Bubbling Down.

Bubbles.

I suppose at least until the last ding-dong of doom reverberates through our super-heated no-longer atmosphere, that there will always been certain things we can count on. 

Living near the sea, as I do now, the tides are one such linchpin. As is of course the rising in the east and the setting in the west of the sun. As is renaming major lakes and parts of the ocean for hate and xenophobic effect.

But of all of our planet's verities, more than dinner being late or crappy neighbors, the verity most inviolable is this: creeps will always chase after, flock to, speed toward money. The more money there is, the more and faster they will chase after it.

We are no different, humankind I mean, from ants after a bit of spittle. 

(I think, btw, social media might more accurately be re-titled social-mania. Now you can see everyone and her cousin doing something inane or flat-out dangerous on any one of about thirteen trillion platforms, and you feel compelled as well to do it. We've even invented an acronym for it, and everyone has it and is driven by it: FOMO. We never consider FOFF(ALLAA). (Fear of following flocks and looking like an ass.)

Let's think about one industry for a moment--just one--so as to limit the breadth and width of my frayed blanket statement.

In the last 40 years in advertising:

• Every agency has consolidated.
• Every agency diversified into non-advertising related fields like auto-racing, sports-agenting and more.
• Every agency sold all the diversified interests they diversified into.
• Every agency has merged with two or three dozen other agencies.
• Every agency destroyed about 80% of the agencies they bought.
• Every agency has relocated and un-designed its work-space.
• Every agency has divested its media arm.
• Every agency has un-divested its media arm.
• Every agency has sold itself to one of essentially three holding companies.
• Every agency has eliminated offices and quiet and privacy.
• Every agency has jammed people together so "they can communicate better."
• Every agency has abandoned platforms for tiny tactics.
• Every agency has lowered creative salaries.
• Every agency has competed on price, not business' built.
• Every agency has chosen pay-for-play awards as a way to signal its viability and quality.
• Every agency has raised c-suite pay and lowered regular-person pay.
• Every agency has abandoned the agency-of-record schema and become instead a vendor.
• Every agency has stopped partnering with clients (WITT--We're In This Together) and started charging by the infinitesimal pixel.
• Every agency has self-decimated in hunt for: 
     -programmatic magic
     -digital magic
     -six sigma magic
     -scrum magic
     -agile magic
     -some planner with a cool accent magic and
     -AI magic
  
• Every agency has differentiated itself via lock-step sameness. 
• Every agency does exactly the same as every agency because that's what every agency does.

To sum all of the above up in a single sentence, Every agency has been so busy chasing after the 'easy money' that every agency has forgotten what agencies can and should do in order to grow. 

They've abandoned challenging ideas that get attention and drive sales. They've abandoned leadership.  They've abandoned risk. Campaigns. The need to be better than the programs they interrupt. They've abandoned respect for customers, their own employees and they've abandoned commitment to a client.

Charlotte Beers--the CEO of Ogilvy 30 years ago said she wanted to make the joint "Most valued by those who most value brands." Spoken or un-spoken those words guided Ogilvy and a dozen places like it for dozens of years.

Today--as we chase after wherever it is with think the money is--agencies seek the be "Most valued by those who most value .00564-percent more margin, and quarterly growth via manipulation of spreadsheets, and the numbers we show the street."

We chase so vigorously after money we left our souls in the dust.

Dumb. Desiccated. Destroyed.