Word Imperfect.

There was a book review in The Wall Street Journal not too terribly long ago about "amerikan" accents and why we speak the way we speak. Why do some Bostonians, for instance, drop "Rs"? Why do some southerners say "y'all"?

You can read the review here, (if you can still read.) These few sentences, however, were the ones that sent me scrambling to my old Smith-Corona to write this post. (12 wpm when I'm typing downhill.) In them, I noticed a point-counterpoint in modren amerikkka.

I began seeing what I would consider a phenomenon--or a "potent new dynamic" back more than a decade-and-a-half ago when I worked for the self-anointed "digital agency of the decade," or the "agency for the digital age." 

Certain words would sweep the agency like the Black Death galloped through 14th Century Europe. Suddenly, everything was "curated." Suddenly, we were no longer in advertising, we were "brand story-tellers." Suddenly we no longer told people what a product of service did and why they needed it, we were instead, "having conversations about brands." 

Even our posture changed. Suddenly, we were "leaning in." We weren't expressing opinions or thoughts anymore, we were finding "insights." The list goes on and on and continues to this day.

Google Ngram is a blunt-instrument of a tool and not very often updated but it often serves my purpose. It measures the prevalence of a word or term within a corpus of texts with a defined date range. A few examples follow:

I asked myself at the time what I think is the question we have to ask ourselves more often. "I've gone my entire life without hearing about "curation" or "story-telling" or "marbling in steak." I'm not a young man and these things which I seem to hear 50-100 times a day are all things I never heard before.

What's happened that this is happening?
What does this mean?

If you've read Victor Klemperer, author of "The Language of the Third Reich," or even have a smattering of knowledge of George Orwell, you'd realized that language often has a political agenda. Simply put, it's used to sell something: an idea, a product, a person or a cult. [By the way, for $23, including shipping, you can buy this book. You'll be glad you did.]

When all of a sudden you hear dozens of times a day, or more, something that you've never heard before, it's your responsibility, if you're a thoughtful human being, to pay attention to how you might possibly be being manipulated.

Looking at the paper and the "comedy/tragedy" "news"-shows of late, I realized another one of these charged words. (By "charged," I mean words we'll eventually be charged for and wind-up paying for something that will make someone else rich.)

I am 68-years old, almost 68.5.
I realized the only time I ever heard the word "ballroom" was when I watched the Disney movie Cinderella with my daughters.

Now ballroom (a synonym for 'architectural scrotum') seems to be every third word you hear from the plutocrats and malefactors of great wealth who are reverse robin-hooding the entire world. That is stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the architectural scrotum tump will foist on the nation. But I do care about how an entire nation is being force-fed a spurious idea to enrich someone else--either through money or ego.

You have to wonder why this is so important.
You have to wonder what is really happening.
You have to wonder what bill of goods we're being sold.

Language, despite how it's so often mis-used, does not lie.  That's a quote from Dr. Klemperer. How we use language, how we speak, how the brands and corporate hegemons we work for speak has within the meaning of the words a larger meaning, perhaps one that's harder to veil.

Responsible people question.
They don't accept words--they examine them.
They reveal actions.

That's what we should all be doing.

The Common Cult.

There are many people who believe that amerika is, and has been for centuries, under the thrall of a "cult of science" or "the cult of technology." 

There's a reason for this belief, of course. amerika is the richest country the world has ever seen (not the fairest, but the richest) because since its inception, amerikans have believed ingenuity and cheap labor will carry the day. 

That's why amerika dominated the world in so many industrial outputs. From cotton, to steel, to coal to more modern times embracing cars, planes, refrigerators and TV sets. Today, the output of amerika's belief in its own superiority are algorithms, computers, chips, AI, and likely quantum computing.

But there are side-effects that cascade from being a believer in the cult of science. 

