I'm afraid.

Above is from my personal email-box. It’s, to my mind, evidence that many marketers or e marketers or digital marketers have chosen to ignore David Ogilvy’s maxim: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that too often, in our quest to assuage the lowest common denominator we are pushed to do work similar to what the spammers above are doing.

We dumb things down.

We tell dumb jokes or vulgar ones.

We rely on tired adjectives or even-more-weary platitudes.

We make spurious promises and punctuate them with gleaming orthodontia.

We forget that there is an element of rational to many buying decisions.

We forget what Francis Bacon said so many centuries ago: “Knowledge is power.”

I’m afraid that vapidity, cupidity and stupidity are our guiding principles. The tenets which earn us industry accolades. That give us the assurance that we must be doing it right since we’re doing what everyone else is doing.

What if we imparted useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way?

What if?

Thank you, Hector.

Early on in my season with the Saraperos de Saltillo, Hector Quesadilla my manager seemed to have it out for me.

I had always played 3rd base, the hot corner, the esquina caliente, but Hector, after seeing me in a couple of my early games deemed me a liability in the field. I wasn't like Dick Stuart, a hard-hitting, bad-fielding first-sacker who played for the Pirates, Red Sox, Phillies and a handful of other teams in the late 50s and through most of the 60s.

Stuart hit 228 home runs in his 10 year career, including 1963 when, for the Red Sox of Boston, he slugged 42 round-trippers and led the league with 118 RBI.

So bad was Stuart's fielding that he earned two sobriquets along the way. One was Dr. Strangeglove, an homage to both Kubrick and his Swiss-cheesed leather. The second was, given my literary proclivities, my favorite. In a tribute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, they called Stuart "The Ancient Mariner," because "he stoppeth one in three."

No, I wasn't that bad. But Hector set out to improve, polish and generally refine my glove work.

We would arrive at Estadio Francisco I. Madura early. I would change into my gear and run out to 3rd base. Hector would encamp in the grassy area before home with a bucket of beaten horsehide and his famed fungo bat. Hector, like many of his school, used his fungo bat as a magician uses his wand. He could put a ball anywhere with it, on the dime. I'd seen him dot the "i" on the Cerveza El Presidente billboard in right-center.

Hector would then proceed to kill me, hitting a grounder to my left, a grounder to my right, left left left, right right, pop up behind third, line drive left, screamer right. And so on. Rapid fire like a hockey goalie at a rifle range I was soon, despite the cool of the early morning air, sweating like a stuck javelina.

Today, of course, missiles at work fly all around us at rapid-fire speed. They seem unrelenting and directed as if they have intent to kill.

I work to handle them. To field them cleanly. To make the play.

Sometimes I'll bobble one. But most, I do ok with.

Thank you, Hector.

Rainy day reflections in a muddy puddle.

The rain this morning is coming down in sheets and lashing the plateglass of my 11th story window. It makes long streaks like tears on the glass as if it's buffeting us, this Tuesday morning, with cosmic sadness.

It's already 8:15 yet the only sound other than the pelting rain is the whoosh of white noise meant to mask the oppressive din of our open plan work space. I suppose the rain has slowed New York's creaking 1850's infrastructure to a near halt.

Nothing works anymore because we haven't the will to find money to fix what is broken. Instead we look for cheap band-aids and magical panaceas.

A friend is visiting the states from China with a group of Chinese business associates. They're amazed at how decayed things are. The roads look like they've been hit with artillery. The paint on bridges and overpasses comes off in large, rusty clumps. There are potholes that warrant their own zipcodes.

Still, we won't pay to have anything fixed. The gasoline tax hasn't been raised in over two decades and the anti-tax anti-government minority that imposes its will on the nation seems ascendant.

I'm wondering if the same morass affects our business.

As Bob Hoffman pointed out yesterday, we are slave to two statements: we need to get younger and we need to get more digital. There's a subtext in those statements that no one wants to call out. That is, I need to do things cheaper. I don't want to invest in my brand. I'm not willing to think long-term.

Everybody, every brand, at one time or another, says 'let's be like Apple.' But no one's willing to do the work. 1) Have a clear message. 2) Stick to that message. 3) Invent innovative products. 4) Show how those products work. 5) Make great ads--TV, outdoor, print.

