iTold you so.

A few posts ago in The iPhone, will it be for U? I asked if the iPhone will be on brand for Apple. This morning I came across a story in the NY Times with this headline: "Chiefs Defend Slow Network for the iPhone." At least at its inception, the iPhone will run on AT&T's older, slower network. The article states: "Early reviews of the iPhone, while positive, have faulted the slower network because it will limit the palm-size wireless computer’s greatest strength — making the Internet easily accessible on the go."

Of course, this news lead AT&T chief executive Randall L. Stephenson to sound like a twelve-star general during the Viet Nam war. “It doesn’t concern me,” he said. Perhaps "It doesn't concern me" should be AT&T's new tagline. It's certainly their positioning.

This is bad news for Apple. It reflects a lack of customer focus. Which is fatal. Bad. Off-brand.

And as they used to say in Maoist China, "When you sleep with dogs, you wake up with fleas."

Joan Lunden on anal leakage.

Not too many years ago I was asked by my ECD to work on a pitch for a pharma product. I blurted out the title of this post, and he took the hint and he let me off the hook.

With the billions now being spent on pharma advertising, it stuns me that essentially, no matter what medicine you're hawking, you do the same commercial.

I used to have this, so I couldn't do that, so I asked my doctor and he told me about blank. [Diarrhea disclosure. And people pushing kids on swings or sitting on the sofa with an attractive person of the opposite sex or an attractive couple walking on the beach. With a super that says see our ad in Cooking EZ.] Name of product and tagline, usually "Take back your life." Or "Tomorrow is your future."

Pharma commercials suck because the people involved in them have an illness. It's called "Conference Room-itis." The ads all work in a conference room. On forced exposure people nod and say "that's me." And the sales force loves hearing their product name. But on TV or in the real world they just are not seen.

Wasting billions. That's sick.

With apologies to everyone.

I think I have insomnia.
Am I afraid of another
Tsunam-nia?
Do I fear a dirty bomb-nia?
Perhaps it's the bad econom-nia?
Or a pair of too tight pyjam-nia?

Thomas Friedman on Advertising.

Thomas Friedman already has three Pulitzer Prizes and a couple of award-winning books to his name--those accomplishments in and of themselves make him a must-read. Today, however, he must be clipped, taped to bulletin boards and discussed widely, both within agencies and with clients.

His column, "The Whole World is Watching" discusses a new book called "How" by a guy called Dov Seidman, the CEO of a business ethics company. Here's the gist (I'm quoting Friedman here): "Seidman’s simple thesis is that in this transparent world “how” you live your life and “how” you conduct your business matters more than ever, because so many people can now see into what you do and tell so many other people about it on their own without any editor."

In other words, if you screw up--like Dell did with their customer service--it can destroy your business. Friedman continues:

“The persistence of memory in electronic form makes second chances harder to come by,” writes Seidman. “In the information age, life has no chapters or closets; you can leave nothing behind, and you have nowhere to hide your skeletons. Your past is your present.” So the only way to get ahead in life will be by getting your “hows” right.

Ditto in business. Companies that get their hows wrong won’t be able to just hire a P.R. firm to clean up the mess by a taking a couple of reporters to lunch — not when everyone is a reporter and can talk back and be heard globally.

But this also creates opportunities. Today “what” you make is quickly copied and sold by everyone. But “how” you engage your customers, “how” you keep your promises and “how” you collaborate with partners — that’s not so easy to copy, and that is where companies can now really differentiate themselves."

That's it. That last paragraph. That's all about the changing role of advertising--about inviting people in, not shoving messages out. That's what agencies and their clients should be discussing.

PS. Friedman is a "Times Select" writer, meaning you can't get him for free online. So pick up a copy of the paper for a dollar.

Passing the Buick.

Buick and GMC, two divisions of General Motors, have just shifted their advertising accounts from McCann and Lowe to Leo Burnett. This comes not long after Cadillac shifted its account from Leo to Modernista! (The exclamation point is in Modernista's! name, and it's so awful and pretentious, I feel obliged to include it.)

Somehow, this consolidation is supposed to "further unleash the power of the Buick-Pontiac-GMC channel and also support our efforts to create three strong, fully differentiated brands within this channel," said Jim Bunnell, general manager, Buick-Pontiac-GMC. Oh, puh-leeze. If anyone is minding the store at GM, they'd fire Jim Bunnell's golden-parachuted ass for such blather. "Unleash the power"? Come on. Buick's sales are down 27% since last year, and they are roughly 80% lower than they were a decade ago. I don't think there's any power here to be unleashed.

In addition to making a product that can't compete in a world market, Buick and GMC spend over $400 million on :30-second spots that I challenge anyone reading this blog to recall. That's a lot of money to shoot a bunch of cars on a wetted-down winding road.

