Advertising lessons from Jonas Salk.

In about 1952, Dr. Jonas Salk had pretty much developed a vaccine against poliomyelitis. No one today realizes how horrible polio was.

It struck indiscriminately, killing about 40,000 mostly children a year and crippling three or four times that number. The summer months were months of dread. Parents worried--with good reason--that their child would be struck down by the disease.

Like I said, Salk had the vaccine pretty much ironed-out and tested by 1952.

But a lot of people didn't like Salk.

They didn't like his methods.

They didn't like that he used inactive virus serum not killed serum. They didn't think he tested thoroughly enough. They didn't think he had screened against TB, kidney damage and other side-effects.

Rather than rolling out the vaccine--the largest clinical trial in the history of the world--in 1953, many scientists urged delaying the trial--the vaccination of millions of children, to 1954.

Salk replied that waiting meant 40,000 deaths.

Over vehement protests, they went ahead with the trials.

Which proved that the drug, while not perfect, prevented polio.

Lives, tens of thousands of them, were saved.

Too often in life, even when the stakes are high, we chicken out.

We prefer another round of research. We prefer another few months of perseveration. We say to ourselves 'it's not yet perfect.'

Our world of marketing is not as black and white as Salk's was.

No one will die if our Triscuits campaign spends another few months in the can.

But there's too much fear of being wrong. Fear of not being perfect. Fear, really, of action.

Sometimes perfection comes from doing and trying.

Not being actually perfect.

A hot morning in New York.

A thick soup has settled on top of New York. It's main ingredients are sweat, stink, moisture and carbon dioxide. That slurry is heated to 90-degrees by a faraway but malevolent sun and everyone and everything in the city is a little more ill-tempered than usual.

A friend of mine, despite the heat I still have one or two, showed me a photograph of someone who snapped a picture of a handheld thermometer on the platform of the B and C downtown trains at 86th Street. It read 129-degrees.

That's bread-baking hot.

Today I waited for a car to take me to work. An air-conditioned car dispatched through the ride-sharing service called Via. As I walked to spot where they were to pick me up, the skies opened up and a downpour ensued.

I sought refuge under an overhang at the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th. I was dry.

Some others were there, their shirts soaked with rain and perspiration. A nanny was their with two small charges and one large stroller. The organic smoothie man stayed in his steel box by the curb, pelted, pelted by the rain.

In short order a gigantic black SUV arrived with three other passengers. I sat down next to a pretty blonde in a short black dress with an intriguing dimple in her knee.

It was too hot to even bother.

We drove to work in silence.

A strange night in the Tempus Fugit.

A lumpy old man was sitting at the bar as I entered the Tempus Fugit. He wore a fedora, without irony, a rumpled grey suit, and an off-white buttoned-down dress shirt with a dark tie.

It was hot outside, hot like a wet towel, a hot that constricted your breathing. Whiskey, my three-year-old golden retriever was restless in the heat. And when Whiskey is restless, well, I am too. So at about three in the morning, I threw on yesterday’s tee-shirt and jeans and walked up to the Tempus Fugit.

In all the years I’d been visiting the place, there was seldom anyone else there. I sat on my usual stool, one in from the end, and Whiskey curled at my feet. The bartender, quick as a whippet was around the mahogany and brought her a bowl of cold water. Whiskey licked at it, then curled into a C, and closed her dark eyes. Back at the serving-side of the woodwork, the bartender pulled me a Pike’s Ale (the ALE that won for YALE!) and placed it in front of me on a small paper napkin embossed with the bar’s name.

I emptied the suds from the juice glass in front of me, and the bartender complied by refilling it. The lumpy man took a Cuban from his breast pocket, offered me one, then lit his. For a moment he disappeared in the haze of his stogie’s blue smoke, then he coughed a few times. Then he began.

“We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Swallow,” he said to me as I swallowed my second glass of Pike’s.

I answered in Shakespeare, and raised him one.

“I know thee not, old man; fall to thy prayers!

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!”

With that, he pushed himself away from the bar. He was old, like I said, and disheveled. But when he pulled himself up to his fullest height, I could see, for a fleeting instant, the man he once was.

His voice boomed as he exhaled some more blue smoke.

