Bought by Private Equity. (A Short Story.)

I was doing fine, really.

Almost four years early, my wife and I had paid off our mortgage on our three-bedroom co-op on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a neighborhood fairly impervious to real-estate downturns. We'd bought the place in the late 90s. By now it had at least quadrupled in value.

My business, which I started because there was nowhere in the ad industry that would (or could) hire me for what I consider a living wage, was doing well. My yearly revenue was slightly lower than 2023 but slightly higher than 2024. And I was getting calls from potential clients, averaging about one a week.

Most important, my kids were ok. They had each bought condos in their respective cities and each were well on their way in good careers. They were healthy, happy and making their way in a tough world.

When a certain Sally Hedgerow, a senior partner at the private equity firm of Wendelstadt, Ersatz and Kaliper called me, I probably should have ignored it. But she didn't exactly tiptoe in on little cat's feet.

"George," she blustered, "we want to buy you."

"B-b-b-buy me," I stammered. "I didn't realize I was for sale."

"Everyone's for sale, Georgie-boy," she galloped. "Everyone and everything and everywhere, every day. It's all just a matter of terms. It's all just a matter of you seeing things our way."

"What is your way?" I'll admit, she had set me back on my heels. What's more, there are times when running my own agency makes me more than a little lugubrious. It's non-stop, it's demanding, and you usually have to survive Net120 payments. Sally caught me unawares and in a moment of weakness.

"We want to buy you," Sally plowed. "We've looked at the public records, sequestered your bank accounts. We watched you from the bungalow across the street from your beach-side cottage. We social-listened to your social feeds. We AI'd your pupick up the wazoo. We even talked to the conductor on the Amtrak you took into Penn Station last week--business class--we want to buy you."

"Go on," I said. I have to admit, I was more than a little bit intrigued.

And then, as fast as a fart, she called up on her phone a long single-spaced contract full of dense legalese. She scrolled for about twenty seconds--it had to be comprised of at least 8000 words--until she got to a yellow sticky-shaped arrow that said assertively "Signature." As thoughtful as a kid at a carnival shooting-gallery, I signed with the tip of my index finger. 

All at once I was 75-percent owned by Wendelstadt, Ersatz and Kaliper.

"We're investing $15 million into you," Sally said, to upgrade your technology, data and AI capabilities. We're installing now, as we speak, a set of Quantum-enabled tools and pinpoint targeting so you can more accurately target pinpoints."

"$15 million," I said disbelieving.

"Well, that's not actual money," she eye-batted. "That's debt. You'll have buy that back through your cash-flow, from you clients."

"My cash-flow is good," I answered, "but not quite $15 million good."

I'd never actually seen someone "pshaw" before but Sally Hedgerow of Wendelstadt, Ersatz and Kaliper did.

"We'll fix that," she confidented. "Let's start when you wake up in the morning. You have one of those fancy Oral-B electric toothbrushes."

"It's recommended by the Wirecutter," I defended.

"You brush for two full-minutes," she calculated. "You can decrease that by a full 25-percent, to 90-seconds, and see only a marginal 12-percent increase in dental anomalies like cavities and endodontic issues. The rise over run is a lot of rise for a little run.

"Then there's your blog. You're giving it away free," she said. "You have to start charging."

"But I get 90,000 readers a week and business from the damn thing," I said. "It drives my revenue."

"You can't prove that," she answered. "We looked at the numbers and we don't like what we see. The same goes for the way you work with clients. You have to stop over-delivering. No more kibbitzing on the phone. In fact, we need you to hire three or four project managers. You're walking your dog way too much."

"It's good for my brain," I defended. "I get ideas when I walk Sparkle out by the sea."

"Listen, Mr. Obstreperous. You have four major limbs. Just a reminder: We own three of them." I felt a tightening in my nether lands.

"When do I get my $15 million," I asked.

"As soon as you pay us back $22 million, plus interest and fees. It's all in the contract. You read it, didn't you?"

She grabbed my computer. She sat me down in my chair in my office and turned off the light.

"Now get to work," she demanded. "And that standing desk, that's Herman Miller, isn't it?"

I nodded, looking with admiration at its deep walnut finish. 

"We can get two-k for that."

Out of Opt.

It might sound strange to you, it did to me, but 399 years ago, in the part of Europe we today think of as Germany there was a war--a bloody and mean one (not that there are other types of wars)--over freedom.

