The Yankees who had almost always won, but who were now older and as rickety as Mickey Mantle's knees. Almost every year "The New York Times" would herald the arrival of the next great Yankee. After all, DiMaggio had followed Ruth and Mantle had followed DiMaggio, so it was only natural to expect someone to, in turn, follow Mantle.
There was Ross Moschito and Roger Repoz, who had torn the cover off the ball in the minors. There was Roy White who was small but speedy. Then there was Bobby Murcer, an Oklahoma boy like Mantle himself, who played shortstop like Mantle had and was coming up as Mantle was in the long, slow inevitability of hanging up his spikes.
Even though baseball was still regarded as "the summer game," we played year round. There was barely an exposed brick wall in town that didn't have a portrait-oriented rectangle painted on it, a stickball strike zone. In those days, the mid 60s, most stores still closed on Sundays and that when kids from all over would take over the A&P parking lot and play until dark.
My brother, the oldest of the lot would announce the games as he pitched. To his ears his did a dead on "Red" Barber imitation, and would recount every pitch, every hit, with a slight Southern lilt, using liberally, the "ol' redhead's" stock phrases.
"It's a beautiful day at the big ball park. Mantle gets ahold of one, it's way back, way back, that's going, going, gone!"
There's nothing in the world that feels quite so gratifying as hitting one over Brewer's hardware store with your mother's old broom stick, the ball sailing into oblivion, necessitating a good ten minute break as we searched for it amongst the unraked leaves or the untrimmed hydrangea.
When we got older and we could swat the ball too far for comfort, we would deaden it a bit by shrouding it with electrical tape or by puncturing it so it wouldn't fly as true.
We never had any money in those days before you left the house with "mug money." We'd head out the the parking lot on our bikes and play until someone had to go home or until dark. If we wanted something to eat or drink, we would scrounge some deposit bottles until we got 20-cent's worth or a quarter's.
At Benny's, a luncheonette just up the road, you could get a Coke for 25-cents or a Cherry Coke for a nickel more. When we had the money we'd get a hotdog, fries and a Coke. That was a whole dollar. A millionaire's extravagance.
Benny's made the best hotdog I've ever had. It was even better than the ones at the ballpark. They would slice the dog in half lengthwise and grill it then serve it to you on a lightly buttered toasted roll. It was dog perfection.
There was also a Carvel soft ice cream place nearby where you could get a single cone for 17-cents or a "Brown Betty," the same cone dipped in chocolate sauce for 25-cents.
Besides deposit bottles, the other things we would collect were the bottle caps from the milk bottles the milk man delivered two or three days a week. Dellwood, the local dairy was a sponsor of the Yankees and inside each bottle cap they put a paper insert colored orange. I think if you collected 350 of those inserts you could get a free bleacher seat to Yankee Stadium. My brother and I collected them for two years and never got close to that number.
On the way back from Cape Cod last weekend, we drove past all these old haunts, on the Major Deegan, the New England Thruway and the Bruckner. Where there used to be open lots there are now big box stores or condominium townhouses. There's even a Trump tower now in New Rochelle that's 40-stories high.
If you had given us a chance, we could have swatted one over that building easy.
We wondered, primarily, how the Yankees would do. The Yankees who had almost always won, but who were now older and as rickety as Mickey Mantle's knees. Almost every year "The New York Times" would herald the arrival of the next great Yankee. After all, DiMaggio had followed Ruth and Mantle had followed DiMaggio, so it was only natural to expect someone to, in turn, follow Mantle.
There was Ross Moschito and Roger Repoz, who had torn the cover off the ball in the minors. There was Roy White who was small but speedy. Then there was Bobby Murcer, an Oklahoma boy like Mantle himself, who played shortstop like Mantle had and was coming up as Mantle was in the long, slow inevitability of hanging up his spikes.
Even though baseball was still regarded as "the summer game," we played year round. There was barely an exposed brick wall in town that didn't have a portrait-oriented rectangle painted on it, a stickball strike zone. In those days, the mid 60s, most stores still closed on Sundays and that when kids from all over would take over the A&P parking lot and play until dark.
