Good Old New York Sarcasm.

 

Right hip in need of replacement and all, my wife took me to the Met this afternoon to see the wildly heralded exhibit, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350. The show featured about eighty paintings--many which though they were meant to be cited near each other, hadn't been displayed together literally for centuries.

I'll admit, I am such a creature of advertising that it doesn't take me long to find an advertising point in almost everything I see and do. It's an ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny affect of mine, and I really don't seem to be able to help it.

Of course, you can't see a show featuring European art in the 14th Century without considering the Plague, or the Black Death. Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, leapt via flea from rat to people. And from people to people. When it inexplicably dissipated (though it returned with regularity) roughly fifty-percent of Europe's population had died. Florence, Italy didn't achieve its 14th Century population again until the 19th Century.

As I was going through the exhibit, I noticed the explanatory cards listed the dates the artists being featured were active. I first noticed Simone Martini, 1315-44. 29 years. 

I said to myself, hmmm, life expectancy was shorter then. He might have died from the plague, yet he had an active 29 years of a career. That's longer than most advertising creatives get today. If you start at 25, most people are long-gone 29-years-later at 54.

I let that sit until I got to Bartolo di Fredi. He was active from 1353-1410. 57 years. If he started at an agency at 25, he'd have worked until he hit 82. Talk about a Divine Comedy. 

Imagine an 82-year-old in an agency today. It seems half the people are 82 months old.

Then I got to the Lorenzetti brothers, Ambrogio and Pietro. They had 28-year careers. So, if they started at 25, they'd have made it to 53.

I end my myopic look at the exhibit by looking at Lippo Memmi. He was active from 1317-1356. 39 years. If he had started at an agency at the age of 25, he'd have lasted till he was 64.

I was about the oldest man standing when I got shit-canned at Ogilvy in January, 2020. Just as the Covid plague was descending. At that point, I had been active for 36 years.

That's when it hit me.

Despite the Black Death, the life-expectancy for creative people was longer in the middle ages than it is today, in a modern holding company agency.

You could have had a longer career in 14th Century Siena than in 21st Century New York.

Oh, in case you're wondering about the small figurine at the top of this post. It's by Pietro Lorenzetti, who was active from 1320-1348. 

It's called "Man of Sorrows."

I can't relate.

 

Quincy and Stanley.

My father, Stanley I. Tannenbaum, had a long career in advertising. He rose to become Chairman of the Board of a merged-out-of-existence agency (it was a top-twenty-agency when he was there) called Kenyon & Eckhardt.

That was the first 25 years of his career. For the last 15, he was the founder and Chairman of Northwestern University's Medill School Integrated Marketing Communications program.

If you said, he "wrote the book" on integrated marketing communications, you might be trite. But you wouldn't be entirely wrong. My father literally wrote the book. I'm not sure if, 30 years after it was published, people still read the book, but for a long while it was the sine qua non of advertising text books.

Somehow, Integrated Marketing Communications send me to Quincy Jones.

Like many people who still live in a fact-based, literate world, I read early last week the great Quincy Jones' obituary in The New York Times. Entirely worth reading if you believe people like Jones shape culture not Verizon using Beyonce in an over-produced commercial.

Reading Jones' obituary, I felt ignorant. I wanted to hear some of the music I hadn't to date paid particular attention to. I downloaded this album and listened to some of it this morning on my way to the private-equity-disaster of a grocery store to buy paper napkins, low-fat yogurt and a dozen eggs.

When I got to the song at the top of this post, a song I knew primarily through Paul Williams' version, my ear buds almost popped out of my ears.

This post won't do you any good if you don't take 150-seconds and listen to Quincy Jones' arrangement.

But if you do, better than anything my father every theorized and taught about it, you'll understand what integrated marketing communications is all about in practice, not merely in textbook. 

Because what you have is a true "audio campaign." You have the original "hucklebuck" tune. That's the foundation of the marketing campaign, then you have different instruments (i.e. channels) adding to it. Diverging from it. Coloring it in. Taking it in slightly different places. Making it theirs. Working their strengths, their humor, their interpretations.

But always always always, the orchestra (the various agencies, creatives or channels involved) come back to the original theme. They stay true to the song. While making the song theirs. While adding to the song. They always come back to the song.

I think that's what a modern multi-channel campaign is supposed to do. I think that that's always been true. 

Listen to Paul Williams' Huckle-Buck. Listen to Quincy Jones' arrangement.

You might learn something about advertising. And how to make it work better. Sound better. How everything works together and uses its strengths.

We used to care.

Brick-aback.

Put two bricks together.