No.

As a nation and as an industry, our pursuit is of short-cuts, cutting corners, the quick fix.

Even the absurd proliferation of awards short-cuts the success that once came with actually driving sales and building brands.

Instead, we take a short-cut.

Hand me a trophy and say we did something important.

That's our world today.

We do nothing good and expect rewards for it.

A sunny weekend.

I was lucky enough to take Friday off from work.

Originally, my wife and I had planned to travel to see my cousins who were encamped in Brigantine, a small seaside community just a dice's throw from Atlantic City. I seldom get to see family, and this was to be a rare gathering. Cousins were flying in from Boca, San Francisco and Santa Monica. There would be a dozen of us in all.

Unfortunately, at the last minute, my wife's jury-duty obligations extended an extra day. And rather than being able to getaway to the Jersey shore on Friday, and thus beat the always horrific traffic that clogs virtually every road in the tri-state area, we awoke at 5:30 Saturday morning and hit the road by 6:15.

As my cousin Howard said when we arrived at around 9, "I didn't know the Lincoln Tunnel was open that early going to New Jersey."

That's the kind of weekend it was in a nutshell. A wonderful cacophony of silly jokes, life-updates and rose-colored memories. Oh. And lots of eating, though there were times, almost inexplicably that we went as long as two hours without sitting down to a meal.

I grew up with virtually no family save for the people we visited this weekend. My father was estranged from his brothers and my mother was estranged from reality as well as her three sisters and one brother. So, I'll admit, I never knew the joys and travails of extended families. I never got to experience and  enjoy the love and the nuttiness.

Over the years, thanks to the cousins I visited this weekend, I've gradually learned. Family doesn't come naturally to me, but I am learning, and, I suppose getting better at it. Proof of that is we played mini-golf. 11 of us.

Sadly, my kids weren't able to make it to the reunion. My eldest, Sarah, was at a gigantic convention of psychologists in Toronto, where she was presenting a paper she and a partner had worked on. And my youngest was off in the Grenadines somewhere, leading a dozen teenagers 100-feet underwater while teaching them how to scuba dive. Maybe next year.

There's a sickness in our industry now where we crave fictional outward signs of our success. Not only do we all seem to crave awards like addicts crave crack, we even get awards for winning awards.

They've never mattered to me, awards. I've yet to do an ad or a communication where I've given it less than my best. After that, you let the chips fall where they may.

The awards, or rewards, come from weekends like the one I just had.

Victims.

Of all the things that have served to all but kill the advertising industry, and most others for that matter, the most vicious has been that old stand-by: greed.

To my mind, the most blatant demonstration of bald-faced greed came into practice when the television industry transitioned from being delivered through the air to being delivered through cable. TV went from being free to being something you paid for.

All at once, playing commercials started, again to my mind, double-dipping. We were paying for TV with money, why did we also have to pay by having to watch commercials? TV was making us pay twice.

Then, of course, the cable companies decided since they had a government-endowed sinecure which gave them a monopoly, that they could rake consumers over the coals. The idea that you have to pay and pay and pay for things you don't want--because they're bundled--is absolutely un-American.

I don't watch a lot of television, in fact, I've never watched less. But when I do watch, I utilize one of about seven channels. Of course, I'm paying for 2,000 or more--even with the most basic service.

Those who know me--who know my insomnia--know that the chances of me tuning into the Garlic Channel's "Back-to-School" Special is slim. Nevertheless, I have to pay for it.

I think most people, Trump supporters or not, feel that the television industry is yet another powerful force over which they have no control. They know they're being schtupped and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

So, we have a nation of victims.

Victims of advertising they're paying for twice.

Victims of television who are ripping them off.

Early morning, Saltillo.

There's a lot I love about the quiet of the morning before there are other people about. When I was 17 and playing for the Seraperos de Saltillo I would arrive at Estadio Francesco I. Madura, our 7,000-seat band-box of a ballpark long before everyone else.