My brother, the oldest of the lot would announce the games as he pitched. To his ears his did a dead on "Red" Barber imitation, and would recount every pitch, every hit, with a slight Southern lilt, using liberally, the "ol' redhead's" stock phrases.
"It's a beautiful day at the big ball park. Mantle gets ahold of one, it's way back, way back, that's going, going, gone!"
There's nothing in the world that feels quite so gratifying as hitting one over Brewer's hardware store with your mother's old broom stick, the ball sailing into oblivion, necessitating a good ten minute break as we searched for it amongst the unraked leaves or the untrimmed hydrangea.
When we got older and we could swat the ball too far for comfort, we would deaden it a bit by shrouding it with electrical tape or by puncturing it so it wouldn't fly as true.
We never had any money in those days before you left the house with "mug money." We'd head out the the parking lot on our bikes and play until someone had to go home or until dark. If we wanted something to eat or drink, we would scrounge some deposit bottles until we got 20-cent's worth or a quarter's.
At Benny's, a luncheonette just up the road, you could get a Coke for 25-cents or a Cherry Coke for a nickel more. When we had the money we'd get a hotdog, fries and a Coke. That was a whole dollar. A millionaire's extravagance.
Benny's made the best hotdog I've ever had. It was even better than the ones at the ballpark. They would slice the dog in half lengthwise and grill it then serve it to you on a lightly buttered toasted roll. It was dog perfection.
There was also a Carvel soft ice cream place nearby where you could get a single cone for 17-cents or a "Brown Betty," the same cone dipped in chocolate sauce for 25-cents.
Besides deposit bottles, the other things we would collect were the bottle caps from the milk bottles the milk man delivered two or three days a week. Dellwood, the local dairy was a sponsor of the Yankees and inside each bottle cap they put a paper insert colored orange. I think if you collected 350 of those inserts you could get a free bleacher seat to Yankee Stadium. My brother and I collected them for two years and never got close to that number.
On the way back from Cape Cod last weekend, we drove past all these old haunts, on the Major Deegan, the New England Thruway and the Bruckner. Where there used to be open lots there are now big box stores or condominium townhouses. There's even a Trump tower now in New Rochelle that's 40-stories high.
If you had given us a chance, we could have swatted one over that building easy.
Friday, June 3, 2011
A new way of doing things.
Years ago I was going to be offered a job and the time had come to talk about my salary. I had a bit of an epiphany. I would ask for a moderate salary and per page remuneration for each powerpoint page I had to sit through.
Today I had a similar vision. Let's apprise assignments not by the creative we are meant to produce or the date the work is supposed to be live. Let's assess our assignments based on the number of client meetings it takes to reach some sort of tangible conclusion.
For instance, a print ad may be a "26-meeting assignment," a banner ad "a nine meeting assignment" and a brand television campaign or website build might be a "100-meeting job."
The beauty of this methodology is this: it acknowledges that what's important in the business is not the creative we produce to propagate an idea or a brand. It's the meetings we make.
Today I had a similar vision. Let's apprise assignments not by the creative we are meant to produce or the date the work is supposed to be live. Let's assess our assignments based on the number of client meetings it takes to reach some sort of tangible conclusion.
For instance, a print ad may be a "26-meeting assignment," a banner ad "a nine meeting assignment" and a brand television campaign or website build might be a "100-meeting job."
The beauty of this methodology is this: it acknowledges that what's important in the business is not the creative we produce to propagate an idea or a brand. It's the meetings we make.
The world isn't hip.
In the universe of advertising blogs, there are those that cover the ins and outs of the agency business. Who's gotten fucked. Who's laying off. And what agency is winning which account.
The biggest news of late is in that last category and involves McGarry Bowen winning, in the span of about ten days, both Sears and Burger King.
The pusillanimous (usually anonymous) pundits commenting on such news excoriate McGarry Bowen. They're sure McGarry's work will be family-focused and bland. It won't be new and cutting edge. It will be mainstream and middle-American.
Well, guess what. Most people are mainstream. They don't want an ironic hamburger. They like to see people smile and they like the warm, emotional and heartfelt.
