Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Departures.
In the last few weeks or months, at least in the United States, a fair number of creative luminaries have left their lofty positions either for posts unknown or for jobs outside of the advertising industry, the latest departure being Kevin Roddy, who has just bid farewell to BBH.
Unknown others would like to do the same, I suppose, but cannot due either to finances, lethargy or some other predilection that keeps them in their jobs and their psychiatrists in theirs.
The common plaint is “it’s just not fun anymore.”
What I noticed last night while my work was being assaulted at focus groups was that it’s feeding time at the zoo. The new-media punditocracy, the people who issue proclamations and write books but who have never sold anything, are nevertheless winning hearts and minds. There’s not a person who goes to a focus group today who doesn’t know she’s supposed to say “I don’t watch TV.” Or “I would zap that.”
Such proclamations are de rigueur. Akin to buying Playboy for the articles or flossing after every meal. You know what you’re meant to say, in fact you’re programmed to say it, so you say it. As do clients.
The facts about TV and other media say different. As the Ad Contrarian points out (Vox Clamatis en Deserto) TV viewership is at an all-time high. Zappership never amounted to much and besides, what’s the alternative? Creating an app that twelve hipsters riding their fixies in Williamsburg while wearing an “I Love Juice” t-shirt will download and use four times?
It reminds me of what happens when people who say ‘print is dead’ lose their cat. They might post and tweet of their loss, but chances are they print up flyers and tape them to street lamps. See, print works.
Surely the industry is reeling. Maybe it’s not as much fun as way back when when our secretaries had secretaries, when there were hot and cold running account people, but some of the damage to our industry, our profession, our craft and even—ack ack—our integrity is self inflicted.
The first step to having fun is believing in what you’re doing.
Unknown others would like to do the same, I suppose, but cannot due either to finances, lethargy or some other predilection that keeps them in their jobs and their psychiatrists in theirs.
The common plaint is “it’s just not fun anymore.”
What I noticed last night while my work was being assaulted at focus groups was that it’s feeding time at the zoo. The new-media punditocracy, the people who issue proclamations and write books but who have never sold anything, are nevertheless winning hearts and minds. There’s not a person who goes to a focus group today who doesn’t know she’s supposed to say “I don’t watch TV.” Or “I would zap that.”
Such proclamations are de rigueur. Akin to buying Playboy for the articles or flossing after every meal. You know what you’re meant to say, in fact you’re programmed to say it, so you say it. As do clients.
The facts about TV and other media say different. As the Ad Contrarian points out (Vox Clamatis en Deserto) TV viewership is at an all-time high. Zappership never amounted to much and besides, what’s the alternative? Creating an app that twelve hipsters riding their fixies in Williamsburg while wearing an “I Love Juice” t-shirt will download and use four times?
It reminds me of what happens when people who say ‘print is dead’ lose their cat. They might post and tweet of their loss, but chances are they print up flyers and tape them to street lamps. See, print works.
Surely the industry is reeling. Maybe it’s not as much fun as way back when when our secretaries had secretaries, when there were hot and cold running account people, but some of the damage to our industry, our profession, our craft and even—ack ack—our integrity is self inflicted.
The first step to having fun is believing in what you’re doing.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Uncle Slappy comes back for a visit.
I was sitting at my desk and heard a commotion out in the hallway. Figuring it was absolutely nothing, I went back to work. All of a sudden, the door swung open and I heard an inimitable voice shout out, "Mr. Big Schott, your Uncle Slappy is here."
Uncle Slappy, it seems had taken a last minute trip up from Boca to spend Succoth with us. "I thought I'd come up and visit you" he said.
"Uncle Slappy," I admonished, "I have to run to focus groups tonight."
"Watch your mouth, Big Schott."
"Focus groups, Uncle Slappy. Where consumers tell you what they think about your work."
"Well, suppose I come along to these focus groups, I want to take a look."
With that, Uncle Slappy and I jumped into a cab and went over to the focus group place.
What follows is Uncle Slappy's report.
"So Mr. Big Schott Mad Man takes me over to an fancy schmancy office building in mid-town to hear what some people have to say about his commercials. "Listen, I say to Mr. Big Schott, these people are some sort of experts?"
"No, Uncle Slappy. They're supposed to represent ordinary people like you and me."
