The richest man in town.

I promise I'm not going to use the word humbled.

Speechless is more like it.

On Sunday night my friend Maya and her husband Carl came over to our little house along the sea and we had dinner. Steak.

Though my 63rd birthday was way back in December, Maya presented me with a birthday gift.

And what a gift.

For whatever reason, Maya and Rob Schwartz put together a book called  Fannenbaum: Love Letters to the Legend. A "Fan" book from friends and colleagues--a tribute--believe it or not, to me.

I'm generally speaking a dour kind of a guy. And frankly, though GeorgeCo, LLC, a Delaware Company is doing better than I ever imagined it would, getting thrown out of Ogilvy at 62 was a shock to my system. 

I was doing the best work of my life faster than I had ever done it before. I thought I'd be like Douglas MacArthur's old soldier, and fade away from the business while planted on those ugly red carpet tiles.

I felt embarrassed. 

I felt a failure.

I felt at an end.

How do I tell my children...my wife?

I was thrown out. Finished.

The main thing I learned after I was thrown-away was this: like my Hollywood namesake, George Bailey, "No man is a failure who has friends." And also like George Bailey, in many ways, with so many friends, I am "the richest man in town."

To Maya and Rob who created the book, to the couple dozen or so people who wrote me notes in the book, to all you out there in blog-ville who read my writing and smile at me--or at least don't throw rocks--and most of all to my long-suffering wife, Laura, who has to deal with my often mis-firing brain and over-firing temper, well, like I said, I'm speechless.

It would probably, therefore, be a good time to call me.

The Holding Company Town Hall.

Welcome friends and all those friends who have not yet been fired.

Welcome to our first Holding-Company-wide Zoom Town Hall of 2021. 

Welcome, it's been quite a year. 2020. Whew. But, while we had some setbacks, like losing seven of our six biggest accounts, or is it ten out of our biggest nine accounts, my friends, the past is behind us and our behinds are past us.

And as we move forward into a brighter 2021, we are already seeing the green shoots of recovery. Or shooting the green seas of recovery, whichever comes first.

My friends, our goal as a holding company is to be the most under-valued by those who most under-value brands. We will forge new paths, grasp new horizons and advance the ball. We will blaze new trails of gibberish and technobabble. We will prove the value of minutia on the most minute scale possible all while narrowing our focus, focusing on the narrow and making sure our focus remains laser-focused on c-suite bonuses and the largeness of largess.

Lofty goals, to be sure.

And how, you ask, in these times of constrained budgets, how will we get there?

Simple, my friends. 

We will get there through our unique combination of creative-centricity and focusing on the centricity and eccentricity of creativity. 

Now, of course, talk is cheap. Unless it comes from a consultant. Then talk is expensive. But as any of our 23,275 consultants will tell you, at the very core of creativity is creativity. And so, as we both forge a path forward and forge a check backwards, we will focus on creativity, creativity, creativity.

How, you may ask. And if you do ask, we will probably fire you. But how?

We will focus on creativity by first focusing on firing all creatives who have experience in being creative. We will replace old people--people who hearken back to the 1980s, people with television sets, people who read...books, with creative people who have never done any of those things before, but who have instead grown up both as digital natives and natively and naively digital. Their ability to think in increments of 140 characters will help us at Interscammyconcom transform businesses of all sizes into businesses of smaller sizes. As we have done with our own business. We will lead business transformations by transforming big businesses, including our own, into much smaller businesses. Small means agile and agile means robust and robust means a stand-up scrum. We will be defined by our lack of definition and be noticeable in our dedication to work that never gets noticed.

Creativity. Creativity. Creativity.

How?

We will spend $200 million on building a brand new bespoke data consultancy from the ground up. Data will make us creative as creative will make us dated. This is about the fusion and confusion and defusing of synergies and sin-orgies, that will drive our creative product forward.