Put two bricks together.

No matter who you are.

No matter what's happened to you.

No matter how bleak it looks.

Summon the strength.

Find the bricks. Or make them.

And put them together.

That's how we build.

One brick. Another. Together.

When things fall apart, as they do.

Put two bricks together.

Rebuild the work they killed.

The career that got waylaid.

The relationship that blew up.

The family that entropied.

The nation that forgot.

Put two bricks together.

That's where architecture starts.

And life.

Now.

 

AI-dvertising

Nearly every day, someone posts something somewhere about the purported prowess of AI and the efficiency and efficacy of using the technology to advance the advertising business.

This is another case--another of the trillion cases--where we as a society are using the wrong measures and measuring the wrong things.

About a decade ago, I noticed that movie reviews on the radio news show I used to listen to talked more about the success of a movie at the box office than its success as entertainment or as art. 

Wrong.

In what used to be amerika, we have a rapist running for president who seems to equate leadership with crowd-sizes.

Wrong.

When I worked for Hewlett-Packard and they sold a lot of printers, the standard measure for printer speed was pages-per-minute. Pages per minute doesn't matter. 99% of the time, you're printing one page or two. Not 19. The measure of printing speed should be "first page out."

We make the same sort of error when we measure the acceleration of cars. We use 0-60. A much more meaningful measure is 40-70. That calculus more accurately depicts the reality of merging onto a superhighway from an on ramp. You rarely have to go up to 60 from a dead stop.

The new calculus of AIdvertising seems to be speed.

Why?

Did Pope Julius II say to Michelangelo about the Sistine Chapel, "Hey, I need this done in a week?"

I'd be fine, really, with AIdvertising if the people who run what used to be the advertising industry were only honest about it.

If only they said, AIdvertising is no longer about reaching people with simple, timeless human truths. AIdvertising is about the constant drip drip drip (or torrent torrent torrent) of always on messaging that we'll besiege you with until we wear you down. 

AIdvertising isn't about reaching it's about retching.

One half-hour of election week TV viewing will make the preceding sentence abundantly clear.

Stay with me a minute longer and consider a word I chose to use an inch or two from here: Besiege.

AIdvertising is not a creative industry, it's a besiege industry. 

A siege--a real siege--whether during the Crusades or the Nazi siege of Leningrad looked like a modern AIdvertising campaign. 

Huge masses of people were employed to break down resistance. Giant siege engines we're constructed to apply pressure to the victims (we call them marketing engines today.) And the latest technologies were applied to breakdown a city's walls. We do the same to break down a person's diffidence.

You can read a good description of a Medieval siege here. It compares nicely to a 168-page PowerPoint.

If you're a masochist like I am, or if you like educating yourself, you can read Harrison Salisbury's classic book on the Siege of Leningrad. You might not find a better book on modern marketing techniques and approaches. Plus, no 360-reviews.

I suppose all of this is an appeal to humanity.

If you're a client, you can decide how you want to how you treat people. You can decide to reach them. Or you can assault them.

It's you're choice.

AIdvertising or Advertising.

(Good for Your Soul.) A Guest Post from TJ Bennett.

When I started this blog, seventeen and a half years ago, I had no idea how "big" it would get. How much a part of my life, my who-I-am it would be come.

What's more, because I didn't foresee the veritable death of the advertising trade press (which mostly prints agency press-releases or runs 40 under 40 lists and calls it content) I didn't realize that in some manner, my blog and a few others, would become important as sources of "truth" in the ad industry. 

I also didn't realize how many people would count on Ad Aged because of that. I don't have Nielsen data or any readership information other than what's supplied by LinkedIn--but just judging by the likes I get and the notes from various industry scions, Ad Aged has more than a little sway in the industry.

Because of that, I've begun reaching out to people I know. If I think they have something important to say, I've begun offering them "space" in my blog. 

Late last week, I offered Ad Aged to TJ Bennett. TJ and I don't know each other well. We worked together briefly when I freelanced at Hill Holliday in New York back in 2006. And we reconnected back in July or August on TJ's really outstanding "Desuckify Work" Podcast. TJ's hosted something like sixty episodes. They all discuss how we can help an industry that's lost its way perhaps get on track.

I asked TJ if he'd like to write something for this space. Something that can help TJ help people Desuckify Work. TJ is about helping people. Helping make work better. TJ's that all-too-rare type of human: a mensch. Someone who's kind, helpful, caring. 

Someone with a soul.

If you feel like talking to someone with a soul, TJ is a good place to start.

Here's his post.

Thanks, TJ.

When I was 23, I had my blood scrubbed and returned to my body three times per week. 

