A Smile from Pyle.

I didn't ask Lesly for her permission to use this from her site.
But why wouldn't I?

Like Walt Whitman, today's guest-writer, Lesly Pyle contains multitudes. She's funny. Warm. Ambitious. Brave. A connector. And a bit of a trouble-maker, the characteristic I most-admire in another human being.

Lesly wrote me last week with the news a lot of ad people are dealing with these days. I wrote back with my usual old man wisdom. "Don't hide the news," I said, "Use it." And moments laters, Lesly sent us (it's for all of us, after all) this wonderful post.

Enjoy it.

And enjoy Lesly's Lesly-ness.

And hire her.

When you do, you owe me one.

Copywriting Portfolio: PyleOfWords.com

LinkedIn CV: LinkedIn.com/in/Friscomoon
Email: friscomoon@mac.com

Best-Selling Dementia-Fundraising Book (with more stories like the one below): PyleOfMemories.com

Angels & Demons | A Tale of Two Agencies

By Lesly Pyle

 

_____ 

 

Cut to 2000.

 

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma in June and moved to San Francisco shortly after. You could say I was a Sooner fresh off the Schooner.

 

My first post-collegiate job was at an incredible ad agency called Foote, Cone & Belding. FCB for short. FCB was known for its creative work — and its equally creative pranks.

This story is about the latter.

 

I was only a month old at FCB when my fellow creative assistant, the mysterious Michael Burbo, approached my desk with a mischievous grin on his face. This was not rare. Michael Burbo was always up to something. He spoke from a 3/4 angle, never quite making full eye contact. This kept him in a stance poised for a quick escape should the need arise.

 

“Look, kid, Bacino called,” Burbo said.

 

Oh boy.

 

Any sentence with the words “Bacino called” was worth leaning in for. Brian Bacino was our boss. He was a Group Creative Director who was kinda like a don. But the fun kind. If Burbo was scheming, Bacino was likely behind it.

 

“Bacino’s at a Giants’ game with the Top Brass,” Burbo said. “They’ve ordered ‘Black Ops’.”

 

Burbo and Bacino spoke in code. It was a great education for this small-town Okie to learn how to decode their cryptic language. But, by four weeks into my four-year tenure at FCB, I had figured out some basics. If the Top Brass were at a baseball game during the workday, this meant two things:

 

They were drinking.

 

And they were thinking.

 

A few days before this fateful phone call, the ad agency across the street from us, GMO Hill Holiday, put up a little sign in their window facing our building. It had basic black letters on a white sheet of copier paper. The lack of visual panache plus its punchy tone made us suspect that it was designed by a Copywriter. It had only two words:

“FCB SUCKS.”

 

“FCB SUCKS.” We got a big laugh about our little brother from another mother calling us out. Both agencies were owned by Interpublic Group — a giant holding company that got gianter recently when it merged with the mothership, Omnicom.

 

FCB was the big kid on the block and felt no guilt about humiliating our brethren publicly. In fact, the command to do so had come from FCB’s executive leadership at the last game of the Giants’ regular season. They were masterminding a sinister plan between overflowing cups of overpriced beer, whilst cheering their hearts out to send the Giants to the post.

 

Bacino gave Burbo a budget.

 

Burbo gave us the green light.

 

The FCB Fox Force Five was led by Michael Burbo. He recruited the rest of us. Brian Tocco, a fellow creative assistant, who was Burbo’s best friend and best pranking accomplice since childhood. Ward Evans and John Benson, a creative director team, who played in a band with Burbo. And the Okie who nobody really knew but trusted with Top Secret intel anyway. I wondered if it was my Gomer Pyle naïveté that got me the nod. My band of brothers shouted my last name like Sergeant Carter repeatedly: “Pyle!” “Pyle!” “Pyle!” That joke never got old. For them, anyway. But if that’s what it took to be part of the hijinks, I was happy to fall in line.

 

FCB’s and GMO’s buildings were smack dab in the middle of the San Francisco “Ad Ghetto.” Yes, that’s really what it’s called. The Ad Ghetto. Our office was seven stories tall with a modest roof deck. GMO’s was only three stories but they had a much larger rooftop. The kind where you could throw all-staff parties. In three days, the Blue Angels would perform their annual Fleet Week Flyover. Ad agencies were always looking for excuses to party. Fancy flying was more than reason enough.