I am not advocating blandness by any means, that's not my point. But what is my issue is that the Williamsburg-Lower East Side "Creative" Cabal has this belief that there is only one strategy for each and every brand and this is this: "We are cool. In fact we are so cool, we're probably too cool for you."
I don't want a cool car insurance company or a cool bank. I would like Sears to be like an old fashioned Army-Navy store. I could give a rat's ass if they're cool.
Go to Disney World sometime, or even LA but not "that part" of LA. It's filled with people that hipsters mock.
Sorry.
That's America.
The biggest news of late is in that last category and involves McGarry Bowen winning, in the span of about ten days, both Sears and Burger King.
The pusillanimous (usually anonymous) pundits commenting on such news excoriate McGarry Bowen. They're sure McGarry's work will be family-focused and bland. It won't be new and cutting edge. It will be mainstream and middle-American.
Well, guess what. Most people are mainstream. They don't want an ironic hamburger. They like to see people smile and they like the warm, emotional and heartfelt.
I am not advocating blandness by any means, that's not my point. But what is my issue is that the Williamsburg-Lower East Side "Creative" Cabal has this belief that there is only one strategy for each and every brand and this is this: "We are cool. In fact we are so cool, we're probably too cool for you."
I don't want a cool car insurance company or a cool bank. I would like Sears to be like an old fashioned Army-Navy store. I could give a rat's ass if they're cool.
Go to Disney World sometime, or even LA but not "that part" of LA. It's filled with people that hipsters mock.
Sorry.
That's America.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Asses.
One of the things that happened in America with the rise of television networks is that regional accents, slang and usages began to disappear. Mass media was the same whether you lived in Manhattan, NY or Manhattan, KS. And over the decades a norm of language was established.
We no longer hear idiomatic descriptions like those of Senator Claghorn, a character on Fred Allen’s old radio show. If you’re speaking too much and saying too little, you’re unlikely to be told “your tongue’s wagging like a blind dog’s tail in a meat market.”
The internet, I think, has furthered our homogenization of language. People from all over the world quickly see (and learn) from many of the same sources. While there are literally billions of sources to chose from, my guess is that some binary version of the 80-20 law prevails and 80% of the world’s populace gets their blather from a handful of sites.
I draw this conclusion because I see the rapid disintegration of our language. Language that is divorced from meaning, that comes from on high and is inexplicable. Language that communicates nothing other than that “I, the speaker or writer ‘get it,’ and you, the dim-witted recipient or listener are unable to even understand what I get.”
As George Parker points out this morning, I defy anyone to explain this sentence by Google’s Eric Schmidt: “Facebook's done a number of things which I admire. It's the first generally available way of disambiguating identity.” Or this sentence that Bob Hoffman gagged on from Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media at PepsiCo.: “how much are we encouraging the continual learning from inside our staff about how to leverage these technologies with inside of their communications and engagement plans but as well as just for their own personal communications and internal communication with inside each other and from employee to employee.”
These sentences, like so many others we hear from worldwide vessels, are in no known language. Yet because such speech is everywhere, early adopters pick it up and propagate its meaninglessness. Like the Emperor with no clothes, very few people will stand up and call bullshit.
When I worked on IBM—a highly technical piece of business if there ever was one—I used to say I wasn’t in the advertising business I was in the translation business. My job was to take things that are hard to understand (because you don’t know the language) and break them into intelligible parts. A chair is a chair is a chair. It is never a ‘seating solution.’
Now, this all brings me to women’s asses. It occurs to me that these days we have three or four words that we use almost exclusively to describe the aforementioned. Booty. Bootay. Trunk (as in ‘junk in the trunk’) and, of course, ass.
Back when language was richer, was less homogenized we had many more and much more interesting words to choose from: backside, posterior, behind, hind-quarters, hinder, heinie, rear or rear-end, derrière, rump, aft, stern, poop, apple, caboose, cakes bottom, tail, trunk, arse, badonkadonk, biscuits, bum, buns, butt, can, cheeks, duff, fanny, hams, haunches, seat, sit-upon, tush, to name a few. Along the way, getting and spending, we have laid waste our powers.
