Givens.

One of the worst things about the human species is that it seems each human born is born with a relatively empty hard-drive. Until some tech non-tax-paying trillionaire figures out how to do brain implants to give their own kids and no one else's an advantage so they can be quadrillionaires or quintillionaires, not just trillionaires, and also skirt taxes, all new people have to start at essentially the same cognitive blank slate.

No one is born knowing how to talk, "toilet" themselves and with the ability to harness AI for the generation of more sextillionaires. We all have to learn to mama and dada. We all have to learn to teeter and walk. We all have to learn a certain corpus of knowledge that allows us to order a grande half caf soy pupik at the local coffee oligopoly.

Of late, and this may be a function of my rapidly advancing age, many things that I thought were knowledge "givens," that is learnings that I believed we could posit that everyone accepted are no longer accepted.

Of late it seems like saying things like, "the earth isn't round," "all people aren't created equal," or "certain citizens deserve more rights than others," is considered by more and more perfectly acceptable.

Things we used to take for granted, things we used to accept have been abnegated by millions and millions. We question things that were once unquestionable. 

Before long there will be online fora for those who believe the sun rises in the west. We're already seeing the words of the Second Witch in Shakespeare's Macbeth ring truer than they have since the days of kissinger and macnamara. Our battles now--just listen to the felon-in-chief about the Iran war he started, our battle's are "...lost and won." And, as all three of Macbeth's witches said, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair..." Or in the roughly similar words of Chico Marx, "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The undoing of what we thought was signed, sealed and delivered is the hallmark of our era. Cue the three witches: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair..."

The below is from Times' essayist, David French. An account of questioning things that we used to posit. Little things, like equality.

vance-isms like the below are so anti-amerikkkan, they'd probably even make our slave-holding founding fathers emancipate the shit out of human chattel.

A Heritage American, in their formulation, is someone who can trace his lineage back to the founding of the country, preferably even before. You get an A grade if you’re “colonial old stock,” meaning your ancestors came here between 1607 and 1789. You get a B if you’re “antebellum stock,” a C if you’re an “Ellis Islander.” You get a D if you or your ancestors arrived after World War II....

It’s a short trip from inherited virtue to inherited entitlement. And at its most extreme, the Heritage American idea bears an eerie resemblance to the so-called 14 words of white supremacy — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Of course as behavior in advertising is merely a microcosm of how we behave in amerika, there are many similarities in our business.

We no longer posit the need to breakthrough, to get attention, to communicate clearly, or to persuade people. We no longer accept as givens the power of repetition, the power of mnemonics, the power of differentiation and the saliency product attributes. Those attributes, which have been communication mandatories since humanity began, are no longer accepted as truths.

Instead we gallop down today's one-size-fits-all shibboleth that the only thing advertising must do is "become part of culture." There's so much I don't understand about that goal--what it means, for one, and what culture even is, for two. Not to mention the idea that my culture is the same as yours.

The basics of communication, like the very basics of Enlightenment thought have been thrown out by big-money know-nothings who propagate the "hot," without proof or ballast and by spending billions on propagation of their untruths have destroyed both advertising and democracy.

For instance, much of the ad industry looks to martin sorrell, who's destroyed two holding companies, WPP and S4 Capital as some sort of sage. As we look to fascist enablers as upholders of democracy. Soon we'll look to bernie madoff for financial advice or buy elon musk's guide to fatherhood or the holding company's guide to stopping ageism. Or adolph's guide to Judaism...

Remember, the same people who have abnegated impact, clarity, persuasion and repetition are the ones who have sold us programmatic, digital first, AI, divestment of media, consolidation of agencies and a whole host of other troughs of tripe.

I don't very often work with a big holding company agency, but I read what's left of the trades and I see it 21 times a day. What. passes for advertising no longer moves people, it merely assaults them. Impact has been replaced by inundation and reason replaced by trendiness.

Certain things, like the spherical nation of our earth, should not be questioned.

We should be beyond questioning the need to get people to notice us. We should be beyond questioning the need to tell people why a product is better, needed or different. But we're not. Those characteristics of communications are now considered trite and outmoded.

No wonder just as more and more people question the very viability of amerikkka--what Lincoln once called 'the last best hope on earth,' more and more people question "creativity." That is, what Bernbach called the "last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors."

