Darkening. Harkening.

When I was fired from Ogilvy, though I was making the agency a shit-ton of money and almost single-handedly doing much of the creative on a large account, Mark Read, the then CEO of Ogilvy's Holding Company WPP said in the press that the senior (mostly creatives who were fired) "harkened back to the 80s."

He posited that thinking and learning from a time when the industry was more creative, more vital and more prosperous was a bad thing.

Harkening back to such a time was a pejorative. 

Mark Read has since left WPP with a gigantic severance package (about 50 times what a 20-year employee would get) and he's gotten a job from a company he bought while running WPP that WPP has since sold. That's about as gangster as capitalism gets.  [BTW, when Read was forced out of WPP, the feckless trade press allowed him to claim he left WPP in a secure financial position. 

The holding company's market cap has plummeted from $32,000,000,000 when Read joined the firm to about 1/10 that today. Saying WPP has a secure financial position is like Eichmann saying Auschwitz had great showers. Many people believe our current economic systems is capitalism for the poor--we live day to day. And socialism for the rich--they get more help than we can even imagine.]

Since leaving WPP in a 'secure financial position' 12 months ago,

WPP's 'secure' stock has fallen from 39.77 to 17.46.

(Imagine if a baseball team went from winning 40 games to winning 18.)

In any event, last week I had a week where client meetings ran into client meetings ran into client meetings. And all of those meetings were GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company pretty much one-on-one with the CEO of one of my clients.

It's tough meeting with CEOs.

They're stern, demanding, usually cheap. And most often they haven't a clue about advertising--what it can do, what it can't and how it actually works. What's more, my current job is at least three jobs. 

1) I'm a FINDER. (I have to find business.)
2) I'm a MINDER. (I have to care for business.)
3) I'm a GRINDER. (I have to do to ads.)

In exhaustion and some exasperation I wrote a note about this to a friend of mine who's had a long and successful advertising career.

What I unwitting put my finger on in the note above is what IMHO, Mark Read and his ilk never knew and the entire industry has abdicated itself from.

The highest order of our job is not just creating ads or "culture." It's shaping who a company is, how it comports itself, what and how it sells what it does.

That's how we create real brand value.
That's how we earn our keep

However, today,
In our race to create a better BOGO,
in our race to kerpow of KPIs
in our race to make our ROI roar,

We've forgotten our true power.
Defining.
Differentiating.
Demonstrating the
who
what
why and
how

a business exists.
And making it 
lust-after-able.

Come.
Harken back with me.