 

The FCB Fox Force Five had little time to prepare our disproportionate response to the 8.5 x 11-inch “FCB SUCKS” sign taunting us from across Pacific Ave.

 

Cut to October 5, 2000.

 

At 0900, we enlisted the FCB championship softball team. We drafted the players with the strongest arms and the tightest lips. Until our strike, you could count the number of people who knew about our secret mission on two hands.

 

At 16:00 hours, from our lookout atop FCB’s building, we saw trays of charcuterie and tables of booze being carefully arranged on GMO’s roof deck. Perfect. It would soon be full of unsuspecting victims.

 

We waited for the right moment. The GMO crowd was at a quorum. The Blue Angels’ aeronautical acrobatics appeared overhead.

 

Ward Evans was a creative by day and a musician by night. He played a few instruments but on tap for this day was one in particular. His trumpet. He tooted the iconic “Attention” bugle call. Everyone across the street turned their awe from amazing circles in the sky over to us. We stole the Blue Angels’ thunder. Our plan was working already.

 

Ward’s bugle call was our team’s cue too. John Benson and I unraveled the first of two king-sized sheets which cascaded down the side of our building. It held our giant two-word retort:

 

“HEY GMO.”

 

Ward trumpeted again. Burbo and Tocco released our second sheet to reveal the ultimate call to action:

 

“SUCK THIS.”

 

It might not have won a Titanium Lion for copywriting excellence but it got the point across.

 

For the next several minutes, the FCB bombardiers pelted GMO over and over and over again with water balloons. We had buckets of balloons in our armory. Allegedly, our assault was all caught on tape. The softball team’s captain also ran the in-house A/V Studio.

 

With the help of long-range slingshots and throwing arms like cannons, we targeted GMO’s trays. Splash! Food went flying. We targeted their booze. Splash! Bottles went flying. We expected all of this.

 

But what we didn’t expect was their reaction. Or lack thereof.

 

We thought our sibling rivalry would just keep escalating into an “Ad-nerd War for the Ages” with antics press-worthy enough for the front page of trade magazines like Ad Age. First things first. We needed GMO’s counterattack. Aside from a half-hearted attempt to dump buckets of water on our heads during a Pacific Avenue block party, it never came.

 

A different headline made the news instead. GMO had just laid off much of their San Francisco staff. Many of the people we had just soaked from head to toe had just lost their jobs. We literally rained on a parade that had already been deluged.

 

We eventually got ours.

 

A few months later, FCB went through a large layoff of its own. It rendered our big seven-story building that housed 500 people unnecessary. And we had to move.

 

Our office was converted into luxury condos. We watched this sad transition take place from FCB’s new home, across the street, in none other than GMO Hill Holiday’s recently vacated space. FCB continued to shrink and had to move again in a few years. “600 Battery” has since been known as a doomed address for ad agencies. Commercial real estate seekers beware.

 

Cut to 2022.

 

I moved again. This time, to an agency far, far away: The Richards Group (TRG) in Dallas, Texas. On my first day, I met one of TRG’s group creative directors and fellow copywriters. He’s a neighborly fella named Mike Bales. He told me he had also moved to Dallas from San Francisco.

 

“Where did you work in 2000?” Bales asked.

 

“FCB,” I said. “You?”

 

“GMO Hill Holiday,” he said.

 

Mischievous grins appeared on both of our faces.

 

“And to answer your next question,” he said, “Yes, I was there.”

 

But he’s yet to admit if his was the infamous window that faced FCB.

 

Cut to 2025.

 

In another twist of fate, the author of this story, Lesly Pyle, was laid off from TRG and she’s now looking for a job. Contact her for creative positions and/or creative shenanigans. She’d like to thank George Tannenbaum for giving her this space so this story would finally see the light of day in an official advertising trade magazine: Ad Aged, not to be confused with Ad Age.

 

A Lift from Andrew Jolliffe.

Back in September, when the world was somewhat cooler, somewhat kinder and somewhat less be-nighted than it is today, my friend, Andrew Jolliffe, wrote a post for this blog. 

Not long ago, though it's taken me a while to do this, Andrew offered me--and you, dear readers--another post. Andrew is one of the finest writers writing today. In advertising and outside of advertising. I welcomed this post, but had too much else cooking to actually post it. Thus depriving you, my readers, of Andrew's Andrew-ness.

