Random memories.

When I was a kid growing up in New York there was a bank called Bankers Trust. And there was another bank called Irving Trust.

Of course through the years each of these institutions have been eaten by other institutions and the word trust is as antiquated a notion as the two-cent deposit bottle. (We used to find bottles after school and then run over to the Carvel in the neighborhood where you could buy a small cone for 17-cents. A "Brown Betty," a cone dipped in chocolate topping was eight cents or four bottles more. Which was usually out of our price range.)

Anyway, Bankers Trust had a slogan in those days, "There really is a banker at Bankers Trust." That was an era when you could put banker and trust in the same sentence and the appellation banker wasn't roughly equivalent to that of Adolph Eichmann, Director of Personnel.

In any event, I grew up seeing these banks and hearing these slogans. They were a part of my life, like the Hoffman's Soda jingle:

"The prettiest girl
I ever saw
Was sippin' Hoffman's
Through a straw.
The prettiest girl
I ever saw,
Was sippin' Hoffman's through a straw."

Girls, in fact, did look prettier sippin' Hoffman's through a straw but I debated which was the better slogan, Hoffman's or Cott's, who always proclaimed "It's Cott's to be good!" Then there was Yoo-Hoo who scored the coup of having Yogi Berra as a spokesperson. Though Yoo-Hoo never really caught on in my neighborhood--my gang were more Bosco drinkers. "Hey Roscoe, it's Bosco!"

In any event, it's my blog and they're my digressions. When I got to be around 15 I wrote a slogan for Irving Trust based on Bankers Trusts' slogan. "There really is an Irving at Irving Trust." That one never did catch on.

From Craig.

A rare advertising friendship. We were partners 25 years ago.

Spanx for men.

The New York Times is arguably one of the ten most important newspapers in the world, so when they write about a fashion breakthrough like the slimming shirts of Spanx for men (available at Neimann-Marcus, Saks, Bloomingdale's and other fine stores) this adipose aficionado sits up and takes notice. "Shapeware" is all the rage, and boys, let's be honest, who couldn't use a little tummy trim these days, don'tcha think?

Spanx t-shirts start at just $59 and tank-tops begin at $55. Small prices to pay for picture-perfect pecs, ab-fab abs, and more.
Don'tcha think, boys, or don'tcha?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/fashion/30spanx.html?ref=fashion

Getting without giving.

It never ceases to annoy me, our three-day-weekend Bacchanals. We have turned what is meant to be solemnity into an orgy of televised sports and barbecued meat. More mourning over a fourth rate child star than memorializing of our war dead. It makes me mad.

We get a day off. But we don't give. We don't think about the meaning of the day. We think about sales.

Getting without giving has ruined us.

Getting without giving has destroyed our economy. We are a Ninja society (no income, no job and no assets.)

In advertising clients want work to perform miracles. They want it to get attention without giving it the money that pays for attention. Getting without giving.

In sports we want to get strength and muscles without giving up the time it takes to get them. We inject steroids. And it's ok. They are our heroes.

I grew up hearing that you get nothing for nothing.

In America today we want everything for nothing.

Poem.

Or at least a couplet.

If there's anything I surely hate,
It's people who text while they urinate.

Get back to work.

I am now reading Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money, A Financial History of the World." A book that primarily outlines the progress the world's made because, as my mother would have said, "our collective eyes are bigger than our collective stomachs."

In other words, because as a species we always want more, we are always finagling a way to get it. The big wigs, the money men, most often construct ways so that they benefit from the labors of many. Chances are right now you're wearing clothing made by people who earned 30 cents/hour making it. That's the way of the world.

So get back to work.

Dispatch from the Land of the Rising Blonde.

Maybe it's because I've been out of Manhattan for the last 48-hours. Maybe it's because for the last two days USA Today as been foisted upon me--a zombie-like brain-eater of a journal where everything from world hunger to environmental catastrophe is sublimated to last night's Idol winner. Maybe it's just the my bio-rhythms are out of trim. But I am feeling particularly gloomy about the state of mankind this morning.

