Life with holding companies.

I am embroiled in a fight with the finance people of my agency. They are kicking back expenses because I don't have receipts for subway rides to the client. There is so much wrong in this I want to take a sledge hammer to Michael Roth's sphincter, that is, if he has one which I doubt.

First off, I am a senior--perhaps the most senior creative in the agency. I bill out--at 246% billability at some unconscionable rate. I have been with the holding company for more than ten years and have never been accused of financial malfeasance. Now some motherfucking peon in some self-satisfied cubicle is kicking back $150 of subway fares and asking for receipts.

Second, what happened in this business that we are taking subways to client meetings in the first place. Is it really too much to stick us in a car service. The pissant holding company should be kissing my boots, I'm probably the reason the account remains here.

Third, how dare you make me guilty until proven innocent. How dare you.

Fourth, pay me my fucking money before I rip a urinal from the motherfucking wall.

Judge not lest yet be judged.

Every person carries their own burden, which is why, I've been admonished, we should always be loving and charitable.

It's hard, however, being loving and charitable, when so much is so brutal and stupid.

But worse than the brutal stupidity and weaponized noise of so much marketing, is the mania of trying to win awards.

So much of the work I've seen is so utterly and completely meritless I am practically agape. What's happened, and I've remarked on this sort of thing before, is the disintegration, the meaninglessness of the compound "award-winning."

Awards are meant to be given for something "unusual." Something extra-special. Something note-worthy.

Today, all that seems out the window.

Entering is award-winning.

Noise.

There's an article in today's "New York Times" about the noise level at various sites in New York City. It mentions a gym where the decible level is in the low hundreds and a couple of restaurants where the high 90s are recorded.

By comparison the train I ride to the office--hardly the most civilized of New York's many subway lines, recorded 84 decibles, and normal conversation registers between 60 and 65.

One acoustical engineer calls these excessive noise levels "the weaponization of audio."

You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/nyregion/in-new-york-city-indoor-noise-goes-unabated.html

I bring this up, of course, because in our business we are inundated with weaponized noise. We live in an era of group-grope and group think. Where everyone has a voice and every opinion gets expressed.

Most pre-production noise ruins creative. We are made to listen to too many imputs and heed too many directions.

What we are left doing is producing more noise.

Noise that ultimately makes no noise in the market.

But creates noise nonetheless.

That's noise. Weaponized.

At an awards show.

I am up in Boston for the next couple of days for a couple of reasons. First off, I've been asked by an old friend to judge an award show--and while I usually turn down such requests--this one is in Boston where my oldest daughter lives and I couldn't turn down a chance to see her in her absolute splendor. And second, my wife and I just gave birth to a new golden retriever puppy and my wife's driving up with the pup to meet her older sister.

In all, I'll be doing more judging than daughtering, but that's ok. Little things can mean a lot.

Here are some early random observations from the weekend.

If you're hotel room has one of those Keurig coffee makers, don't use it. The coffee is slightly below the quality you get during domestic air travel.

If you're given a "deluxe" room, immediately ask for an upgrade. Deluxe in most hotels is like bivouacking in Georgia in a swamp.

If there are twenty other judges, you're likely to remember two or three names. Get over appearing foolish. It's ok.

Advertising is an amazing industry populated by people who really love what they do. Seriously, the love of the people here for the job of advertising is astounding.

That's about all for now.

I'm going to try to be friendly, thoughtful and uncynical. The first two will be hard. The last nearly impossible.

Tannenbaum's Graph.

As a corollary to Hayden's Mandala (below) I have derived Tannenbaum's Graph (above). It simply, I think, depicts the course new business pitches and other assignments follow.

We start at a moderate level. We're excited about the project, but concerned about timing, if we have the right teams, if you, yourself have run out of ideas.

Then, quickly, there is a period of elation. You've cracked it--and quick! All is right with the world. The business is as good as won, the project solved, glory is on its way.

Then, boom, reality. Someone's done it before. You're off brief. Your boss doesn't like it. You crater. Plummet to a dark place.

Then, you reach down and pull good things to the surface. You do the hard work of work and get to a place you like.

At that point you are nearing your deadline. And here's where exogenous factors intrude. Good agencies and teams find ways to build the work up, to make it better, to make selling it easier. They rally around the work and buoy spirits.

Bad agencies and teams do the reverse. And work takes a turn for the worse.

Nearly every assignment and pitch I've ever been involved with has followed the above line. It's just the way things go.

Hayden's Mandala.

Steve Hayden, the recently moth-balled Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather and the copywriter on arguably the most famous commercial ever written, Apple's "1984," was by some order of magnitude both the smartest guy I've ever worked for and the nicest.

In my darkest moments, I think I fucked my career sideways when I left the viper's nest of Ogilvy for sunnier San Francisco climes. But that's spilt milk and besides the point.

Back to the matter at hand.

I was lucky enough to hear Steve give a speech on Hayden's Mandala. Hayden describes this as "a model that describes all human and corporate behavior." You can see the whole magilla it here: http://haydensmandala.com/Intro.html Or take a gander at the Mandala below.

Right now at work I am midstream inside two winding digestive tracks. One involves trying to sell a new broadcast campaign. The second involves a new business pitch.

Very few people--even experienced people understand the oscillations that are behind any long term project. These oscillations (as pinpointed above) are implicit in everything we do.

Unfortunately people don't realize this. They get up when things go well. And suicidal when things go badly.