Andrew is a writer of unusual charm, grace and surprise. If you're looking for a fastball straight down the middle, Andrew will fool you with something you're not expecting. That's the hallmark not only of a good writer, but a good creative and a good thinker, and a good human.

Andrew's LinkedIn details and website are here. He lives way over in Italy now and I'm sure would welcome a kind word or two if you have a moment to spare.

BTW, Ad Aged gets a lot of readers. As Carl Ally is reputed to have said about the money he made from advertising, "More than I expected but less than I deserve." In any event, it's a pleasure for me to share with my readers different people and viewpoints. Tomorrow, in fact, we'll be hearing from the great and powerful Lesly Pyle. If you have something to say, drop me a line. I'm not as harsh as people say.

 

THE FIRST RULE OF ROMANCE

 

Tears ago I missed a train from a northern English town. The place was a soft shadow of its industrial heyday. Its air was stale, its streets a slate grey and its morale darker.

 

There was a train in two hours. The station flanked a bar and snack shop. The bar stank of the last night’s joints and the snack shop of yesteryear’s beef and testicle pies. Undecided as to which appealed most, I took a walk. The air was dank and the sun on strike. I headed down a pitted cement ramp, across the roaring highway, past a kebab shop, a nudge-nudge wink-wink massage parlour and a row of cut-price stores undercutting each other like commercial cannibals.

 

I saw distant trees, so soldiered on. Up alleys, down broadways, across an expanse of dead vapes and cat vomit. Gagging for a shortcut I shot down a passageway into a concrete square.

 

And there it was.

 

It was a poster. For a soft drink that wouldn’t surprise. But the poster did. A swirling kaleidoscope of colour, mercifully, joyfully, beautifully puncturing the nicotine-stained square. And under the colour, there was life. Lots of it. A drummer, a rapper and a bass. Mums, kids, their dogs and grins. Applause, cigarettes and catcalls.  

 

All it took was some coloured joy. And this time it was an ad.

Advertising’s relationship with all folk starts with attraction. It’s the catalyst of catalysts. Like a blind date, the start of something mysterious and gorgeous. The first sweet words. The knowing wink. The once-or-never chance. Drop the ball on the first pass and it stays on the ground. Or if you like, bore your date and you’ve blown it. Forever. An encounter  with a prospect starts with a lift. Something funnier, fizzier, more colourful, more intriguing than what the day has been. A signal that there’s a rainbow somewhere in the grey. And you could be it.

 

And for our date, today has been as grey and normal as the three before it. Our ravishing, wide-eyed, dream date has stared at a screen, commuted, browsed TikTok, fought their way through queues of silent phone-browsers with body odour, reconstituted a TV dinner, browsed again, repeat, dreamed of that dreamy, bright, fresh encounter that could take them away from it all.  Something, maybe-maybe, to  add a jewelled spark to a life.

 

And what do we do? We turn up for our one-chance encounter with nothing to say, in unwashed jeans, with our balls hanging out and no apology.

 

In our spirally ever-dulling daily world of economic catch-up, billions of us are staring into space. Having affairs, or wishing we could. Doodling. Not talking. Staring at pap posted by folk they’ll never know. Dogmatically passing time in a vacuum of gaming apps and cheese crispies. Never before have we craved colour in the midst of a deepening grey.

 

And he who offers it can win us all.

 

Advertising has forgotten that attraction leads to romance leads to engagement leads to faith and wedded bliss. Only with beauty, fascination, intrigue and spectacle can we create the perfume, flowers and pheromones of new adventures with targets.

Without real attraction we will go nowhere, and vanish like grains of pale sand in the wind of fake progress. Pump out colourless work and the grey of its environment gets greyer.  Brighten up lives and we brighten prospects, careers, results, reputations and our own consciences. Make someone smile, and they’re yours. But I’m sure we really know that. 

What's That Ticking Noise?

The whole thing, but especially the line
from the blonde in the car at 3:08.

I don't know about you, but I have an ear-worm problem. About twice a week, or maybe more often (if you listen to my long-suffering wife) I get a song in my head. When I do, it's a little bit like lower back pain. I can't ignore it; it's the only thing I can think of, and then suddenly, it's gone.

I've been a victim of ear-worm-itis since I was a little boy. I remember I had a 45 of "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley." I must have listened the grooves off the record.

Maybe that explains my mother's disposition.