It kept me alive. And I fucking hated it. 

23 years old and I’m stuck in a cold, sterile room for four hours with two shotgun needles jabbed into my arm instead of shooting the shit with my roommates in our mismatched living room after work? 

23 years old and I’m surrounded by the gaunt, gray faces of my fellow dialysis patients instead of the bright eyes of my youthful peers at that after work place I kept hearing about? 

23 years old and I’m spending eight days in the hospital fighting blood clots in my lungs instead of spending yet another week doing whatever the hell I damn pleased with a body that worked like a normal young person’s? 

All that time hooked up to machines makes you question some things. Like who you are. What actually matters to you. And what is life, exactly?

Thanks to the kidney my beautiful brother donated six months after I started dialysis, I’ve been able to spend the last 31 years trying to answer those questions. I’m not sure I’m fully satisfied with what I’ve come up with so far, but I’ve come to enjoy the trying. 

When people ask me why I became a coach, that’s usually the best answer I can give. I enjoy the trying. And I enjoy seeing others enjoy it as well. 

That’s really all coaching is—trying. You may see some folks on LinkedIn promising BIG results like 10x-ing your productivity or scaling your business to 8 figures in 8 days, but that’s not my jam. If you really want to 10x something, I’m here for you. But I’m not sure it will have more impact than the simple act of trying. 

Trying to learn more about yourself. Trying to listen more. Trying to find meaning in your work. 

Yoda is famous for saying “do or do not, there is no try.” And he’s not wrong. We need to do things. 

But we also need to do those things with a mindset of wonder. There is wonder in trying. In yearning. In discovering. In doing things with zero faith that they will turn out the way we want and still saying, “sure, why the hell not.”

People are often surprised by my transition from creative to coach. Perhaps they expect an HR person to be a coach. Or even an account person. But a creative?

Yeah, a creative. 

Because coaching is one of the most creative acts I’ve ever experienced. My clients are creating something new for themselves every time we meet. Every time they commit to doing something different or scary between our sessions. Every time they try.

I even ask my clients to write a creative brief when we start our work together. Inviting them to use their beautifully weird mind to solve whatever challenges they’re facing, with the same smarts and scrappiness they’ve used to crack client briefs. 

There is no greater brief than this one. And yet we so easily put it on the back burner while we work ourselves to death selling cell phones or SUVs. 

My clients put some pretty lofty stuff in those briefs. Finding a career that makes their soul happy. Discovering their purpose. Becoming a better leader. Creating an agency that is great to work at and does great work.  

I have the honor of walking along side of them as they take those uncertain steps towards something new. Some better, maybe. 

They are trying. 

And that makes my soul happy. 

A 600-Year-Old Lesson on Advertising.

Dan Jones is an historian. A major historian. And in my unqualified opinion, one of the most important historians writing today.

His great book, "Power and Thrones," is a must read. 

If you want to know how the world works, if you want to feel the sweep of history, if you want to understand how little things can have have thousands of years' of impact, and if you want to finally read about the effects of climate on our planet, pick up "Powers." Yes, it's almost 700-pages long. But each page is important and riveting. (I'm not sure how many crappy TV shows you can watch in the time it takes you to read 700 pages, but my guess is you'd be better served here.)

Right now, I'm 93-percent of the way through Jones' latest book, a 500-pager called "Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King." It might be the best book on how to run an ad agency that I've ever read.

That's right.

A book about a 15th-century king can tell us how to run a 21st-century business. Even a pseudo-business like an ad agency.

If you're educated in the old school like I was, you might have some nickel-knowledge of Henry V based on various plays by Shakespeare. His characters, Falstaff. Hotspur. Hal. Richard II, and Shakespeare's Henry plays all gave us a picture. And an interesting one.

Shakespeare indexed heavily on the wayward youth, Prince Hal, growing into a staunch and solid hero of a king, Henry V. What's more, his "St. Crispin's" speech should be listened to at least once a year. In fact, I wish kamala harris knew it, used it and understood it as our country writhes through its trumpian torment.

But, for all that. 

Why is the Jones' story of a king from 600-years-past a lesson for today?

Let me start with something big and small.

During my last five years at Ogilvy, I never once saw a senior suit on the creative floor. Just walking around. Seeing how people are doing. Looking at their desks and seeing pictures of their kids. Seeing the be-head-phoned creatives working to create. Watching hundreds working through lunch or through weekends, trying to create something fun, smart, human. Walking about, getting to know, support, show love for the people doing the work.

Just once in my 40 years in advertising, did I meet a holding company head. And the wall-eyed-dweezil lied to my face while condescending to me.

