Keeping score. And your sanity.

When I was young and playing ball--so many decades ago, I heard a quotation by a great baseball sage, either Casey Stengel or Yogi Berra, that went like this: "The trick to managing is keeping the ten guys who hate you away from the 15 guys who are undecided."

When I was somewhat less young--just about 30--and going to work at Harvard Business Review's 1980s Agency of the Decade, I was hired by Executive Creative Director (when that title meant something) Mike Tesch. He said to me, "I want this to be the kind of a place where you can be as good as you think you are."

It's funny how something you learned in the 1970s or something said to you in the early 1990s can rattle around in your head for 35 years or half-a-century, or longer. 

But the farther I get away from working for someone else--especially the hegemony of the modern Holding Company state of advertising, the clearer it seems to me how most businesses are run as "squashocracies." 

By that I mean, they infantilize you, or juniorize you, or sully you, or seek to undo your confidence. 

There's a reason for that, of course. 

If you realized how good you were, how special, how unique, how intelligent and driven, the Holding Company would not be allowed to take four out of every five dollars (or more) that you bring in. 

I knew a ballplayer many years ago who after going 16 wins against nine losses one season was offered a $3,000 pay-cut. He was told his season was less good than his previous season, so he should make less money.

We were having a drink one night when I still drank. 

"What did you say to them," I asked, sipping at my Schaefer.

"I said, I had heard where slavery was banned in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln."

In a squashocracy, a dominant and domineering ethos prevails. Somehow it's communicated to you that you are fragile. That you are lucky to have a job. That you need this job. And that without this job you'd be destitute.

Somehow it's communicated--you are made never to question--that you are nothing without the agency. Nothing without account people to organize meetings, planners to write 144-page decks, nothing without bosses to say, "it's close," or boss' bosses to say, "hand me my 5-iron." You are made, somehow, to doubt the brains in your head, the passion in your heart and the skill in your hands.

I'll admit, the squashocracy did its number on me for 40 years. They made me feel like there was always someone smarter, better and harder-working than I. I let them make me feel that I needed them. Looking back, I never realized how much they needed me.

I've been on my own for more than two-and-half years now. And the infection and decrepitude and doubt that invaded my bloodstream is beginning to diminish. I am beginning to believe in myself. And belief begets belief as an opposite-field double begets confidence.

When I was just 17, I ran away from home to play baseball south of the border. When I returned to El Norte, I never returned to the squashiness of my parents' home.

One day, after I hung up the phone having spoken to them, I wrote down every insult they had thrown my way during our phone call. From that point, until I never spoke to them again, I would keep a tally of insults and assorted meannesses. When I got to a certain total, "I said to myself, 'these conversations are hurting me more than they're helping me,' and I severed ties for the rest of their time on earth.

It wasn't easy doing that. I could have used a set of parents along the way. Or even just one. But, as a student of economics, I understood the rise over run was too steep.

If I had to do my agency career all over again, I wish I had had the mental and emotional wherewithal to do the same. I wish I had kept a little reporter's notebook of all the power-moves, idiotic comments and scrotum-squeezing demands that make up a really well-run squashocracy. All the people who can only feel big if they make you feel small. All the people whose sense of self comes from destroying yours.

All the people who say, there are no bonuses. Salaries are frozen. You're at the top of the pay-band. And all that shit. All those people who assert they're doing you a favor letting you sharecrop in their disaster.

That would be my advice to one and all reading this:

They are exceedingly well-armed. And their strength is reinforced because they're able to keep the people who hate them away from those who are undecided.

Keep a tally.

The power and the glory. (Fourth-grade edition.)

When I was in just fourth grade, my father had a major cardiac infarction and it looked for quite a long while that he would die. 

I was just nine at a time and for about that entire year--when I was from nine to ten, I think no one in my mother's spooky tilted house spoke louder than a whisper. Though my father was miles away intubated in some hospital somewhere (we weren't allowed to visit him) it was as if any noise we made anywhere, any kid-like silliness, any sort of misbehavior whatsoever, would send his EKG a-skitter like an Eastern European Jew on a hot tin roof.

