Boney Tenant.

 

Every once in a while, you read something or stumble across a story that is so profound that you feel obliged to check if it were written by Sophocles or Plutarch. This story here from Wednesday’s “Wall Street Journal” is an example of what I mean. You can read it here.

I was never much of a Tony Bennett fan until 2001 when my father died. Around that time there was New York’s last jazz station broadcasting out of Newark, New Jersey, WBGO. They played an old “V-Disc” recording of Tony Bennett singing one of the saddest songs ever, “St. James Infirmary.” V-Discs were made during World War II or directly after. They were made to be sent to soldiers overseas. Bennett was born in 1926. The war ended in 1945, so he was a young man when he cut the wax. 

When my father died I called the station and they played it for me. Here’s a link to a version. I can't seem to download it. Life today means every time something is improved, it gets worse.

Hearing this was really when I fell in love with Bennett. 

I told a friend of mine about it and she sent me a ten-CD set, that though it had a lot of great music on it, it didn’t have the V-Disc recording. 

The article linked to above on Bennett is one I wish everyone would read. I especially wish the award-jockeys, financiers and accountants that have taken over the ad business would read it.

Not because of Bennett. But because it’s about integrity. Because Bennett is about “To thine own self be true.”

By the early 1970s, to quote the Journal “reinvention seemed to signify relevance….With several No. 1 hits and a Carnegie Hall triumph under his belt…Bennett was already a major star.”

Clive Davis—the legendary executive at Columbia Records said to Bennett, "adapt to contemporary tastes or the label will move on without him."

Davis handed Bennett a list of contemporary rock songs to cover, including Eleanor Rigby and MacArthur Park. Bennett went into the studio and "vomited from the strain of artistic compromise. The resulting album—“Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!”—remains a musical and commercial debacle."

Why this in a blog on advertising?

Because  who hasn’t been told essentially, "adapt to contemporary tastes or the label will move on without him."

Who hasn’t been told to be digital first, or social first, or :06 first, or Tik-Tok first. Who hasn’t been told it’s not the message, it’s the medium? 

When Ogilvy was still in business and I was still there, I was told by the president and the CCO that Ogilvy was “no longer in the platform business. Clients are no longer buying platforms.”

Oh. 

I’ve been told rational thought is dead.

Information is dead.

Product differentiation is dead.

I’ve been told no one cares about benefits and features.

I’ve been told every tool in the persuasion and selling toolbox is dead.

I’ve been told today’s consumer is so radically different that everything I know and believe in is dead. 

Heaven forfend, if my dog ran away, I’d put up signs with her picture that says “Lost Dog.” The same way people would have in 1926, 1826, 1726 and plain-old 26. 

I wouldn’t plot an influential strategy or do something brand-y that obscured the message. I’d say “Lost Dog,” and have a picture, her name and my phone number.

Has the world really changed that much?

When I’m pitching a piece of business, it feels like I’m hoping to get picked by some baseball team. You have to stand-out to get in.

Here’s where Bennett might have served as an example to an industry still engaged in Ponzi-inflected Seppuku.

The Journal continues:

Bennett’s son Danny became his manager. He felt “The product was fine; only the distribution needed fixing.” Soon Bennet was on late-night television, alternative rock clubs, and eventually on MTV. His album 'MTV Unplugged' won the Grammy album of the year and went platinum. 

Bennett’s story is also a study in brand discipline, though he would never have used the phrase. Instead of gravitating to rock or its offshoots, he preserved the product and trusted that quality would eventually become a competitive advantage….

In a marketplace saturated with manufactured novelty, that made him rare.

Bennett spent seven decades betting that a superb song, sung with conviction, would outlast every fashion built to bury it…. 

His real innovation was patience—an asset that never depreciates.

I like the line above, a superb song, sung with conviction, would outlast every fashion built to bury it.

You can cross out the word song and substitute “headline,” or “joke,” or “essay,” or “drawing,” or “blueberry cobbler.” There’s a lot of money to be made in riding to FOMO Ferrari, in convincing clients and customers and everyone else within spitting distance that the world has changed irrevocably, and we better get with the latest trend.

In fact, I’d suggest that’s why everyone and his sister are accepting the sloppiness of AI. Forget its dearth of verve and originality, it’s cheap and everywhere.

I’d suggest that “superb” work is not based on trends. And conviction—by definition—can’t be faked. Real feelings and real emotions expressed with integrity is what the industry should once again be about. That’s why, almost seven years since being kicked to the curb by Ogilvy/WPP, they’ve lost 80% of their value and I’ve gained 80% more wherewithal.

I suppose it’s weird to flit from Tony Bennett to William Faulkner—but they’re both people who stuck to their knitting. You wouldn’t find Faulkner partnering with James Patterson or co-writing the Yoknapatawpha cookbook with Martha Stewart or some other atrocity. 

Faulkner concluded his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech with these words. I don’t expect you to read them as often as I do. But try to read them once in a while.

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. 

The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. 

The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Trends are fine. You can make haste quickly with them. But to build something that lasts, you don’t merely chase after trends.

You endure. You consistent. You do you. You prevail.