Sold. Out.

If you've ever had a mortgage, one of the felicities of having one is getting an envelope in the mail with an unknown letterhead. I'm usually loathe to open things I don't recognize. I figure it's flaked with some kind of anthrax or ricin or actual physical spam. Why are you, you unknown letterhead, mailing me something.

(The fact is, I don't even put phone numbers with names into my phone until I've known someone for ten years. As Paul Simon sang, "It took a little time to get next to me.")

Once, not long ago, I got something with a logo that said "Mr. Cooper" on it. What I found inside was a bill for my monthly mortgage payment.

I said to my wife, "I thought we had our mortgage from Citibank." She answered, "We did. They must have sold our mortgage." 

That doesn't seem right to me. 

I paid Citibank for something--ostensibly a loan and service surrounding that loan. How can you sell it?

But they did.

Without telling me.

Fortunately they sold it to Mr. Cooper, "my home loans & refinance partner." Like Adolf Eichmann was my ZyklonB and Crematoria partner.

A similar thing happens at times when you book a flight on, say, American Airlines to Phoenix. You'll notice when you print your boarding pass type that reads "this flight operated by Such&Such Airlines."

It doesn't do any good to bark about any of this. There's no one to complain to and no good answer for any of this except that someone figured out there was more money to be gained buying and selling customers than actually serving them. 

What's more, the people in various organizations doing this slicing and dicing aren't really in any business--not mortgages, not airlines. They're in the arbitraging business. They don't really give a rat's ass about mortgages or airlines. That's not where the money is.

The other day while on LinkedIn, I saw an ad for an agency called BBDO MW. Quaintly, I figured the MW stood for Midwest. I assumed BBDO had consolidated their Chicago and Minneapolis offices. 

I clicked on the ad and saw this sleight-of-hand and slight-of-management.

MW had been founded in 1947 was sold to Omnicom in 1998. It's now been eaten by Omnicom and reduced to two letters. 

I'd imagine there are clients who chose to work with Martin Williams. Creatives, too. But their career mortgages have subsumed their careers. Their "home" has been sold. 

The cynicism. A name means nothing. It's just an expense. A heritage means nothing. Memory is just an expense. As is tradition, the past, even values.

All this happens because amerikan business is no longer about the business it's in. It's about selling, ginning up and getting out of town before they catch you.

amerika is take the money and run.
And if you take enough you can avoid paying taxes.

The names mean nothing.
The traditions and legacies and histories have been destroyed.
Customer preferences are ignored.
What they "bought" and what they get aren't related.
All for something more important.
Fifteen or so very wealthy old white men getting very-wealthier.

When I was in Cairo, Egypt with my family about 20 years ago, we went to the famed and ancient Bazaar, Khan el-Khalili. You can probably learn more about marketing and advertising from a few hours in Khan el-Khalili than you can from one-thousand years in MBA school. 

There are no chain stores. No flashing neon. Every shop is owned by the owner and worked by the owner. Most shops have a picture of the current owner's father or grand father framed and in a place of honor. If you're smart, you say to the current owner, "That's your father? What a handsome man. And you look just like him." That's the equivalent of breaking bread with someone before arguing or negotiating. It's the stuff of humanity--and has been for thousands of years. 

Names and legacies aren't erased. Scaling isn't the topic 24/7. Nor are agentic bots. 

In a world where names mean nothing, nothing means anything.

That's the modern ad business today.