I also remember discovering poetry when my father recited the rhyme "Fuzzy Wuzzy." I went over it again and again. I couldn't believe its symmetry and humor.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy,

Was he?

Since I first heard that ditty, I've seldom encountered something so perfect. Sidney Morgenbesser, below, comes close. 

The genesis of this slight summer-Friday post is a current week-long ear-worm I've been both enjoying and suffering through. A song by Chano Pozo, who was shot to death by his drug dealer in Harlem almost eighty years ago.

Chano wrote "Tin Tin Deo." You can listen to Chano here. Video seems to be undownloadable from YouTube. Though this musical version by Oscar Peterson has my head and brain rapt.

Chano and Tin Tin Deo have been the "ticking noise" in my head for a week now.

I first ran into Chano when Hector Quetzacoatl Padilla had "Tin Tin" blaring on the loud-speakers of Estadio de Béisbol Francisco I. Madero during one pre-game practice just about 50 years ago, to the month. What a blessing to have had a manager and a fill-in father who love be-bop. If you've never played pepper to such a soundtrack, you haven't lived. Melville said "A whale ship was my Harvard and my Yale College." My Wottsamatta U education was gained fielding grounders listening to Tin Tin.

Like Chano, Hector grew up in one room with one mud floor, one mattress and eight brothers. Hector heard life and death and joy and sad and love and hate and hunger and fat and fast and slow in every bit of Chano. Chano, along with Freddie Fender, who was hot that summer, were our soundtrack on long bus rides through the snow-capped peaks of nowhere and the nowhere of the still-as-dust deserts and the grime of solidified ancient cities spinning apart like cheap Chinese toys in an out-of-control centrifuge.

I heard Chano again last week via a wayward synapse--it must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque--but it got to me finally. It arrived when it was almost midnight and I was driving a rented grey Nissan Sentra down in the dark from the peak of Mt. Lemmon, elev. 9100 ft. to the Tucson valley 22 miles below, as the road winds. 

It was my first time night driving since my cataract surgery in April. And the road had more curves than Rita Hayworth cross-bred with a Möbius strip. Of course, 91-percent of all drivers today tailgate. And drive too fast. Even on those roads. Even in the ink of night. But I persisted. 

I drove just over the speed-limit. Not fully trusting myself, or the Nissan's brakes or its steering or its engine. My wife was there. But it was Chano who kept me company.

He's still with me.

Oh Tin Tin Deo.

 

Wheeeeeeee!

Many years ago--actually, maybe three decades ago, Ogilvy's CEO at the time, Charlotte Beers, came up with a pretty damn good mission statement for the agency she led. 

It was broad, yet simple. There was no wordplay. Nothing about it that was too complicated. Yet, it was clear and memorable. Most of all, it helped define--for decades--Ogilvy's reason for being.

Even so, I doubt anyone at Ogilvy, or anywhere else for that matter (excepting maybe me) uses the line anymore.  I doubt anyone at Ogilvy, or anywhere else for that matter even remembers the line.

"To be most-valued by those who most-value brands."

If I'm wrong about its use within Ogilvy and if anyone at Ogilvy wants to write a rejoinder to this post, mi bloggo es su bloggo. You can write whatever you want in this space, and I won't edit a bit, except for obvious grammatical and spelling mistakes. And calumny. I am anti-calumny.

What's adroit about the line above is that it posits advertising agencies are to be valued. And the best agencies attract clients who value that agency's ability to enhance the reputation, the clarity and even the performance of the client's brand. 

There's a symmetry to the line, too. Not just semantic symmetry but a spiritual symmetry. To me it says, "We add to your value, that's why you should value us." Or, "Because we add to your value, you should value us." Often, the best relationships are built on equations and those equations are usually reciprocal.

When I first joined Ogilvy way back in 1999, I'm not sure if I ever heard anyone actually say Ms. Beers' line in a meeting or in passing. David Ogilvy's Ogilvy-isms were everywhere and were always a crutch you could lean on if you had to do a house-ad for some awards magazine. But somehow "To be most-valued by those who most-value brands" infiltrated my marrow.

Many times when I'm working with a client I'll bring it up. If, for instance, my client makes doorstops, I'll say to them that my goal in working with them is to make them "most-valued by those who most-value doorstops." Until I come up with words that are better than those, they serve as a pretty good proxy for a client's over-arching mission. 