Henry was different.

Though at just 16-years an arrow shot six-inches into his skull nearly piercing his brain, he fought alongside his people. Alongside his people. With them, scarred cheek by jowl.

Artist's interpretation.

Today, in most societies and industries and communities, there are masses of people who get little more than the equivalent of processed cheese food. There are the few--the anointed, the to the manor-born, the mega-wealthy, the c-suiters, who never come down from their perch.

You see them hustling to their black cars at five, while you're finally getting lunch.

Some call it capitalism for the poor (that's you and I) who have to fight molar and nail for every scrap, and socialism for the rich (they're fed by the state.) It's another version of the old saw, "the rich get richer and the poor pay taxes."

The holding company executives never see, acknowledge or thank those who have made them rich. They're so removed from actual work and life, they believe their shit don't stink. 

Shit stinks. No matter whose it is.

As Jones writes about Henry V:

"it becomes clear that this has been an astonishing victory for Henry. For a king to have put himself in the face of such peril for so long speaks to his physical aptitude for fighting and his willingness to gamble everything if he detects the faintest scent of victory. That Henry has inspired his small and weak army to overcome the larger, fresher, more confident, and more glamorous French one is not just the basis for a dramatic legend: it is a military fact."

If you're a client, think about this.

You never see the people you spend the bulk of your agency money on. The rich people you pay for never put themselves at peril for your success. 

They aren't there for the creating. Only the accounting.

It's convenient to believe, or to convince yourself to believe, that the systemic sides of business operate machine-like. 

But no social organization, government, team, or company doesn't run on people.

It's the people, stupid.

It's people.

You know.

Those things we ignore.

Ouch.

It's funny how when you're old, little things can remind you of who you've always been.

For about a year now, I've been struggling through a painful right hip. About six months ago, it started getting wincing bad. About a month ago, I started seriously thinking about seeing a doctor about the prospect of a hip replacement. (Not a hip-replacement. A hip replacement.)

Last week, amid what was one of the busiest work weeks of my life, I decided I needed some time away from the Gingham Coast and took the Amtrak train back to the city. The last time I did so, I took a cab up to my apartment from Penn Station. It took about an hour and it cost me about $70. It's a four-mile trip.

My wife let me forget neither of those facts. "You have your Metrocard," she asked-and-answered. "Take the Q from 6th and 34th, and you'll be at 83rd and 2nd in two shakes of a rat's tail."

Obediently, and against my snobbish better judgment, I agreed. I'd take the egalitarian train. Not an elitist cab.

 

What I didn't calculate was that in compensating for the not inconsiderable pain in my right hip, I successfully threw my back out. I limped through ever-crowded Herald Square lugging my overnight bag and walking like the worst of the guys above. Shot through with buckshot. Barefoot. And pained from god-knows-what, and probably Dysentery.

But, as they say, "Dig We Must."

In long short-order I made it back to my apartment, sweating and cursing with the unseasonable 80-degree late-October climate-change-denial heat.

Unfortunately, a raft of repair people were in my New York apartment when I arrived. Repair for the apartment. Not for me. And I hastened them along. Just an hour after I got into my apartment, I had a client call--and I didn't want to wrassle the toilet repairman while I was reconnoitering my way through a host of confusing and conflicting client comments.

When the call ended I was what our British friends call, "knackered." I sat, finally, in my favorite chair, drew myself a tall-cold glass of seltzer water and ordered some Chinese food. I hoped to not be disturbed for the rest of the evening.

That was not to be. 

There were noisy Halloweeners in the hallways. My wife and children called, and I remembered I had scheduled a client call for Friday and I hadn't read what I needed to read. What's more, my longest-serving client had called that morning. He too had something pressing.

There's something about people of my generation. Or maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's having grown up poor.

We have a hard time stopping.

We have a hard time saying no. 

Even then we know better, we haven't learned to no better.

Even when age peers say, "George, when are you going to cash in some of the chips you've accumulated? When are you going to take a load off your feet?"

This morning, Saturday morning, against my better judgment and against my assorted pains, I went out for my morning walk.

I said to myself, "George, you don't have to do four miles. It's ok if you do two." But I did my full distance--and then tacked on an extra half-mile to get to the last newsstand in Manhattan that still sells the paper Wall Street Journal.

I remembered, as I was limping, my late twenties basketball days, when I would play until I bled against the kids in the local school yard. I'd open the door and immediately say to my wife, "don't be angry." 

An eye was blacked, a nose was Terry-Malloyed, or a knee was bloody.