I don't know if that time is when I turned into myself and consulted no one but myself when I faced a problem, but my father's condition and my mother's reaction to it did nothing at all to encourage me to be gregarious. There's no doubt in my mind where my aggressive Super Ego comes from.

The world was different back in 1967--in some ways, I think kinder than it is today. My fourth-grade teacher, Miss Kaiserling, was aware that my father was on the brink of death and took a special liking to me.

Of all the travails I had growing up, I was lucky in a way, in that whatever school I was sentenced to, there was usually a teacher who took some sort of care of me. When you're used to getting crumbs in terms of affection, these teachers seemed to be able to give me a well-margarined slice of black bread. Accordingly, they made if not all the difference in my life, they  were, in any case, responsible in many ways for "saving" me.

I don't know why, 55 years after I left Miss Kaiserling's class, I thought about her this afternoon. As I thought about her, I remembered a small in-class test we had. I reached a conclusion I hadn't reached before and then rushed away from my Weber grill and wrote this post.

Back in those days, students, even those who were only in fourth grade, were expected to know how to spell. There were concessions of course for being young, but we were supposed to be literate and always working to improve. 

A poem I remember from those days, would get me excoriated today. It would mark me as some sort of pedant, or even worse, a relic of a Draconian time gone by. It went like this: 

Good, better best,
Do not let it rest.
Till your good is better,
And your better, best.

The moment I thought about as I was barbecuing was the first time I ever realized I had power in my writing. 

I didn't know, at nine, with an almost dead father and a vicious harridan of a mother, that so many years later I would make my living as a writer. But I remember this incident.

We had a pop vocabulary test.

A dozen or twenty words printed out on a gluey-smelling mimeographed paper with blue-purple courier type. We had to write a definition of each word and then use the word in a sentence.

About halfway through the list of words, Miss Kaiserling proffered the word "Flawless."

That presented no problem for me. I defined it in a few words. Probably as accurately as Webster--or at least Webster when he was nine.

But when it came time to use the word in a sentence, I faced a small dilemma. I immediately came to an answer that I liked. But, I wondered, in this situation--fourth grade, 1967, would my flippancy get me in trouble? Even back then I was a wise-ass, but I wasn't sure if this was a place for my wise-ass-ness. Would it get me in trouble?

But, as they say today, I "went for it." I wrote:

Flawless: perfect and without any faults or mistakes.
"I am flawless."

I finished up my dittoed test and handed it in, not without a tremor of trepidation.

In a couple days Miss Kaiserling handed my test back. Next to my "flawless" answer, she wrote "ha! You sure are."

I noticed then and I remember well-more than half a century later, this as the first time my writing had made someone laugh. I noticed then and I remember well-more than half a century later, the feeling that this small feat gave me.

As a boy who was all alone in the world, isolated without a father and with a borderline mother, it gave me a sense that I had power and control and the ability to reach beyond myself and get a reaction with my writing.

In the intervening 55 years, I don't think I've thought about that moment back with Miss Kaiserling more than five times or three.

But maybe, looking back, it was one of the most important moments of my life.

Dude!

Cannes is almost upon us. And like you, I'm getting a thousand emails a day like the one below. All of them from people I don't know and never met.

--

Dude!

Long time, no see.

Or as we say in the agency business, long time, nausea.

So, let me cut right to the cheese and let the cat out of the bag. (The only thing better than a mixed drink is a mixed metaphor.)

It's been too long since we worked together and I'm itching to do it again. Soon.

I'd love to show you our new reel and what we're up to at Rabid Ocelot. Great things! Good times.

We have a new crew of heavily unshaven directors who speak virtually no English and for whom telling a linear story is an absolute anathema.

(Did I just say 'anathema'? Too much SAT studying in my past. HAHA.)

So, will I see you at Cannes?

We're having a great party the evening of the 21st and I really do hope to see you there. I've already signed up for oodles of great content and it would be a great opportunity for us to connect--like in real life, not over Zoom--if you're going to be around. 

Let me know if you'll be there or square. 

It would be great to strategize on working together...this year!