We will invest in creative by investing in data. We will invest in creative by firing all creatives. We will invest in creative by not paying creatives. As we devalue, so do we value. As we disrespect, so we respect. As we lie, so to do we tell the truth. The longest journey begins with a single schtup and so on.

At Interscammyconcom, it's all about creative and creativity and creative posturing.

But mostly, friends, creative accounting. Which is the only reason I still have a job. If I still have a job.

 

Let's not talk about it.

At my first agency, I was dubbed a print guy. That was distinct from being known as a TV guy.

In those days, at least in New York, the adage went, "print wins awards; TV makes you money." Since I was supposed to win awards I often got an inordinate amount of time to work on an assignment.

After my first year at my first agency, I calculated I had produced more print than any other writer: Twelve ads. If you work 250 days a year that means I sold and produced an ad roughly every 21 days--about one a month.

That was about 40 years ago and the pace of life in an agency has accelerated quite a bit since then. Especially when you consider all the tweets, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook crap we're forced to do. But still, I've always found the pace of agency work too languid for my taste. 

That's one reason I am sometimes less than enthusiastic about books I see coming from ad school students. It seems they get years to come up with ads.

One thing I've learned since being on my own, having my own ad agency--and since I began this blog 14 years ago--is that there's nothing to be gained by procrastination. Maybe I feel right saying that because I don't really believe in the theoretical. I don't like talking about ads without showing ads.

A lot of times people will shoot the shit about what an ad could look like or read like or be shot like or sound like. They'll talk about it late into the night.

My guess is that no one really understands what anybody means when they're describing something until they can actually see it. I could tell you in excruciating detail about a dark blue, almost indigo painting of cyclone-stars and yellow crescents in the sky, but you'd be much better served if I showed you the Van Gogh.

Likewise, business runs much better when you sketch something out with a pencil or type something out using two or more of your typing fingers. In fact, in most cases, I'd say that ten minutes of working trumps ten hours of chatter about working.

One reason GeorgeCo, LLC, a Delaware Company is, for now, doing so well is that I show clients and prospective clients every day what I can do. I post a post. And I also often run an ad. Those ads average about 20,000 views, which ain't bad for a registered misanthrope. 

Most agencies, it seems to me, write bland "About" sections that sound like every other agency's About section. They usually say they have 97 offices in 186 countries and have won more awards than Carter has little liver pills. I've worked full-time at 12 or 14 agencies. To my ears, when they pitch they all sound just alike.

That's fine.

But me, I'd way rather button my lip and type. I'd rather show what I can do than say what I can do.

Now, I'll admit, this hasn't been an especially notable post.

But mediocrity is my metier.

Green shoots.

GeorgeCo, part of the Flypaper Group of Companies, a Division of BlandAdverCom Worldwide and a recently-named leader in Gratner's Magic Sixteenthdrant, is currently looking for a forward-looking, ahead-of-the-curve-careening, compound-adjective-using, transformational-business-leader to help transform our transformational-business-leading transformational-business-leading transformational group.

The successful candidate will be a critical and hyper-critical and overly-critical part of our lean and mission-critical team of problem-solving thinkers, consultants and "Control-the-Room-inators.™"  The successful candidate can quickly deliver business insights through understanding audiences, developing data-led decisions, customer experiences and strategy direction as well as off-strategy mis-direction, not to mention ms.-direction and Mr-direction.

You’ll be a fast worker, so fast that sometimes you'll be done with your work-week before the work-week even begins. You'll deliver both impeccably and without pecc and on-time, even though time is a man-made and mutable construct with no fixed basis in reality. Unlike this job description and everything else emerges from GeorgeCo (hereafter known as dba Dipshitz) your strategy will be sublimely simple and simply sublime. During the summer when we have cocktails on our rooftop basement, we will serve cocktails with sublime, sublemon and the occasional subolive. And your presentations will be perfectly persuasive and persuasively perfect in an unpersuasively imperfect way.