1. We usually ignore the unintended consequences aka human consequences, of science. In the 1790s, slavery was all-but dying. Eli Whitney's technological breakthrough separated cotton seeds from cotton fibers with great efficiency. He didn't invent the machine to revitalize and spread slavery, but that was the effect. Likewise, kerosene then gasoline, were superior alternatives to whale oil. They weren't advanced to pollute the air, choke our cities and cause catastrophic climate change. But that's what happened.

2. We almost always think of a technology advance as an endpoint, not a jumping off point. By that I mean, you'd think once you had a TV, you'd be done. But technology begets technology, and that usually created more jobs and more demand. Before long we were making bigger sets, remote controls, color sets, flat screens, etc. etc. Technology generally speaking creates more work than it eliminates.

3. The human brain is plastic. Plastic--meaning adaptable, not a forever petrochemical. It adjusts to new and thinks and thinks and thinks to create a new new. That's how the world turns. Socrates thought writing and the new Phoenician alphabet would destroy the human ability to remember. Just like people today think google has done the same. And just like we perseverate about AI killing every human faculty worth keeping.

The human brain is infinitely more complex than anything humankind can create. According to Matthew Cobb the human brain, has 90 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses and its billions of glia (these figures are all guesstimates). We have much more skill, imagination and drive than the most highly-touted AI system.

Remember, the sam altmans of the world are leveraging amerika's "cult of science" to raise capital. The only value OpenAI or any other AI have created is the individual net worth of people like sam altman. Purportedly OpenAI is worth $852 billion dollars. Which would mean it's worth roughly 3% of amerika's $33 trillion economy, or it's worth one dollar out of every eleven.

4. Hot companies come and go, tulips are forever. In Holland in the early part of the 17th century, they had AI stocks, too. They were called tulips. Many people regard "tulip-mania" as the first nationwide speculative bubble. A single tulip bulb was priced at between ten times and twelve times the annual salary of a skilled artisan. For some context, if a Fred Smith Manhattan plumber makes $400,000/year (a low-estimate) that would put a single tulip bulb at a cost of between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000. Today, of course, tulips are a dime a dozen. What's more, you can get them for free at any graveyard.

The point in all this is embrace the value of your humanness with the same fervor that you embrace the value of tech or a hot stock or the latest trend.

They won't last long.

You might.

If-Then.

The great scientist and writer Desmond Morris died last week. No one in the entirety of the advertising industry even noticed. No one in the entirety of the advertising industry even knows who he is or why he merited a long obituary in the Times.

You'd think that a scientist who spent his life studying human behavior would be esteemed by our business--a business that purports to leverage knowledge of human behaviors for commercial gain. But Morris was old. Therefore, to our industry, not important. Unlike Dua Lipa, his greatest works came sixty years ago. So, not talking about tweeting, twerking or some-other -ing, Morris became obscure. (It's fine that I an obscure. But Morris wrote "The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal." It sold more than 20 million copies (a lot for a book by a zoologist.) It was translated into 23 languages, and argued that ancient genes, shared with apes, shape human behavior.

I first encountered Morris probably in 1967 when The Naked Ape came out. My father bought the hard-cover and kept it on the table near his reading chair as a coaster. Of course, even as a nine-year-old, I found the title intriguing and it and Dr. Morris' name lodged in my elephantine memory.

45 years later, my esteemed psychiatrist and advisor, Dr. Lewis recommended I read a different book by Morris, "The Nature of Happiness." Look beyond the "cialis-inflected" cover art and you'll find one of the world's most-important books. 

To sum up the above in one sentence, happiness most often comes from the pursuit, rather than the accomplishment of that pursuit. When humans hunted in groups, the teamwork, the divisions of labor, the chase were often more exciting and energizing than the kill, which often left the group a little "triste." Or as one of the world's first doctors, Galen of Pergamum said more than 2000 years ago, "post coitum omne triste est sive gallus et mulier." ie After sexual intercourse every animal is sad except the rooster and the woman.

All this is a long introduction to the short point of today's post. That is advertising is supposed to find its meaning from, in Bernbach's words, "simple, timeless human truths." 