"They don't know nothing special?"
"No, Uncle Slappy. We just want their impressions. Their opinions."
"What for? You're Mr. Big Schott, yes. You've got a million and a half awards, because you accomplished things. So you're listening to strangers?"
"Well, they're regular folks Uncle Slappy. We need to know what they think."
"Wait a sec. When a plumber fixes your terlet, he asks your opinion?"
I showed Uncle Slappy a room where, "the Mets were on the Philco." When I came out three hours later, he was asleep on the sofa, the Brach's candy all finished.
The trickiest thing.
With the rise of the non-traditional agency comes the rise of departments and specialties and "practices" that didn't exist just a few short years ago. Where agencies used to be creative, account and media, you now have to throw into the mix interaction design, planning, mobile experts, social media mavens, flash specialists, analytics and more.
What's more, each of these tribes are told that a great idea can come from anywhere. Thus they feel they can sit in judgment of the ideas that emanate from the agency. In short, ownership of ideas becomes individualized rather than collectivized. The agency, at least at the early developmental stages of idea development, seems to say "that's not our idea, that's your idea."
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but despite all the politics and in-fighting that afflicted agencies in days of yore, there was some portion of rallying around the work.
Now work isn't isn't owned by the agency--it's owned by the individual who created it. When things don't go well, you're out on your own. If work goes well, then you have friends.
I think Casey Stengel once said, "The trick to managing a baseball team is keeping the ten guys who hate you away from the fifteen guys who are undecided."
The trick to being a successful creative is keeping your insecure and negative impulses away from the impulses that are undecided.
Some days that works. Some days that's hard.
What's more, each of these tribes are told that a great idea can come from anywhere. Thus they feel they can sit in judgment of the ideas that emanate from the agency. In short, ownership of ideas becomes individualized rather than collectivized. The agency, at least at the early developmental stages of idea development, seems to say "that's not our idea, that's your idea."
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but despite all the politics and in-fighting that afflicted agencies in days of yore, there was some portion of rallying around the work.
Now work isn't isn't owned by the agency--it's owned by the individual who created it. When things don't go well, you're out on your own. If work goes well, then you have friends.
I think Casey Stengel once said, "The trick to managing a baseball team is keeping the ten guys who hate you away from the fifteen guys who are undecided."
The trick to being a successful creative is keeping your insecure and negative impulses away from the impulses that are undecided.
Some days that works. Some days that's hard.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thinking about advertising week.
Basically people who create are insecure. Think Van Gogh. Think Melville. Think David Foster Wallace. Edna St. Vincent Millay. The list goes on.
Around these people grows up an industry of people who encourage these creators. Especially once they get successful. Agents, promoters, editors, etc.
Our industry has a similar encouragement mafioso. They pop up in trade magazines, at trade shows and events like advertising week. They are usually photographed holding their chins in their hands and with a far off gaze. And they tell you all you need to know to make work that overcomes all the obstacles, that makes people happy, that makes things work.
They issue articles that say things like, "addressing the post literate apocalypse." "Folks simply don't want to read text," says one pundit. Another says something like this "display ads can be reinvented as "dis-play" units: outlets for creative executions in branded entertainment and utilities."
Oh, ok.
Around these people grows up an industry of people who encourage these creators. Especially once they get successful. Agents, promoters, editors, etc.
Our industry has a similar encouragement mafioso. They pop up in trade magazines, at trade shows and events like advertising week. They are usually photographed holding their chins in their hands and with a far off gaze. And they tell you all you need to know to make work that overcomes all the obstacles, that makes people happy, that makes things work.
They issue articles that say things like, "addressing the post literate apocalypse." "Folks simply don't want to read text," says one pundit. Another says something like this "display ads can be reinvented as "dis-play" units: outlets for creative executions in branded entertainment and utilities."
Oh, ok.
When I was just 20.
My parents moved from New York to Chicago just as I was turning 20. So when summer break from college came I went to Chicago to live in a strange house and a strange city. My first order of business being "home" from college wasn't to find friends and to get to know the city, the first thing I had to do was get a summer job.
I suppose I'm someone who has always found solace and satisfaction in work. It is a place and a role that you can hold and construct and make your own. At least somewhat. In any event, I answered two ads that were listed in the Chicago Tribune. One was for a clerk in the gift shop of a Northside hotel and the other was for a night shift cashier/stock boy in a Northside liquor store.