That comes with the territory if you're playing ball in shark-infested waters. 

And when aren't you?

Mid-day Friday, I had one of the client calls I mentioned above. The client is pro-bono. But she runs a huge organization doing important work, helping hundreds of thousands of kids who need help. What's more, she was nice and smart and thankful. Agencies one-hundred times the size of GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company would give their left arms to have a pro-bono account like this. 

At the end of the call, the client said to me and H, my account director, "Thank you so much for all you're doing. I can't tell you how grateful we are."

I said to the client, "We're lucky. H and I like each other and we like working together. I like you and I believe in what you're doing and your cause. I'm glad I get to do all this."

If you want to, you can find plenty of reasons to phone it in. Or to half ass an entire day, or an assignment, or anything you choose. During the World Series, a Yankee pitcher who's signed a $300 million contract didn't run over and cover first on a simple play. Even if you make $300 million, no one pillories you for shit like that anymore.

Except I do.

Lassitude can cost you the World Series title. Like it cost the Yankees this year.

Lassitude can cost you more than a World Series title.

It can cost you your self respect, your pride, your soul.

Those are prices I'm not willing to pay.

Ad(d)s.

If you follow me on Linked In, as I'd imagine many people who read my blog do, you've probably seen the ads I run for the agency I've founded, GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company.

I started running these ads for GeorgeCo., before there was a GeorgeCo. I realized some time back in 2018 or thereabouts that I had about 2,000 connections on Facebook, 5,000 on Twitter and 10,000 on Linked In. (I've since canceled my Facebook and Twitter accounts.) 

Looking at those numbers I had an epiphany of sorts. I didn't have "connections," I had somehow built a media channel. Today, I have about 30,000 Linked In connections. That gives me the "circulation" of a small magazine. I know enough about journalism to know that it's not unusual for a small circulation "organ" to have undue influence in a community, profession or even in a country. I.F. Stone's liberal newsletter comes to mind.

To be all Yogi-Berra-esque about it, "nobody read it, but everybody read it."

Since I had that small epiphany about my "reach," I've probably run about 1,000 ads for my agency. I've even collected a book of 81 of them called "George on Advertising," which I send to prospective clients. My ads won some sort of expensive trophy and award in Communication Arts' Advertising Annual 63.

-- 

--

And some have gotten literally hundreds of thousands of views. More important, views from the right people. Like CEOs and founders of potential clients.

Once in a while, I run something and I get a text like this from an agency luminary.

But more often than not, these thrice or four-times weekly, or two-times weekly ads, just do their thing. They're like an old diesel engine. They just keep going.

In fact, these ads--not the content but the form--were written to answer a brief I gave myself: Without phoning, texting or emailing the legions of gatekeepers who exist to keep job- applicants/supplicants from annoying actual creative people, how can I keep GeorgeCo., top of mind? 

How can I keep GeorgeCo., top of mind in a world where there are more gatekeepers than gates?

How can I keep GeorgeCo., top of mind among people who are getting thousands of calls a day from people looking for essentially the same work I'm looking for?

How can I keep GeorgeCo., top of mind when giant brands like Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Nike and others spend billions of dollars and they can't stay top of mind.

That's a brief.

A tough one.

My ads seemed to answer those bells. Or in Faulkner's words, "those last ding-dongs of doom."

But this is a post not about my ads, believe it or not. 

It's a post about causality.

Too many people in the advertising industry--or who use advertising (which is just about everyone) think advertising should have what I call a "Tuesday-Wednesday Causality." ie, you do something on a Tuesday and you see results on a Wednesday.

Very little in life has hand-in-flame happenstance. Most things take gestation. And most things involve an annoying amount of chance and/or luck and mostly, unpredictability.

When I played baseball, I coined the phrase "a wasted double." I used it when someone hit a two-bagger early in an inning and we couldn't bring him in for a run.

Much of life is a wasted double.

Or might be.

Because you can't attribute anything to them directly. 

But from the distance of 50 years--the approximate time since I stopped playing ball--there is, in a sense, no absolute wasted double. You might not have scored from that double but maybe you rattled their pitcher. Maybe you put doubt in their noggins. Maybe you gave your own teammates (or your own self) a soupçon on confidence.

You can't really argue with Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion. Every action does lead to an equal and opposite reaction.

You just don't know when, where or how. What's more, the more someone says they do know, the more full-of-bushwa you should know they are.

So that's why GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company runs so many ads.

They get me known. 

They get me business.

They make people laugh. 

Or think.

They get reposted.

And they make my phone ring.

I just never know when.

(Usually when I'm busiest. Like now.)