“I am Orson Welles,” he commanded. “And who are you. And what have you done?”

I merely stammered. Maybe it was the two Pike’s in rapid succession.

He stared me dead in the eye. He inhaled his Cuban. Then exhaled. Then spoke.

“George walked home through the strange streets of what seemed to be a strange city. For the town was growing…changing…it was heaving up in the middle, incredibly; it was spreading incredibly. And as it heaved and spread, it befouled itself and darkened its skies.”

“Wow,” I said dumbly.

“Wow,” he mocked. “Booth Fucking Tarkington wrote that swill. A second-rate writer of a third-rate novel. And then…”

He examined the lit end of his cigar. He smoothed the leaves of the cylinder then took another long drag.”

“It was to be my apotheosis, my apogee, the continuation of my meteoric rise. My follow-up to ‘Citizen Kane.’ And the Philistines…no, Philistines is too kind, the Helots,” he was shouting now, “The Helots took the film away from me.”

I mustered up some courage. Again, maybe it was the Pike’s talking.

“Actually, Mr. Welles, meteors don’t rise. They fall. They practically, in fact, plummet.”

He stared hard at me. He breathed heavily, rasping. 

“By god, you’re right! They do,” here his laughter coalesced with the phlegm-y rasp of severe coughing fit. After a few minutes, he continued. “They do fall. What’s your name, young man?”

I began to answer.

“No matter,” he interrupted. “I’ll call you Jedediah! Well, Jedediah let’s get drunk. Let’s get good and drunk. Let’s get good and drunk and drive along the coast till we hit Ensenada. There’s a place I know there where a girl costs less than a cigarette.”

The bartender was around the bar by now, leading Welles back to his stool.

“I think you had enough,” was all he said.

I had had enough, too. I passed the bartender two twenties for my Pike’s. And for the entertainment.

“On me,” he said.

And Whiskey and I walked slowly home.

Selfies and advertising.

I'll admit, I have never taken a selfie.

But I can't help but think that selfie culture has taken over lives.

This is a mindset that puts the self at the center of all things.

The self is larger, greater and more important.

You need only walk through Times' Square to see evidence of this.

Everything is all about us.

I think the reductio ad absurdum of this is the putative candidacy of Donald Trump. And his proclamation that he'd like Sarah Palin in his Cabinet.

This is the apotheosis of selfie-ism.

Politics, in this case, is no longer about the country or the greater good.

It's about aggrandizement.

Of course, in advertising we are not immune.

No, we are also playing the selfie game.

Putting our own selves above the needs of our clients.

A mad dash for awards even if it means lying and cheating.

Agencies are no longer known by the brands they've built but by the Lions they've cadged.

That's a selfie.

If selfies are our measure of success, our measure of accomplishment, our measure of a glamorous life, then we are all doomed.

Our industry will shrink even more.

Our solipsism will consume us.

We're doing it to ourselves.

The copywriter who came in from the cold.

Intrigue at the office. Makes me think of how much advertising is like a bad spy story. Alliances, affairs, double-crosses. To that end:

I met Lubjek at precisely the highest point of the bridge, right over the center of the river. I don’t know how he did it, but he was on-time to the second. I had said, “Let’s meet at eight,” and at exactly eight, with no seconds on either side, he stepped out of a black Trabant that sped away in the fog of its own diesel gloom.

“Lubjek,” I said.

“Tannenbaum.” We didn’t shake hands. We didn’t nod. Our eyes never met. But in unison we each took a long drag on the cigarettes we were smoking. Again in unison, we exhaled in a Trabant-like veil of vapor.

“I have the K. file,” I said, nodding toward the black leather attaché I was carrying.

“I have the Z. papers,” he responded.

“The K. files will tell you how to access Q. through R, S and T. But you can’t say how you got them.”

“And the Z. papers. They will connect you with D, E and F. Assuming you can find G.”

“We know where G is,” I bluffed.

We exchanged attachés. To be extra careful, I cuffed mine to my left wrist.

Lubjek lit another cigarette, throwing his previous one into the muddy water below.

“Stoyanoff is onto Timoshevitz and Korsakova is having an affair with Timoshevitz’s brother’s wife.”

