Paper Rout.

Outside of "Ogilvy on Advertising," "Reality in Advertising" by Rosser Reeves, "Pearl Harbor..." by Jerry Della Femina, and the three horsepersons of today's current advertising blogosphere, Trott, Hoffman and Siegel--with a side order of Steve Harrison and John Long tossed in like semantic croutons, I don't read books on advertising.

They're a bit, I think, like reading a book on how to ride a bike or hit a baseball. When I was a boy, and in avid pursuit of wood on horsehide, I did read Ted Williams' "The Science of Hitting." Like most instructional books, it listed things I already knew. 

1) Keep your eye on the ball.

2) Keep your swing level.

3) Wait for your pitch.

Those things, of course, are easy to know but really hard to do. They're a little like if Jim Ryun wrote a book about running a four-minute-mile. Telling me to run 15-miles-per-hour for 1760 yards doesn't get me any closer to doing it. You either have the "motor" or you don't. Reading about it only really underscores the probable inadequacy of your engine. 

It's easy to run a sub 4-minute mile. Just do this.

All that being said, one of the best advertising lessons I ever learned came from the Headmistress of the elite and expensive pre-school on the Upper East Side that each of my elite and expensive daughters went to.

My ever-loving and I were in the school auditorium for a parent-teacher night and Jean, the head of the school was fielding questions from some type A parents who had taken the night off from their Goldman Sachs labors.

A 40-year-old in a suit that costs roughly the same as a year's tuition stood to ask a question. He was like a rough Brooklyn District Attorney interrogating a mobster small enough for him to push around.

"I've had two kids here," he began. "Before they got here, their art-work sucked. After they left, their art-work sucked. But while they were here, their art-work was great."

Pause.

"What's your secret."

Even longer pause. Of the sort that showed Jean wasn't cowed by either the suit or the wearer's comportment.

"There's no secret," Jean answered. "We just know when to take the paper away."

I remember reading from Roy Grace his description of what a creative director does. He said, eloquently, "I take out the garbage."

"We know when to take the paper away," is that level of adroit. About ninety-seven point nine percent of account people don't know when to take the paper away from clients. ninety-seven point nine percent creative directors don't know when to take their paws off of your work. And about ninety-seven point nine percent CCOs don't know when to take the paper away from the CPAs who currently run our business.

Like a three-year-old's art-work in most scenarios, everything today is improved to death. Every swimming pool has been peed in. Every beef stew has been over-salted. Every guest has out-stayed their welcome.

I grew up with a mother who wanted my brother and I to follow in the footsteps of the Kennedy boys. Not get murdered, but become a president and a leading candidate. 

She drummed into us a ditty that after 112-years of therapy, I still can't shake.

Good, better, best.

Do not let it rest.

Till your good is better.

And your better, best.

That's a winning formula if you're in the therapy business. 

It ain't so hot if you're in advertising.

Sometimes the best thing you can learn is when to take the paper away.

---

I had two very rare advertising books that were stolen from me when I worked at Ogilvy. I've been looking for them since they went missing about a decade ago. You can read the story of the books on Dave Dye's great blog, here. (And no, Dave did NOT steal them.)

In any event, about twice a year I spend an hour or two trying to track these books down. Yesterday's semi-annual search led me here, to Julian Koenig's New York Times obituary. 

Julian was the writer behind "Lemon," and "Think Small." And a hundred other great ads. 

Less than a week after DDB was shuttered by Omnicom (omnicom means 'death star' in Latin) I stumbled onto the obituary of one of DDB's most-famous writers and found this quotation.

It seems like it might be an adroit epigram for the death of the industry. 

I wish more people had noticed.

“The hardest thing in the world to resist is applause,” he said at his induction. [into the advertising Hall of Fame.] “Your job is to reveal how good the product is, not how good you are, and the simpler the better.”