Retinal Acuity.

Back in 1978, and we accepted it at the time as we accept it now, the American Broadcasting Company, under the purported aegis of something called a Roone Arledge, placed the network's News division within the network's Entertainment division.

He then paired Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner. Like putting Soupy Sales with John Gielgud. You know, ratings.

Thus, quietly, stupidly, inexorably, and with few people noticing it, began the end of amerika. And as a tiny spillover effect, the end of the advertising industry.

That was it, folks, 1978.

That's when we could, as a society, no longer distinguish between something that's entertaining and entertainment. 

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-winner fired from the Times for being too liberal, calls today "The Age of Illusion." The passage below was written sixteen years ago. Does it shiver your timbers?

We now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.

That's why, today, as amerika and nominal amerikan values are being eviscerated (like "Birthright Citizenship" which has been the law of the land since 1868) instead of outrage, we're talking about a third-tier pop star going to space.

On a day after the amerikan secretary of duh-fense or defenestration , whichever comes last, sends out military secrets to the world and the pope dies, all the items above can be found on the front page of the Times. Neil Postman had it right, we've amused ourselves into a coma--preparatory to death.

Most people in advertising can no longer distinguish between an ad that's fun, and an a fun ad that sells. We default to stunts, noise, fanfare and bombast and leave selling on the cutting room floor. But people like us, they really like us.

The pasta ad below is a good example. Would it have hurt to put in a single line that says something like "Italy's #1 pasta" or "The pasta made from durum wheat--the grain of the Roman Empire."

That would have made it an entertaining ad not just an entertainment. As it stands, it could be for any pasta. 

As an industry, we don't even draw a distinction anymore.

If you believe, as I do, in Dave Trott's simplification of every successful communication in the history of carbon-based life forms on earth, you'll soon realize that most of the communications or ads we see only do one-third of what they need to do to be effective.

Many have impact, but they communicate or persuade not at all. Many say all the things clients and focus groups want you to say, but they have no impact. And many try to get you to act, with no real persuasion other than using the word NOW! and thirty-four exclamation points. And balloons. Or, worse than balloons, Kevin Hart.

I try to be entertaining when I do my work. My ads are usually twisted and funny and informative and persuasive. The ones I do for GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, which have built my business into a seven-figure one. And the ones I do for clients.

I want to win awards as much as the next person. And, I suppose, at some level I want to be liked, too. But not if it means sacrificing my values and my standards. And my taste.

Looping this around from the micro of advertising, to the macro of politics, that's the difference between a leader and a demagogue.

To that point, it occurs to me that a lot of what's masquerading as advertising, mustard-flavored ice cream, a dress that looks like oatmeal or a company that produces more plastic waste than any other on earth twisting its logo in an effort to deceive people as to their environmental bona-fides, is little more than demagoguery. 

As accounts fire old agencies and choose new agencies just like the old ones, as we endure another never-ceasing award-season followed by a hurricane of hubris and humble-bragging, I'd ask you to keep the definition below somewhere near your retinas. 

I'll admit, it's not entertaining.

But it might be important.

Slag Bag.

This is a metaphor.

Patrick Coffee, who writes about marketing in The Wall Street Journal, and I are acquaintances. 

When he wrote for Business Insider, he'd email me or call me now and again about a lead or to answer a question. Of course, I couldn't pick him out of a line-up. And, I'll admit, I don't read him with great regularity. 

Last Thursday, however, Coffee had an article in the Journal that caught my cataract-recovering eyes. Particularly the sentence I highlighted below, "AI could have produced another hundred pieces of content."

I've puzzled over that sentence for almost a week now. I'm not trying to be dense. I just don't get it.

If you're reading this and you do get it, please help me out. Send me a note or something, like a 168-page "media landscape" presentation. 

I don't understand why any brand needs 100 pieces of content. Shakespeare, over the long decades of his prolific career, wrote 37 plays. Seinfeld, which ran for ten years, produced 172 episodes.

The Economist campaign by Abbott Mead Vickers, over many decades probably produced a few hundred ads. Alfredo Marcantonio's book, "Well Written and Red," collects many of those ads. It is only 256-pages long. At an average of 1.5 ads per page, that's under 400 ads.

Another book edited by Marcantonio, "Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?" which collected decades and decades of VW print from about the world is just 364-pages long. At 1.5 ads per page that's about 525 ads.

And Richard W. Lewis' "Absolute Book," which collects decades of Absolut ads is 250 pages long. Again, my 1.5 calculation gets to about 400 ads.

Let me go back to the sentence from Coffee's story that I highlighted. And let me ask a simple question.

What is all this content for? 

Why do we need 100 pieces?

Is the real difference in advertising today is that as an industry, we have replaced "Stopping Power," with the purported power of "Inundation"? BTW, that would be like choosing to dig a tunnel through a mountain using drip-erosion rather than nitro-glycerin. 