The problem is that 99.89-percent of us are too busy watching "stupid, temporal human trends."

As an industry, we have ignored the fact that there are human desires--the desire for logic, the desire for causality, the desire to turn 'base metal into gold,' that though they're often derided as false, still grip us like gods. Humans will always look for powerful people to guide us. trump is smart enough to play that part and 70,000,000 amerikants buy it. You need only think of those "...is always right hats" to understand what I mean.

Counterpoint.

In advertising, we follow at least two ancient 'default-settings' of being human. Two things humans want to believe in. But really never come to pass.

1. We believe we can future-proof things. (You see this phrase all the time in technology ads.) We don't know what tomorrow will bring, much less next week or year. How could you possibly buy into the notion of future-proofing. 

And worse, while related,

2. We believe there are if-then propositions in the world. Meaning if you do this, then, inviolably, that will happen. Our entire industry has been given over to the notion that we can predict human behavior. 

If we open with a logo, the ad will be more effective.
If we enlarge the 'learn more' button, the ad will be more effective.

If we get $77,000,000 in funding, then we will be successful.
If we are 'digital first', then we will succeed.

As the cult of science has become more and more influential in our industry, the if-then proposition has tightened its grip. When I worked with consultants/scientists/best-practice-ites a couple decades ago, they would bark with fervor about the if-then-ness of marketing.

I would always respond as I respond today.

"You can walk up Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, perhaps the best retail street in the world, and ten-to-fifteen percent of the storefronts are vacant. If it were so simple to be successful, don't you think everyone would do it?"

At that point I usually got a cruddy 360 review from the ELT, disinvited to meetings and found a way to quit.

That's also a simple, timeless human truth.

Work is Working.

I wonder how many people reading this right now have heard of Gary Hart.

Or Howard Dean.

Or Walter Hickel.

Or Spiro Agnew.

Or even Sarah Palin.

I wonder how many people reading this right now have heard of Robin Roberts.

Or Wilbur Wood.

Or Johnny Callison.

Or even Frank Howard.

In politics and baseball, these people were household names--appearing dozens of times a week on TV and in newspapers when I was a boy growing up.

I wonder how many people reading this right now have heard of 
Scali McCabe Sloves.

Hal Riney.

Needham Harper and Steers.

Erwin Wasey.

Or even D'Arcy.

In the ad industry, not all that long ago, these were big names. They were mighty agencies that worked with Fortune 50 brands and multi-million dollar budgets.

I wonder how many people reading this right now have heard of
Excedrin aspirin.

Comet powder.

Janitor in a drum.

Buitoni pasta.

PanAm airlines.

These were all big brands, not all that long ago. They had huge marketshare and tremendous brand valuations.

On Friday, which already seems a decade ago in the "weeks that feel like centuries whirlwind" that tump has created, I read an article in The Economist, as I so often do.

The Economist and The Wall Street Journal are vital if you're in the ad business. Reading them, you'll likely know more about business, including your clients' business than anyone else in your agency and even your client. Knowledge offers you a leg up. Yet most people accept their legs down.

Of all the destructive effects of "O tempora, O mores" (oh the times, oh the customs) on the advertising business, the most pernicious is the most widespread. 

The idea (I live this about 99 times/client) that advertising is a "one-and-done," not a "we have to do it all the time." You can see this with the rampant stuntification of advertising. Some all-but-inconsequential brand will come up with a mustard-flavored toothpaste, or ice cream or running shoe. They'll get a one-second chuckle from some smarmy "news" coverage they get. Some CMO will post that his brand valuation went up 408%. He'll parlay that free wank into a new job and think he knows what he's doing.

Brands used to be built to endure.

Which means, like if you own a house, a car or have a dog or children in you care, you have to "maintain" them. You have to fix cracks in the concrete. You have to change the oil. You have to exercise them. And make sure they eat right.

This is not a one-week/year commitment.

This is every day.