And if you aren't going, I'll be drinking a glass of Rosé in your honor. (Or your dishonor. Whichever comes second.)

Cheers!

F**K conference rooms.

Since my first agency job back in 1984 to my last agency job in 2020, I'd guess that the number of creatives as a percentage of agency staffing has been quartered. 

I'd also guess that the percentage of "footprint" taken up by conference rooms has octupled. You know, gone up by eight-hundred percent or eight times. Where we used to have two per floor, now we have 16.

That phenomenon has led me to rip off something that the great creative Tibor Kalman wrote back in the 1990s. "Fuck Committees." Today I think we should say "Destroy Conference Rooms."

This isn't another one of my anti-meeting screeds. John Kenneth Galbraith in his great "must read" book, "The Great Crash of 1929" screeds better than I ever could (we have to forgive his gendered use of pronouns. He was writing 65 years ago.) But this post is anti-conference room.

In fact, from a semiotic point of view, I think conference rooms have led to the demise of our industry.

Here's what I mean.

The number one criterion for any successful communication, whether it's a $120 million blockbuster film or a 120-pixel mobile ad, is getting attention. If no one notices your message, everything else is academic.

But when work is presented in a conference room, we forget the most important thing about the work we do. We forget that it has to wake people up. We spend countless hours bickering over some small, inconsequential detail--a word, an illustration, a (heaven forfend) typo. And very little time worrying about will anyone even see our ad.

That's because conference rooms, like focus groups, force exposure. And because you've been called to a conference room, you are there to care. 

That's two important ways that the spaces 97-percent of the industry works in aren't remotely like the real world. In a conference room people are paid to pay attention and care. In the real world, no one pays attention and no one cares. That's where the real work of our work comes in: to get people to see. To get them to understand. 

Judging advertising in a conference room, where everyone gets to stab at the creative and often does that more for power than for purpose, reminds me somehow of testing scuba equipment in the Mojave Desert.

Most of the conference rooms I've sat in for parts of five decades were really "over-think rooms," "nit-pick rooms," "my dick is bigger than yours rooms." 

I never sat in one meeting, not one, where anyone from the most senior to the most-nephewed said "let's evaluate this board this way: 1) Will it get attention? 2) Does it say the right things in a way I understand? 3) Is it persuasive?

Many years ago, I had spent weekends and nights preparing a ton of work for a very important client of the agency I was freelancing with. The agency had four campaigns to show, and the ECD that I was working with presented the first two.

When it came my time to present the last two, something horrible happened. The client was a voracious eater and her assistant had brought in a tray of cheese and crackers as big as the Ritz.

As I was trying to present, she was shoveling the Havarti into her gaw. Or reaching across the table for some whole-wheat crackers, or spreading some curdy-goop on a slice of semolina.

She didn't stop.

I wasn't about to present my work and the work of a dozen teams amid her cheesy maelstrom. So, even though I was a freelancer, I stopped. And waited. And waited.

Finally, the client realized the words disturbing her cheese and crackers had ceased and she looked at me. I was standing.

I clicked on the appropriate slide and I said, "You're sure to like this commercial. I call it 'Cheese and the People Who Love It.'"

Silence.

You could have cut the tension in the room with a cheese knife, if one were available. But I Borscht Belt deadpanned on her, and finally she cracked and laughed.

I got her attention.

I even took her down a peg.

And I went on to present.

All good.

Pass the cheddar.

Today's post.

Was inadvertently deleted because of sleep deprivation. Shit. And shit happens. Apologies. 

I'll be back and rested tomorrow.

Corte Madera, California.

I am spending 12 hours in the San Francisco suburbs. Seeing a client and the person gracious enough to help me manage my business without killing me.

I don't know anything about the town of Corte Madera, except it appears to be forty-five parking lots with 700 stores adjacent. Of course, the weather is beautiful, the cars are German and the place is crawling with bare midriffs that summon the insistent trumpets of lust, even in an old man like myself.

A lesson here--and there are many--is don't for a second think that language anymore communicates.

I order a sandwich from the Hispanic woman whose job it is to make sandwiches. 

ME:  With balsamic vinegar.

HER: Mayonnaise.