“Complicated,” I said.

“Keep an eye on D. He is not to be trusted. And E, well, you probably already know that he drinks too much. And when he drinks too much, he talks too much.”

“That’s how people wake-up dead.”

I drew a cigarette pack from my coat’s inside pocket. I shook one out, then offered Lubjek one. He preferred the pack he pulled from his own jacket.

“From Kazahkstan,” he said. “Turkish tobacco.” He drew 50 percent of the cigarette down in one inhale.

“Latchkey is the one to watch.  As far as I can spit,” I said, spitting, “I trust him. He could interfere with E., crossing L. and that could stymie getting through to F.”

I put my hand out and we shook good night.

That was wishful thinking.

The night was anything but good.

A morning, early.

It was an early morning, like before 6 early.

Late yesterday, I got an email about a pressing assignment. Not a pressing assignment like I have some wrinkled shirts to iron. But a pressing assignment--you get the idea.

We walked over about a block and a half to a small conference room to chat about the assignment. It seemed fairly important and very rushed. Stuff is needed late today.

So, like I said I got in before six. I put Rossini's "Semiramide" on my iPod. If Semiramide doesn't make your blood flow faster, like Formula 1 faster, well something's wrong with you.

I guess because I've been around the block more than a few times, I tend not to look at assignments--especially 'writing' assignments with a great deal of trepidation. The analogy I'll use is this: You might think your car is in serious trouble because it's spewing oil. I've come to realize that that's an easy problem to fix. Just find the pinhole and seal it.

But most people start screaming that it's the end of something. It's not. There are minor things to handle in order to make things right.

In any event, like I said I a couple of ticks before 6 I sat down at my table. I put Rossini up high, and I did what I do.

I typed.

I typed and I re-typed.

I read and re-read the notes that were passing for direction.

By around 8:15, I was pretty sure I had plugged all the metaphorical leaks and I sent my copy around.

There's a chance, of course, that I did a lousy job and people will hate what I've done.  There's a chance I'll be yelled out. Castigated. Flagellated. Lacerated.

But those are the risks you take.

It's better to put something out there and worry than merely worry in the abstract.

What's happened?

I spent the first 32 years of my career not having heard the following words that for the last five or seven years I've heard dozens of times a day.

Content.

Narrative.

Ecosystem.

Story-telling.

Insights.

Conversations.

Activate.

Amplify.

Use-case.

Creators.

Makers.

Has that much changed in human behavior that we've needed to invent a new vocabulary to mark it all?

Or are we getting better at bullshit because that's what we get paid to do?

Over at the scurrilous comments section at "Agency Spy," I just read that a planner I once worked with is "a brilliant champion of digital truth. Baptized at the fractious crossroads of storytelling and technology."  

What does that even mean? 

What does any of this mean?

I, personally, am so alienated from the vapidness of our garbage culture (a culture where Donald Trump is a thought-leader) that I have practically left the ranks of the living. I don't watch TV. I don't go to the movies. I'm finding it harder and harder to listen to the nightly news on NPR.

And while I make my way through a fair portion of "The New York Times'" non-fiction best-sellers, that doesn't count as being in our culture. Because our culture is reading comic books grandiosely called 'graphic novels.'

As Neal Postman pointed out in his classic "Amusing Ourselves to Death,"

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. 

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. 

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. 

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. 

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. 

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture... . 

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. 

In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. 

In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. 

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. 

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.”

Tempest on Tenth Avenue.

I went to a little deli on Tenth Avenue and 45th this morning, a couple of blocks from my office. It's a cruddy little place with a water-stained undulating ceiling but I like it anyway. There's no pretense here. Just a place to pick up a couple of bottles of seltzer and coffee from an urn the size of a suitcase nuclear bomb.

The place was empty when I walked in. A couple of guys sitting on plastic milk-crates restocking the soda refrigerators in the back, one crooked-cigarette manning the grill and the counter man, a medium-sized middle-aged Puerto Rican who was born, like Scaramouche, with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

A young lady walked in, a winsome young lady.

Scaramouche immediately picked out a banana for her from the pile on the worn linoleum. He held it up to his ear like a phone.