What's more and most-important, you will derive, present and sell-to-the client substantive reasons why every actor in every commercial we sell, shoot, produce and otherwise sully, begins to break into dance at the drop of a proverbial hat. As if the whole of America isn't mired in an ever-deepening descent into diseases of despair. Because we dance. We dance in car commercials. We dance in pharma commercials. We dance in phone commercials. We dance in cable tv commercials.

You’ll be liaising directly with clients to understand their challenges, and proposing, planning and delivering strategy engagements that will meet their needs. Not only will you meet their needs, you will knead their meats (pending HR-protocols). You will also spend weeks at a time making, concocting and otherwise crafting perfectly stupid words like liaising--when a normal word like meeting would be completely functionizableizationable.

You’ll bring 700 or 7000 or 70 years of strategy double-speaking and e-confusionization™ as a marketer that can translate martech, startech, fart-tech and barftech, understanding into client language with a customer-first mindset; orchestrating communications strategies based on the capabilities, a clients' systems, protocols, beliefs and payments, but equally pushing for a better future state and vision.

You are able to demonstrate your ability to build and maintain strong relationships with clients to sell/deliver work aligned to their organisation's needs; be comfortable with non-linear processes and ambiguity, that is contradiction, lying, lack of clarity and last-minute changes in direction. You'll be a believer in lurching, lunging, lunching, collaboration, turning inklings into insights, insights into possibilities, germs into viruses into pandemics and bringing stories to life in ways that create profitable behavior change and crush the souls of the sentient. You'll be such a team-player and believer in collaborationization that occasionally you'll take home a team-mate's paycheck--after all, you collaborated on the work, you deserve it, goddamn it.

You will also when writing, spell words as they're spelled in England--like organisation for organization and you will at least once per presentation use the word whilst whilst abjuring if not negating the use of the more prosaic word, while. Oh, and cheers. You will say cheers.

You will be responsible and accountable for managing, over managing and micro-managing the overall lack-of-quality, myopic vision, retrograde innovation and execution of all creative and creatives both deliverables and undeliverables. Leading integrated, segregated and cheese-grated, multi-discipline teams. You will ensure that the work is aligned with the client’s marketing reflecting the brand’s equities and inequities and meets the objectives as defined in the creative briefs and the uncreative boxer shorts. You are ultimately accountable for the overall unaccountability therein.

The offer is void where prohibited and prohibited where voiding. 

Of Yoyos and Yumans.

A friend called the other day.

He had just gotten a job offer. A rare event these days.

"I've gone more than three years without a raise," he said. "I said to my boss. Don't counter-offer. It's only going to piss me off. You haven't been able to get me a dime since 2017--and now that I'm leaving, if you offer me more money it only points out your insincerity and cheapness."

"You said all that?" I asked. "I guess you're not planning on coming back any time soon."

Another friend called shortly thereafter.

He, not so rare an event, had just gotten fired.

"What happened," I asked.

"Pretty much all of upper-management has left in the last 12 months. My new boss hated me. About three or four other groups wanted me to work on their business--but my boss squashed it."

"That sounds vindictive," I said.

"Yer durn-tootin'. If you're better than your boss and no senior people are left minding the story, you're screwed."

Robert D. Putnam is a Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government political scientist and professor of Public Policy. He's also the author of the best-selling book, "The Upswing."

In The Upswing, Putnam introduces two phrases, or acronyms, that I think have some bearing on life today--and of course on the advertising industry.

The first, harrowing term, is YOYO.

YOYO doesn't allude to the ups-and-downs of today's capricious economy--an economy which since the Ronald Reagan years has presided over a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the mega-wealthy.

It's well-known, for instance, that Warren Buffet, a man with between $50 billion and $100 billion of wealth pays taxes at a lower rate than, say, his secretary. And that the Walton family, which has something on the order of $200 billion of wealth uses government payments to make up shortfalls in their employees' salaries. Even Zoom, you know, that Zoom, paid no tax during 2020, a year where its profits were up 4000%.