ME:  Balsamic vinegar.

HER: Mayonnaise.

Then, after we've found the balsamic,

ME: And a Coke.

HER: Coke?

Then at the checkout.

HER:   You have a Safeway value card?

ME: No, I have a Dangerousway value card.

HER: Next!

Lesson two: Everyone is over-specialized.

There's a Container Store. A wrap store. A salad store. A sriracha fried chicken store, a sandwich on a pretzel store, and about nine stores that specialize in generic coffee.

What I wouldn't give for the whole world to be run like a New York City Greek diner in 1975. You can get anything you want, fast, and the prices are reasonable. Even when it's raining buckets, you can get a turkey burger deluxe delivered before you have time to hang up the phone. 

Would that some political candidate would start the Angus Burger party. Fast. Fresh. Efficient. Affordable. For all. Take it from me, the world would be a better place.

Third, for me, is that no one knows any history.

I hear Corte Madera, and I think of Francesco I. Madero, a reform candidate who defeated Porfirio Diaz in the Mexican Presidential election of 1911. The stadium in Saltillo where I played so long ago was named after Madero. 

My notebooks, tell the story this way:

"When Porfirio Diaz was the king and had sold our land and our resources and our peasants and our oil and our railroads to the Americanos.

Diaz ruled like a god for five decades.

From the peasants they took. To the rich they gave.
Like el Norte today.

"As Diaz's soldiers killed the Zapatistas. And Madero's soldiers shot back. And the US helped Diaz shoot back with even more machine guns because the American money insisted, and bodies were piled high in the streets and the dead outnumbered the living, all because of the love of a filthy buck.

Madero fought Diaz. Madero fought the Americans.
But Madero was killed.

One million were killed in the Revolution.
99 percent of them died in the only clothing they had.

"Francesco was gunned down. Shot I believe in the back of the neck and left to be eaten by dogs in the sun. One million others died as well. Died trying to live. One million. And the nation's population was probably around 20 million at the time. That's five-percent. The equivalent of 18 million Americans dying today."

Like most of the United States, California was stolen. All the sun and surf and tacos and bitchin' blondes. First stolen from the first peoples by the Spaniards, and then stolen by the Americans.

We done good with all this stealing.

It's made us the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.

These are the things I think of, while sitting by the pool at the Best Western.

It's a hotel.

But it sounds like an omelette.

You gotta crack a lot of eggs to make a California.

--

And a sadder, but more poetical take: 

LINES FROM CALIFORNIA
by Arthur Miller

They meet for purchase or sale
and to trace their bounds through rosebushes.
There is a catechism: What's your name, what
do you do, how do you feel, and where you from?
Like people on a perpetual cruise, and the dead
go overboard into a lawn. It's a deck,
part of which is always on fire.
Anything inconsequential makes them serious.
Some teach parakeets to climb ladders; they also
have Malted Milk Specialists.
Tragedy is when you lose your boat.
Life is a preparation for retirement.
The sun is good for business.
Al Jolson left a trust fund which pays
to floodlight his tomb at night forever;
even in death a man should have bills.
The second-largest industry is sporting goods.
To succeed as a woman you have to have a car.
California is Christianity plus the conveniences.
Driving from town to town one wonders what will
happen if neon gas ever runs out; some may
have to learn to read paint.
When a man admits failure he becomes a pedestrian.
Brotherhood is when two men have the same mother.
Sacrifice is a car sold at a ridiculous price.
Society is when people listen to classical music;
or a Savings & Loan.
Law is order, Justice a decent return on money.
Progress is anything turning on and off by itself.
Beauty is teeth, deep skill, and the willingness.
Freedom is the right to live among your own kind.
A philosophy is a keen sense of land values
and the patience to wait.
War is peace waged by other means.
They know they are the Future.
They are exceedingly well-armed.

Progress inflation.

Some years ago, I was an ECD at the world's most prestigious digital agency.

One day I showed up for work and it was some cosmic mischief-maker threw a switch. Everyone in the agency--and there were close to one-thousand people working there--started talking about 3-D printing. 