The liquor store was the one that came through first. I used my brother's name on the application because I was not yet 21 and it was illegal for me to drink booze, much less sell it. In any event, I spent the first couple of days at this job telling people "my name is Fred, but friends call me George."
The job paid well. For a summer job. For a kid. $3.50 an hour with a guaranteed six hours overtime at time and a half. Plus, there were the busy weekends in the summer when I would be asked to work a double shift. One week I grossed $206. That was decent money back in 1977.
The night shift was a bit frightening back then. The city was wild, and the store's location was amid whorehouses and nightclubs and bars and parking lots. However, every night around 9 an off-duty Chicago cop would come in and sit in the back smoking cigarettes. The brothers who owned the place paid him in cases of beer. I also got to know the regulars. The bottle blonde whores and the sunken cheeked parking lot attendants. The parking lot guys bought pretty much the most expensive brandy we sold, in pint bottles.
One warm afternoon, it had to be 4:30 or so (I started at 4) a limousine pulled up to the store and an elegant older woman came into the store. I was standing with Mr. Bragno, one of the two brothers who owned the place. He went white as creme de cacao. "Claudette Colbert," he whispered to me.
I hardly knew who she was, though of course I knew the name. Later on, when I saw her in DeMille's Cleopatra, rolled up into a carpet and presented half naked to Caesar or Anthony, I was really impressed. Ms. Colbert worked with Mr. Bragno directly to fill her order. I was given the job of carrying her case to her limousine. She gave me a dollar and smiled with her dark eyes.
Another day the representative from a local beer company, Old Style came in. Minnie Minoso. Minoso was one of the great stars of the Go-Go-White Sox of the 1950s and 1960s. He wore his 1959 World Series ring proudly and gave me his autograph when I asked. Minoso was the first major leaguer to play in 5 decades and was the first black player to play for the Sox. His hands were the size of phone books and engulfed mine when we shook.
The most memorable character of all was the 50-year-old stock man, Lorenzo Jeffries. He was the soul of the place, running up and down to the cellar, keeping everything shelved and fully stocked, with not a bottle out of place. If I said to him, "Lorenzo, we're nearly out of Winston cigarettes," he would look at me with his sad eyes and say "The system is supposed to be the solution. But the system is part of the problem." Then he would, in his manner, hustle down stairs singing "The system is not working."
Lorenzo was from Arkansas. In the store we sold a mineral water called Mountain Valley water that was also from Arkansas. Lorenzo claimed it was the best water on Earth and that he brought it from Arkansas himself in his limo, which he called the 151 bus.
At the end of the summer it was time for me to say goodbye to Bragno's and return to New York and college. I made $2,000 those two summer months, met Claudette Colbert and Minnie Minoso and became friendly with Lorenzo.
A couple years later I came back to Chicago to visit my parents who were either about to die or who had just recovered from being about to die. I walked by Bragno's, where it used to be, figuring I'd say hello to whoever was there, but Bragno's was gone. Today, there's a store called Urban Outfitters on the site.
I suppose I'm someone who has always found solace and satisfaction in work. It is a place and a role that you can hold and construct and make your own. At least somewhat. In any event, I answered two ads that were listed in the Chicago Tribune. One was for a clerk in the gift shop of a Northside hotel and the other was for a night shift cashier/stock boy in a Northside liquor store.
The liquor store was the one that came through first. I used my brother's name on the application because I was not yet 21 and it was illegal for me to drink booze, much less sell it. In any event, I spent the first couple of days at this job telling people "my name is Fred, but friends call me George."
The job paid well. For a summer job. For a kid. $3.50 an hour with a guaranteed six hours overtime at time and a half. Plus, there were the busy weekends in the summer when I would be asked to work a double shift. One week I grossed $206. That was decent money back in 1977.
The night shift was a bit frightening back then. The city was wild, and the store's location was amid whorehouses and nightclubs and bars and parking lots. However, every night around 9 an off-duty Chicago cop would come in and sit in the back smoking cigarettes. The brothers who owned the place paid him in cases of beer. I also got to know the regulars. The bottle blonde whores and the sunken cheeked parking lot attendants. The parking lot guys bought pretty much the most expensive brandy we sold, in pint bottles.
