Two amerikas.

by Margaret Bourke-White. Not A.I.

Some years ago, you may remember if you're cursed with a functioning memory like I am, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote an opinion piece about "the two Americas."

We still capitalized amerika in those days, and spelled it with a c, not a k.

Friedman was writing in the wake of an unusual ice storm in Texas that knocked out their electrical grid and water system. Thousands of homes were without power for days on end. The fragility of the grid, the lack of oversight, and the failure to respond to the disaster in a timely way was due to the ethos of one amerika. The one that doesn't want to pay taxes for anything and that doesn't believe in the notion of expertise. 

That same week, the other amerika, landed a Rover on Mars. It travelled 292,000,000 miles from earth (there was no traffic) and put the Rover right on the dot of its intended landing site.

Here, in Friedman's own words.

At a very early point in my career, I noticed a similar dichotomy when it comes to ad agencies. There are agencies that reflexively say no. And there are agencies that say, yeah, we can do that.

What are you crazy? The client will never go for that.
Let's do it! The client will love it.

When I was in my waning days of my second Ogilvy stint, I had a similar realization about agencies and amerika. The agency had become, like amerika has become for so many, a Zero Sum Game. If Marcia gets something (a raise, a great assignment, a primo desk near the air-shaft) Wanda doesn't. There's not enough to go around. That's the prevailing ethos in our country today. If poor people get healthcare, it will cause rich people to give up one of their four or seven private jets. 

Today, it seems like more and more ad agencies, despite their performative and gratuitous clamor for awards (which they pay millions for) don't believe in actual creativity. They are silently and stealthily firing huge numbers of people and promoting instead AI. They are saying creativity can't do it; data can.

The questions clients ask, even if they never say them in so many words, are "can you make us famous? Can you separate us from our competitors? Can you make us lust-after-able?"

More and more, the answers are no, we can't. That's not what the great god Algorithm does. Or, we'll do it through 37,994 banner ads that no one ever sees.

More and more, like in the Friedman above, the minor-potentates who (mis)run the big holding companies have chosen short-term profits over long-term resilience. My guess is that none of the holding companies will be around in their current form by 2035. Certainly the minor-potentates will be in Mustique by then, probably cooking puppies for dinner.

Success takes initiative. It takes perseverance. It demands you keep your eyes on the prize. Often it means you need experienced people who are willing to fail and who know that failure leads not to getting shit-canned but to doing great things.
As Friedman says, audacious goals and long-term investments.

Those attitudes no longer exist in amerika.

Or ad agencies.

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BTW, I had cataract surgery last week and am having it again this week. My cataract surgery came from the "only in America" amerika. I checked in at 6AM. I was in the operating room at 7:30AM. In the recovery room at 8:06.

A 9mm lens was removed through a 2mm slit. A new man-made lens was put in place.

Starting 8:30, I had eggs in a coffee shop and walked three miles to my apartment. My vision in my "doctored" eye is already 20/25 and after fifteen years of wearing reading glasses, I can throw them out. I have no pain and can see out of an eye that was essentially blind.

I want the agency equivalent.