There's got to be a better way to spend $400 million. And I have to believe that if Leo Burnett is going to succeed with these GM brands they had better do something different than what they did with Oldsmobile (defunct) and Cadillac (before they lost it.)

Unleash aweigh!

Not made in China.

It seems like virtually every day there's a story in the news about something that's made in China that falls apart, is full of some toxin or causes an unseemly, almost medieval illness that most people in the West regarded as all but eliminated some decades ago. Today's news item is about the recall of almost half-a-million tires that are of the "shred it yourself" variety.

Here's the point: cheap is cheap. Whether it's crap you buy at Wal-Mart or an advertisement, you get what you pay for.

During my career I've often been told by clients that the agency I represent is too expensive. Generally, when agency account people or finance people hear such an accusation, they respond by squeezing prices, ie. they mark down what they sell. Marking down prices, selling cheap is the best way to make your product or service a commodity. And before long, if it isn't happening already, some sharpie in a well-tailored suit and a Harvard MBA will start saying how ads can be constructed much more cheaply in Bangalore. Now, this is fine, if you're in the commodity business. But unless you suck, you're not a commodity.

Not all that long ago when I was at Ogilvy I wondered what would happen if we created and ran an "Ogilvy ad" for Ogilvy: "Why it makes sense to choose the world's most expensive ad agency." It makes sense because it winds up that expensive agencies are, in the long run, cheaper. Ads are more effective, sales and a company's position in the marketplace are enhanced. Of course, such an attitude is contrary to how business works today. "Look," says the junior brand manager, "I schtupped the agency and saved $xxxxx." Somehow that attitude is supposed to result in effective work. I'll believe that when it snows in August or when I buy Chinese radials.

The iPhone. Will it be for U?

I don't know anyone who doesn't covet the impending iPhone. Even I, who eschew virtually all things material (I am typing this post on a 1991 KayPro 200 computer) would like to have one to fiddle with. Positing all that though, I have a question. Will the iPhone be off brand for Apple?

Here's what I mean. When something sucks, Apple usually finds its place in the market by making that suckiness better, or eliminating that suckiness altogether. Certainly that was the case with the Mac and with their Airport. But with the iPhone, they are hopping into the sack with the devil: AT&T.

"Record your message at the tone...When you are finished recording, hang up."

Wow, thanks phone company for that compelling information and customer service. Thanks to that automatonic voice, I now know how to leave a message.

Now if I were Steve Jobs, I'd have insisted AT&T eliminate that banality. And if I were AT&T, I'd eliminate that crap and build a campaign around having done so.

Personally, I believe the iPhone will succeed. But it would succeed even more if big, dumb companies like AT&T took a page from smart, smaller companies like Apple and learned how to treat customers with respect.

Cannes IV.

The international advertising masturbation festival at Cannes is finally over and it seems like the nabobs there are teetering on the brink of entering the 21st century. Ogilvy Toronto's Dove Evolution work took top honors in both the Cyber and Film categories. That's good news --acknowledgment that Cannes judges and other advertising potentates are realizing at last what every consumer under the age of twenty-five has known for ten years, our on- and off-line worlds have collided.

Rosebud.

My fifteen-year-old is, like me, a bit of an old movie nut and tonight we watched Citizen Kane together. It is a treat for someone who has seen the picture 100 times as I have to watch it with someone who hasn't seen it before--particularly someone who was born a full fifty years after Citizen Kane was released.

There was a lot of technique in Citizen Kane--Toland's cinematography, Hermann's music, etc. but it's not technique that makes Citizen Kane stellar. It's the story, the script and the acting. Going back to an early post called An Homage, Citizen Kane imparts useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way.

It is a fabulous piece of work and if you haven't seen it for a while, buy the DVD. Watching it will be good for your career. If nothing else, it should raise the level of your ambition.

The first time I got fired.

The first time I got fired was in part because I said that FedEx's "fast-talking man" commercial was the best direct spot ever created. That made my boss furious. There was no phone number! No repetition of the offer! No call to action! Boom. I was canned for what she regarded as my lack of understanding and heresy.

Since then, I've continued my private onslaught against the tyranny of didactic definitions and rigid classifications. If you read AdAged regularly you know that I believe in advertising and that all these sub-categories (like direct, interactive, health care, whatever) are so much nonsense.

Today, I'd argue that the best of Apple advertising is direct. You know what you have to do and why you have to do it. My two cents says that iPhone ads will gain an ROI "direct" ads can only envy. No wonder TBWA/Chiat/Day (or wherever the virgules lay) keeps winning Effie after Effie for their work.

And that brings me to today's advertising verbal appendage. The word "interactive." I suppose there's a complicated technical definition, but the word in its simplest for means that people get involved and participate with whatever the stimulus is. Man, if your ad doesn't stimulate some kind of response, it sucks and you should start over. Because if your work ain't interactive, it ain't advertising.