A report from the front line.

I was dreading today. I'm preparing things for a big meeting and I knew I'd have to staple some paper together. I was dreading it because recently my agency (actually the entire holding company) switched from the Swingline 7720 stapler to the Pointe 798.

Since I started in this business, I've been a Swingline man. I started with the 32Z (shown above). And it was the stapler all the great agencies used. Heck! It's what Bill Bernbach himself stapled with. So when they told me about the move, I was more than a trifle disconsolate.

Even after they told me that around the world we would save over $177,000 in staplers and stapling-related fees--even that wasn't enough to move me. I was stiff-necked even after they told me the Pointe 798 would reduce--in half!--stapling injuries.

I get all that. But when the pressure's on, when a major client meeting looms and the work needs to be neatly clipped, jeepers, you want Ol' Reliable.

I argued to no avail. The holding company's CSO (Chief Stapler Officer) turned a deaf ear.

The work had to be stapled and all I had was a Pointe 798.

Well, I'm here to report that the Pointe 798 is a damn fine machine. Entry is deep and even, staple-ejection is fast and clean.

God, I love this business.

Thinking of Apple.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a six-word story and reputedly called it his "best work." "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Looking at TBWA/C/D's iPad work delivers a Hemingway-esq lesson in restraint and economy and the confidence you must possess to abide restraint.

The iPad work is perfect in its nothingness. An entire story is told in each ad without any whiz-bang photographic technique, fancy-schmancy design or high-falutin' copywriting.

Your attention is grabbed because the creatives and the clients knew a good story when they saw one. They didn't muck it up with their own egos. And they let a stunning product speak for itself.

No, it isn't.

BusinessWeek has an article today that claims "Your Office Chair Is Killing You." In fact it says that your chair is workplace "Public Enemy#1." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm

Fuck me with a Herman Miller, that ain't right.

Meetings are Public Enemy #1.
PowerPoint is Public Enemy #2.
Stupid requests are Public Enemy #3.
Capricious changes are Public Enemy #4.
Do-overs are Public Enemy #5.
Interruptions are Public Enemy #6.
Open plan seating is Public Enemy #7.
Babble is Public Enemy #8.
Jargon is Public Enemy #9.
Bombast is Public Enemy #10.

I'll be late this morning.

I got up on time, got dressed and all that. But then I couldn't get my search engine started and missed my train.

Lunch with consultants.

Last week, I went to a new restaurant, 'Rick's Place,' and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange.

When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I observed that he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket.

Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I inquired, 'Why the spoon?''

'Well,' he explained, 'the restaurant's owner hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all of our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.'

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he replaced it with his spare.

'I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.'

I was impressed.

I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly.

Looking around, I saw that all of the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies.

So, before he walked off, I asked the waiter, 'Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?'

'Oh, certainly!' Then he lowered his voice.

'Not everyone is so observant.

That consulting firm I mentioned also learned that we can save time in the restroom.

By tying this string to the tip of our you-know-what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39%.

I asked quietly, 'After you get it out, how do you put it back?'

'Well,' he whispered, 'I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon.'

Words from Tesch.

I worked for Mike Tesch for a couple of years while we were both at Ally & Gargano. I don't think I'm just being a nostalgic old guy, but he created some of the greatest advertising ever. Work that still works.

I think about him because though he didn't pay me much mind, I studied him like a yegg cases a vault.

Just now I stumbled upon this quotation by him. A lot of people could learn from it.

"Bob [Gill} gave me a good kick in the butt. He taught me not just to decorate a page, but to have an idea and make sure you always say something, be it a letterhead or a matchbook cover. He sent me on my way..."

Do you believe it?

I was in a client meeting yesterday, a long client meeting, a long "let's talk over each other for two-and-a-half-hours client meeting" and at the end the client said this: "You know that 'if Microsoft created the iPod' video, that's us. Don't let us do that to the work you create."

OK. I thought.

And then I thought of Roy Grace's great definition of his job as a Creative Director, "I take out the garbage."

We'll see what happens. And if it gets me fired.

Allen Swift, 1924-2010.

Allen Swift, a voice actor who worked in over 30,000 commercials (not a typo) died on April 18th, The New York Times reported today. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/arts/28swift.html?ref=obituaries

If you grew up in New York back in the 1960s and 70s, you heard Swift as the voice of Vita Herring's "Beloved Herring Maven." I am in touch with Michael Solow, son of Marty Solow who wrote those spots, but to date haven't gotten my hands on either scripts or recordings of those great old spots.

I never worked with Swift, but I did work with one of his peers, Jackson Beck. Beck was the voice of the opening sequence of the old "Superman" TV show. The guy who said "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, etc." And also the narrator in Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run."

When I worked with Beck, he made me print my scripts in large type because his eyes were just about gone. He stepped into a booth too small for his large frame, chain smoking cigarettes. He came out a few minutes later having nailed my spots. Smoke preceded him out of the booth.

He waited till the air had cleared and then he said in his great stentorian voice, "Everything I know and love I owe to cigarettes."

If anyone has memories of Swift, I'm sure Ad Aged readers would love it if you shared.

I just figured something out.

A friend at work has spent the last few minutes raging against the stupidity of a flyer he received urging him to get Verizon FiOs. The flyer tells him that he needs to sign up for a three-year-contract and the first year of the contract is only $84.95 a month. "What will it cost for the second and third years?" he wants to know. He'll have to call an 800 number to find out.

That's when it hit me.

They're not 800 numbers.

They're Wait-hundred numbers.

Dial Wait wait wait and so on. Recorded messages and phone trees are standing by.

The military and agency life.

There's a front page article in today's New York Times about the US military's obsession with powerpoint. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp

What's surprising about the article is that it seems there is a bit of a backlash among the military's higher-echelons against powerpoint. Unfortunately within agencies, no such backlash is evident.

Here's a smattering of quotations from the article:

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” said Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

"Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making."

Junior officers are tied up making PowerPoint slides. To the point where they're derisively called "PowerPoint Rangers."

Here's my favorite: "Thomas X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel, whose title, “Dumb-Dumb Bullets,” underscored criticism of fuzzy bullet points; “accelerate the introduction of new weapons,” for instance, does not actually say who should do so."

Ah. How agency-esque. Put it on a slide but assign no responsibility.