Freedom.

Remember it?

I am no expert on this period. And my understanding of the schism between Martin Luther and the Pope is limited. I'm a Jew. Let the goyim do what the goyim do. Is that wafer Christ or a representation? The discussion is cause for war, yes?

Martin Luther rebelled against the Church.

He rebelled against the idea that the church dominated all of life. And that the word of god could be received by the masses only through priestly intermediaries. 

He rebelled against the idea that peasants (that's you and me) were bound to both the church and the noble class.

The priestly caste and the nobles (and they were by all definitions castes) owned most of the land, and concomitantly most of the lives of most of the people. What's more, those priests, those nobles, and their hierarchy, sold "get out of hell free" cards--indulgences. Yet another way these castes could enrich itself. 

That's my point.

It sounds like today.

Really.

Pay us or burn in hell.

Let me explain. And analogy-ize. 

Please bear with me.

If you were a peasant in most of Europe in the 16th Century, you were owned. You were either a de facto or de jure serf.

What's more, there were so many laws, rules, precepts and strictures that virtually every move you made was monitored and taxed by either the church or the estate you belonged to.

Want to fish: Tax.
Want to marry: Tax.
Want to die: Tax.
Want to travel to another town: Tax.
Want to farm: Tax.
Want to hunt: Tax.
Want to pray: Tax.
Want to breathe: Tax.

In the parlance of New York, "Dey gotcha comin' and goin'." You were owned.

As I'm reading the book above, I've struck by the similarities between 1526 Germany and 2025 America. 

The difference being there's no one left in America who realizes what's going on or who protests against it. 

The ownership of our every protoplasmic pixel is complete. Every simple process demands that you turn over your data. From seeing a website, to ordering take-out, to buying a train ticket to going to the doctor.

Your every movement is monitored and owned--by the modern-day version of the Church and the nobility. A relentlessly authoritarian government, or even more relentlessly authoritarian corporations. Just to get paid for freelancing at an ad agency, you have to submit a petaflop of data. 

Then wait 120 days.

At the doctor's office on Thursday, a kiosk demanded I sign three separate consent forms--each over 1000 words long, before the receptionist would acknowledge that I arrived in the office for my appointment. This is after I've received about 27 "My Chart" texts asking me for the same information the kiosk demanded. People no longer say good-morning. They say, "date of birth."

Like 16th Century Germany, in 21st Century Amerika, every point of contact is a point of control. And every interaction demands an act of submission.

Like the churchmen and the nobles almost half a millennia ago believed they had dominion over hunting lands, rivers, lakes and human lives, the government and corporatist state is reasserting dominion over our world today. They have the right to sully our air, our water, destroy our planet and track us relentlessly. They have dominion. The right to control us.

All this serves no purpose other than to remind us that we are under the thumb, under the control of the powerful entities that rule our lives. They have dominion. You are dominateable.

You can't opt out.

We're out of opt.

Living. Lying.

The other day I wrote what might have been a nasty comparison between the nastiness of what used to be amerika's government and the nastiness of the swindlers and operators who have sucked the wealth out of and eviscerated the ad industry. 

On Monday in The New York Times, columnist Margaret Renkl wrote an essay, "Truths to Remember in a Time of Lies." You can (and should) read it here.

To strain my comparison between Washington and Holding Companies even further, I marked a few of the lies the moguls of monied malfeasance told us would revitalize the industry. All they really did was remove more money in their Swiss accounts.
Feel free to add to my list. I have a feeling I've just scratched the surface.

HOLDING COMPANY LIES WE'VE BEEN TOLD.
AND CONTRADICTIONS. AND MORE LIES.

1. We're better off spinning off media companies.
2. Media companies should work with creative departments.
3. AI will create jobs.
4. Data will make us more creative.
5. Diversity adds to our creativity.
6. DEI is no longer a priority.
7. Open offices will contribute to communication and the free-exchange of ideas.
8. Hot-desking will contribute to communication and the free-exchange of ideas.
9. We have $250,000,000 of "structural" costs savings to make.
10. We can afford to pay the new second banana $49,000,000.
11. Creativity isn't a department. It's everyone.
12. Creativity can come from anywhere.
13. Planning will make our work more insightful.
14. Data will make our ads more effective.
15. Since our ads aren't working we need to buy more data companies.
16. We'll differentiate through our AI offerings.
17. We need diversity.
18. But that shouldn't include people over 50.
19. And not if it costs us money.
20. We have to be in-tune with culture.
21. Personalization will solve everything.
22. Our new project management system will improve efficiency.
23. We can produce it just as well in house.
24. Brands need to be always on.
25. We don't need staff we can "just in time" assignments with freelancers.
26. There are no product benefits.
27. Gen____ doesn't care about that.
28. Our awards mean we're successful.
29. Our number of offices means we're successful.
30. Our yacht at Cannes means we're successful.
31. We've had a rough _____ but we've taken the hit and are turning the corner.
32. We're looking forward to a robust second half.
33. The tech slowdown has impacted our business.