The hundreds of noises that accompanied, that magnified the quiet, were soothing to me, like, I suppose the muffled heartbeat of the mother I never had. I would change into padded sliding shorts and a fungo t, with 3/4-length aqua colored sleeves. In the silent distance would be the plink plink plink of drip from the half-dozen showerheads 15 feet from where I sat in front of my locker. Above me, I'd hear the ca-dunk of seats being closed so the sweepers could sweep the aisles free of ballgame flotsam, peanut shells, crumpled scorecards and, of course, cans and bottles and cups of cerveza strewn everywhere.

Outside, alone, in our small field, Uribe, a Serapero from the 1940s and our groundskeeper now, would be sending a forceful stream of water from his whooshing hose, fighting his never-winning battled to keep the infield green against the persistence of the summer's sun. He would make long-arcs across from first to third, making lazy S shapes with the flow, hoping hoping hoping that today some clouds would find the sun.

In the outfield, early like this, you could hear the electrical hum of millions of little cicadas holding court under leaves and in the bark of the spindly trees in the park just beyond the Estadio. They would be answered, at times, by the friendly chirp of crickets who made their home in the desiccated shrubbery that circled the park. I'd hear the whoosh thud of my spiked feet as I kicked up the dewy grass during my outfield jog.

Later more prosaic sounds would echo through the place. The pop of a ball in leather. The crack of ash against horsehide, but mostly the chatter and laughter of thirty men-boys who chased a round sphere for a living. Under the ever-present glare of the sun and the ever-present view of Hector Quesadilla.

Queequeg's lament.

Blisken signed a check.

I have enough dough now for six months.

So, keyboard in my lap, I sang him something I'm still working on..."Queequeg's Lament."

QUEEQUEG:                         The bones have foretold

                                                That I will not grow old,

                                                That I’ll perish right here,

                                                On the sea.

                                                The gods have decreed,

                                                Their will I must heed,

                                                That I’ll perish right here,

                                                On the sea.

                                                So silent I sit,

                                                I cannot fight it,

                                                I’ll perish right here,

                                                On the sea.

                                                Yes, my death’s in the offin’,

                                                Carpenter, build me a coffin!

                                                A strong wooden box

                                                For my home.

                                                Make it long as a river,

                                                So it will deliver,

                                                My soul to the Kingdom

                                                Of god.

                       

                                                Make it wide like Gibraltar,

                                                And strong like an Altar,

                                                A strong wooden box

                                                For my home.

THE CREW:                           Oh!

                                                Carry him off in

                                                A custom-made coffin,

                                                For Queequeg’s fortold

                                                He must die.

                                                Make it strong, make it stout,

                                                No man can get out,

                                                When he has foretold

                                                He must die.

QUEEQUEG:                         There’s no use resisting,

                                                The gods are insisting,

                                                They’ve summoned this pagan

                                                To die.

                                                They’ve torn me asunder

                                                I’ll die there down under,

                                                Under the spell

                                                Of the sea.

                        

Moby! The Musical, Part II.

This morning, while most of you were still sleeping, I had a 6:15 meeting with Cy Bliskin, the Broadway producer who is interested in the musical I'm writing "Moby! The Great White Whale meets the Great White Way."

Last we met was at Sardi's and I sang him the "Show Stopper," a little song I wrote (to be sung by the entire cast) called "Where's there's a Whale there's a Way." You can read about it here.

This morning we were due to meet, mostly so I could give him an update on how my writing is going. I decided to surprise him with a second song I had written: "Call Me Ishmael."

I brought a small electronic keyboard with me and set up in a corner of the Viand coffee shop on 86th and Second.

ISHMAEL:    Don't call me Dennis,

 No, don't call me Fred,

 Don't call me Vincent,

 Or Herman or Ted.

Don't call me Peter,

And don't call me Frank,
Don't call me Leslie,

Or William or Hank.

CHORUS:      Oh no?

                        Oh no?

ISHMAEL:    Call me the name

                        I got from my mother.

                        Call me that name,

                        And never another!

CHORUS:      What ho?

                        What ho?

ISHMAEL:    Oh no!

                        Call me Ishmael,

                        That’s my name!

                        Call me Ishmael,

                        I proclaim.

                        Though my Biblical namesake is infamous,

                        I am proud of us,

                        Call me Ishmael!

