Friday, January 8, 2021

The New Ad School: A modern curriculum.


Nearly 200 years ago, Herman Melville (who never won even a single Webby) wrote, "A whale-ship was my Harvard and my Yale College." That was his quaint way of suggesting that life experience might be as valuable as formal education.

Nonsense. 

Today virtually everyone in advertising goes to ad school to study ads!

What progress since the days of the old spermaceti-meister.

Who cares about the hoary, gendered and canceled notion that, as encapsulated by Alexander Pope, "the proper study of mankind is man."

We are much more apt to find what Bill Bernbach called "simple, timeless human truths," if we study not human behavior but the fake, precious and antiseptic ads that dominate awards' competitions.

With that in mind, GeorgeCo., a Delaware Company, LLC, is proud to introduce the GeorgeCo., a Delaware Company, LLC, Advertising School--a modern ad school, with a modern curriculum that will quickly put young and old ad students-alike on the path to a robust five-figure salary in the glamorous world of Madison Avenue.

Here's a sampling of this year's courses:

1.       
Youth: not wasted on the young. Agency survival. How to stay under the age of 28. Forever.

2.       
Yes-person, 101. Nodding your way to success with timely head-movement-derived ass-kissery.

3.       
What color is my golden parachute? The art of failing up and up and up.

4.       
The 700 Club. How to win 700 awards with a single ad that never ran.

5.       
You won't read this. Copywriting tips for a 'nobody reads copy world.'

6. 
      
What's in a word? The world's 200 most meaningful meaningless words and how to use them.

7.
What's in a word? Again. 
The world's 200 most meaningful meaningless words and how to use them. Again.

8. 
The name game. Strategically dropping the names Lance, Noam or Spike in every meeting. They really want to shoot your banner ad.

9.      
A Cannes-do attitude. Imitating last year's Cannes winners for fun and profit.

10.
Cleaning the seas. Removing a Texas-sized gyre of ocean plastic from the Pacific with one 300x250 banner ad.

11.
Fighting for equality. We learn how to make woke ads for a brand that uses slave-labor to manufacture its products.

12.
'It's dead.' A two-semester seminar on declaring things dead without evidence or foundation.

13.
Harkening 101. A look back to pre-historic advertising times--the 1980s. [Guest lecturer: Mark Read].

14.
I don't do radio. 500 ways to say, 'I don't do radio.' (Kaore au i te reo irirangi) in Maori.

15.
Leadership through Pontification. A four-semester course on everything you need to be the emptiest of empty suits. Learn: 'that's not what Wieden would do.' 'It's close,' and 'Try something different.' Special focus on never showing up with ideas of your own--only criticizing others'.

16.
Something about TikTok. We will say things with utter conviction. Special attention will be paid to ululating and undulating.





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