Nifty™.

There's a commercial that's running and running and running that I absolutely abhor, and not just because it was done at Ogilvy.

I hate it because every aspect of it is false. The casting. The problem. The solution. The acting. Everything is just plasticine. 

It makes the Barbie movie look like Eisenstein's "Battle on the Ice," from his seminal movie "Alexander Nevsky." There, everything is real. It's human and relatable. The commercial I'm speaking of makes polyester feel gritty.

I saw the commercial again last night.

Mind you, I watch 25 minutes of TV a night. Jeopardy! and nothing more. Yet I see this spot over and again. 

I checked online.

This horrid spot has been running for more than two years. 

I know Broadway shows run for a long while. But if I, a light TV user have seen this spot 64,946 times, if it's made me cringe 64,946 times, if it's made me hate the client 64,946 times, how many times over the last two years has a heavy TV viewer seen it?

One of the things I did when I started GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, was think about everything clients told me they hated about working with a big agency. The slowness, the difficulty in getting a scope, the unresponsiveness to client needs, and their general ossification--you know, where they'd allow the same spot to run for over two years.

I decided to do the opposite.

I'm not, after all, monopoly-controlled. With me, you get choice. And someone who listens. 

So, early on, I developed an "offerings" list. If I had a phone call with a prospective client, I wanted to be able to send them a proposal within four hours. Having a list of offerings would help.

I first invented something I've had more than a modicum of success with. 

I call it the 3-6-3.

I spend three days learning, reading and talking to the client. Six days of writing and thinking. Three days on revisions.

The cost? A day-rate times 12. 

That seemed smart to me and clients love it. It's fast. Efficient. Productive. And I don't linger like a fart in business class. 

Next, I created something I call "The Nifty Fifty™." 

When I entered the business--way back when we had a print-based world, three print ads could feed a client for about 18 months. Now that print is primarily being used to pick-up after the dog, agencies and clients are still creating presentations the old-fashioned way--as if everything had stayed the same when in fact, so much has changed.

It occurred to me, in a social media world, you need a different ad every day. That's how you become something I call a "living, breathing brand." 

If you don't give people evidence that you're doing something interesting, why would they care about you? If they came to your website once, why would they come again, unless there was some spark, some news, something of value. 

I started using the matrix above. I had adapted it from a 1970s book by a professor at Duke called James David Barber. In his book, "The Presidential Character," he classified American presidents using this grid. Somehow I remembered it for almost 50 years and was able to apply it to the modern advertising business.

The Citizens spot above I put in the Active/Negative slot. It's energetically bad. I don't care what research says, people generally abhor the commercial yet they run the shit out of it.

I believe clients and agencies should be in the upper right. Do things people like. Do a lot of them. Keep it fresh and fun and surprising.

In a sense, my matrix aligns to the matrix below. It might take a moment to work out all the concord, but give it a go.

IMHO, the Citizens Spot is clearly in box 4.

I don't want my clients or my work anywhere but box 2.

Ergo, the Nifty Fifty™:

Lately, and maybe it's because of some vagary of today's economy, or whatever fear is running through the advertising market right now, I've been getting more clients interested in a Nifty Fifty™ than in a 3-6-3™.

One of the reasons that people hate advertising is that so much advertising is so hateable.

It has no news value. It provides no information. It doesn't entertain. And it's absent of kindness and humanity.

BAD                        

1. No news.
2. No information.
3. Not entertaining.

4. Phony.
5. Repetitive.

GOOD
1. News.
2. Useful information.

3. Entertaining.
4. Realistic.
5. Fresh.

Whatever you do as a creative person, whatever you're looking for as a client, from the very beginnings of human time on our dying planet, good communications have had the attributes I've listed above, under the word Good.

I'm sure people will argue with that. They'll tell me that GenW thinks entirely different from any permutation of our species that has ever existed before and therefore we need to show gyrating people in three-second increments accompanied by too-loud percussions to reach them.

The other day, my friend Evelyn posted an eight-minute Apple Underdogs spot. 

Eight MoFo-minutes.

And I loved every MoFo one of those minutes.

Because of all the reasons I've pointed out so far.

There are a lot of ways to do crappy work. A lot of ways to make people hate your work and the brands we work for.

There's only one way to do good work.

Respect the viewer. 
Respect yourself.
Respect your profession.

I hope that's nifty enough for you.