All this to say that advertising, like Washington, DC, used to attract people among the best and the brightest.

I think the lies have chased that cohort away. Like they've chased many of the best people in the business to operate differently--in a non-holding-company manner.

That's enough for now.

Promise.

Taxing.

The thing about the current presidential administration is that if you're in advertising, and you've been watching, you would have seen it coming.

Since the advertising business' hey-day, since amerika's hey-day, the business, the country has grown mean, unfair and unequal. 

My father made a lot of money as the Chairman of a bland top-20 agency. He might have made 15 or 20 times what a median worker at his agency made. That was the going ratio in the 1970s when his career crescendoed.

Today, the CEOs of the two holding companies which are traded on the New York Stock Exchange (so the only two of the four I have information on) make many times that.

According to the Wall Street Journal's 2023 report on CEO Pay, John Wren of Omnicom made $20,150,000. His median employee made $52,691. A little 4th-grade math has Wren making 382 times as much as a median employee.

Philip Krakowsky of IPG is only nominally less Snidely Whiplash-ian. He made 205 times the wages earned by his median employee.

Off the top of my head, IPG has merged, or otherwise, destroyed, a dozen major agencies out of existence. Ammirati & Puris. SSC&B. Marschalk. Scali. Bozell. Kenyon and Eckhardt. And the squeeziation isn't much less severe at Omnicom. In fact, it might be worst over at shriveling WPP, which under the fetid aegis of Mark Read destroyed the following agency brands, Y&R, JWT, and, I'm sure a few others that escape me right now.

The trumpzis are doing the same. Eviscerating important agencies and functions of government. They're not doing this for philosophical reasons. They're doing this so they can appropriate the money for themselves. 

What's more, how different is the Omnicom-IPG's claim of $1,000,000,000 in "structural" savings different from amereich's so-called department of government efficiency. Boys and girls, efficiency and structural savings are synonyms for unemployment.

Additionally, holding companies bought literally hundreds of agencies. They bought them to squeeze them. When there was no juice left, thousands were fired and the names were gone. The money went to a few people at the top. Oh, and the ostensible share-holders. But really shareholders not with 100 shares here and there, but blocks of tens of thousands.

Like what's happening in washington today, this isn't about any functionality, or even philosophy. The agglomerating of the advertising industry, like the consolidation of virtually every major industry from Telco (three providers) to airlines (four providers) to candy (two providers) to banking (four providers) to political parties (two providers) to hardware stores (two providers) was never about size, scale, efficiency or serving clients better.

Like the government (years ago I might have said 'our' government) the concentration of control is about one thing: the greed of the people at the very top.

The more "shelf space" they control, the more money they get.

With less competition, they can do less for clients and charge more for it. 

Along the way there's a wealth transfer. From the many to the few. Happening in advertising--many support the few. Happening in taxation--where our taxes pay for trillionaire tax cuts.

It worked for Standard Oil. 
It worked for US Steel.
It worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

People, that's you and me, get used and eaten.

A few escape.

Even fewer get obscenely wealthy.

The only consolation in all this?

Believe in god or not, they'll rot in hell.

--

Two more things worthy of note.

1. In the last six months WPP has seen revenue drop by about $500,000,000. 

2. They've seen operating profit increase 149.5%. That kind of efficiency comes from having fewer people doing more work, probably for less money and of lower quality. 

Those gains are likely unsustainable. It's like a car engine running in the redline over thousands of miles.

Welcome to madison avenue amerika.

Words Without Meaning.

When I was a boy, I don't think I ever heard the word "crafted," unless it was in the context of some pine-needled agglomeration called summer camp. There, there was usually an out-of-the-way cabin with paste and thick primary-colors of paint, called Arts & Crafts.

