Oy.

Everything stays the same.

Years ago, right about the time the internet was taking off, I picked up David McCullough's great book "The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal."

Around this time, I also went to Ogilvy to work on IBM.

I had never worked on a technology account before and I was, frankly, having a hard time figuring out what all these systems, machines and programs and processes actually did--why they were important to you and me and businesses large and small.

It just so happens that Lou Gerstner made a rare appearance at the agency and addressed a few score of us. He talked about speed. Closeness--both physical and spiritual--businesses, trade, people and countries without boundaries. All this would be a result of the technology he was selling.

The promise was nearly identical, according to McCullough, to the promise nearly a century earlier of the Panama Canal.

Those characteristics, a boundaryless world, a world where people are closer, where communication is easier, where speed reigns, are behind many great technological advances. In fact, the promulgators of the Canal prophesied that world peace would be a result of its construction. Just as the progenitors of our e-communications declare that democracy will be the result of Twitter.

I'm sure when the first humans lashed the first sail to the first mast and traveled at a speed never before attained, their enthusiasms gently foreshadowed the promises made by these later, more sophisticated, technologies.

Today, we have a raft of new technologies that are supposed to be fundamentally changing the way we do everything from chat, to shop, to share, to--practically--take a shit.

Accordingly, we have rafts of people proclaiming that exalting the wonders that will result from these technologies. Remember, Twitter was the engine that toppled dictatorships in the Arab world.

Here's where I fall out of bed with the technologists--where I have lost my app-etite.

Twitter didn't bring down Hosni Mubarak any more than the Panama Canal brought peace to a world that seems bent on destroying itself. What ignited the serial toppling in greater Arabia was Anger, not Twitter. Anger was the message. Twitter was the delivery.

I'm not saying that technology isn't important and that new channels have no importance. However, they are means to communication--not communication in and of itself.

The message, not the means, is what matters.

Happy brands and sad ones.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This quotation, by way of Leo Tolstoy's first line of "Anna Karenina" goes a long way, I think of explaining the current mania of "agencies of the future" jumping off new media cliffs.

Here's what I mean. Say you are toiling on a client I'll call "Amalgamated Adipose and Suet." Hardly anyone, including your client, knows who your brand is. And, at best, very few people will, on purpose interact with suet. But before long, some bright young person will decide you need a social media strategy, that you need to create a presence on "Pinterest" (where Harold Pinter relaxes at the end of the day) and you need to create massive amounts of content for online use.

This is what Nike does, they'll say. Or Apple does it this way. Or did you see the cool thing that so-and-so did online?

For many years--in this space and others--I've been fighting against the OUS--the One Universal Strategy. That is: make our brand cool and relevant to 27-year-old boys. Most advertising we see follows the OUS. Further, they seek to replicate the success of inherently cool brands in cool categories without considering that Mop n' Glo is unlikely to have an impact on popular culture no matter what you do.

Here's the deal, at least for this morning.

There are a few brands that can capitalize of their inculcation within the public consciousness. But most brands aren't that blessed. And never will be. People won't lust after them. People won't talk about them. 

This is not to say that an "unhappy" brand can't be made more relevant and popular. But you can't--for every brand, in every circumstance run your marketing by asking "What does Nike do?"

 

Just as I can't go to a bar at night thinking I'm George Clooney.

The 80/20 rule.

One of the things I've noticed through the years is that there are many more things to be done in agencies than there were, say, 30 years ago.

Maybe this change is due to my ability to "get things done," maybe it's related to my hands-on-ness, maybe to my seniority. Or maybe it's instead a function of the mind-numbing, soul-sapping complexity we've allowed into what should be a simple business.

Today it seems we have a million dumb little things that take up our entire day. They can consume us. Ruin our lives and our careers.

As I learned years ago, the trick to being a good creative is this. Spend 20% of your time doing the 80% of the crap you've got to do. Spend 80% of your time doing the 20% that matters.

Reflections.

Yesterday my friend Rich Siegel celebrated both his birthday and the third anniversary of his wonderful, funny and occasionally caustic blog "Round 17." http://roundseventeen.blogspot.com/http://roundseventeen.blogspot.com/

His post got me thinking about the act of blogging, or writing such as it is.

Since I was a young boy, I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always regarded the profession of writing whether it's allied to academia, journalism, publishing or even advertising as something to aspire to. I've always admired writers, usually finding a writer I like and going through his or her opus like a fat kid through a cake.

Writing, for me, is not something I merely want to do, it's something I have to do. Blogging has helped me with this.

I try to write at least once a day. I feel uncomfortable if I have no ideas for my blog. (Usually when I have no ideas, I write a post like this one. Or I write about some conversation I've had with my Uncle Slappy.) If the morning slips by and I haven't posted I feel real and palpable angst.

