Wasted motion.

For the past couple of weeks or so, the DiSano Brothers have been "deconstructing" the parking lot, a ramp and a small building across the street from where I work. Basically I've been able to watch the remarkable crane-eal dexterity of the man who's operating the Deere shown above as he destroys the aforementioned structures and then sorts and places the detritus in the appropriate containers, efficient like a laundress sorting wash.

What I've observed these past weeks is that the backhoe guy barely wastes a movement. Things go from point A to point B with nary a glitch, a miasma or an unnecessary discussion.

How I envy him.

Corruption.

"George," my therapist rails, "you're too Old Testament. Too inclined to see things in terms of absolute good and absolute evil. You have to soften. You have to look for the shades of grey."

What set me off this morning was an article in "The New York Times" about two prominent doctors who said they wrote a book that was in reality written by a drug company. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/business/30drug.html?_r=1&ref=health

Oh, I'll let it go.

I'll not use this as a metaphor for more macro corruptions in our world or more micro ones in our industry.

I'll let it go.

A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff


‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

More reflections and a bit of a rant.

I'm reading right now "And All the Devils Are Here," a book on the collapse of the American (and world) financial system by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. One of the small bits of chicanery that led to the latest destruction of our world was perpetrated by ratings agencies like Standard & Poors and Moodys.

In early, more honest times, ratings were based on scrupulous analysis. During the crisis triple A ratings--the safest of the safe--went essentially for sale. If you could pay for it, you were bestowed it. After all, the ratings agencies were public companies. They couldn't afford to turn away the customers who would be turned off if they remained stringent while their competitors kowtowed to the big money boys.

It occurs to me, as I look at the output of the "advertising awards industrial complex" that much the same is happening in the advertising world.

Ads and agencies are heralded for work that may or may not be real, and that may or may not have built clients' businesses or driven sales.

The awards shows, our industry's equivalent of Moody's, bestows honors on agencies that pay huge fees. The veracity of what they are judging is someone else's department.

So we call work solipsistically created to win awards award-winning, our criterion for judging is only that it looks award-winning.

We expend our energy running around in ever-tighter circles applauding ourselves while there's real work to be done.

Reflections.

Advertising in Cuneiform.

There is a body of people--they are everywhere--who proudly and loudly and constantly proclaim "this will change everything. This will mean the death of all that has gone before it. This new technology is so advanced, it will supplant all previous technologies and change the very functioning of the human brain in the process."

Just yesterday Adweek proclaimed that William Morris Endeavor's Ari Emmanuel has a new way of marketing that will kill ad agencies. http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3icb5eee0f228ca2294f3558d4d9bc779a If you're listening closely enough, you'll hear a couple of these proclamations a week.

Yesterday, I went to an exhibit at The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, part of New York University, that displayed 13 clay tablets from ancient Mesoptomania. These tablets are the work of students who were deciphering the wonders of Sumerian mathematics and using, some think, the Pythagorean Theorem some 1,300 years before Pythagoras did. Written in Cuneiform the tablets show calculations on a host of practical problems, like like calculating the width of a canal, given information about its other dimensions, the cost of digging it and a worker’s daily wage.

It occurred to me while viewing this small exhibit of just 13 tablets from about 3,700 to 3,900 years ago, that the Babylonians scratching on them probably reckoned that their work would change everything. That they had reached the apotheosis of all things and had rendered all else obsolete.

And this from a people who used the number 60 as the base of their numbering system.

The Babylonians were futzing with pi and square roots about 2,000 years before Christ.
That leads me to think that there just may be some essential human and physical truths that time cannot monkey with, some ideas, reactions and ways of assimilating and disseminating information that may be hard-wired into our common humanity. Things that just won't change.

Some numbers.

Of course, radio advertising is dead.
Of course, newspapers, and newspaper advertising are dead.
Of course, magazines and magazine advertising are dead.

Well, together, those "dead" media account for more ad spending--$135 billion, to internet and mobile's $66.2 billion.

TV, the deadest of all media, has 250% of the ad sales of the internet and mobile.
$156 billion was spent last year.

Listen, my point here is simple.

The bombast of the death-knell ringers should not over-shadow the facts.

The proper way to reach consumers is through a variety of different channels.

A new model won't do it.

Spurious claims of "engagement" won't do it.

An app, or a game, or a "viral" video won't do it.

One thing works.

Hard work.

Proof women don't get it.

Some blonde, a Victoria's Secret model, is gushing on CBS, announcing the Macy's parade. My wife comments "She actually has a bad nose."
Me: "I don't think anyone notices her nose."

A new word.

I just heard an interview on NPR's "Morning Edition" of Steven Levitan, who is the co-creator and executive producer of an ABC television show called "Modern Family." In the interview, Levitan used the made-up word "fun-miliar" for a "sweet moment that has been overdone."

It seems to me that about 97% of the faux warmth we see in commercials on TV fit that description.

It's Thanksgiving. I am pickling eels for our traditional eel dinner. I gotta go.

It's all the same to me.

There's no shortage of articles and blog posts and snarky comments about the sameness of modern advertising. But it occurs to me that you seldom read an article about the sameness of the products our clients make and sell.

I just read an article in Ad Age about a "fast-fooder" called Steak 'n Shake and their hunt for a new agency. As usual in the comments section after the article there are a couple of anonymous voices decrying the work of Steak 'n Shake's former agency.

Well, from cars, to batteries, to fast-fooders, to banks, to airlines, to politicians, to agencies themselves, what does anyone do differently? Everyone is a parity product. So of course advertising becomes parity as well.

Despite what cynics say, and so many believe, our job in the industry is to present useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way.

It would help if our clients invested more in boldness and differentiation rather than relying on some small creative fillip to make them interesting.

No matter how much lipstick you can slather on a pig, you wouldn't want to kiss it.

Best wishes from a truck.