3-D printing was going to change everything. We'd build houses. Manufacture parts almost instantly without expensive re-tooling and die making. We'd even be able to formulate artificial limbs. 

I have nothing against 3-D printing. 

But I kept asking a simple question.

What does it have to do with advertising?

Around the same time, at the same agency, many people began announcing their desire to "design products." 

I wasn't playing dumb.

I didn't know what they meant. Still don't.

Sure I have a flatscreen and a microwave and an expensive German dishwasher, but I couldn't for the life of me understand what all these new products were that I suddenly needed. I have just about everything I ever wanted. And frankly, I'd be happier if my TV had an old-fashioned dial rather than endless buttons so I don't have to click through 58 different channels playing the Home Shopping Network.

A robot vacuum cleaner? 

A toothbrush that flosses as you brush?

What does any of this have to do with advertising? Why are we talking about it?

There's a lot of smoke being blown in advertising today. 

And very little understanding of progress and how it's actually made. And how real progress doesn't come along that often. What's more, progress very often takes years to take effect.

Two examples here.

One: If you look at the life-expectancy of our species it was basically about 40 years from the time we came down from trees till the late 19th century. Then it leaped to about 70, where it's essentially stayed. 

Sure medicine and medical surgery and attempts to curb pollution have pushed life expectancy upwards, but the real progress--the almost doubling from about 40 to 70 happened seemingly all at once. Because of indoor plumbing. It took humankind 20,000 years to figure out the toilet.

I can't imagine progress on the order of indoor plumbing happening again, in my lifetime or that of my kids. Sure, we'll see Wired Magazine articles and we'll get tweets from Elon Musk about this or that. But I'm not buying.

Two: Germany now gets 40-percent of its energy from renewable sources. Primarily wind, sun and hydro. Has Germany reduced its consumption of fossil fuels by the same amount--by 40-percent? No. Fossil fuels as a percentage of Germany's energy supply have decreased less than 10-percent. And at the same rate, by 2040--when you'll be an old mutha--Germany's reliance on fossil fuels will still be around 70-percent.

My point in all this is probably more than a little be obtuse--inchoate, even. But it's the same point I've been trying to make in this space for almost two decades.

There are no magic bullets.

Progress is hard. And slow. 

Vaclav Smil talks about the four elements that make up our modern world. Cement. Steel. Plastics. Ammonia. None of these have we figured out how to make without fossil fuels. I don't think we will. And without those four elements, Earth's eight-billion people will have no place to live and nothing to eat.

I also don't think we'll colonize Mars. Or have a hyperloop. Or even create a peanut butter that doesn't stick to the roof of our mouths.

Insights and breakthroughs are rare. Maybe you'll have three in a lifetime. Five if you're Isaac Newton.

And whatever you do to make your mark involves not a lightning bolt from above, but work from above your shoulders. 

Persistent, dedicated, every day, and undaunted work. 

As a friend of mine once wrote about being in love, "there's never any point where it's just smooth sailing." That is, on the bumpy road to progress, there's no automatic pilot.

I'm teaching a class in advertising now that I'm not sure hasn't been something of a failure. Because I can't seem to get my students to "type blindfolded" and come in with 40 ideas a week or 80.

I'll be honest with you, as honest as I know how to be. 

I've written a blog post every working day for about 6000 days. Some of my posts are really good. Some of them, more, in fact, bite the cosmic wienie.

That's ok.

That's life.

Limber up your fingers and start typing.

That's how it goes.

Heraclitus, Rob, Geno and me.

My good friend Rob Schwartz, Chair of TBWA New York Group, was on Gene Schellenberger's "Breaking and Entering" podcast. I listened to it yesterday as I took a train into the city from wherever it is I am living these days. You can and you should listen to Rob and Geno here.

Geno's podcast, as its title implies, is about getting started in the advertising business. How people like Rob broke in.

Rob sent me and Geno a note. He suggested I might be a good guest on Geno's show.

But then I got to thinking. 

I never broke into the industry. 

That is, I'm still breaking in.

As Heraclitus reputedly said "You can never step into the same river twice." If you're lucky, smart, hard-working, resourceful, a little bit daring and lucky, every day in life is breaking in. Every day is entering something new. Stepping into a new river.