Maybe someone somewhere, presumably a McKinsey or Bain MBA working as a holding company consultant did the calculus and convinced a McKinsey or Bain MBA working at a holding company on the efficacy of inundation as opposed to impact-i-dation.

I would like to see the data or hear the argument.

When I get 97 direct mail pieces offering me 10,000 bonus points, $200 cash back and 1% off everything I buy, up to a 99-cent limit, all to cajole me into a credit card I don't want, need and didn't ask for, I get annoyed. And I get about 97 direct mail pieces a day.

(If you're ever really blue, buy yourself a $99 shredder and shred the direct mail you get. You'll feel better.)

I can't imagine I'm alone with this feeling. I don't like ads everywhere. I don't like getting credit card offers when I'm trying to order some Kung Pau.

For as long as I've been in advertising, I've heard about getting "the right message in the right place at the right time." I'm 67-years old and have yet to see an example.

Maybe that's what those 100 pieces of content do.

Maybe they're just the advertising equivalent of the slag heaps that pile up on the outskirts of coal-mining towns. A pile of detritus once they've taken out the anthracite. It threatens everything around it.

That sounds right, or wrong, to me.

For me the big question is Impact or Inundation.

I understand impact is hard to bet on. Inundation is more count-on-able. Anyone can do it.

And usually does.

Smart and Dumb.

I've had a helluva month. 

Not bad, just exhausting.

And long.

I didn't realize until recently when I read Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory," when TS Eliot wrote the line "April is the cruellest month," it was an allusion to the upswelling of killings in World War I. Winter was over, the days were growing longer and the killing was easy. Ahhhh, Spring.

This April (and March) weren't cruel, just long.

Since March 21, when my second grandson was born, I've been as busy as the only serrated knife at an Oneg Shabbat. 

Not only am I am in the middle of producing seven commercials for two different clients, I am constantly pitching and losing and pitching and winning. Also, pitching and winning and then finding the client is cold-feeting. I guess that's why they call it the agony of de-feet.

I also had a near death experience on the New England Thruway in southern Connecticut. My car, I was going 75, so about 20 mph slower than everyone else, suddenly shifted into neutral and I couldn't get it in gear. Fortunately, I squeezed into an exit and got the thing re-engaged on a service road before I was flattenized by a Peterbilt. 

I dropped the old machine off at a dealer just twenty miles away and they were nice enough to loan me a 2025 for the thousands I spent getting my old jalopy back into fighting trim. I also picked up my California-daughter who was in-town to visit her new nephew. 

Of course, I also had cataracts removed in each eye. That entails a lasering of one eye, followed by a lasering of the other a week later. Plus 14 drops in each eye each day. Plus the general discomfort of sleeping with a plastic eye shield. And my unshakeable supposition that my wife is planning to replace one of those therapeutic drops with extract of cayenne pepper, battery acid, onion juice or something slightly less benign.

Along the way, the press of client work and keeping a lot circulating and hoping nothing drops. Not to mention my daily routine of blogging and promoting GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company. 

My dour side says this isn't quite how I planned to spend my dotage. I thought I had a chance to be an elder states-person at Ogilvy and spend my waning years working to train people and to help out on difficult clients and on pitches. That's what I was hoping for. But agencies decided they no longer need experience anymore, so I am beating the bushes like an old vaudevillian hoping a full-house in Altoona gets me a week in Toledo.

I grew up with a father who was an extremely hard worker. I supposed I picked up my work ethic from him and some others who showed me that the application of schnozz to grindstone could lead to diamond not rhinestone. 

The hard part of all that, of course, is that many people like myself who were brought up working hard never learned an alternative. Never even learned that the world would keep on if you weren't always lending a hand and a check to grease the skids for someone you care for.

In all the years I played baseball, I never learned to hit to the opposite field. In all the years I've worked, I've never learned to not work.

You can spend a life time being smart.

Only to find out you're really dumb.

Normal.

Barbara Tuchman, the great Pulitzer-prize-winning historian once said, "The persistence of normal is strong." Here's wikipedia's rendition of "Tuchman's Law," which contains the phrase that pays.

Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply)

I've referred to Tuchman's Law a fair amount in this space. And will surely refer to it more and more as trumpism and fascism gets a stronger grip on what used to be amerika. Despite the horror around us, we keep on worrying about what's for dinner, a sore hip, a 40-point-loss by the Knicks. While the world is no longer normal, we hold more tightly to the normality we can still hold onto.

I think about Tuchman's Law especially when it comes to the advertising industry, it's lemming-like linked in lunacy and the practice of agencies and holding companies and those still working going on as if the whole shebang hasn't fallen off a cliff.