YOYO stands for--You're On Your Own.

We see this everywhere in our business. You get no help. You have no security. You get no raises, no bonuses, no training. You have a job--but really no long-term hope. Meanwhile, if you're Instagram friends with some of those in the c-suite, you'll be able to witness their increasingly Lucullan lifestyles--their expense-account dinners, their beach-homes, their braised whatever in whatever sauce.

Putnam is hoping that America can shift from YOYO to WITT. YOYO can be summed up by this anecdotal piece of information. Michael Roth, outgoing CEO of Interpublic makes about 230 times what the average IPG employee makes. Ogilvy alone, by my calculus, has five or seven CEOs and ex-CEOs on payroll right now--at a time when it is hemorrhaging business, revenue and people.

You're On Your Own, as represented in these charts from Forbes magazine.

WITT stands for the diametric. We're In This Together. 

WITT is really the only hope for our industry, our country, our world. 

It means that once again the relationship between hard-work and advancement would prevail. It means that when accounts are lost and revenue plummets--everyone takes a hit. It means that raises are more-or-less equitable, going to the deserved, not just the entitled. It means, haha, employment, loyalty and reward based not on ass-kissing, but maybe on merit and maybe with a notion of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I suppose WITT, if we're going to be fantastical about it, would also be an acronym that informs, if not governs, agency/client relationships.

It's the spirit I've tried to inculcate in GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company. It's the elan, the manners and the deportment that leads to business success, personal success, pride in work and more.

We've survived the "greed is good" era, barely if you consider the late Trumpian-period as the apotheosis of YOYOism. The culmination (I hope) of roughly two generations of wild and widening inequality. The shredding of the social safety-net. The destruction of the middle-class and the evisceration of the lower-class.

I'm an old man now.

I don't really, right now, have much to do with the industry as dominated by the shareholder monopolists of the big 4 or 5 holding companies. I can make and follow my own rules.

It's friends, like the friends I've mentioned above that concern me. My daughters. The industry I loved.

I think we're in this together, WITT, whether or not we act as if we are. And right now, a lot of people are being YOYO'd to death.

A short course on getting off course.

The hardest thing about growing old in a young-person's world is that when you look at that world, you're never quite sure if you're going crazy or the world is.

More and more of what I see and hear online, in articles, in posts, in commentary, from pod-casts, seems to me as alien as Alpha-Centauri. Most people seem to be living in a reality that has no foundation in my reality.

For instance, I hear about brand conversations. But I've never actually had one. 

"Honey, you know what's funny about Saran Wrap?"

"No, dear, tell me."

In fact, more and more of the advertising I do see seems more and more delusional.

This ad below is probably four decades old. It was never great. Not really attention-getting. But at the very least it made a promise to the viewer. It was grounded in facts and consumer needs. I'm not saying this isn't drivel, but at least it's purposeful drivel.

Just yesterday, this ad was pixelling through my social ether. I assume like everything today, from a five-million-dollar manifesto to a symphony of staccato flatulence, it had to go through seventeen-rounds of review in order to get approved.

It seems to me that more and more ads are like the one above. Devoid of promise. Devoid of humanity (humanity does not mean showing a picture of a person. It means relating to a person via something they care about.) Completely lacking in understanding of the product. And with zero truth.

If you're reading this and you work for the agency that created this work, or if you work for the client, I'd love for you to tell me why this ad is good. Why you spent time and money on it. Why was it produced? I'll give you all the space and time you want and need to state your case. Have at it.

To my glazed-over eyes, more and more marketing conversations are about putting the digital mechanisms of commerce in front of people, but there's less and less attention paid to giving people reasons why they should buy.

Digital transformation seems to be all about the HOW of commerce. Yet, we seem to have ignored, destroyed or neglected the WHY of selling. 