There's nothing wrong with capital d democracy that decency, fairness, representation and equal justice won't fix. And kindness. There's nothing wrong with advertising that good advertising can't fix.

Except the agenda of those who seek to profit through their destruction of it. 

They're sowing doubt where there should be truth.

Yom at Heart.

Today is Yom Kippur.

For the remaining 16,000,000 Jews left in the world (that's about one-fifth of one percent of the world's population) it's the holiest day of the year. 

Though many Jews, myself included, live in fear of the inimitable or perhaps inevitable re-ascent of anti-semitism, we still cordon off a day every year to beat our breasts and bemoan all the things we have done wrong.

Only about one-in-forty amerikkkans are Jewish. But in amerikka, three-out-of-five victims of hate crimes are Jews. 

That said, we are not, by the calculus of the day considered to be a "minority." We are not members of a protected class. Jews on average pay a higher percentage of their income as tax than any other group and their children have a harder time getting into top colleges. This isn't paranoia. It's data.

That said, we still atone every year for all we have done wrong. Some do it publicly in temples that require metal detectors and armed guards against potential terror attacks. Some do it privately, internally and as I do, daily. Yes, daily.

This I learned from my father. 

A man, like so many fathers of his generation, a man who was most missing when he was most needed. 

That was a sin. A sin visited upon his children.

Stan was about as religious as a lamb chop, but he took atonement as seriously as a gavel.

During Yom Kippur, Jews traditionally recite something called the Al Chet ten times. (Al Chet, I realize sounds like the name of  a midwestern sports-reporter. To make Al Chet properly Semitic, add a little spittle to it. Al will rest easier, as will Chet.

The Al Chet is like Kasey Kasem’s Top 40. They’re the recitation and confession of the biggest, most universal and most human of sins. Not of the “I left the refrigerator door open” ilk. The Al Chet confesses serious shit—hard-heartedness, impurity of speech, disrespect, evil talk. And so on.

It’s how Jews ask forgiveness and atone.

It's how we always have, and no matter what happens to our dwindling and besieged cohort, how we always will.

You can do the standard catalog of sins. 

Like my father before me, and likely my children after me, while the list above is good and encompassing, I prefer my own list. It feels realer, truer, more atoney-er that way. I've never been afraid to re-write what was written. Even the word of god.

So, simply, I am asking forgiveness and atoning.

For the sin I have sinned when I have thought differently.

For the sin I have sinned when I refused to do as I was told.

For the sin I have sinned because I know my worth.

For the sin I have sinned when I made a joke during a meeting.

For the sin I have sinned when I wrote something instead of talking about writing something.

For the sin I have sinned because I am old.

For the sin I have sinned because I am old and still energetic.

For the sin I have sinned because I am old and still energetic and still ambitious.

For the sin I have sinned because I have questioned you.

For the sin I have sinned when I asked you to explain.

For the sin I have sinned when I tried to lead with a channel other than broadcast.

For the sin I have sinned because I made myself a product expert.

For the sin I have sinned because I believe people want information.

For the sin I have sinned because I believe people will read what interests them.

For the sin I have sinned because I favor conversations over texts.

For the sin I have sinned for not using jargon.

For the sin I have sinned because I don’t believe ______ is dead.

For the sin I have sinned because I still don’t know what agile means.

For the sin I have sinned because I don’t believe agile has a place in creative.

For the sin I have sinned because I believe advertising is a service business, not a servile one.

For the sin I have sinned because I leave nine-hour meetings early.

For the sin I have sinned because I suck at small-talk.

For the sin I have sinned because I don’t allow myself to be cookied.

For the sin I have sinned because I use ad-blockers.

For the sin I have sinned because I don’t ass-kiss.

For the sin I have sinned because I trust myself.

For the sin I have sinned because I spend too much time helping young people.

For the sin I have sinned because I don't buy the hype.

For the sin I have sinned because I won't give musk or trump or any other blowhard, air.

For the sin I have sinned because I don't go with the flow.

For the sin I have sinned because I don't try to become part of culture.

For the sin I have sinned because I say prove it.

For the sin I have sinned because I don't AI.

For the sin I have sinned when I tell the emperor he's stark naked.

For the sin I have sinned because I speak up.