Our job is to NEW.

To new-ize.

To make people who are bored look at something in a new way.

Not just people watching our commercials. Brand managers and CMOs who are bored with what they do. 

Our job--the very essence of our job--is to break into and enter people's brains.

However you did that yesterday, you have to find a new way to do it today.

You have to find new ways to twist words. New ways to create images. New ways to look at old things. New ways to reach people. New ways to get noticed. New ways to collaborate. New people to work with. New media to conquer.

Also, your world changes every day and you have to find your way in it afresh, every day. 

If you told me on January 13th, 2020 that I'd be fired from Ogilvy the next day (the day after being warmly hugged by Ogilvy's CEO Emeritus) I'd have said you were crazy. If you told me I'd be running my own multi-million dollar agency pretty much by myself, I'd have laughed at you.

I had to break into and enter new phases of my life and my livelihood.

In life, we have to learn--every day--how to distinguish between signal and noise. Signal is the meaningful information you're trying to find. Noise is anything that distracts.

We also have to learn--every day--how to distinguish between complacency and meaning. Complacency is doing things you've done before in ways you've always done them. Meaning is taking what you've learned from previous experiences and finding new and unforeseen ways to apply your knowledge.

Most people I know in the business, whether they're 30 and quickly on their way up, or 55 or 65 and finding new paths, are forever looking. Looking for something.

Before Covid my wife got tickets for us to see Jerry Seinfeld at the Beacon Theatre. Seinfeld has a net worth of almost one-billion dollars. 

But he was out on the stage of the Beacon working. Working on new material. Working on new ways to reach an audience. Working working working.

Working to rage against the dying of the light.

I don't know Seinfeld but I imagine if you asked him about what he does he would say a few things.

1. He's still scared when he goes in front of an audience. He still fears failure.

2. He still needs to succeed and to prove it to himself.

3. He's still breaking in--whether it's material, technique, something.

I think that's true of most everyone I know. Whether they've been a successful lawyer for 40 years like my brother or a successful psychiatrist for 40 years like Dr. Lewis.

We're all just starting out.

Every day.

Go to Hillel.

I'm wondering something dire.

How much of the continuing gun violence in Amerika is a symbol of a much more dramatic problem.

Government, which we pay for, no longer protects us.

When it comes to healthcare, retirement, equal justice under the law, providing opportunity, advancement, education, government barely works.

Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, two drafts of which I've pasted above, seem wholly void. I wonder if we've lost our focus on the clearest role of government because we've so broadly stretched our ideas about what government should do. Or if we've started focusing on things that expand government's role to distract us from the government's shortcomings.

This is a blog about advertising. 

But for me, the metaphor works.

Advertising has so expanded its purview--all the things charlatans claim it can do--that we've forgotten the basics of what advertising is supposed to do. What it must do.

I'll be very stupid about this.

I think the industry has forgotten the basics: Advertising should connect with people, provide them with useful information and persuade them to buy. The best ads have always done this. 

Get attention.

Communicate.

Persuade.

The best stories, sweet nothings, and jokes have done this as well. And the best brands--and the people we like--follow that discipline over and again to make themselves likable. 

That's advertising.

Good, basic advertising.

Advertising that's worked essentially the same way since the first ad on record (offering a reward for a missing slave--from 5000 years ago) because people's brains work essentially the same way as they did 5000 years ago or 10,000.

Good, basic advertisements don't lie. They don't bait and switch. They don't asterisk. They don't dumb down. They don't shout. They don't make meaningless promises. They don't insult your intelligence. They don't roll out tired cliches that make no one laugh unless they're sitting in an agency conference room.

They don't pretend they're building a relationship with you when you never asked for one.

They don't force you to opt-in, accept cookies, unsubscribe when you never subscribed in the first place. They don't ask you useless questions, keep you on hold, make it difficult to get help.

They don't pretend they're having a conversation with you when you barely have time to have a conversation with the people you love.

They don't pretend they're serving you by chasing you with their ads like a bloodhound after a prison break.