This is bad for your heart and your health.

You're much better taking the long view.

Posse.

I worked for an imbecile once who said that these days creating advertising was like making a movie. There is today attached to everything from a :60-second anthem spot costing millions of dollars to a Val-Pak statement stuffer, a credits list of participants as long as your arm. As long as your arm even if you're an NBA power forward.

Right now I am in close cahoots with a very talented art-director who knows what he's doing. He knows how to make work work. He's smart and compendious and has an opinion backed up by experience and fact.

With all modesty, I think I'm somewhat the same way.

He and I get handed a problem, we work and derive interesting ways to solve that problem and express a solution.

My art-director and I do this unencumbered by others. We sit and stew until we have something likable.

Then it comes time to show our labor to clients.

All at once, seemingly from nowhere, the non-entities appear like roaches in an East Harlem tenement.

The planners show up (though they've done no planning.)
The producers arrive (though we've done all the producing.)
Legions of media people.
Account people.
Sundry supervisors.

Suddenly, the two of us, my art-director and I, two unassuming guys, have a posse.

There's been much written and much hand-wringing about the costs of advertising agencies today. Much of that cost accrues because we have, as an industry, eliminated accountability. We have forgotten to periodically look at our people and say, "You cost this agency $X. You make this agency $X less Y. You, therefore, are fired."

If we could introduce such cold Romney-an calculus to our business, our business might be good again.

The people who do the work would be rewarded.

The people who pile on would be at Starbucks.

Filter.

Dear Account People,

I'll make this simple for you.

You often ask me (since I'm the one who actually creates and produces all the customer-facing work on our account) if "there's anything you can do for me."

Well, yes, now that you ask, there is one thing.

You can filter.

The ratio of dumb requests, comments and meetings in today's world is roughly 100 to one smart one. Rather than passing all that dumbness onto me, I'd like you to spend 35 seconds or so thinking through what's being said or asked.

If you know the request will make those little veins at my temples dance like Isadora Duncan, don't just pass it onto me. Try to use your gifts and shield me from it.

If the client hands you a 10-lb. bag of shit, try to remove eight pounds from the bag before you pass it along to me.

Not only will doing so make my life easier, our work will be better and I will stop thinking of ways to feed you into the paper shredder.

Tuesday morning insomnia.

There's an old Yiddish saying I just made up that goes something like this: "If it weren't for beating myself up, I'd get no exercise at all."

Tonight--after today--has been one of those Golden Gloves insomniac nights. A night where I spend too much time and energy applying haymakers to my glass chin and think about what might have been.

About ten years ago I was the head of a giant, dumb and faceless digital agency. I was about as far removed from actually doing work as I could be. The agency had about 800 people, with 140 or so of those in creative. I was insulated through those 140 from ever having to do anything but--pretty much--employee evaluations. My problems were not communications issues. They were about talking to people who flipped someone the bird, who gets raised and who gets axed.

I left that job, impetuously if you must know. And haven't yet recovered either my lofty position or my paycheck.

Today, I'm a writer again. Taking it up the ass with a crowbar from clients and agency people alike.

On nights like this when the stupidity of the world and my surroundings closes in on me like Harrison Ford nearing the gold, I wonder if I blew it.

I'm getting old for this.

Spinning out ideas.

Spinning out ideas for ingrates.

Spinning out ideas for ingrates who have never themselves had one.

It's tough keeping up with the Jones' at one end and the 25-year-olds at the other.

It's tough hurtling through ever higher and ever smaller hoops everyday. Keeping my quality and my spirits up.

It's tough being grin-fucked when all you can do is grin-fuck back.

It's tough, most of all, having to be good. Everyday. Everyday ringing the bell. Being sharp, fast, on-brand.

I could be an executive if I hadn't exploded. It's way less demanding. A judger, not a judgee.

As Preston Sturges wrote in "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock," "A man works all his life in a glass factory, one day he picks up a hammer."

But what's done is done.

I am just a writer. Again.

And tomorrow I have to be good all over again. Not just good. Better than anyone else.

That's all for now.

I need my sleep.

Engagement games.

I find it lands somewhere between sad and mildly amusing. The notion that in our "post-marketing" schema so many people are proffering creative ideas built on "engagement." If I won't spend 30 seconds hearing your message, why would I spend ten minutes "liking" something, uploading a photo, passing it along to my friends, etc.

Most of the work I see these days is demanding. It requires participation from people who on a scale of one to ten, with ten being as lazy as a slug, are 11s.

Maybe my age is showing.

I do not look for fun, affirmation or activity from brands. Basically, I want brands to deliver what they promise then leave me the fuck alone.

This morning I saw an augmented reality bus-shelter ad for Tic Tac breath mints. It's hard for me to believe that anyone in their right mind would do what the jackass neo-hipster in this video is doing, that there's any value to the Tic Tac brand derived from downloaded apps, or that any of this has any impact whatsoever on Tic Tacs sales. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfzQU52Z34

As it stands, the You Tube video I've pasted here has 67 views.

Seriously, when my kids had a lemonade stand they got more traffic than that.

All this is to say that in this new era of marketing, where everything you're NOT doing is hereby declared dead, there is a complete and utter lack of grown-up-ness.

I've worked on some of the most important brands with some of the biggest budgets in the world. Not one of those brands has ever felt that they had all the money to do what they needed to do. They had to make choices.

Choice is about getting the most good to the greatest number.

It's not playing games.