OmniInterLieCom.

 

I've just read a regurgitated press-release in Ad Age. Ad Age, like Adweek, used to do legitimate reporting. When I was starting out in the business, you could read the trade-press and know who was growing, who was shrinking, who was hiring and who was firing. You can no longer get that information. Nor do you get any perspective.

When I started at Ogilvy my second tour in 2014, I believe they employed between 1000 and 2000 people in the New York office. I'd be shocked if they have more than 300 today. You'd expect changes of such muskian-magnitude would be reported upon. Instead, we get a whole lot of nothing, stories about "best places to work," or "articles" by a "publishing partner" i.e. an ad or a press release masquerading as content.

To my tired blue eyes the worst effect of all this is the effect it has on our language and on our relationship with the truth.

Somehow, CEOs who have eight-or-nine-figure compensation packages are using the Language of Plutocracy and they're getting away with firing thousands of people and closing dozens of agencies.

Here's the lede from the Ad Age/IPG press-release cited above:

Linguistically, the oligopoly holding companies have replaced the word "firing" with the word "restructuring." In an industry where about 75-percent of your costs are salaries, there's no way to save $250,000,000 without firing people. A lot of people.

Last week, the CEO of omnicom projected cost savings of $750,000,000 via a slightly more honest admission of, "post-merger job cuts and consolidation of back-office and operations." Wren's prevarication was much less subtle than Krakowsky's. Wren said, "cost savings will arise from streamlining holding company, middle office and regional positions, as well as from eliminating duplicative overhead, back-office, and third-party expenses across our larger combined global footprint.”

CUT TO A CROWDED CITY APARTMENT. KIDS SCREAMING IN BACKGROUND. THE WHOLE THING LOOKS LIKE THE CRATCHIT'S HOME UPDATED TO 21ST-CENTURY BROOKLYN.

PERSON 1:  No, honey. I wasn't fired after eight-years of seventy hour weeks. 

PERSON 2: Thank goodness, the kids...

PERSON 1: I was duplicative overhead, a back-office, and third-party expense, and was let-go across a larger combined global footprint.

PERSON 2: Oh, honey. I'm so proud of you.

Then there's this as re-press-released by Ad Age: When asked if the restructuring would lead to job cuts, the company provided a statement. 

“The goal is to design and implement the right organizational and operating structure to ensure we remain innovative and competitive. This work will change the composition of some teams as we look to invest in talent and technology capabilities in areas such as AI, identity resolution, content management platforms, commerce and data.”

Wren and Krakowsky have been in their jobs for a long time. If they were minding their stores in a manner worthy of their compensation, how could the companies they're ostensibly running have a combined $1,000,000,000 in duplicative and unnecessary costs?

This use of language--from two of the largest so-called "communications companies" in the world is jaw-dropping. It makes Orwell's Newspeak look genuine and truthful.

Firing thousands of people and calling it restructuring is like throwing out the garbage and saying "I'm restructuring egg shells, coffee grinds and banana peels."

Here are two more twisted statements from Krakowsky, a man set to pocket $49,000,000 if the purger/merger goes through.

Krakowksy attributed the fourth-quarter and full-year results [a large drop in revenue] to the “impact of account activity”

throughout the year.  ie "We lost accounts, revenue fell." Just like, "We poked a balloon with a pin, it popped."

And this Stalinist-coded lie, “We were on the wrong side of the outcome in defending a number of very significant media accounts.”  We were on the wrong-side aka "there were two sides, winners and losers. We lost."

CUT TO A BADLY-DESIGNED CONFERENCE ROOM IN AN NEARLY EMPTY OFFICE SPACE

ACCT PERSON 1:  How did the pitch go? Did we win?

ACCT PERSON 2 :  Yes, but we were on the wrong side of the outcome.

 
Here's one more take on the holding company whose lead agency used to have "Truth Well Told" as their slogan. I pulled the visual below from the Ad Age press-release I started this post with. Look past the hackiness of the concept and design. Focus on the lies in the words.

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