It seems our industry's mantra has become "Clickito ergo sum." I click, therefore I am. Very little thought seems to be given to why people act, what they need, what they want, and what makes a product worthwhile, if not superior.

It's hard for me, further, to favorably compare the vapid-celebrity bullshit of this 461-second "film" with any of 100 old Porsche ads done by Chiat, Fallon or Carmichael-Lynch in years gone by.

Whoever is responsible for this monstrosity, whether on the agency side, the client-side or the production side, clearly has no true understanding of Porsche. Again, if you're reading this and you work for the agency that created this work, or if you work for the client, I'd love for you to tell me why this ad is good. Why you spent time and money on it. Why was it produced? I'll give you all the space and time you want and need to state your case. Have at it.

Whereas these ads seem constructed by people who cared, had passion, might have coveted the product, talked to engineers, read a history or maybe even visited the factory.

Today's au courant adverbabble is that no one cares, no one reads, no one has an attention span. Yet, somehow, all that bullshit disappears when an almost eight-minute mindless movie is made.

Chef's don't go into their kitchens saying no one cares if the food is good. Pilots don't start every flight saying no one cares if I bounce the plane about and crash-land. Doctors don't perform surgery saying no one cares if I remove something extra or leave a sponge behind.

Our job as PROFESSIONALS is to make work good enough so that people care. 

Our job is to create something good and true and warm and human and different and funny so that people care. That's how work becomes "part of culture." That's how it becomes "part of the conversation." That's how it helps businesses sell more and succeed. 

We have ratiocinated our way out of this simple logic simply because doing our jobs well is...hard. 

It's hard to set up an agency that streamlines processes so work is about work and not about fiefdoms and metaphorical dick-size. It's hard for client organizations to rationalize assistant brand managers, junior brand managers, brand managers, senior brand managers, associate marketing managers, chief marketing officers and chief commercial officers and more if each one doesn't spray a little pee on the work to make it theirs. And to make it suck. 

It's hard to say to a client the best words an agency can say if they're bent on "protecting the work." Approve. Disapprove. But don't try to improve. It's hard to try day after day against the rising tide and embrace of mediocrity.

Usually, I try to lighten the mood in my Friday posts. I try, if I can, to reach for something funny or to poke fun at something ludicrous.

But the industry's own denigration of our industry has gotten me down. As have the ads below. 

This is a really simple business.

We like brands that act like people we like.

We like brands that are honest.

We like brands that understand our issues.

We like brands that speak to us as equals.

We like brands that don't condescend.

We like brands that don't bullshit us.

We like brands that don't holler.

We like brands that don't tell us how great they are.

We like brands that are honest and admit when they fuck up.

We like brands that tell the truth.

We like brands that help us.

We like brands that listen.

We like brands that are funny.

We like brands that are reliable.

We like brands that are consistent.

I gotta go.

My eye appliances are fogging over.
------

By the way,

spend a couple of guffaws here.

Fecundity and Profundity.

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have had a teacher, Mr. Bockius, who was bent on making me crazy. He didn't teach like other teachers taught. He exposed us to Evelyn Waugh, GK Chesterton, Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis and Alan Sillitoe. Unusual for high school English. 

These were all people who didn't really fit in with their surroundings. Their work and their lives were a bit off-kilter.

Mr. Bockius wasn't just trying to teach us literature. He was trying to teach us that it was ok to be different. That's quite a lesson for a 15-year-old to take in. Today, I suppose, we'd call it an affirmation--be your Best Self, or some vomitous hallmark-sentiment.

Occasionally in Mr. Bockius' class, we'd get a writing assignment. It was the hardest assignment you can give a person. It was this: Write something.

No topic. No length. No suggestions. Just write something.

I had been reading Greene's "Our Man in Havana," which involves a wayward English spy who's done no spying only drinking, being pressured to provide Cuban state secrets. At a loss, he does the only thing he could do. He copies the blueprints from a vacuum cleaner he just bought and sends it to HQ as the plans for a top-secret new weapon.