If you're a client, try it right now with your brand. If a simple substitution doesn't in some form work, sue me. Or worse, ignore me.

I think it even works for being a friend, or a parent, or a spouse, or a creative director. 

The saddest thing I think about the advertising world today, which I don't think anyone would argue is not in a fairly precipitous decline, is that we don't examine the real reasons behind our current state. In fact, the decline is so steep it reminds me of a great line from the 1944 screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, "Arsenic and Old Lace." Cary Grant says something like, "Insanity runs in my family; it practically gallops!" In other words, the advertising industry ain't descending, it's practically plummeting.

We've come up with more reasons than you can shake an MBA at to explain our decline. The rise of holding companies, the divestiture of media agencies, the death of media commissions, the over-reliance of the magic of spurious technologies. There are probably hundreds more reasons you've heard and can think of.

But maybe the most foundational reason is the simplest. And maybe it explains the declines of so many institutions, brands and industries we used to trust and admire. 

We stopped dedicating ourselves to making people's lives better. And we stopped demanding respect for the important jobs we do.

We stopped being valued by clients at least in part because we stopped proving value to clients.

People stopped caring about advertising because advertising stopped caring about people.

A lot of people will look for magic bullets on technologies or creative processes or staffing models that they will claim will bring the industry back.

I don't have faith in panaceas. And people who promise them are usually charlatans.

I think step one, now and always is providing value to your customers. So your customers value you.

That at least deserves a moment or two of consideration.

Being Accessible is a Big Mess-able.

When I talk to other humans about advertising (this happens about once every three months) if they're on a wave-length similar to mine (this happens about once every three years) we often wonder why jingles and mnemonics no longer hold any sway in the advertising we see (that is, if we see advertising at all.)

Most of us of a certain age remember rhymes and ditties from ads that have kept a rent-free place in our brains for half a century or more. Many of those ads, we remember with fondness--though we likely haven't seen them for half a century or more. 

The Brits were always better at these things than amerikansche were. Beanz Meanz Heinz takes the legume. Or the cake. But at one time, there were agencies and people who worked in them and people who worked for brands who practically demanded memory devices in their ads. 

As soon as I get home from school

I ask Mum ‘what’s for tea?’

And hope that she says Heinz Baked Beans

’Cos they’re the beans for me

There are lots of ways to eat them

You can have them on your toast

I like to eat them with fried eggs

Or with a Sunday roast

I like them with fish fingers

With sausages they’re great

The only time they’re not is when

They’re on my brother’s plate

Sometimes when I’m feeling sad

My mum will read the signs

She knows the thing to cheer me up

And she knows that Beanz Meanz Heinz

We've convinced ourselves, against all common sense, that advertising clutter or message inundation is a new thing. Actually clutter is a tale as old as time, as is needing to do something memorable to a) overcome clutter or b) punch above your weight.

Late last week, I stumbled across this obituary in The New York Times.

I'm a better amateur historian than I am professional copywriter but I remember exactly two things about John Tyler. 1) He became the first vice president to become president when William Henry Harrison died just thirty days after being inaugurated. 2) Harrison was called "Tippecanoe" because he killed a bunch of native amerikans there. His campaign slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." A damn good rhyme.

Rhyming works. As the Economist notes in the article that prompted this post: 

"...the brain is “hardwired” to notice rhymes, says Samuel Jay Keyser, author of “Play it Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts”, a new book. Other things reveal this too, such as the sheer ease with which you can detect rhymes in a text. A rhythm can be hard for you to see. That last sentence, for example, was in iambic pentameter, but you probably did not notice. Noticing rhyme in text is easier: if it’s got it, you can spot it.

The first commercial I remember I probably last saw in 1961 when I was three years old. And now, roughly 64 years later, I still remember every word.

When I was young in the business I sold a print campaign to Nabisco about a line extension of A1 Steak Sauce called A1 Poultry Sauce. Back in 1984 people weren't in the habit of dipping food. My partner and I created a dozen or twenty quarter-page units that explained how to use the stuff. 

One of them read "How to inspire a fryer." 

A lot of people in the agency made fun of me for that line. "It rhymes," they mocked. How dare I do something potentially memorable.

Today's dearth of ditties, jingles and other mnemonic devices has always puzzled me. I knew they weren't considered "cool" by the industry's "awards-industrial complex." They could probably get you fired, in fact.