We no longer hear idiomatic descriptions like those of Senator Claghorn, a character on Fred Allen’s old radio show. If you’re speaking too much and saying too little, you’re unlikely to be told “your tongue’s wagging like a blind dog’s tail in a meat market.”
The internet, I think, has furthered our homogenization of language. People from all over the world quickly see (and learn) from many of the same sources. While there are literally billions of sources to chose from, my guess is that some binary version of the 80-20 law prevails and 80% of the world’s populace gets their blather from a handful of sites.
I draw this conclusion because I see the rapid disintegration of our language. Language that is divorced from meaning, that comes from on high and is inexplicable. Language that communicates nothing other than that “I, the speaker or writer ‘get it,’ and you, the dim-witted recipient or listener are unable to even understand what I get.”
As George Parker points out this morning, I defy anyone to explain this sentence by Google’s Eric Schmidt: “Facebook's done a number of things which I admire. It's the first generally available way of disambiguating identity.” Or this sentence that Bob Hoffman gagged on from Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media at PepsiCo.: “how much are we encouraging the continual learning from inside our staff about how to leverage these technologies with inside of their communications and engagement plans but as well as just for their own personal communications and internal communication with inside each other and from employee to employee.”
These sentences, like so many others we hear from worldwide vessels, are in no known language. Yet because such speech is everywhere, early adopters pick it up and propagate its meaninglessness. Like the Emperor with no clothes, very few people will stand up and call bullshit.
When I worked on IBM—a highly technical piece of business if there ever was one—I used to say I wasn’t in the advertising business I was in the translation business. My job was to take things that are hard to understand (because you don’t know the language) and break them into intelligible parts. A chair is a chair is a chair. It is never a ‘seating solution.’
Now, this all brings me to women’s asses. It occurs to me that these days we have three or four words that we use almost exclusively to describe the aforementioned. Booty. Bootay. Trunk (as in ‘junk in the trunk’) and, of course, ass.
Back when language was richer, was less homogenized we had many more and much more interesting words to choose from: backside, posterior, behind, hind-quarters, hinder, heinie, rear or rear-end, derrière, rump, aft, stern, poop, apple, caboose, cakes bottom, tail, trunk, arse, badonkadonk, biscuits, bum, buns, butt, can, cheeks, duff, fanny, hams, haunches, seat, sit-upon, tush, to name a few. Along the way, getting and spending, we have laid waste our powers.
The anti-work agency.
Of the many issues facing advertising agencies today, perhaps the most egregious is that they are, at their core, anti-work. That is, you run against the grain of the agency's cost control core if you have an idea that isn't scoped (by someone who's never created an ad) and decide to work on it "on spec."
No, agencies today have incorporated systems as rigid as a brick and woe be the person who decides to violate those systems. You get a brief that tells you to dig a hole that is two-feet deep and three feet in circumference. Someone, removed from work, has decided that a hole of that dimension is needed. They, of course, aren't elbow deep in the mess of solving a client's issues. They aren't responsive to what's going on in the market. They don't hear the insights of focus groups. They just tell you how to answer all things. They do that with something called a scope.
For the last 15 years or so, since I have been leading groups and accounts, I have had a catchphrase that flies in the face of such regimentation. I always ask "Are we doing the assignment or are we doing the job?"
In other words, are you doing what some petty functionary or someone removed from the business has "scoped" you to do, or are you going beyond and answering a real need?
Sometimes that hole that's been assigned would be more effective if it were a canal, and sometimes you don't know that until you really--'scuse me--dig in and start trying to solve a problem.
In short, question everything. Especially what you've been told to do.
No, agencies today have incorporated systems as rigid as a brick and woe be the person who decides to violate those systems. You get a brief that tells you to dig a hole that is two-feet deep and three feet in circumference. Someone, removed from work, has decided that a hole of that dimension is needed. They, of course, aren't elbow deep in the mess of solving a client's issues. They aren't responsive to what's going on in the market. They don't hear the insights of focus groups. They just tell you how to answer all things. They do that with something called a scope.