I am glad and pleased that Ad Aged has gained its small audience.  But I write primarily for myself. I don't post my posts to my LinkedIn or Facebook. There's nothing wrong with doing so, but it's just not me. I am too shy and am loathe to self-promote. It's just not what I do.

Also over the years I've "met" a few other bloggers (Rich Siegel is one of them.) These are guys with their own blogs. They are people whose writing I respect. People I respect. I keep them in mind when I write. I think it helps keep my standards high.

I have written over 2,700 posts at this point. Some are throwaways, jokes or attempts at funny observations. Some, I like to think, are more thoughtful and intelligent.

My favorite thing about blogging, however, is perhaps the most obvious. Writing as I do, everyday, has simply made me a better writer. I practice writing everyday and because I treat the writing on Ad Aged journalistically, I write fast and most often "publish" my first drafts.

That's all for now.

And if you're reading this, thank you.

Manhattan.

Last Sunday I left Manhattan for a few hours to revel in the pleasures of either the Bronx or Brooklyn, I forget which. Today is a perfect pre-Spring day in Manhattan. You can almost hear the horsehide hitting the leather gloves of baseball players. The air smells good and the sun reflecting off the glimmering rats is nearly blinding.

It would be an exaggeration to say I've been all over the world, but I've seen a fair share of it. I always come back to Manhattan. My "isle of joy."

The video above is Ella. And it mentions my place of birth. Good ol' Yonkers, NY.

Tumors, boils, goiters, warts.

What I think of when I hear the title "Chief Growth Officer."

Speak English.

I've told this story before but during the last few days I've been sitting in new business meetings and, accordingly, I am somewhat at the end of my already foreshortened tether.

The modern advertising agency is much more complex than agencies were 30 or so years ago when I first fired up my IBM Selectric. As media channels have proliferated so have vertical experts. Also, technology has inserted itself as a key component of many marketing messages--whether or not that technology has a bearing on the consumers that use it.

The result of all these changes is that English--pure, simple, comprehensible is as endangered as Darwinists in the Republican party.

Here's the part I'm repeating (and will keep repeating.) When Ogilvy promoted Steve Hayden (the writer of Apple's "1984" there was an article about it in "The Wall Street Journal." I consider Steve my mentor, so I read the article carefully and took it to heart. Ogilvy Chairman Shelley Lazurus was quoted in the article. She said, "Steve never speaks in jargon."

As a writer, as a communicator, I took that as a brief. I know the power of language to alienate readers or viewers. I've always hated when writers insert a phrase in French to show how smart they are. I know how compelling simple can be.

I'm afraid it's lost on most people.

Some thoughts on awards from Ingmar Bergman.

The language is a bit tortured but the point is clear.

"As "Wild Strawberries" didn't compete for "OSCAR" I think it is wrong to nominate the picture and therefor {SIC} I want to return the "CERTIFICATE OF NOMINATION."

"I have found, that the "OSCAR"-nomination is one for the motion picture art humiliating institution and ask you to be released from the attention of the jury for the future.

"Sincerely"

The organization.

This post could be titled "Why it takes 39-weeks to produce a TV commercial or 84 weeks to update a website."

One of the things you learn if you've been in the business a long time--or if you read histories and biographies--is that most organizations, whether they're businesses, armies, political entities, families or academic in nature, create infrastructures that often surpass in power the nominal head of the organization and, just as often, threaten the very viability of the organization.

In short infrastructures are often consumed by infrastructure.

It doesn't take a genius to see this in everyday life. Just visit the post office, that is, if you can. Most are open only from 9-5, making it nearly impossible to mail a package unless you're willing to invest a large portion of your lunch hour or Saturday to do so. The same used to hold true of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 30 years ago all the guys trained at fixing train air-conditioners had gained so much seniority that they were able to take off large swaths of time during the summer.

Of course agencies and clients follow the same, predictable, road to ruin. The organization, most often, runs the agency. The agency doesn't run the organization.

In my career I have twice risen to lead agencies--each time I did so as an out-of-towner. Once in San Francisco and once in Boston.

In each of those cities and in each of those agencies it took me about 38 seconds to analyze the source of their burgeoning ossification. I worked hard to chip away at it. But the people who maintained the status quo ultimately won. They knew they could hunker down, hide beneath their desks, appoint committees, find high-ups also interested in preserving the status quo and by those means could stop things from ever changing.

I'm not sure if there's any way an agency or a client can stop calcification from paralyzing the activeness of the organization.

I do know that that which is suppose to serve the ends of the organization has become itself an end.

Preservation has overwhelmed innovation.