One Word.

My 97-year-old Uncle Slappy, who lives in a nice condo with a view of the pool, is a defrocked Rabbi.

The Board of Directors at his former Temple, Beth Youiz Mywo Mannow, removed him from his post after he had spent over 40 years presiding. They asked Slappy to leave because, ostensibly, he was getting too old to carry on. Though Slappy's mind makes Stephen Hawking's look like that of an organ-grinder's monkey, the Board wasn't entirely wrong bidding Slappy adieu.

It wasn't age that did Slappy in, however. Or even his preternatural crank.

It was the courage and conviction of his conscience. 

One Yom Kippur his sermon was just one word long. 

He said just one word: God. 

Then for twenty minutes looked each congregant in the eyes. Burning God through their retinas.

That was too withering. That was too much for the board.

The other night, as I wrote about yesterday, a group of seven other older ad people and I got together for Indian food at a nice place near Union Square. 

One of our group got up on a soapbox for a bit. He's entitled. He had been both a CCO and CEO at one of America's hottest agencies. He contended that one of the myriad issues with advertising today is that no one knows how to use products anymore. No one knows when to drink a beer or what they should look for if they're buying a car. (The average price of a new car according to the Kelly Blue Book is $47,400. Please don't tell me these are emotional decisions. For that money, you consider what and why.)

About six hours ago, I got a 271-page newsletter from an agency that used to have another, more famous name. I'm not exaggerating. It was 271-pages long. 

I subscribe to newsletters like this one because while I'm out of the mainstream ad industry, I want to keep tabs on what it's doing. I aim to offer my clients more than they can get anywhere else. To do that, I have to, in part, know what my competition are doing.

Here's a screenshot of the cover and a bit of the content from said newsletter.

All of this stuff swirled together in what's left of my Cuisinart of a mind. Uncle Slappy and his one-word Philippic. My friend saying we don't know what products do anymore. VML's 271-page newsletter, and also, Alex Murrell's essay "The Age of Average."

(Murrell's essay is about how everything today, from interior design, to how we look, to the cars we drive all looks the same. Here's a photo from Murrell's piece. I've added below the photo about one-hundred taglines I've found for various electric vehicles.)

All that came together this way.

The one thing advertising should do we've forgotten to do. 

We're talking about AI. 

Conversations. Cohorts. Generations. 

Buy-outs and mergers. 

Timesheets. Scopes. Billability. 

Attention-spans. Tik-Tok. 

We're talking about everything but what we're supposed to be doing. Making a brand stand out. Making a brand stand for something. Making product A DIFFERENT from products B,C,D,E,F,G,H and so on.

We're supposed to differentiate.

Give people reasons to buy.

Make them feel smart for knowing those reasons.

We're suppose to make sure "everything isn't the same." 

From cars, to resorts, to mayonnaise, to chips, to agencies, to presidential candidates.

We used to create ads that did this. 

Here's the copy from a Volkswagen ad that's almost sixty years old. I typed it below so you could read it. With all the quirky line breaks in-tact.

You know what makes the car different.

People bought the car. 

And they knew why.
And they probably told their friends.

And felt smart for it (that's rationality leading to an emotional connection.)

Today, we forgot our jobs.

One word: Different.

After we paint the car we paint the paint.

  You should see what we do to a Volks-
wagen even before we paint it.
  We bathe it in steam, we bathe it in
alkali, we bathe it in phosphate. Then we
bathe it in a neutralizing solution.
   If it got any cleaner, there wouldn't be
much left to paint.
   Then we dunk the whole thing into a
vat of slate grey primer until every square
inch of metal is covered, inside and out.  
    Only one domestic car maker does this.
And his cars sell for 3 or 4 times as much
as a Volkswagen.
    (We think the best way to make an
economy car is expensively.)
    After all that dunking, we bake it and sand
it by hand.
    Then we paint it.
    Then we bake it again, and sand it again
by hand.
    Then we paint it again.
    And bake it again.
    And sand it again by hand.
    So after 3 times, you'd think
we wouldn't bother to paint it
again and bake it again. Right? 
    Wrong.