Yesterday I wrote about companies working its employees to death--metaphorically. Today, I read about it literally. At the Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. which makes iPads, HP computers and Nokia cellphones, 10 workers have jumped to their death this year alone. Yes, the company employs 400,000 people, so maybe 10 deaths is the actuarial norm, nevertheless, in the words of my spiritual predecessor the great Borscht-belter Shecky Shecky "People are dying to work there." Ha ha.

Then, further gloomifying me, I read in The Wall Street Journal that Wrigley Field ushers are wearing shirts made out of 100% recycled materials including plastic cups. If they work for Wrigley, why not make the shirts out of recycled chewing gum?

I've never gotten along with upper management (even when I was upper management) because I always thought people should be treated like people. That whole "Golden Rule" thing. But I am a dreamer and a sap and poor. And treating people well is no way to run a business.

It's joke time again! (Kinda.)

A midget goes into a Psychiatrist's office and asks "by any chance to you treat dwarves?"
And the psychiatrist says, "sure but you'll have to be a little patient."

Somewhere along the way.

No, this is not a send up of Manifesto videos which almost always start with the phrase "Somewhere along the way." This is a post about an central advertising disconnect. And it's all prompted by an article I ran across in "The Economist" called "Overstretched." With a subhead: "Many people who kept their jobs are working too hard. What can companies do about it?"

What advertising companies can and will do about it is nothing, and here's why. Somewhere along the way the people that run and manage agencies stopped being people who have actually created ads. Worse than that, they aren't even interested in how ads are made or what it takes to make them. (BTW, I use the word "ad" broadly, meaning any creative output from any sort of agency.)

According to the lofty-sounding "Corporate Leadership Council," a consultancy group that surveys 1,100 companies each quarter, our "job footprint," that is, what you're supposed to produce has increased by 33% since the start of the recession. Meanwhile, pay isn't just frozen, it has hypothermia. And perks?

I am producing a 50-page or so "Brand Book" for a client. That's a lot of work. I have a producer on it who's never produced a bit of print in his life. Can he help me see this piece to its logical conclusion? No, all he can do is annoy me by asking every 17 minutes or so, "where is it."

Years ago a boss of mine told me a story about when he was partnered with an excellent and highly awarded Art Director named Ted Shaine. Year after year Shaine won assorted gold in The One Show. (Before your ad had to be about pet training to qualify for entry.) Shaine told him "I just have to produce one ad a year."

Surely, and I guess thankfully those days, too, are done.

But somewhere along the way people--not ad people--have conflated us with the machines we work on.

Where have all the scruples gone?

Where have all the scruples gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the scruples gone?
Long time ago?
Money's killed them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

From a strictly speaking adverting POV, the work that Ogilvy & Mather's did for BP--positioning them as a green, beyond petroleum company is masterful. The logo itself is one of the best. And the face the advertising put on this evil, rapacious company made them seem human, respectful and forward-thinking.

Even after 15 people died from a negligence-fomented blast in Texas, BP was happy and cuddly. Turns out--surprise surprise--they were Adolph Hitler in a Teletubby outfit.

I'm not sure where Ogilvy's responsibility lays in all this. They did their job. But, if memory serves, this is the same agency that once turned down tobacco accounts for ethical reasons. The one whose founder proclaimed "The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife." ie Speak to the consumer, as you'd speak to your spouse, with intelligence and candor.

I'm not sure where the network clearance people were in approving all this advertising. I've been asked for back-up to claims a lot less suspicious (and it turns out spurious) that BP's "Beyond Petroleum." That isn't beyond petroleum destroying the environment, folks.

I'm not sure where the advertising journalists were.

I'm not sure where WPP stockholders were.

I'm not sure about what we can do about BP, their flouting of regulation, of truth, of anything but profit.

Not sure what we as ad people can do when we are asked to do something in support of the goals bad companies. We have kids to put through college. Mortgages to pay. To lose your job over morals?