Just now, an article in The Economist explained why. They write:

At the start of the 19th century, around half the population was literate; by the start of the 20th, 97% was... In an era of low literacy the mere ability to read a poem set someone apart; as the era of mass literacy dawned, another marker of intellect was needed. It came in the form of modernism.

In the 20th century, many art forms became “more abstruse, inaccessible and difficult to appreciate”, says Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University, “possibly as a way of differentiating elites from the hoi polloi”. Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one. By the mid-century, rhyming lines had fallen by half.

Maybe, if we were honest, we’ll concede something similar has happened in advertising. 

We got too elite to create communications for the hoi polloi. Or as my mother might have said, "we got too big for our britches."

Very often I'll see a commercial that will say nothing and show virtually nothing. There will be a sullen woman driving in the rain. We'll follow a single rain drop down the pane of a window. The announcer will say a single word: "Confidence." And we'll cut to a logo. These things are shot as if by Sven Nyquist. 

As if we're making an art film. 

As if people care.

We're not. And we don't.

We're making commercials.

And we're acting like dicks about it. 

I repeat from above: Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one.

Maybe we should try to be enjoyable again.

Fun.

Laughter.

Empathy.

Not snobbery.

A Re-Direct.

A lot of my clients make things or provide services that are supposed to make a process faster or more efficient or to somehow cut down on bad side-effects.

I guess that's a long way of saying, I haven't yet won a sugar-water account, and I have a lot of high-tech clients.

With those high-tech clients I'm usually pretty nasty. I mean, I ask nasty questions.

What do you do?
How does it help people?
Can you prove it to me?

Those are simple questions, but tough. Because it takes work to actually answer them with details and truth, not hyperbole and magical thinking.

Hyperbole and magical thinking are about all that's in the post above from my former employer, the ones who fired me because I was too old. If you watch the 77-second video you can find here, you'll hurt your brain with what Shakespeare might have called MAAN™. Not to mention the track they decided to use because they didn't want to pay for music.

Much Ado About Nothing.

Going back to my clients now, when I have my fairly signature "hit me but don't shit me" discussions with them, I usually show them two or three sites I like that make data--and therefore results--visible.

One of the sites I talk about with clients is called "Our World in Data." When they make a claim, they back it up with charts that often look like this:

I love information like this. I think most people do. It's hard to argue with information when it's presented like this. If you don't want what I'm selling after I show you this, that's no longer on me. You just couldn't be persuaded. (Animation of chart above.)

I usually send clients to a site called information is beautiful as well, and a section within that site called "beautiful news." I encourage clients to let me help them make something like this about their offerings every day. Such messaging lets viewers know that the client is "active-positive." That is, they're doing things and they're good. Beautiful News posts things that look like this, daily.

Decades ago, when my friend Dave Dye, who keeps the ad industry's best blog was running Campbell, Doyle and Dye they ran this ad.

I'm tired of everyone trying to convince me how great they are. Every telco says how reliable they are. Every airline. Every ISP. Every agency, every executive, every politician and every abusive parent does the same.

Here's an idea.

Stop trying to sell me. 

Give me the facts, and I'll make up my own mind. Like Dave does above.

For the last 18 months or so, even someone like myself who watches no TV, has 27 ad blockers and listens to no radio has probably been exposed to ten-billion impressions telling me how great our purportedly AI-future is going to be. So far, at least for me, the only good thing about AI is that there's so much being trumpeted about it that I no longer need to read about how great NFTs are.

What I haven't seen are simple charts like these:

1. Time spent waiting in line since AI implementation.
2. Frustration from bad service since AI implementation.
3. Decrease in flight delays since AI implementation.
4. Cost decreases since AI implementation.

1. Customer satisfaction since AI implementation.
2. Hours returned to your day since AI implementation.
3. Increase in on-time arrivals since AI implementation.
4. Effectiveness/likeability of creative since AI implementation.

Since every automaker started trying to sell electric vehicles, I haven't seen one single piece of data about the wonders we'll enjoy if we go electric. 

I've seen all too much of this, and really nothing else.:

There are a lot of CEOs, both from within and outside the advertising industry, who read Ad Aged. 

I believe the fundamental communication problem of our era is that no one any longer trusts anything they read. 

These headlines are not the cause of that lack of trust--but evidence of the difficulty truth is having in today's world.

If advertising is ever once again going to be effective, it must reemerge as a trusted source of useful consumer information. It must be checked, double-checked, scrubbed and re-scrubbed. 