For the sin I have sinned by dissenting.

For the sin I have sinned when I say something that sucks sucks.

For the sin I have sinned when I call out the inherent evil of big concentrations of wealth.

For the sin I have sinned because I refuse to dumb-down.

For the sin I have sinned because I won't.

For all these sins and a trillion more, I ask forgiveness and pardon.

And Happy New Year.

Shoots.

When you're a ball player, no matter what kind of ball, from bowling to ping-pong to golf to basketball to baseball to badminton whatever, there are two ways to deal with a slump.

The same holds true no matter what you do for life, no matter what temporal adversity you face.

There are two ways to deal with it.

First is what new-age people might call centering.

First, acknowledge and respect and even welcome the slump. Slumps happen to everyone. They happen whenever they want to happen. You can't obviate or avoid them anymore than you can skirt a politician's lies or lie with a politician's skirt.

Slumps are just a fact of life. In fact, without slumps, without the inevitable lows, you wouldn't, really, take in the equally inevitable highs. You've never ridden on a roller-coaster that doesn't have peaks as well as troughs. Roller-coasters, like most of everything, are metaphors. You might think about how they're built, why they're built and why so many millions of people flock to them.

One thing you might want to do, right now for instance, is head over to ebay or amazon and buy some version of the centuries-old board game "Snakes and Ladders," or as we called it when I was knee-high to a dust-bunny, "Chutes and Ladders."

Speaking of metaphors, Chutes and Ladders is a good one. If you're in an agency, either as an interchangeable part or a "leader," your job, in a sense, with your bosses, colleagues and clients is to--however possible--maximize ladders and minimize the effects of chutes.

As you might expect, Johnnie Mercer and Harold Arlen said it best, "You've got to accentuate the positive/Eliminate the negative/Don't mess with Mr. In-between."

So, back to my two ways to deal with a slump.

One: You can panic. You can second-guess. You can over-react. You can punish yourself. You can change everything you've always done.

Two: You can think about who you are. The quality and quantity you've always delivered. Your reliability and stalwartosity® and you can confidently get through the slump. With time.

Of course, look at the video tape. See if you dropped your elbow a tad. Examine the circuitry of what you do and see if you got into a bad habit. We all do.

But don't linger on your demise. Or the evaporation of all that brought you to where you are in the first place. If your career and life has been punctuated by ladders, the ladders will once again, and probably before long--probably sooner rather than ladder--present themselves once again.

This is the best I can do on a rainy Sunday morning before six AM.

See you ladder.

Un-Obsolete Yourself.

 

You can read the above here.

For about as long as I've been circling the sun and that's a lot of circling, people have been decrying the fact that "no one reads anymore." 

You can always find data that proves that point, and there's probably no time in history since Gutenberg was horsing around with his olive press that people weren't bemoaning the sorry state of human intelligence.

Of course, since we have a felon-in-chief who's never read a book outside of an Archie Double Digest and makes up history as it fits his racist invective, maybe it is truer now than ever before. In fact to be completely honest, a large portion of me believes that we do live in a dumbed down world. You only need to watch a TV show from the 1950s or 1960s, and you'll hear words and complex thoughts the likes of which are missing, almost completely, from public discourse today. There have been many times when I howled at the militarized moon and suggested that like the Romans of yore, we must have lead in our pipes leading to societal IQ-decline.

However, there's a counter-point out there, if you're looking for one. Kids might not know the state capitals like I did when I was ten. They might not be able to declaim Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." And while "only 14% of 13-year-olds read for fun 'almost every day', about half the figure in 2012," lamentations about communications technologies are as old as Cuneiform. Tom Wainwright, of the Economist writes,

Socrates disliked writing, arguing that the ability to write things down weakened the powers of memory....

Nearly a thousand years later, people were worried again, this time about a sinister new thing called the printing press.... Similar criticisms were made of the typewriter, invented at the end of the 19th century...One newspaper of the era opined that the typewriter 'destroys originality' and 'gives to everything that is written a mechanical touch'.

What's more, and back to kids, I'd say many of them on the other hand have a faculty for things which would have bleared my eyes back when amerikkka was a notional democracy. From computers, to software, to electronics they're way smarter than I was as a boy. And given the plethora of data in sports, they might also have a greater grasp of mathematics than I had. 