They don't rationalize borrowed interest and call it becoming part of culture (as if my culture and yours and someone elses' were interchangeable.)

They don't publicly say things like the above as if it has any meaning to any viewer anywhere.

They don't send mail like this to potential customers that has fourteen times as much legal copy as it has non-legal copy. And more half-truths than sentences.

They don't tell you to ask your doctor about an unpronounceable drug and then spend 45 of their 60 seconds telling you how it can kill you. 

They don't seat agency people like factory-farmed animals at troughs. 

They don't call people resources. Or talent to be "acquired" like a box of saltines.

They don't tell them they're executives so they don't get paid hourly, but give them no executive perks. Meaning they're spending 20 hours a week working for free. 

They don't fire them willy-nilly.

They don't demand loyalty but give none in return.

Basics.

Far be it from me to rewrite the great Jewish scholar, Hillel who wrote, "That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary."

But, "If you think something isn't honest or is dumb or is full of half-truths or deceives or over-promises or doesn't entertain, or is insulting, do not do it unto another. If it doesn't provide useful consumer information brilliantly executed, don't do it unto another. This is the whole of what advertising should be. The rest is commentary."

Making things legible.

With the exception of one client from over thirty years ago, I've always done a pretty good job of working with people. (That one client, by the way, was dating a nominal Hollywood star. When my partner and I presented storyboards that didn't feature her, he threw us to the wind.)

Over the years, regardless of how well I've gotten along with clients, I've become convinced of something that might be considered damning.

I believe most clients can't read.

I don't mean they can't read a newspaper or even a novel. I mean that when they read decks or copy, they are so focused on finding things that are wrong, that they forget comprehension and they make the mistake of looking at individual words, not whole thoughts. 

That's like looking at a painting by Paul Signac or Georges Seurat and seeing the brushstrokes and not the entire work. 

I've noticed, for instance, that it's not unusual for a client to see the word "don't" in your ad and deem the ad, therefore, negative. Or that they're quick to point out that all seven single-key-ideas that they've decided must go in the ad are not in your first sentence. Therefore, your copy is wrong. 

Good copy (or writing) is like a good cup of coffee, glass of wine or piece of chocolate. You should let it sit on your tongue for a while and see if it fills you up. But too often, people are reading copy when they're doing nine other things. They aren't clear, they aren't focused and they want everything, including the last sentence and call to action, first.

Since I've been out on my own--it's been almost 30 months now--I've learned a few things.

Some time ago, I stumbled upon this, which I've rewritten:

Clients are in meetings all day every day. It’s just the way things are. Therefore, I suggest a 50-20-10 rule.

50-word emails.

20-minute meetings.

10-slide decks.

Of course, there are clients who can handle more complexity than that--and it's not disparaging to say they can't. Most people however are doing twelve things at once. They're being pinged, pinged and pinged. Someone's talking to them from across the room. They have 11 to-do's. A kid is screaming in the next room. And they're late for their next seven Zoom calls. Not to mention, they might have a sick parent, a child calling from college, a boss who's all over the place, dinner to get on the table and another amerikan mass-murder to mourn.

In the 30 months I've been running GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, I've gotten good at running ads for myself. I've written maybe 300 and they average about 30,000 views each. That's nine-million media impressions. And those impressions have earned me a decent amount of business and revenue.

I realized that since I run my ads only on LinkedIn, they have to be bold and fast. I'm not expecting anyone to "buy off the page." I just want people to maybe smile a bit, think about how "I get it," and for when the time comes, to remember my name.

I realize GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company is one of only nine agencies in existence that hasn't, this year, been named "Agency of the Year." Maybe that's because some of the ads I do suck. Or maybe because my ads have yet to solve the problems of carbon capture, child trafficking, or talk about the latest Oreo filling (sardine and musk-melon.) 

My bad. But to my eyes, these ads of mine solve a few problems. They're easy to read. They say something. They seem "ownable." They get me business. And the viewer knows what to do.

I realize none of those attributes are what advertising is about anymore. Clearly my ads hearken back to an earlier time when impact, communication and persuasion were important. Too bad. Because they're the best I can do.