It must, as I said above, present facts. Let people decide from there.

Here's are a few examples of what I mean.

The first is the cover of a Mets yearbook from almost 60 years ago. I remember as a nine-year-old being impressed by its honesty. The covered showed the team's progress. And were candid about missteps. They did more than just say "we're great."

Then a few ads. 

Remember ads?

Marching to Oblivion.

Let's start today's post with a question. Keep that question in mind. And then the rest of the post will seek to reveal my point and answer my question.

Here's the question: Why would the consolidated "services" you get from a mega-agency be any different in spirit or quality from that you get from car rental place, or a hotel chain, or a quick-service restaurant, or a gas station?

Why would mega-agencies aka holding companies be any different from other big box entities?

Let's look at the "consolidating model." And delineate the practices of chains that a) reduce costs to the provider, b) standardize service so customer expectations are met no matter where you are, c) standardize the product no matter where you are in the world.

Dollar car rental in the Tucson airport does all of the above. Just as the thousands of formerly independent agencies now owned by the four (soon to be three) holding companies do.

Let's use my experience with Dollar car rental as a paradigm for the ad world today.

1. Too slow. I waited a long time for service because costs had been slashed so thoroughly that the counter had just one person working behind it. There was a line of seven people in front of me. If each person takes, say, seven minutes to process, that's a 49-minute wait. 

Most agencies might follow a similar timing procedure to produce something as simple as a tweet, a banner ad or even a :30-commercial. None of those products are particularly difficult to make. But because of under-staffing, an agency might have to start working on their July Fourth "firecracker of savings" tweets in mid-May. That timing invites waste, second-guessing and long-approval processes. All of which are normal characteristics of mega-agency life.

2. Not human. When I finally got waited on, the man behind the counter was robotic. He treated me like a tick-mark, not a human. There was as much human connection as there would have been at a Soviet border crossing. It's clear the counter-man was overworked and customers were more of an annoyance than the most important part of his job. 

3. Generic. There were four or seven other counters at the Tucson airport. They all offered the exact same cars, the exact same prices, the exact same lines, the exact same bureaucratic waiver of phony threats of insurance coverages, and the exact same robotic service. They all supplied their own brand of mediocrity. And everyone drove away with the same entry-level gray Nissan Sentra down a quart of coolant.

The hallmark of decent service, not to even entertain the idea of good service, is usually going the extra mile, doing something a little kind or unexpected. Like bringing a spouse of 40-years flowers of a gift for no particular reason. While MBAs might disagree, offering customers a generic slew of undifferentiated bonus miles does nothing to ungenericize the experience.

4. Unfair. I was told by the man at the counter that if on returning my gray Nissan Sentra, I didn't fill the tank with gas, they would charge me $10.99 a gallon. A gallon of 87-octane gas in Tucson costs about $2.99 a gallon. The Dollar "relationship" starts with the promise of a rip-off.

5. No way to settle problems. When I drove my gray Nissan Sentra from spot J2, I noticed that the gas tank I had to fill when I returned the car was reading F, and I could travel 340 miles on that allegedly F tank.

When I filled the car before returning, the meter indicated I could travel 430 miles on the actually F tank. 

I mentioned to the person scanning my car and checking for dings and dents that I felt ripped off. I explained why. Her response was to say "did you take a picture of the dashboard?" And then to suggest that I take it up with the manager who sat, like Adolph Eichmann when he was on trial in Israel, in a glass booth, isolated from the public. I was told that the manager might be able to give me miles.

Each of these categories is a metaphor for so much of life today in a world in which each category you interact with is dominated by a half-a-handful of giant brands that control a monopoly share of their industry. 

These behavioral characteristics also exemplify how amerika's two political parties behave. Think of the dozens of texts you get asking you for money. Can you imagine the response you'd get from one of those politicians asking for money if you asked for help? At best a form-letter. Most likely, silence.

If you're a client and you're reading this and you're tired of the sort of behavior I've outlined above, you might want to give ‘GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware company a call or send me a note.

You'll notice some things right off the bat.

1. A human (if you can call me that) will respond.

2. You'll probably get a smile or a laugh or something to think about when we speak. 

3. We won't do small talk. We'll get right to your business.

These days, a smile, a laugh and something to think about are more than just nice to have. They're reasons to believe.

Try me.