'Tis the season for people posting colorful rectangles that say they're judging something or other. Ad Age, once reputable, runs money-grab after money-grab after money grub. They promote hot young creatives, 50 under 40, 60 under 5'2", and A-lists, B-lists and C-lists. In three weeks the tsunami of smarm will arrive--people announcing their descent on the old Greek settlement of Αἴγιτνα, which today we call Cannes. All these are pay to play ruses that presumably pay better than legitimate reality-based reporting.

Instead, we fete, and celebrate and applaud. 

We host, pontificate, and a-trophy-ize.

We persist in acting as if everything is normal.

No one raises an eyebrow and says, "Six years ago ________ occupied an entire building and had 1,500 people. Now they have a single floor and 350 people." Or "Not long ago ________ used to be the biggest agency in the city. Now, they haven't won a major piece of business in five years and they might have fewer than 300 people. Or "Just three years ago, _______ won Agency of the Year. Today, they have no accounts."

There's not a person in the industry not decrying the quality of work the industry produces. It's nearly impossible to turn on the TV or to see a commercial on a streaming service and see something that gets you to say, "I wish I did that." 

Yet no one questions that ten-fold proliferation of awards and award shows, or the massive environmental threat caused by a giant football-field-sized gyre of advertising trophies.

There are more awards than ever and less good work. More award winning people, agencies, strategists, networks, and whatnot, and less to show for all those awards. If 1966 were awarded like today, we'd have the Lt. Calley Humanitarian Award for Village Beautification and we'd all miss the irony.

Meanwhile, we're shirking from the shrinkage and warding off the wombatting of awards.

We are pretending everything's ok, until the lights finally go out altogether.

I'm encouraged by a few small agencies that seem to be sticking to their guns. I'm encouraged by the few who seem to still value elbow grease over posturing. I'm encouraged by those who stand up when the world sits down.

The persistence of normal is strong.

Maybe that's a sign of resilience.

But only if you notice what's not being noticed.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.

I grew up in an era in which memory was important. At an early age, I knew all the state capitals, all the presidents and a host of mnemonics that would help me remember things like the colors of the rainbow (VIBGYOR) and the Great Lakes (HOMES.) I created PESWAGL for the seven deadly sins. (pride, envy, sloth, wrath, avarice, gluttony, lust) and OAPLG for developmental stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital.) I made those memory spurs when I was 19, and remember them still.

Being a baseball fan helped too. Most of us had memorized a litany of important numbers. Like 714 (Ruth's home run total.) .367 (Cobb's lifetime batting average.) .406 (Williams' average in 1941--the last man to bat four-hundred.) 56 (DiMaggio's consecutive-game hitting streak.) I still know those today and a couple hundred more. 

Along the way, memorization (which is somewhat disparaged today) played a big part in my life. I can still conjugate my amo, amas, amat, and decline bonus, bona, bonum and hic, haec, hoc. I know my fair share of things like "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes," (who will guard the guards) which while 2,000 years old is sadly all-too-relevant today.

We were also trained to memorize poems. And while much has slipped throughout the years, I know the first few lines of dozens of classics, from "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," to "Dulce et decorum est.")

The other night as I was reading, I happened upon a story about the ancient king Mithridates. Mithridates, from very early on in his life, micro-dosed himself with poison to protect himself from those who would try to off him and steal his wealth and his throne.

A. E. Housman's poem "Mithridates, He Died Old" arrived in my head a few moments later--and the Housman's last two lines a synapse or two after that.

Mithridates, He Died Old

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.

When my elder daughter was fifteen, she swam in the Empire Games--New York's version of the Olympics. She was the New York State Champion for the mile swim. 

Sometime after winning that crown she had to write an essay on a poem she liked. But she couldn't find any poems that spoke to her. Quickly, we went, again, to Housman. When I read my daughter this poem, she was absolutely floored. Not sure if she remembers it, but I do.

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

 

Today, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

 

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

 

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

 

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

 

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

 

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Here are a few more of my favorite poems. For what they're worth.

Two from Ogden Nash. I read these when I was about nine. They taught me poetry could be funny.

Fleas

Adam

Had’em

The Turtle
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

And a darker, Nashian couplet that caught my eye some years ago, by David McCord.

Epitaph for a Waiter

By and by
God caught his eye.

My best friend, Fred, who died three years ago taught me this one when his own father died. It's by someone called Leigh Hunt.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

While somber, this is the poem I love maybe above all others, at least as of this writing. By Ernest Dowson. Maybe I'm just a sucker for Latin

           Vitae Summa Brevis
Spem Nos Vetat  Incohare Longam

The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long --Horace

 

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

   Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

   We pass the gate.

 

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

   Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

   Within a dream.

 

I could probably go on and on. These aren't all of my favorites. Only a start. This one, by Matthew Arnold. Not Tom Arnold's dad.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

 

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

 

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

 

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

But this is enough for now.