"I have only 40 cents this morning," she apologized. "I owe you a time."

We watched her, carefully, as she sashayed out.

Before I knew it, about six or nine dark men walked in in their construction clothes. They were picking up their various breakfasts, shouting orders and getting their joe. Commotion.

A short Puerto Rican got ready to pay. He was staring into his phone, had headphones on and was playing a video game.

"$3.25," Scaramouche said.

"I owe you from yesterday," said the gamer.

"How much?"

The gamer made a back hand motion with his strong right hand as if, across the counter, to slap Scaramouche.

"I get the same thing everyday."

"$6.50."

The gamer peeved but funny said, "Anyone have a dog collar so I can walk this mutt outside."

They exchanged toast and coffee for a five and a one.

"I'm 50 cents short," said the gamer.

Scaramouche was shoveling sugar into a coffee cup now, his back to the gamer.

"You pay me tomorrow. 55 cents."

"50."

"Interest."

I paid and left.

It was already a good day.

A firing, a joke and a philosophy.

Yesterday, like most other days, there was a big firing on Madison Avenue.

It doesn't matter who or where or what.

Sometimes it's an agency that gets fired by a client.

Sometimes it's a high-falutin' creative big-wig.

Sometimes, like yesterday, it's an agency president.

Like I said, it doesn't really matter who or where or what.

To my eyes, all these firings are faces of the same coin.

Agencies, or clients, or departments were hoping for a quick heroin fix. When that isn't delivered, the axe falls.

There's an old advertising joke I like a lot about a woman who dies and goes to heaven.

St. Peter is interviewing her, looking over her dossier.

"Something doesn't make sense," he says. "You've been married for 25 years and records show you're still a virgin. How do you explain that?"

"Easy," she replies. "My husband was an ad man. Every night, he'd sit on the side of the bed and tell me how great it was going to be."

Here's the truth, the pithy core of the matter.

Work, transformation, business success takes   w   o   r   k.

No pomaded puffin dressed in all-black has a secret formula that will all-at-once back-up a semi filled with $100s to your agency.

Judge people by their track records.

Not their promises.

"Squint" Quinones in the Mexican League.

I got a call last night at nine, just as I entered my still-being-renovated apartment. It was German "Squint" Quinones, a pitcher on the Seraperos whom I played with in the Mexican League 40 years ago. 

Squint was in transit, from Mexico City, where he lived, to Boston, to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he played AAA ball for four seasons before giving up the ghost. The Pawtucket squad was having a reunion--a Juegos de Viejos--before they closed the old ball park for good and had invited back every player who ever wore the Pawtucket flannels.

We met at a little bar down the block from me, Bailey's Corner, a suitably dim place without too many hipsters and too much noise. After downing a Leinenkugel or two, Squint and I were decently lubricated and began, as old men do, to talk about old times, back to the when the right-hander first appeared for the Seraperos.

We had our usual line-up that night. After playing a week in right, with a rookie filling in for me at third, because Bonilla was out with a hamstring, I was back at the hot corner. 

“Brutus” Cesar, CF                .308  4   47

Arnulfo Adame, 2B                .277  2   40

Daniel Garibay, LF                .293  20 103

Salome Rojas, 1B                 .262  22  91

Jorge Navidad, 3B                .287  11  73

Clemente Bonilla, RF            .252   8   44

Isael Buentello, C                  .244  13  65

Angel Diablo, SS                   .217  0    19
German Quinones, RHP         0-0  0.00

I'll admit, I didn't mind my six or seven games way out in right. But playing out there is not the game I signed up for. 

You don't think, maybe, of ballplayers being lonely in the field, but it is, in right anyway, a sort of no-man's land. It's not unusual to go three innings or four without a ball hit in your direction. And aside from a desultory backing up of first base lest an errant throw escape the leather of Salome Rojas, there just wasn't that much to do.

What's more, you are too far away to participate in an activity I excelled in, that of infield chatter. I could gab with the best of them and, once I learned the lingo, argue with umps, insult batters and their mothers in gutter Spanish and, in general, make a bi-lingual nuisance of myself. There was none of that out in right.