One warm afternoon, it had to be 4:30 or so (I started at 4) a limousine pulled up to the store and an elegant older woman came into the store. I was standing with Mr. Bragno, one of the two brothers who owned the place. He went white as creme de cacao. "Claudette Colbert," he whispered to me.
I hardly knew who she was, though of course I knew the name. Later on, when I saw her in DeMille's Cleopatra, rolled up into a carpet and presented half naked to Caesar or Anthony, I was really impressed. Ms. Colbert worked with Mr. Bragno directly to fill her order. I was given the job of carrying her case to her limousine. She gave me a dollar and smiled with her dark eyes.
Another day the representative from a local beer company, Old Style came in. Minnie Minoso. Minoso was one of the great stars of the Go-Go-White Sox of the 1950s and 1960s. He wore his 1959 World Series ring proudly and gave me his autograph when I asked. Minoso was the first major leaguer to play in 5 decades and was the first black player to play for the Sox. His hands were the size of phone books and engulfed mine when we shook.
The most memorable character of all was the 50-year-old stock man, Lorenzo Jeffries. He was the soul of the place, running up and down to the cellar, keeping everything shelved and fully stocked, with not a bottle out of place. If I said to him, "Lorenzo, we're nearly out of Winston cigarettes," he would look at me with his sad eyes and say "The system is supposed to be the solution. But the system is part of the problem." Then he would, in his manner, hustle down stairs singing "The system is not working."
Lorenzo was from Arkansas. In the store we sold a mineral water called Mountain Valley water that was also from Arkansas. Lorenzo claimed it was the best water on Earth and that he brought it from Arkansas himself in his limo, which he called the 151 bus.
At the end of the summer it was time for me to say goodbye to Bragno's and return to New York and college. I made $2,000 those two summer months, met Claudette Colbert and Minnie Minoso and became friendly with Lorenzo.
A couple years later I came back to Chicago to visit my parents who were either about to die or who had just recovered from being about to die. I walked by Bragno's, where it used to be, figuring I'd say hello to whoever was there, but Bragno's was gone. Today, there's a store called Urban Outfitters on the site.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
50 Years ago, almost to the day.
We read everyday about the death of messaging, the death of language, the death of the need for writers. Systems will lead our behaviors and guide us the way marketers want us guided. The value of words, the pundits and the new media mavens, tell us is no more. They forget, almost completely, what the Obama campaign did with words and language. But don't bother them with facts, they are busy pontificating and declaring the death of something.
In any event, just about 50 years ago, Ted Williams, the great Boston Red Sox outfielder came up to the plate one last time as a major leaguer. John Updike was in Fenway that rainy day reporting. Here is a short bit, reprinted from "The New Yorker," of October 17, 1960.
"Fisher wound up, and the applause sank into a hush.
"Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy; the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
"Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.
"Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters."
Maybe I am a curmudgeon. Out of step with what's left of civilization. Holding on by my well-gnawed talons to relevance.
Maybe the struggle, at least in American politics, what we are seeing is a struggle between the know-nothings and the elites. Clearly the know-nothings are winning. We have senatorial candidates who believe monkeys can transmute into men before our eyes.
But whatever.
I insist on enjoying writing.
In any event, just about 50 years ago, Ted Williams, the great Boston Red Sox outfielder came up to the plate one last time as a major leaguer. John Updike was in Fenway that rainy day reporting. Here is a short bit, reprinted from "The New Yorker," of October 17, 1960.
"Fisher wound up, and the applause sank into a hush.
"Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy; the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
"Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was wide with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed, naked in its failure. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass; the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and, as far as I could see, vanished.
"Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters."
Maybe I am a curmudgeon. Out of step with what's left of civilization. Holding on by my well-gnawed talons to relevance.
Maybe the struggle, at least in American politics, what we are seeing is a struggle between the know-nothings and the elites. Clearly the know-nothings are winning. We have senatorial candidates who believe monkeys can transmute into men before our eyes.
But whatever.
I insist on enjoying writing.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Friday one-liner.
About no place in particular.
"This place is so age-ist. It was never like this when I was younger."
"This place is so age-ist. It was never like this when I was younger."
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