A Lot of People Will Hate This One.

I often think of myself as a can of soup.

Or a French mustard.

Or an Italian olive oil or balsamic vinegar.

You can go to any grocery store and find about 259 others that look just like me. 

259 others that have roughly the same ingredients, provenance and heritage. 

259 others that do roughly everything I do roughly as well as I do it.

That’s the world most of us face every day.

Whether we’re looking for a significant other or a significant occupation.

How do we get noticed?

There are 259 other cans of soup in the grocery store that are made with the same red, ripe tomatoes.

Some of those cans—most of them—may try to get an edge by lowering their price by a couple of cents. 

If everyone else is $4.29, and they’re $3.99, they might get a sale. Bargain hunters.

A few of those cans have red, ripe tomatoes enough to raise their price by a couple of cents. They charge $5.29 and hope that people will think they’re worth more and that they taste better and are healthier because they cost more.

But for every more expensive can of soup, there are about 28 cheaper cans of soup. 

Obviously, I’m not a can of soup.

Or a French mustard. And Italian olive oil or a balsamic vinegar.

Obviously, I’m not in a grocery store, either.

But it’s worse for us.

Our grocery store is LinkedIn. 

And there aren’t just 259 other creatives we are competing against for the same seven shitty assignments, there are 259,000 other creatives.

Not to mention four giant holding companies that control about eighty-percent of the jobs in the ad industry and because of their size and reach have pricing control over most of the jobs.

What’s more, with the proliferation of awards, everyone is award-winning. If Moses were alive today his LinkedIn would read.

And there are a lot of shoppers, holding company “talent acquisition specialists,” recruiters and head-hunters who really can’t tell the difference between one soup and the other and are paid and incentivized to do all they can to drive your price down.

The soup might be served in a bowl. But we are an industry of bottom-feeders.

It’s not different really if it were 1880, your name were Cżleotǔwicz, you were newly off the boat from Upper Slobovia, and you found yourself in the coal fields of central Pennsylvania.

You might have been promised by 25-cents for each ton of coal you mined. By the time you were a mile below the earth in Shamokin, PA, you were surrounded by so many competing Bohunks, that your promised 25-cents a ton was halved. You’d get 12 1/2-cents a ton. When the mine-owners subtracted what you owed them for use of their pick, their lantern, their mine elevator, their canary and the shack they rented you, you were, as the song goes, “another day older and deeper in debt.”

Then.

That’s the scenario in advertising today.

Now.

I started my GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company just as Covid descended on the ad industry. The ad industry was in the spray of a single cough transformed into the subtract-industry.

There was nothing left.

There is nothing left. 

Unless you’re one of the six people who get eight-figure salaries every year for slowing the shrinkage of the companies they mis-manage and extract from.

This is what I faced.

I had faced it before when I was fired from R\GA at age 56 and reckoned I would never work again.

I asked myself, “How will I ever get a job.”

Quickly, I answered myself.

As if I were a can of soup.

“What am I best in the world at?”

Not what am I good at.

Not what awards have I won.

Not who I know.

Not where I worked.

Not my winsome smile.

What do I do better than anyone else in the world?

I wrote my answer down.

I’m best at taking complicated things and making them simple,

friendly and even sexy.

That’s what I worked at.

That’s what I did.

That’s how I marketed myself.

That’s how I became ECD and Copy Chief at Ogilvy on IBM.

When Ogilvy fired me, I had to do that again.

What do I do better than anyone else in the world?

Recently he former head of Ogilvy recommended me to a new client. She wrote this about me.

"George is as good at positioning and articulating the purpose and value of an enterprise as anyone with whom I've worked. (George was a creative director at Ogilvy for years.). And he does it with charm.”

Your job, if you’re looking for work is to find a statement like the above without you.

No one works harder than Cżleotǔwicz.

No one tries more options than Cżleotǔwicz.

No one is more optimistic than Cżleotǔwicz.

I’ve written this because I’m about to write a note to a client who I’ve worked with since I opened GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company. I was on retainer with him for five years. Then because he wasn’t making any money, we went our separate ways. About two weeks ago, he called me and wants me back.

I’m perseverating about how much to charge him.

I find myself talking myself down price-wise.

Something you should never allow yourself to do.

That’s why I wrote this.

Man, that is one amazing can of soup.