I'd read, of course, in "The Catcher in the Rye," how Allie, Holden's Hollywood older brother had written poems on his glove to memorize while stationed on the greensward. But I wasn't about to scribble John Donne on my Rawlings, no matter how often and for whom my bell was tolling.

We had a new pitcher on the mound that night who had come up from a lower level of the Mexican League, having, we heard, lit up the dusty little town he pitched for with a wicked speedster and an unorthodox delivery.

As he took his pre-game tosses, we infielders gathered around. No one else was yet in the ballpark, it was just us Saraperos, playing ball and warming up.

German Quinones wore cerveza-bottle thick glasses and was throwing loosely, almost gently to the plate. Nonetheless, and seemingly without effort, his fastball cracked in Buentello's mitt. The man had stuff.

"Toss something hard," Hector told him. And Quinones kicked his left leg high in the air and leaned back to put something extra on the pitch. Buentello caught the strike, then stood up and walked to the mound.

"It's good," he said. "He is fast."

We left the mound area, went to the locker room and generally goofed off until it was game time. There's so much waiting time when you're a ball player. Waiting for the ball to come your way. Waiting for your ups. Waiting for the game to start. Waiting for it to end. Most of all, waiting to for the bumpy bus ride into another too sunny town to be over so we could wait around for yet another game.

The game began and Quinones did something I've never seen before or since. As Buentello entered his crouch, Quinones took off his lid, wiped clean his thick lenses and squinted into the stocky backstop's mitt. He looked for all intents and purposes like a latter day Mexican Mr. Magoo on the hill, as if he couldn't see the 60-feet 6-inches from the slab to the plate. Once he squinted for a good five seconds, he let go of his hard one. It sailed a good six feet over the head of a leaping Buentello and into the stands.

All of Quinones' warm-ups went this way. He was firing like a blind man with a rifle, squinting with each pitch into Buentello's crouch.

Buentello went out to calm his rookie nerves, but Quinones calmed him down instead.

"They call me 'Squint' he said. "Soy practiamente ciego." I am practically blind, if anyone asks.

The game began and the first batter stepped in. Quinones wound and knocked the straw hat off a woman sitting in the stands eight feet down the third-base line. Then he came back with a fastball right down the center of the plate. Then came another mis-guided missile, this one almost decapitating the umpire.

Finally, after three walks and two conferences on the mound, Squint began finding Buentello with some regularity. In fact, he struck out six of the next nine batters, the other three grounding out harmlessly. In between throwing strikes, Squint mixed in a pitch now and then that went 20 feet over someone's head, or into the opposing team's dugout, or would plunk the opposing batsman on the square of his back.

Squint went on like this for about six weeks, scaring the crap out of the other teams because of his bad eyesight, erratic control and blazing fastball. He was striking out dozens and gaining wins.

After those six weeks, Squint had moved to second in our rotation behind the Seraperos' perennial all-star, Tito Puente. He was, if memory serves, something like 6 and 2.

But eventually it caught up with him.

We were playing a three-game set down in Campeche, all night games, which left us nothing to do all day. Squint headed out to the racetrack to bet on the ponies and at the racetrack one or a couple of the Piratas de Campeche spotted him.

They saw him sans specs,  reading the small type of the Racing Form. They saw him following his horses around the track. All without squinting, all without his blind man's glasses. Word quickly got around. Squint could see.

From that day forward, Squint's squint scared no one. He still had good stuff, but once the opposing batsmen were no longer afraid of being beaned and maybe killed by an errant pitch, Squint's edge was gone.

Squint began to be hit and eventually fell back in the rotation, ultimately becoming a little-used reliever.

Squint and I talked about old times for a couple hours, until it was time for him to cab to LaGuardia to make his flight to Boston.

The drinks were on me.

Squint couldn't see his way to paying.

Trouble.

Last night while the rest of you were sleeping, I wrote a beautiful "Keatsian" manifesto simplifying problems so complex it was like the Rosetta Stone in its ability to make clear the indecipherable.

Unfortunately, it all disappeared, all those words I was sure I'd remember in the morning, I forgot.

So this morning, as I arrived at my lonesome strip of desk, I had work to do.

No time for blogging.

I'm behind the 8-ball.

Not a comfortable place.

