Shred Up.

When I started GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company over six years ago, one of the first things I bought for my office was a paper-shredder. I suppose because I had to open a business bank account, get a tax ID number, and incorporate my LLC, my data and privacy were sold more often than a ride on melania's ass, back when she was a cheap hooker. Of course, the melanoma-hooker claims are un-proven, so allow me to clarify.  my data and privacy were sold more often than a ride on melania's ass, back when she was an alleged cheap hooker.

With all that horrid direct mail coming in, all those offers of $700 bonuses and 100,000 points and free checking as well as offers for solar power, wind power and lunar power, as well as free roof inspection, lawn-service, tick eradication, security services and various unreliable cable systems offering equally spotty internet connectivity, I decided to work "stupidity shredding" or "annoyance shredding" into my daily routine. 

My shredder has a lovely aggressive mechanical whirl--like a well-oiled Sten gun chopping down Nazis as the Allies try to take Remagen.

I just shredded something in a bright silver envelope from Capital One bank, something else bidding me to open now from the local bank who robs me with their fees, and a fake telegram looking thing from a "financial advisor" offering me $50 to attend an estate planning luncheon. Call me cynical, I am more likely to win the entire IBM ad business than ever collect that $50. 

About 99.676899-percent of advertisements have the ethical standards of a carnival barker. You can win a kewpie doll if you pay $1 and throw three balls and knock over the weighted bottles. But you damn well know that the kewpie doll is worth significantly less than what you paid to win in. I worked at a carnival one summer--exactly 50 years ago. I know whereof I kewpie.

Switching media gears for a minute, when you're on a social platform and you see what are allegedly targeted ads (and almost never are) you quickly get to a drop-down menu that asks you why you hate the bullshit you're being sent with such avidness. The linked in screen shot above has ten ovular choices, but they've left off most of the most egregious reasons, see below.

So much of what I see online in my very-advertising-centric feed is theoretical posturing about what makes an ad or an ad campaign successful. Is the client and/or agency spending too much on performance and not enough of fame? Is the ad reaching people when they're ready to buy? Is the ad contributing to that remarkable American quilt we call culture?

About twenty five years ago there was an agency you might have heard of that handled much of the American Express account. It was called Ogilvy.

One year, the defunct agency had shot some commercials with Jerry Seinfeld and had persuaded Seinfeld to entertain at the agency Christmas party.

He probably did about five minutes. And was very good. Because he cut through the bs with truth. Seinfeld said something like, "The great thing about advertising is that you can only really say two things about it. You see a commercial you can say, 

1. "It's good." or
2. "It sucks.'

Trillions of dollars and quadrillions of hours are spent in advertising rationalizing the efficacy of the 99.676899-percent of advertisements that suck.

We'll heat map them, and eye-graph them and come up with about 14-million reasons why a dog's breakfast might be deemed Le Bernardin-esque--research said so. The research and data will pour in, as will the case studies proving incontrovertibly that the $42 million spent on the totality was worth it.

Into the shredder it goes.

That's what real people do.