In my essay, I took off on this idea and created a giant state-run vacuum cleaner that sucks up all reality and leaves New York an Elysium, a paradise.

Later, I was encouraged to use the piece as my college essay and I got in everywhere I applied but for Princeton, and one school told me it was the best student essay they had ever read.

Mr. Bockius taught me something else.

Often in this final stage of my career, I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. I have close relationships with senior-level clients and they want me to solve things. They don't want to wait. Nor should they. I charge them a lot of money.

People ask me--don't you ever feel like you just have no ideas, nothing to write? Of course. But then I think back and remember Mr. Bockius taught me this thing.

"If you have no ideas, if you can't think of anything, write at the top of your page (we still used paper and pens in those days) 'I like.' Then in a second column write, 'I don't like.' Just write a list. If nothing else it will get you going.

I've always found it does. I'm no longer thinking of big problems to solve or the shape and sound of words, or 29 people who want 47 different things from my copy, including my art-director who wants no more than nine words. 

I'm just writing.

Pre-pandemic I had a cup of coffee with an old friend of mine. Someone who had risen to the highest heights in the business, had built a great reputation and also found time to lead one of America's premier portfolio schools.

I had signed up to teach a couple of ad classes at different schools and we were talking about teaching and techniques.  

"George," he said, "We have a weekend boot-camp at school. This is a full-time accredited school, so it's different from some other programs. I tell the kids during a Friday night class that they have to come up with 100 ideas for, say, shoe polish by Saturday night's class. Not 50 ideas. Not 97 ideas. 100 ideas."

That made me nervous and I'm not in the class.

"During Saturday's class, we kick the shit out of those 100 ideas and get it down to ten. On Sunday, they have to make those ten ideas better. Then on Monday, they have to present three ideas."

That might be a little Draconian, that process, that workload. And I'd bet that if you instituted it where you worked there'd be a line down in HR as long as the line of c-suiters' black cars leaving the agency at 4:45 every night.

But I think it's right.

The best way to work, to create, to think, to do, to write is to do. Not to noodle on your phone. Not to search for a bag of Doritos you might have forgotten about. Not to call a friend and shoot the shit. Not even to take your very doe-eyed puppy out for a much-needed walk.

The best way to work is to work.

Ted Williams used to take batting practice until his rib-cage bled, abrading against his elbow.

Somedays, I feel the same, my fingernails down to the quick from writing and writing and writing.

I'm forty-one years in this business come May. Forty-one years making my living clacking on a keyboard.

The only way to write is to write.

Becoming a part of culture.

About 60 years ago there was an agency that many people regarded as the best agency ever. It was called Carl Ally. A later, but still excellent permutation was called Ally & Gargano. It had  some names after that--when I joined the joint in 1990--but by that time, its greatness was long gone.

Ally spawned Ammirati. Scali. Messner. Altschiller. And a few other merged-out-of-existence entities. All of those shops at one time or another were among the places the best people in the industry wanted to work. Because they did the best work. 

Many of the brands you know of today were incubated at those agencies. FedEx. BMW. MCI. Perdue chicken. Volvo. Saab. Dunkin' Donuts. FedEx for instance had a budget of $300,000 at its outset.

At Ally, I was taught something as intrinsic to advertising as the golden rule is to being human. It was their belief in what advertising is meant to do.

"Our work will impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way."

Every day I hear something different about what advertising is supposed to do. Mostly that it's supposed to be part of culture. 

I'm not trying to be contrary but I literally don't know what being part of culture is supposed to mean. Also, what's part of culture to you is likely not part of culture to me. I can almost guarantee that my culture, whatever that means, has no idea of what culture was being cultured during Sunday night's Grammy's. 

