I try to help people in the industry when they come to me for help.
I try to return phone calls.
I try to be a decent human being.
I try to connect people.
All that.
But when it comes to work, I'm not so nice.
A lot of my age-peers these days ask me why I work so hard. Why I'm so avaricious and hungry. Why I'm so determined and fervid.
I wrote something on my blog the other day--a kind of stream-of-consciousness response to those questions. Without really thinking about it, I wrote: "It's not about the money anymore, it's about kicking ass.
I like to win. I like to win assignments. I like to win growth. I like to win for clients. I like to win against other people who want the business I want. I like to win against everyone who ever put me down because I'm not like other people and don't hang out with the boys. I like to win to show the big-money holding company fickers that I shouldn't have been thrown out at 62--at the peak of my powers--because I'm too old, or not diverse, or, I'm afraid, a Jew (in coded language, they call us: 'privileged'.)
I like to win to show the poseurs in Cannes who are wearing wool hats in June and cliché facial hair and cliché tattoos, and who do cliché work that never actually runs and never actually has a material effect on anything other than a $12 trophy that you spent $12,000,000 trying to win, that you are little more than cultists pretending what you do and poo and make and fake are worthy of awards--awards that are leveraging a prestigious name to lend prestige to an industry that embarrassed to do what it's actually supposed to do, so it dresses itself up in fine feathers and furs to finagle the fakery of it all.
Also, re the people who have raped our industry, as they have pillaged so many others, who have seen marketing spend as percentage of corporate revenue drop to its lowest point ever (except for 2021 during the 'Covid' era) and who nevertheless persist in publicly whistling past the graveyard and celebrating their hubris, I want to win against them.
Against all that, I like to win.
Etiam si omnes, Ego no.
Even if all others, not I.
Not I.
Not long ago, I read an article in the sports section of the cheery neo-fascist Wall Street Journal that brought it all to the forefront for me. If you can get past their Draconian paywall, you can read it, too.
There's a notion on our modern world about geniality, collegiality, bridge-building, togetherness, collaborationism and other treacly-sweet lies propagated by people who want to benefit from your hard work without paying for it. They want us to play nice while they're knives out stealing from us. It's the sort of bullshit that's behind the credits of a six-second spot being longer than the credits of Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky."
No. Don't watch the whole thing. It's too good for you.
You don't have to be a bastard and sabotage people. But I don't believe in playing nice. I believe in predatory thinking. (Thanks, Mr. Trott.) I believe in everything you are, everything you've learned, everything synapse you snap should be dedicated to winning. For yourself, your family, your work and your client.
The WSJ writes:
I think that's how I've written a blog every day for 17 straight years and survive in a business and a world and at times even a family that seems to want me dead, or at least forgotten.
Our purpose here is not to fade-away. Not to be forgotten or marginalized. Not to be unimportant.
That's what we're supposed to do for brands. Not with lies. Not with stunts that last about nine-seconds. Not with fake ads and their accompanying fake case-studies.
But with real work.
Work that makes brands thought about. Considered. Selected. Bought. Re-bought.
That day will come when I opt in to disappearance.
But it will come on my terms.
See ya.
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