I think what we often overlook when assessing the relative intelligence of different generations is that we don't consider that those TV shows I enjoy from the 1950s were going to a much more rarefied audience than most shows do today. In the early days of television, for instance, the medium was almost wholly urban, white collar and college educated. It was a pretty select mass medium.

That digression aside, the Economist writes in the article pasted above,  

"People everywhere are sounding the alarm about a decline in reading. Parents struggle to cajole their children to pick up a book; professors despair that students cannot finish reading lists.... More than half of American adults say they have not read a single book for pleasure in the past year.

The panic is summed up in “The New Dark Ages”, a polemic by James Marriott, a bookish Times journalist... He rounds up the evidence that reading is in decline, placing most of the blame on smartphones, “predators of our attention”. “Dickens wrote in the reasonable belief that [his work] might be the most absorbing entertainment in your house—hence the average Dickens novel being about 800 pages...” 

Seeing as many readers in this space slog--maybe daily--through my writing, I can surmise they value the written word. For them, and for myself, perhaps there is some hope--and some not-to-be-overlooked value in what writers do--even if 'no one can read anymore.'

Maybe this is how writers--you and I--can market ourselves in a world that no longer values writing. 

The same Economist article says,  

...writing allowed cultures to “externalise” their thoughts, making way for more complex ideas and allowing them to be laid open to dissection... sophisticated mental processes, like logical reasoning and abstract categorisation, derive “not simply from thought itself but from text-formed thought”. Whereas oral delivery often employs a “backlooping” structure, the speaker rambling and repeating as they hone their argument on the go, writing allows for logically structured reasoning....

Let me repeat the above with "key words" highlighted. Key words that might persuade all those millions of clients and colleagues who say "nobody reads" of the importance of writing.

...writing allowed cultures to “externalise” their thoughts, making way for more complex ideas and allowing them to be laid open to dissection... sophisticated mental processes, like logical reasoning and abstract categorisation, derive “not simply from thought itself but from text-formed thought”. Whereas oral delivery often employs a “backlooping” structure, the speaker rambling and repeating as they hone their argument on the go, writing allows for logically structured reasoning....

In other words, it's writers who will help decipher (and make sense of) complex ideas. It's writers who will lay process and procedure open to dissection (so it can be understood.)

Here's an example from a zoom I had with my longest-running client not six hours ago. We were discussing an upcoming photo shoot of his technology, factory and offices.

CLIENT:       

The problem with shooting here is our factory isn't finished. It's kind of a mess. It doesn't look neat and architectural.

GEORGE:     
That's ok. That's good in fact. You're a science company, a technology company. Science and tech are never done, they're always improving and changing. If things are neat and tied up with a bow, that could imply that ​you're stagnant and not inventing.

CLIENT:       
Oh. You're right.

There might be a bit of ratiocination in the 98.7% genuine dialogue above. But that's ok. 

We might live in a post-reading, post-writing era. But cultures still need writing and the methodicalness of writing to "externalise their thoughts." To think things through with labor and intent not blurt and bombast.

I've had many conversations through the years with advertising writers I respect. Many of them do what I often do. Before we start with headlines, or TV spots or any other "content," we start writing about what we're trying to sell--what it does, how it's different, why it's better, why you need it.

We have a conversation via our keyboards with ourselves or a imaginary friend about what we're selling and why.

This is from Dominik Imseng's great book "Ugly is Only Skin-Deep." And this is how Bob Levenson, DDB's eventual copy-chief and Helmut Krone's third partner wrote about how he wrote.

In other words there's something about words. And the writing/thinking process that gets you to words that work.

Here's the obituary that DDB ran when B died.

Before we write an obituary for writing, it might make sense to read the writing in this obituary. 

It might remind us of our power. The power we have. The power we can use. The power no one, not holding companies, algorithms, or pomposticators can wrest from us.

To make it easier for you (and to repeat for emphasis):

I do not, cannot, will not, will never believe that jumping from facts into the realm of ideas is replaceable, machine-made-able, or will ever be obsolete.

Word.

A Milling Cove.

For whatever reason, maybe it was the fourteen-days of day-rate (reduced) I just got from [large agency], the phrase "milling cove," popped into my head last night and I couldn't quite get it out.