If culture is atomized--meaning that every group and sub-group, every person even, can claim their own cultural signposts, then what is the definition of a culture? If it's a shared set of likes, dislikes, preferences, tastes, styles, beliefs and behaviors, fine. But how many people have to be sharing it for it to become a culture?

And given this, what does it mean that we strive to make advertising that's a part of culture? Again, I'm not trying to be captious or obstreperous, I literally don't understand. When do you know when a brand is part of culture? Nike, I see. People display their logo as a badge. But very few other brands ever rise to that level. Or if they do, my culture just hasn't noticed.

Which in large measure is why I don't understand the latest Burger King (a culturally imperious moniker if there ever was one. Shouldn't their name be changed to the more egalitarian Burger Proliteriat?) 

Why does any brand think it falls to the brand to mend a broken world? I think Burger King's job is to make better hamburgers, pay its employees better and maybe clean up more of the massive amounts of trash they generate. Let's start there. When you're perfect at all the things I want from a burger joint, then we can talk about ocean plastic.

I remember a couple years ago when every airline in the world decided that the way to their customer's heart was through a funny, sexy video on how to insert the metal tab into the buckle. Safety videos had always been the stuff of $79 production. Now, overnight, they were being given $2 million dollar budgets.

I never liked those videos for one very simple reason. When I'm seated in a seat more suitable to an about-to-be-slaughtered veal calf than a 6'2" man with more than his share of adipose, I want to think that the airline I'm flying on has done everything they can to make me comfortable--not to make me amused. When your product sucks or your service or your sense of societal responsibility, don't try to buy me off with the filmic equivalent of a happy meal. You've only pissed me off.

Likewise, when I've spent $500 on opera tickets, don't put a ten-point message on the little screen that translates the lyrics for me saying, "Tonight's opera sponsored by Bank of America."

I know who Bank of America is. And how they ass-raped the poor with subprime mortgages and other forms of rapacious credit. I paid $500 for these seats--you, Bank of America, are a theatrical mugger. Taking shit from me that I didn't want to give.

As for Burger King saying a woman's place is in the kitchen, no matter how that thought was intended, misintended, well-meaning or utterly tone-deaf, it's just dumb. And it's none of your business.

My culture says burger joints should focus on making great burgers. Phone companies should focus on building a network that doesn't drop two calls in five. And ad agencies should be 98.989% concerned with making effective and likeable advertising that produces business results.

There's a Talmudic precept that says "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if they have saved an entire world." That's yet another reason I feel like companies should do what they do. Do good for your clients. The rest will follow. Don't try to earn brownie points by showing an uncaring public how goddamned noble they are. Or how important their role is in shaping culture.

Of course, you can disagree with me.

You probably do. My opinions are not very au courant.

So disagree all you want. But these beliefs are my culture.

Resiliency. Orwell Modernized.

Yes, we have lost a skein of accounts lately. Culminating in the loss of an account we've had for 71 years. 

But we are resilient.

Sure, we haven't had any significant wins--or even come close to a significant win- since we fired just about every senior creative person three years ago.

But we are resilient.

I know we're trying to put a positive spin on things by announcing the wins of Acme Safety Match company and the rebrand of Billy Bob's Mason-Jar Moonshine and Furniture Lacquer Company, even though the revenue of those two accounts in total couldn't pay for the hair on a moldy Whopper.

But we are resilient.

I get it, we're not making short-lists. The market has dubbed us a dinosaur stock and the consultants we hired to help lead our digital transformation (though we ourselves have a consultancy) have just been fined $573 million for their leading role in causing thousands of deaths during America's opioid crisis.

But we are resilient.

Yes, you're right. Most of the agencies in our network don't even know their names anymore or even if they'll have a new name next week or month. 

But we are resilient. 

Of course, we're taking $4.3 billion in impairment charges due to a failed acquisition from over 20 years ago.

But we are resilient.

Yes, our headcount is down 7% from a year ago.