I'll try to write later, if I get a moment.

I heard yesterday from an old Mexican League friend, a pitcher called Squint Quninones. He'll be in town, passing through tomorrow on his way to visit old teammates in Boston. He was hoping we could bend an ear and an elbow.

I haven't seen or heard from Squint in 40 years, so naturally I don'y want to miss the chance to have a beer with him.

No story from Squint as yet, except maybe the story of how he got his nickname.

But no time for that.

Like I said, I'll try again later.

A Larchmont wash-out.

Though the radio said the rain would, at times, be torrential, we went up to the beach on Saturday anyway.

Whiskey insisted.

I know it doesn't make a pile of sense to attribute an understanding of chronological time to a Golden Retriever, but somehow Whiskey understands when the weekend is here. Accordingly she makes it abundantly clear to us that she expects to go swimming.

So, again, despite the reports of inclement weather, we loaded up the Simca for a day in the country.

Since we left before 7AM, we made it up to Larchmont in fewer than 30 minutes. Along the way, a light drizzle began, which we decided to ignore. It was hot enough out--even at 7:15 that the mist was welcome and cooling.

My wife jumped out of the car with Whiskey and walked to water's edge with Whiskey's breakfast. Whiskey ate like she hadn't seen food for a month. And by the time I had parked and locked the car, she had already fetched her day-glo orange bumper a half dozen times.

My wife tries, but Whiskey appreciates my arm. She appreciates how far I can throw her toys into the sea. And she appreciates that I'll toss a stone nearby her floats to better help her mark what she needs to retrieve.

By the time I arrived at the beach it was raining harder. There was one other guy there. A 40-year-old with a water-loving Viszla named Elsa.

Now it was pouring and there were bolts of lightning from down about Co-op City way. The thunder roared.

All of us humans, took cover under an all-too-porous aluminum dock. It did nothing to shield us from rain that had turned torrential.

Still, I braved things. I kept tossing Whiskey's float into the water. She kept doing what she's been bred over the centuries to do. Bringing it back to me.

Finally, after about ten minutes, we were as wet as the sea itself.

We ran for cover and made it to the Simca, which was dry. Even the leak near the right passenger-side window. Lothar, my Croatian mechanic, down in Tom's River has done wonders with the 50-year-old machine.

Whiskey was wet on her tarpaulin in the back. My wife and I were dripping on the vinyl in the front. The engine turned over. I shifted into first and we drove back to the city. Whiskey wondered why such a short session.

My wife further convinced I am out of my mind.

Like no other training in the world.

When I was knee-high to a cockroach in this business, with a portfolio and a prayer, I got a job in the in-house advertising department of Bloomingdale's.

I didn't know it at the time, but I'm not sure I could have had a better start in the business and, for that matter, adult life in New York.

For one, Bloomingdale's at the time was a hive of creativity. We did great promotions, shot with the best photographers, and the store was the center of a lot of attention in many circles.

Second, and most important, I had to write at least ten ads a week and I had to get them out the door.

There was no time for dilly-dallying. No time to ping and pong. No time to wallow in my innate lack of confidence.

No. You had ads to write, to get approved, to get shot, to get approved again, to take through the buyers, to proofread, to fine tune.

This was all before digital, all before computers, practically before overnight shipping.

Today, more often than not, all time is crunch time.

Something that should take weeks, well, you're expected to hand it in in minutes.

I usually get stressed but I do my best to handle it.

Maybe this afternoon, I'll drop by 59th and Lex and buy a few pairs of socks.

My way of saying thanks to Bloomingdale's.

He ain't heavy.

There's a deli down the street from my office on the corner of 10th Avenue and 47th Street. It's a dirty little place that'll make you a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and dispense thick black coffee, where you can pick up a turkey sandwich on a stale kaiser roll along with a bottle of seltzer.

In short, it's a deli like about ten thousand others in New York.

The thing I like best about the joint is its name: 5 Brothers Deli.

Brothers and Deli seem to go together in New York like Original went with Rays went with Pizza.

There are more brothers than the Karamazovs.

There's Brothers Delis numbering from Two to Nine.

I think this all grew out of a place over on 9th Avenue called 7 Brothers Deli.