Of course, I did the usual searches on Google, and got nowhere fast. Thought I did find an article on Mousley Hurst, the long-ago center of English pugilism, pre-Marquis of Queensbury, and of one Samuel Elias, the English bare-knuckle champeen in the late 18th century. Champeen is how you pronounce champion in da Bronx and the adjacent city, Yonkers, where I was born back when Pterodactyls competed with DC9s for air space.)

Dutch Sam, AKA Samuel Elias, a Milling Cove.
Dutch was known as his era's hardest-hitter and earned the 
mellifluous moniker, "The Man with the Iron Hand."

Before long I switched to an AI search engine, Perplexity, and I found this piece from just a week under 75 years ago, September 22, 1951, by one of my favorite writers, A.J. Liebling:

Every-once-in-a-while, you read something by a writer you admire that can restore your faith in humanity and people who care about the words they choose, and the stories they tell. 

My friend Debra Fried just sent me her latest Riff from her Substack, 'Ruffle' and, frankly, I had to put my computer down after her first paragraph. It was one of those passages that made me mumble aloud, 'well, fukaduk,' and feel wholly unworthy of my keyboard.

She begins:

Wow.

Debra and I are friends, both copywriters and around the same age. Though we've never spoken about it, our competitiveness sneaks out sometimes. It prances about our crania like some version of Terpsichore showing off, and then it hides so as not to derail our friendship.

There's been so much in the news lately about AI coming for all of humanity and on the cusp of destroying or enslaving all of us. (It's funny how private equity and tech bros assign blame for their bad actions to the technologies they create, gin-up and finance. It's never andreeson, horowitz that needs restraining--it's AI that's to blame for AI, not the carom-ing balls they set into motion.)

For all that hype about the last ding-dong of doom, it's worth thinking about all the small crafty things that have not been killed by supplanting technology. Podcasting for instance is basically old-timey radio. It is more vibrant than radio has been for more than 80 years. People still like beautiful hand-made clothing, furniture and wall-coverings. Even a wretch like me is

dying to wear this human-hand-stitched suit next time I wear a suit. I don't think a machine can do most good things. Most good things take humanity.

Of all the many and tremendously wise "Ogilvy-isms" I've learned and absorbed through the years, I think the one that's most important is the one that's most ignored. [I'm de-genderizing it lest I get excoriated for being part of the "patriarchy."] 

The consumer isn't a moron; they are your significant other.

In other words, and to be Talmudic about it (another set of rules no one knows or anymore follows) treat others--even in your ads--as you yourself want to be treated.

That's so goldenly-obvious and so rare. Disappeared even.

As the ad industry flees humanity (and humanity flees the ad industry) nearly every bit of writing treats viewers like they're idiots. Jokes are tired, insulting, dumb. Over-blown-ness is everywhere. And more generally, slap-dash thinking that's a slap in the face of everyone who thinks. 

Whether you call it crap, hack or slop, we can blame it on algorithms and machinery. But it's us that lets it happen and it's us that says that it's good enough to pay for and represent the brands that pay us. It's us that posits people aren't worth real work and that AI-made drivel is enough to answer the bell.

You need only read closed-captions to see how little care is expressed in accuracy and verity of the captioning. You need only to look at one seven-minute video with two or three commercial breaks that happen anywhere, even in the middle of a scene or a word to see how little our industry cares about either the viewer or what they're watching. That's a human decision, expedited by machinery. That's an imperious choice we have made.

Headlines like this abound. They make Slip Mahoney look like Nöel Coward.

I've never had a job with a degree.

The Milling Coveness I began this post with was from feeling pummeled and punished by people and a system that wouldn't know Shakespeare from the shipping news. Fourteen days of that left me feeling like I was laboring at the wrong end of a shooting gallery.

Bang!

That said, it led me to the A.J. Liebling I mentioned above. It led me to a couple emails with friends. It lead me to being more determined than ever to hold-fast to who I am, what I believe and what I do. What I may do better than anyone else.

It also led me to these sentences and paragraphs. [CAUTION: Liebling uses language that means I have to write a trigger-warning. He calls Black people 'colored' or 'Negro.' Such was the practice of the times. O tempora, O mores! as Cicero exclaimed. Oh the times, Oh the customs.]