The current thinking of the MBAniacs is that pulse matters and to hell with sustain. 

We treat brands today like we treat most things.

There's no routine maintenance. There are no repair shops. When they get creaky or long in the tooth, we take them to the curb and dispose of them like a floating gold fish.

That's what Omnicant has done to DDBuried. FCByebye. And who knows what else. It's what WhyPayPeople has done to Y&R, JWT, and just about every agency they own. 

No maintenance. No caring. No longevity.

Value is not permanent any more than asphalt paving is. 

And there are no short-cuts to creating and maintaining it. There's no magic "tweet" formula or "viral" stunt that will implant a brand in your cerrebellum.

It takes constant.

It takes building blocks.
It takes methodical-ness.
It takes every day.
It takes dedication and commitment.

It takes money.

Brands are not wet-t-shirt contests.

They are not meant to create a stir for 12 seconds then disappear.

I refuse to believe that.

I believe they're built on

definition: who they are/how they behave.
differentiation: why you should choose them.
demonstration: showing, not telling.

dollars: putting your money where your mouth is.

Your advertising work isn't done when you run a campaign.
It's never done.

It's not a done, it's a doing.

Seminal Behavior.

Not too many minutes ago, I went out for my morning walk. 

Since I was booted out of Ogilvy for "harkening back to the 80s," WPP/Mark Read-speak for being of the generation where I expected to be rewarded for my dedication, talent and skill, I've exerted some control over portions of my life I had neglected while in the crush of the Holding Company hegemony.

My west coast Doppleganger, Rich Siegel wrote about this, in his manner, on his blog earlier this week. Rich is always wise and worth reading. By wise, I mean Rich likes potato chips. 

At the start of my walk I checked my US Post Office mailbox which sits about one-hundred feet from my front door. We usually check for mail during Sparkle's noon walk. But with the crush of work being what it is, both my wife and I forgot to check yesterday--thus foiling the efforts of countless local financial planners inviting us to a free lunch and a "financial assessment."

In the mailbox, surprisingly, was a forest green envelope with our names and address hand-written (neatly) upon it. 

Artist's rendering.

It was a Thank You note from my elder daughter, S, who despite all the travails of modern life and parenting was brought up essentially right.

Sorry if the word "right" is "judgey." 

There are right ways to behave, treat people, work, love, play. When we started propagating the idea that standards are mutable, and norms were a couple of guys who hung out at the barber shop, we got to tump and tumpism.

I thought about the "propriety" and "old-fashioned-ness" of a hand-written thank-you note. I thought about what semiotically getting such a note--and having had the upbringing to feel compelled to write that sort of note--means.

A hand-written thank you note is about as archaic as you can be in the crass, nasty and inconsiderate world we live in today. From an MBA's point-of-view, I'm sure the ROI of human decency just doesn't add up. "Do you know how much time you spent on that note? Not to mention the cost of a card and a stamp? You spoke to your old man after your son's birthday party. You thanked him. A relic like a thank-you note just is not cost-efficient."

A hand-written thank you note is as old-fashioned as putting your "calling card" on a silver tray and being announced by the butler.

NEWS FLASH TO THE WORLD IN GENERAL AND MARKETING IN PARTICULAR

Not everything has to have an ROI. And meet KPIs. 

Beyond such contrived and concocted metrics there are other, unmeasurable, metrics. There's something ,for the purpose of this post, I'll call the HDB.

The Human Decency Bonus.

The seemingly inefficient, un-intelligent, not-worth-the-effort things people do to express human decency and kindness. 

Holding the door for someone.
Giving up your seat on the cross-town bus.
Listening.
Not interrupting.
Expressing yourself with care, artistry and kindness, not merely algorithm.

As we descend further and further down the pubic-clogged drain of artificial intelligence, things that make no sense will become more and more rare. 

From a "we all share this planet" point of view, from a "communications that breakthrough" point of view, those behaviors that make no sense will begin to make more and more sense. Simply because they show the recipient of those communications that you genuinely thought about them and took a moment to show you care.