I suppose burning your name into an old piece of birch or glueing noodles onto an old Savarin coffee tin-can counted in those days. But with apologies to R. Mutt, my arts and crafts didn't stand the test of time.

Today, no matter where you go, everyone claims everything is crafted.

The coffee at a chain store at extortionate prices: crafted.
The artisanal bread, usually stale: crafted.
The breakfast burrito from the Greek diner: crafted.
The sewing of a new button on an old pair of jeans: crafted.
The LinkedIn announcement that says you're humbled: crafted.

And of course the copy we read, even if it says what 93-percent of all copy says today, "Buy one and get one free during our daffy-dollar-days triple-play-bundle-St. Patrick's day blow-out": crafted.

The word crafted is what I call a "check-list" word. Clients, or bosses, or both need to see it. 

Because of all of the above, it no longer has any meaning. The act of craft was supposed to distinguish how you did things. But if everyone is saying crafted, by saying crafted, you're just asserting your commoditization and undifferentiation. You have to say it because everyone says it. 

It's an entry-ticket to invisibility.

Like most other words and phrases we see in advertising today.

We're agile.

Nimble.
We're here for you.

How can we help you?

Have a nice day.

They're all meaningless because their ubiquity has detached them from meaning.

It's attending a casting session for fashion models and describing someone as pretty. It's just not distinguishing. 

Or seeing the pyramids in Egypt and proclaiming them "awesome," when just last week you said the same about your tuna salad sandwich--the free one you cadged after a meeting had let out of conference room B.

I just now had a Chobani low-sugar strawberry yogurt. The tin-foil cover said "Crafted with real fruit."

That's what precipitated this post.

As creatives, our job is to create. To put things together, words, ideas, images, sounds, to create meaning, differentiation and impact. In doing that we shouldn't use words, ideas, images and sounds people are used to seeing. If we do, we're not giving viewers anything new to read. So, since familiarity breeds ignorability, they'll likely be bored by the trite and ignore it all together.

From Eric Arthur Blair's 1948 essay, "Politics and the English Language."
If you write for a living, it should be on your desk.

Being ignored is the enemy of our entire industry. But, somehow we accept that 99-percent of all people ignore 99-percent of all ads.

Years ago, I did some work for a high-end cruise line. The CMO kept saying "we want to redefine European luxury." 

What does that mean, I asked?

She looked at me like I stuck her kitten in a Cuisinart. Which I seldom do anymore.

"Well," she finally said, "we don't rush you from activity to activity. The pace is a little bit slower."

I came back with something like this:

I could have said "Sea Swirl. Crafted in the craft tradition of European cruising luxury." They would have been happy with that.

Back to my yogurt. 

What if it didn't say "crafted"?

What if it said, "Mixed at low-speed for 11 minutes. With strawberries and love."

I've referred to the VW ad below a dozen times in this space. They could have said the finish was crafted.

They didn't.

They investigated the product. Found a meaningful differentiator. And created something that sold cars and added to the long-term value of the brand.

This is a plea to anyone reading this to start doing that again.

It's our job.

Besides, A.I. can't.

Job security.

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.

Holy Rabbit Hole!

One of the interesting things about the internet, if you have the time to explore and think, is you can unravel how you arrived at some quotation, essay, film clip or poem. 

While it's often hard to find the same page twice (it's even harder to unsubscribe to a "service" that charges you every month though you never signed up for it) with some luck you can follow the course of whatever rabbit hole you've unwittingly or blindly or stupidly descended. You can find your path.

I'll spare you the exegesis. Or even a link to a page that tells you what exegesis means. But after a rough morning of work that started in the fives, I somehow rabbit-holed to the six-minute video above.

It features, in case you don't recognize him, the ol' vaudevillian, Ray Bolger who most-famously played the Scarecrow from MGM's 1939 classic, "The Wizard of Oz."

In any event, while on hold with the crappy little bank I use for GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company (the one that promises they're 'community kind') to have a simple question answered so I can accept a wire-transfer from a client in India (for which they'll charge me $10) I watched the video three inches up. 

One word came to my mind.

A too-rare word nowadays when it comes to life--and work.

Joy. 

Maybe two words.

Fun.

Maybe three words.

Uninhibited.

When my wife got home with a tired Sparkle from play-time at the beach, she looked at my quizzically and with some concern.

"What are you laughing at," she fretted. 