For the last 15 years or so, since I have been leading groups and accounts, I have had a catchphrase that flies in the face of such regimentation. I always ask "Are we doing the assignment or are we doing the job?"
In other words, are you doing what some petty functionary or someone removed from the business has "scoped" you to do, or are you going beyond and answering a real need?
Sometimes that hole that's been assigned would be more effective if it were a canal, and sometimes you don't know that until you really--'scuse me--dig in and start trying to solve a problem.
In short, question everything. Especially what you've been told to do.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A great piece of design.
It isn't often that I bump into a bit of copy, a headline or a graphic that rings my bell. But this one has. It's for the Criterion re-release of a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece, "The Great Dictator."
In it, Chaplin plays both a poor Jewish barber and the Tomanian dictator, Adenoid Hynkel.
So much graphic design, like so much of everything else, is meaningless and superfluous. Mere decoration.
This piece, in addition to being artful and lovely, is intelligent and--heaven forfend--funny.
Freddie Norman, 104 Wins; 103 Losses.
There was a great baseball manager in the 1970s and 1980s named Sparky Anderson. I think he was the first manager whose teams won a World Series from each league. He won with the Reds in '75 and '76 and with the Tigers in '84.
In any event, there was a guy who pitched for Anderson when he was with the Reds named Freddie Norman. Norman had the uncanny knack for hardly ever winning more games than he lost. He routinely registered records like 13-12, 13-14, 14 and 13. He had a lifetime record of 104 wins and 103 losses. In other words, he was mediocre.
One of the first things Anderson did when he got to the Reds was trade for Freddie Norman. He went after him like you would have gone after Sandy Koufax in his prime. I remember he was asked, by a New York Times reporter, why.
Anderson replied simply, "A baseball season is about 1400 innings long. Year in and year out Freddie Norman eats up 200 innings and doesn't hurt me. He gets me through the season."
Sometimes not hurting things is enough, even in advertising. Sometimes you just need to get through the innings. Work hard and as well as you can. Do your job to the best of your abilities and fight the good fight.
Not every opportunity is an award winning one. Not every battle is for a foothold in Europe. Sometimes you just hope to get through without wounding yourself too much. Closer to the finish line, stirred but not shaken.
Today, just back from an idyllic trip to Cape Cod, I have to edit an internal video for an unappreciative client and, frankly, an unappreciative agency. It's the advertising equivalent of the second game of a double header against the Kansas City Royals. Nobody's watching. Nobody really cares.
I'll use my strong right arm and muscle the ball out there. It won't be a tour de force,
but I might eke out a win. And this way I'll get through part of my 28th season in the game.
In any event, there was a guy who pitched for Anderson when he was with the Reds named Freddie Norman. Norman had the uncanny knack for hardly ever winning more games than he lost. He routinely registered records like 13-12, 13-14, 14 and 13. He had a lifetime record of 104 wins and 103 losses. In other words, he was mediocre.
One of the first things Anderson did when he got to the Reds was trade for Freddie Norman. He went after him like you would have gone after Sandy Koufax in his prime. I remember he was asked, by a New York Times reporter, why.
Anderson replied simply, "A baseball season is about 1400 innings long. Year in and year out Freddie Norman eats up 200 innings and doesn't hurt me. He gets me through the season."
Sometimes not hurting things is enough, even in advertising. Sometimes you just need to get through the innings. Work hard and as well as you can. Do your job to the best of your abilities and fight the good fight.
Not every opportunity is an award winning one. Not every battle is for a foothold in Europe. Sometimes you just hope to get through without wounding yourself too much. Closer to the finish line, stirred but not shaken.
Today, just back from an idyllic trip to Cape Cod, I have to edit an internal video for an unappreciative client and, frankly, an unappreciative agency. It's the advertising equivalent of the second game of a double header against the Kansas City Royals. Nobody's watching. Nobody really cares.
I'll use my strong right arm and muscle the ball out there. It won't be a tour de force,
but I might eke out a win. And this way I'll get through part of my 28th season in the game.
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