They grew to be successful and other Delis began to Brotherize their names.

So there's a 2 Brothers Deli out in Flatbush. A 3 Brothers Deli at 900 8th Avenue. A 4 Brothers Deli at 4402 White Plains Road in the Bronx.

Like I said there's a 5 Brothers Deli on 10th and 47th. A 6 Brothers Deli at 689 10th Avenue. A 7 Brothers Deli over at 719 9th.

There doesn't seem to be a local 8 Brothers Deli, though there is one in Philadelphia. Appropriately enough, "the city of Brotherly Love."

As for 9 Brothers. They're a Circus Act in Yonkers. Right now riding unicycles while juggling.

Here's how.

Often what we need to do in advertising is to take a complex thought and make it simple and understandable.

Carl Ally said, "we must comfort the afflicted."

By that I mean, people today are beleaguered by complication. If we are to impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way, we, as marketers, must cut through that complexity and explain the what, why and how to our customer.

No one handles complexity better than "The New York Times."

Agencies could learn from this. I'd love to have things boiled down like the below. I suspect clients would like it, too.

Race, Faulkner and Advertising.

I finished a short book last night called "Something Must be Done about Prince Edward County." You can buy it here and for what it's worth, I recommend it.

The book is the story of a rural Virginia county an hour west of Richmond, Virginia that in response to the 1954 Supreme Court "Brown vs. Board of Education" ruling decided to close all its public schools rather than have white and black children in school together.

The white kids were able to go (for free) to a "private academy" that was paid for with tax-payer funds. For four years, black children in the county had no access to free public education.

I write about this because in advertising we like to believe in magic.

We'd like to believe those email ads we get about losing 10 lbs with one pill. I often say to myself (no one else listens) that new media people are the medieval alchemists of today. They believe you can turn base bullshit into gold. All it takes is declaring it so.

We'd like to believe that changing entrenched beliefs is simple.

It's not.

Though "this will change everything" has become one of the mantras of our age, very little, in fact, ever changes.

We live in an era where CMOs come and go like the seasons or the swallows to Capistrano. With them, ad campaigns change with shocking regularity. We throw them out long before we use them up. Long before they get implanted in people's heads and minds. We get bored with them long before their expiration data.

Fact is, most people do the same with jobs, apartments, even spouses.

We want everything to succumb to a magic bullet. We want instantaneous results. Now.

Think of those people who, when Barack Obama was elected president, blithely declared America "post-racial."

Beliefs and behaviors change slowly.

Even in our hyper-lapse times.

We may wish that life operated on the time-frame of a deck, but it doesn't. 

Faulkner said it best. Not unusual there.

"The past isn't dead. It's not even past."

Torpid Tuesday.

If you’re in marketing—especially if you’re a copywriter or someone who cares about words—you owe it to yourself to pick up Victor Klemperer’s dense and almost impenetrable book, “The Language of the Third Reich.”

Klemperer, a linguist and a Jew in Nazi-Germany, and later a subject of the East German Communist state, made analysis of the language of the speech of the Master Race his reason for being.

Like Orwell, he looked deep into language to unearth true meaning.

I know this is complicated for a blog on advertising. But we need to look at our industry, I think, from a philological point of view. To get to the true nature of our world we need to examine the language we use and question why we use it?

Why do we harp on the word “authentic,” banging it around like a stick in a swill pail? It's probably because we're covering up for being inauthentic.

Why do we use the word “curate,” when it’s clearly not what we mean? We could say “pull together,” or “select.”

But we choose—with the fervor of religious zealots—to use language that no one seems to understand. Often in the service of creating work that no one will see. With a message that seems trivial at best. You know, to win awards we pay for.

Content.

Story-telling.

Telling stories.

Paradigm.

Modality.

Insight.

We have created a language that has no meaning. A language that is built to obscure, befuddle and confuse rather than communicate with precision and clarity. We have embraced that language. Every meeting seems to me to be the same two or three dozen words repeated over and again in a different order.

Truth be told, I leave meeting after meeting not knowing what was said, what I’m charged with doing, or why. When I ask for clarification, I get the opposite. And the distinct impression that no one really knows what or why the fuck.