Joy. Oh Boy.

I grew up in the Ally & Gargano style of advertising. Or, more accurately, the Carl Ally style of advertising.

I believe in this style of advertising.

Advertising that provides the reader/viewer with facts. That rarely uses adjectives. That rarely engages in emotional manipulation.

I worked at Ally & Gargano for five long years. During that time, I probably produced 300 ads. During that time, I rose to become Ally & Gargano's youngest-ever Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director. Doing all that I set my career way back--probably ten years.

Because while I was creating ads that were based on logic and facts, the industry had shifted. Shifted dramatically.

If I had a dime for every creative, account person, planner and janitor who told me I was too logical, I'd have at least ten dollars now. My thinking was old, obsolete, and outdated. People want to feel good about brands. Not know how they work and feel good that they know.

The industry decided emotions ruled the day. That rational, thoughtful arguments were too much for people. We had to tell them how happy and satisfied we'd make them. We had to show people having orgasms induced by a mayonnaise, or a nacho chip, or a beer, or a vacation destination. The only way we believed to communicate an emotional benefit was to tell people the emotional benefit and to show people smiling.

As Kamala Harris was rolling out "Joy," I think a lot of people were feeling pain. Living paycheck-to-paycheck. Fearing what drugs would do to their kids. Worrying about job loss, a factory closing, schools that stopped teaching. They worried about violence and a world that seemed to have spun off its axis.

You can say Joy once a second for one-hundred years. It wouldn't change a thing.

It's like getting crammed into a middle-seat smaller than your ass and the guy in front of you reclines and the people on either side of you hog the armrests. Being told, have a nice day, or that we're all about making you happy doesn't change that situation.

As Kamala Harris was rolling out "Joy," my Ally & Gargano roots left me with a sick, worried feeling. Sure, I want joy in my life, but how.

I sat at my computer and wrote this ad. Proclaiming Joy--whether you're a brand, a life-partner, or a presidential candidate is fine. 

How is better.

I sent this to the Harris campaign. I heard nothing back. As an ad this is so far from the tenor of the times--I expected nothing back. No one in advertising would run an ad like this. 

It's so serious. 

It doesn't show people smiling.

It demands viewers read. And the product itself might be held accountable if it puts in plain English what to expect. 

Tripe is our default setting.

When I worked on Boeing after the 737 Max crashes, I had a simple plan. Leading to the recertification of the plane, an ad a day for one-hundred days of "This is what we did today."  ie. "We're 97 days from launch. This is everything we did today to make the Boeing 737 Max the safest plane that's ever flown."

I wanted them to look like the great United Technologies ads from the early 2000s. Whether you read them or not, they looked well-engineered. So you believed United Technologies were well-engineered.

This circuitry is missing from modern advertising. Because, against the admonitions of David Ogilvy, deep-down the entire ad industry--including clients--believe the consumer is a moron, that the consumer doesn't care enough to read, or simply can't read.

So, we pander.

We say joy.

We show people who are merry.

Undistinguishable from any competitor whose SUV or clear plastic wrap also makes people merry.

We started thinking we could own adjectives and differentiate them. Our joy is better than your joy.

Before I spend my money on almost anything, I want a permission to believe. I'm too hard-assed to buy the idea that a new laundry detergent will have the affect of prozac--lemon-scented, to boot.

And if I'm shelling out $47,000 (the average price in America of a new car) I need to know more than that it has Apple Car Play and can nominally parallel park by itself, because I'm too lame to know how to.

For a pessimist I am ever hopeful.

That the Harris campaign will be a turning point.

That maybe someone will realize that there's product inside of products. And that products, people, services need to be explained, differentiated, and back by promises kept.

That seems basic to me.

And 97-99-percent of people reading this will tell themselves "George is an obsolete, angry old man." They're right.

That doesn't mean I'm wrong.

--

BTW, as examples, I've chosen some lesser-know Carl Ally ads.

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.