An AI generated ad, or a bot on a chat, or a computer generated voice on a phone tree are all cost-efficient ways of doing business. 

But, generally speaking, they make a lot of "customers" aka people feel like shit. 

They remind people of this:

There is a reason, even though it makes no economic sense, to say "please" and "thank you." To look up from your computer when someone is speaking. To make eye-contact. To smile. 

Just to be all Rosser Reeves about it: Decency could be your unique selling proposition. If you still believe in old-fashioned nostrums like that.

It's all here, BTW.

Start at 2:05 if you're time-pressed.

Start at the beginning if you're a human.

Faith.

The gods are powerful, and the law that governs them is strong. It is by this law that we believe the gods exist; it sets the rules for what is right and wrong in our own lives. If, faced with it, you disregard it … there will be no more fairness in the business of humanity. 

—EURIPIDES, HEKABE, 799–805 

"I hear it's about a whale. Is it about a whale?"

"Damned if I know what it's about." 

                                                            —CONVERSATION WITH HECTOR, AUGUST, 1975 

Like a lot of post-Holocaust Jews, I was born into a world where for many, faith had been gassed along with six-million of my co-religionists. Of course I know people who are still believers. Who pray to Yahweh. Who light the Shabbat candles. Who observe the high holy days and teach their children. But I never could.

Despite the sincere efforts of friends, psychiatrists, rabbis and people I respect, I can't "just let it go." It happened on god's watch. Which makes me think if god exists at all, he wasn't watching, or he doesn't care, or he sucks at his job.

As woody allen (he deserves no caps) once said, ‘If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.’

In short, I have no faith.

No Mary Poppins/Annie "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow." If it does, it'll probably give you a melanoma. Right when tump eats medicare to pay for his trillion dollar 'already-won' wars.

I have no faith.

But I have batting practice.

That is, I have the regimens I've adopted over the years that allow me to
a) work with integrity,
b) maintain personal dignity and
c) do my job well.

When I played ball those were getting to the clubhouse early, listening to Hector, my manager, watching the game and the opposing pitcher for 'tells.' And practicing my "craft" like a madman to perfect (as much as possible) the precision and power of my swing, and my discernment of the strike zone. 

In the field I took thousands of grounders. I'd spread rocks and gravel in front of third to anticipate bad hops. And I metronomed my throwing motion so I could throw hard, fast and accurate and from nearly any angle in the hopes of beating even the fastest-runner to the bag.

The same sort of assiduousness applied to my advertising career. I listened. I read. I award-booked. I got in early. I worked and worked and worked and worked.

I filled pages. 
Then I'd hide them.
And filled some more.
Again.

Faith never intervened when I got an assignment and had 16-tons of pressure and no help. What intervened was work.

My business, because of that creed, and touch wood lest I jinx things, has been good. But I never shorten my sails, believing that doing so will abridge my sales. I work on new business all the time. Connecting with people I don't know. Staying connected to those I do. And of course, writing my GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company ads and this blog, which probably at this point has amassed about three-million words--maybe one-hundred thousand of which show my intelligence and skill to positive effect.

No matter how the phone and the cash-register ring, I am almost always nervous. 

I have no faith that my string hasn't played out. As I say to the few people I open up to, "I'm afraid the George-show has gotten tired." 

No one wants a one-trick Georgie.

So, Dig I Must.

Like an old Timex watch, I take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

At a time in my business where the uncertainty of amerika's economy, and the oppression emanating from the creepy holding company hegemon seem to be working against little people, I worry more than usual.

There's no place to go.

But time spent worrying doesn't diminish time spent working and being me and taking my advertising agency equivalent of daily batting practice.

Less than two hours ago, in the course of just 20 minutes, I got two emails from two former CEOs of major global agencies sending clients who are their friends my way.

I write this not to brag.

But to remember.

As I say to many of the people who call me after they've just been shit-canned by this holding company or that, "figure out who you are and what you do well. And be you. No one is better at you than you are."