CHORUS:      He is Ishmael,

                        That’s his name.

                        He is Ishmael

                        We proclaim!

ISHMAEL:    Though my Biblical namesake is infamous,

                        I am proud of us,

                        Call me Ishmael!

Story fucking scaping.

There's some drivel, and drivel is probably too kind a word, on Agency Spy this morning from an agency on the art of Storyscaping.

Apparently it's so complicated, storyscaping is, that you have to invent a word to name it. The video is 43:31 long, and so well-done that as of 10:45 this morning it had garnered an impressive 15 views. What's more, the ppt that the blowhard presents from is full of imagery stolen from various stock libraries. Another notch on the belt of originality.

I am sickened by all this storytelling bullshit, as if the people blathering on about it for nearly 44 minutes had an original thought about it. You want storytelling, read "Haircut" by Ring Lardner, or "Extraordinary Little Cough," by Dylan Thomas, or "For Esme, With Love and Squalor," by JD Salinger. 

Stop talking about banalities. Stop stealing other people's ideas.

Next, maybe advertising agencies will start talking about how the fundament of communication and persuasion is fire. All storytelling originated around a campfire, if you think about it. And when you shoot a story, there's always light on the set--reductio ab absurdum--fire.

By the way, here's a video to watch. I couldn't post the 44-minute one. It's over the size limit. In so many ways. 

Take my word for it, it's a vomit-inducing tongue-flapping and fart-bonging.

The other, is a story.

Honest. Intriguing. Natural.

Quiet.

We hear a lot these days about driving highly curated content and story-telling conversations across channels in the new media landscape.

I guess I did some of that on Saturday night when my wife and I walked over to the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park to see Shakespeare's "Cymbeline."

If you don't remember back to Saturday night, or if you're not from New York, the weather that evening was dead solid perfect. It was in the mid-70s, with low-humidity and even the bugs and mosquitoes had flown out to the Hamptons for the weekend.

Speaking of bugs, the politicians who came to capitalize on the event with speeches were mercifully short. Chuck Schumer, New York's Senator was there and blasted the political "yahoos" who want to cut arts fundings. And even the before-performance commercial from the Bank of America--praising themselves for their oh-so-generous support of the arts (while ignoring the fact that they nearly brought down the world's economic system) was nearly palatable, though, I admit I booed a boo that sounded like 500 boos. Keep your dirty dishonest dealings off my Public Theatre and go back to your rat's nest and your billions in extortionate profits and your million dollar taxpayer-financed bonuses and your $17,000 wastebaskets decorating executive offices. Keep all that to yourself, and go on not paying taxes or livable wages, just leave the Bard alone.

But back to the evening.

We had nearly perfect seats in a theatre that has nearly 1500 of them. We were in the fourth row, stage left, close enough to the surpassing cast of actors to see them spit their Ps. 

The play for better or worse was classic Shakespeare. By turns convoluted, contrived and corny. And by other turns brilliant, insightful and hilarious. After 20 minutes or so of hearing Elizabethan English, your brain adjusts and you're able to understand what's happening. You know who's good, who's evil, who's wise and who's the fool. Before long you're not watching a five-century-old play, you're just seeing something wonderful and enjoyable.

Near the end of the third act, a nearly full moon rose over the trees that surround the theatre. It was one day after the highly-publicized "blue moon," and this moonrise was doing its best to show off its stuff. It was serene, majestic and beautiful. I could have closed my eyes and slept in the moonglow and all would have been right with the world.

The play ended. The cast and the band took their bows and applause. The audience spilled out of the old open-air playhouse and into the park.

In less placid times the police would set up Klieg lights to guide the masses. There would be cops everywhere, police cruisers patrolling. But these are peaceful days in New York, and we walked through the park unaccosted and unaccompanied. If you listened closely, you might have heard some long lost relative of Chester, the cricket from Times Square, chirping his chirp.

We think the world is new and communication and human truths and interactions are being reinvented because of ones and zeroes. We think change happens in a nanosecond and that everything is mutable.

We think we invented the notion of storytelling, and sex, and even humor.

No. To my mind, very little has changed since the 16th Century.

Especially on a perfect Saturday night in New York, the first of August.