All that said, it makes me feel like less of a milling cove to see work and people who treat work and people with a soupçon of respect and dignity. I feel less like I was knocked off my feet and left to die, lying prostrate on the filthy canvas that is life.

By the way, if you apply a little elbow grease I'm sure, even if you don't subscribe to the New Yorker, you can find the entire article online. Or you can buy Liebling's great book, "The Sweet Science," on abebooks.com for $6.52, not including tax and shipping. One of my two copies sits to my left right now, not five feet away from my good shoulder.

The problem with that is that my good shoulder hurts worse than my bad shoulder.

Abrams and his hair.

--

BTW, here a video the fight Liebling writes about above, colorized and condensed down to just over 18 minutes. The commentary is by undefeated heavyweight champeen, Rocky Marciano. It's concise and astute. If you hang in to the end, you could learn something about life, about getting hit, about life.

Bubbling Down.

Bubbles.

I suppose at least until the last ding-dong of doom reverberates through our super-heated no-longer atmosphere, that there will always been certain things we can count on. 

Living near the sea, as I do now, the tides are one such linchpin. As is of course the rising in the east and the setting in the west of the sun. As is renaming major lakes and parts of the ocean for hate and xenophobic effect.

But of all of our planet's verities, more than dinner being late or crappy neighbors, the verity most inviolable is this: creeps will always chase after, flock to, speed toward money. The more money there is, the more and faster they will chase after it.

We are no different, humankind I mean, from ants after a bit of spittle. 

(I think, btw, social media might more accurately be re-titled social-mania. Now you can see everyone and her cousin doing something inane or flat-out dangerous on any one of about thirteen trillion platforms, and you feel compelled as well to do it. We've even invented an acronym for it, and everyone has it and is driven by it: FOMO. We never consider FOFF(ALLAA). (Fear of following flocks and looking like an ass.)

Let's think about one industry for a moment--just one--so as to limit the breadth and width of my frayed blanket statement.

In the last 40 years in advertising:

• Every agency has consolidated.
• Every agency diversified into non-advertising related fields like auto-racing, sports-agenting and more.
• Every agency sold all the diversified interests they diversified into.
• Every agency has merged with two or three dozen other agencies.
• Every agency destroyed about 80% of the agencies they bought.
• Every agency has relocated and un-designed its work-space.
• Every agency has divested its media arm.
• Every agency has un-divested its media arm.
• Every agency has sold itself to one of essentially three holding companies.
• Every agency has eliminated offices and quiet and privacy.
• Every agency has jammed people together so "they can communicate better."
• Every agency has abandoned platforms for tiny tactics.
• Every agency has lowered creative salaries.
• Every agency has competed on price, not business' built.
• Every agency has chosen pay-for-play awards as a way to signal its viability and quality.
• Every agency has raised c-suite pay and lowered regular-person pay.
• Every agency has abandoned the agency-of-record schema and become instead a vendor.
• Every agency has stopped partnering with clients (WITT--We're In This Together) and started charging by the infinitesimal pixel.
• Every agency has self-decimated in hunt for: 
     -programmatic magic
     -digital magic
     -six sigma magic
     -scrum magic
     -agile magic
     -some planner with a cool accent magic and
     -AI magic
  
• Every agency has differentiated itself via lock-step sameness. 
• Every agency does exactly the same as every agency because that's what every agency does.

To sum all of the above up in a single sentence, Every agency has been so busy chasing after the 'easy money' that every agency has forgotten what agencies can and should do in order to grow. 

They've abandoned challenging ideas that get attention and drive sales. They've abandoned leadership.  They've abandoned risk. Campaigns. The need to be better than the programs they interrupt. They've abandoned respect for customers, their own employees and they've abandoned commitment to a client.

Charlotte Beers--the CEO of Ogilvy 30 years ago said she wanted to make the joint "Most valued by those who most value brands." Spoken or un-spoken those words guided Ogilvy and a dozen places like it for dozens of years.

Today--as we chase after wherever it is with think the money is--agencies seek the be "Most valued by those who most value .00564-percent more margin, and quarterly growth via manipulation of spreadsheets, and the numbers we show the street."

We chase so vigorously after money we left our souls in the dust.

Dumb. Desiccated. Destroyed.