That could be pablum.

But this is only a dopey blog on advertising. 

And at least it comes in four flavors.

Heavy For a Blog on Advertising.

I never thought about this until I read "Hubris: Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens" by David Stuttard. I started the book a week ago and finished Monday night. I've been thinking about it pretty much 24/7 since I read the review in the Wall Street Journal, which you can read here.

Before I begin, I'd guess about 99.7-percent of world has no idea what the ancient Greeks meant by the idea of Hubris. 

I wish more people grasped the concept. 

Especially during our current benighted era.

The Greeks regarded Hubris as the worst of all wrongs.

 

Studdard writes in his introduction, "hubris originally meant a deliberate and dishonouring transgression of status boundaries, (i.e. when you get too big for your britches--over-stepping your bounds) often involving physical violence, with specific reference to the boundaries that were believed to separate humanity from the divine. In English, the definition has been broadened to include overconfidence or pride. In this book, readers should especially bear the former definition in mind.”

In Georgian words, the transgression of Hubris is when:
You start thinking your shit don't stink. 

You can do no wrong.
You're smarter than everyone else. 

The world owes you a living.

The laws that apply to regular folks don't apply to you.

I'd say, while I'm dishing out blanket statements, about 99.7-percent of the ad industry's problems stem from behavior that's been fundamentally hubristic. And about 99.7-percent of amerikaka's problems, too. Maybe 99.9-percent.

--

Beyond Hubris, the Greek word, not the book title, what I found most interesting in Stuttard's book is the detail with which he writes about the great buildings of ancient Athens. Temples like the Parthenon, one of many sacred buildings Athenians built to venerate their gods, were not just buildings. In an age where few people could read (like today) they told the stories and myths of a common culture.

Where we see slabs of broken down marble, the Greeks saw more. Every bit of Greek temples had a meaning, and a story to tell. We don't see this today, because we haven't ever learned to read such things.

Each of the areas called out in the diagram above were "story-telling" opportunities. They'd be adorned by sculptures and friezes that imparted the foundation myths of the world's first Democracy. Battles. Gods. Victories. Epics.

Like a well-written long-copy ad of the old style, every corner holds something of meaning, and interest. Maybe even something more and larger.

Eventually, as Athens grew greater and greater, becoming the world's dominant power--having vanquished the <er> Persians and the Spartans, politicians and wealthy people (who, if not politicians, run the State) wanted to shift the credit formerly given to the gods for Athens' rise to themselves. As Stuttard writes, “the motivation behind temple building was not primarily religious but political. And the danger was that others saw this, too.” In fact, images of Pericles--bloated by Hubris--were positioned on formerly exalted and godlike places.

All this of course, living in tump's amerikka, scares the p-p-p-Pericles out of me. Seeing buildings renamed. Coins minted with his plastic "comic-book superhero" visage. And his proposed triumphal arch (when we are losing, while adding trillions to the indebtedness of the unborn) are all examples of Hubris writ not large, but XXXXXL, or even one-size-fits-all. 

BTW,
Hubris kicks another god, Nemesis, into action. She is surely waiting just off stage like any good Deus ex Machina. 

Nemesis is the “winged goddess, blue-eyed unbalancer of life, the scourge of hubris, punisher of mortals who transgress the boundaries that separate mankind from gods." Nemesis is the personification:
Of retribution.
Of payback. 

Of you'll get yours.
Of karma.
Of what goes around comes around.

Of 'you'll be sorry.'

You don't have to believe in the gods. You don't have to believe that there is any fairness in the universe. You don't have to buy any of it. You can call all of it a bucket of warm bushwa.

Personally, though (and this is a personal blog) I believe in Newton's Third Law of Motion. Living on the seashore, I believe it in part because I see it every day with the coming and the going of the tide.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As an amerikan, I worry about amerikan Hubris. All who live under a criminal regime are guilty. Even those who speak out.