Yes, we went from a £1.21 billion profit in 2019 to a pre-tax loss of £2.79 billion in 2020.

And our fourth quarter organic revenue was down 6.4% in the U.S., 7.4% in the U.K., 0.8% in Germany, 8.9% in India and 12.1% in Greater China.

BUT WE ARE RESILIENT.

No, our CEO doesn't own a decent tie and our entire holding company is virulently ageist with fewer than one out of one-hundred employees over 60.

BUT BRUTUS IS AN HONOURABLE MAN.

(Inspired by today: The Ides of March. And Marc Anthony's speech from William Shakespeare--one who harkens back.)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

One night. One mile below Madison Avenue.

WE OPEN IN A LAVISH PANELED BOARDROOM CARVED OUT OF A DORMANT VOLCANO THAT SEETHES UNDER NEW YORK'S ONCE THRIVING MADISON AVENUE. THE CAPO DI CAPI OF THE WORLD ADVERTISING INDUSTRY ARE GATHERED AROUND A GLEAMING 75-FOOT LONG TABLE.

CEO OF PUBICOM: 
Gentlemen, these are not easy times for us.

CEO OF OMNIGORE:
No, they are not. Certainly not.

CEO OF PEW:
Something must be done. But what. 

CEO OF INTERSPECIES:
Every time we hear the word "margins," the phrase razor-thin is appended to it.

OMNIGORE:
So, do we look to develop thinner razors? That would make our margins...razor thick!

INTERSPECIES:
Who has the Gillette account--can they work on this?

OMNIGORE:
We used to have it but...

PEW:
We have it. But they're not talking to us.

PUBICOM:
Gentlemen, thinner razors won't help. We need some big ideas.

INTERSPECIES:
Can we hire an agency to help?

OMNIGORE:
McKinsey? They need the money after that $573 million judgment for killing thousands of people for their Oxycontin clients.

PEW:
Gentlemen, I have a staff of over 300 CFOs and 180 business transformation experts. 

I think we have something...

INTERSPECIES:
Something big?

PUBICOM:
Something you're willing to share.

PEW:
We will all stand together, gentlemen, or we will all hang apart.

At PEW, Plastic Eviscerating Wire, we have an idea. 

Lights, please.

[THE CONFERENCE TOMB DARKENS]

Gentlemen, slide one:
I give you Cee Ess Tee.

OMNIGORE:
CST?

PEW:
Yes. CST. 
Creative Savings Time.
Every time there is a creative project, we move the billable clock back one hour, so we can bill for more time. AND we move the creatives' clock ahead one hour so they don't bill at all and we can fire all those who are left.

PUBICOM:
We have over a dozen blood-sucking creatives wanting to get paid every week.

INTERSPECIES:
Leeches.

PEW:
With CST, Creative Savings Time, we can bill our clients more--and give them less.

OMNIGORE:
That is the return of the path to profitability. Do less. Charge more.

PUBICOM:
That is genius! But if a Frenchman thought of it, it would be not just Creative Savings Time, but Client Savings Time as well.

INTERSPECIES:
CST! We save on what we spend on clients.

OMNIGORE:
And we save on what we give to creatives!

PEW: My, friends, CST is our road back.

JUST THEN THE LIGHTS FLICKER BACK ON AND A TINY SCOWLING MAN ENTERS THE ROOM.

PEW:
It is Sir Martin.

PUBICOM:
All hail!

MARTIN:
You old Holding Companies are doing it wrong! You don't need CST. That's the old Agency Model.

SSSS4444 has a new way.

CSSSST.

OMNIGORE:
CSSSST?

MARTIN:
CSSSS4444--Certainly. Sorelbow Steals Shareholders Souls. What did you think SSSS4444 stands for?

A TREMENDOUS CRASH OF THUNDER SOUNDS. THE ROOM DARKENS AGAIN AND THE FIVE MEN DISAPPEAR INTO A CLOUD BLOOD RED SMOKE.