I think she feared I had finally popped my main-spring and was soon to be consigned to the Funny Farm. What could possibly be so funny on a Monday in the trump era, just six weeks from tax-day?

I made her watch the Bolger clip.

What occurred to me was simple.

Not profound.

But obvious.

As an industry we're like the old Henny Youngman joke about a guy being so old he doesn't even buy green bananas.

As an industry, we are so riven with fear, fear and meanness, fear and meanness and holding company grift, that as financial entities we shouldn't even buy green bananas. We might not last long enough to enjoy them.

R?GA, not long ago agency of the decade is now a financial collateralized debt obligation. IPG is hemorrhaging money, as are Omnicom and WPP. Publicis seems nominally better. Their razor-thin-margins maybe two razor's thin. 

The impecuniousness and time-sheeted-job-numbered-project-managemented-micro-managing small-ness of it all has removed joy. Fun. Uninhibited-ness.

Instead, we are mandated and screamed back into ugly offices with no personality, no personal space with about the warmth of a North Korean submarine.

How can you do good work when your scalp is being caliper-ized, not to mention your gonads. Everything is measured but nothing measures up.

It's hard to have a good day when it might be your last. 

And I think everybody working in advertising today feels like today might be their last day.

There's no one to say 'it'll be ok.' 'The cuts are over.' 'We've turned the corner.'

There's still blood in the stone.

And the CPAs and MBAs are waiting to slurp that last corpuscle.

Habits.

 

Freddie Norman was a professional baseball player for more than 20 years. From 1961, when he first took his south paw to the mound for the Shreveport Sports in the Southern Association, to 1980 when he hung up his spikes after playing for the Montreal Expos in the majors.

During all that time, Norman was probably never anyone's favorite player.

He never won an award. 

He never made an all-star team.

They never carried him off the field shoulder high--like Housman's athlete dying young. They never doused him with crappy supermarket champagne. 

Even if you're of my vintage (that is, old) and a baseball fan, you've probably never heard of him.

Yet, Freddie Norman, is someone who's helped guide my career. He's done more to shine a light on running my own business than a thousand Simon Sineks and a million bits of fortune-cookie pablum from Seth Godin.

Yes, Freddie Norman is one of my work heroes.

As a sole proprietor, I have a very low threshold of worry. If I am working on three clients at a time, I worry that I'm not working on four. If I'm working on four, I worry that I'm not working on five. 

If I am 39 ads into completing one of my famous and popular Nifty Fifty's, I worry what comes next. 

I worry both macro-and-micro-economically. Macro, that trumpism will destroy everything and there will be no more business anywhere. Why bother if you make money only to have the bloated plutocrats thieve it. Micro, I worry that the George show has grown tired and there will be no more business.

My soul has grown deep with worry.

But Freddie Norman shows me the way.

Yes, Freddie Norman, who lifetime won 104 games and lost 103. That is, over 16 big league seasons won exactly one game more than he lost.

But Freddie Norman did something more vital than racking up Koufaxian numbers. Something that made his managers and team-mates love him even if the fans didn't.

He showed up. 

He endured. 

When you gave him the ball, he gave you back innings, if not winnings.

He might not have been the great leap forward, but he didn't lose you ground.

The last two weeks for me have been like Freddie's 1978 and 1979 seasons. Over those two years, his combined record was exactly 22 wins and 22 losses.

But most importantly, he pitched 372 innings over those years. That's a lot of time taken care of--a lot of time holding your own.

My last two weeks have not been halcyon. After a giant finish of 2024, I had a great opening six weeks of 2025, but the last two, my cylinders were skipping a beat.

But I Freddie Norman'd. I went out there. I raised my hand. I did little "pick-up jobs" here and there for long-term clients. I pro-bono'd and manifesto'd with a vengeance. 

Not big money. But big meaning.

When I'm worried, and no jobs are beating down my door, I make like Freddie Norman. I don't slink to the end of the bench and hide.

I let the world know I'm ready to take the ball. Ready to throw a strong seven innings. Ready to hang tough.

I do my work. 

I write my blog.
I call my friends.
I kibbitz.
I pro-bono.

I pitch in and help those who need it.

That's how I give my innings day in and day out, like Freddie Norman.

When the one great Score-keeper comes to pen my advertising name, he won't have me in the pantheon of superstars.

He'll have me two notches down, or three. 

As someone who works every day.

And every day makes things a little better than the day before.

Stee-eee-rike!