The God particle.

It appears that physicists working with the large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland have discovered something they've been looking for for a long time: the Higgs boson, or the God particle. The Higgs boson imbues things with mass, which, I suppose, is what makes them things in the first place, that is the possession of mass.

I can't say, not even for a minute, that I understand any of this, any more than I can understand why a TV show like "Jersey Shore," is interesting. But nonetheless, the incipient breakthrough discovery got me thinking. Does advertising have a God particle?

That is, is there something, perhaps something elusive and mysterious and hidden, that imbues an ad (or to be politically correct, a marketing communication with "mass.") Or, more specifically, what is it, what piece of God makes a communication worth noticing, acting upon, remembering or passing along.

Of course, the advertising industry does not have a 17-miles-long Large Hadron Collider to help us unravel such mysteries. And even if we do have 17-miles of empty holding-company desks filled with highly-paid holding company suits who have never written an ad, they do nothing, it seems, to help us.

The only thing they accelerate is their own ambitions, and the collisions they set into motion lead not to breakthroughs but to downfalls.

There may be a God particle in advertising.

It may be interest.

It may be humor.

It may be intelligence or empathy.

It may be a razor-thin slice of humanity and truth in a world that prefers to revel in bombast and cliche.

Maybe one day someone brilliant, a latter-day Bill Bernbach will re-emerge and show us again the way.

Until then we will keep searching.