Ad Aged: Ad(d)s.

Friday, November 1, 2024

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.