I wish I were Mitt Romney. A poem.

I wish I were Mitt Romney.
I wish I had perfect hair.
I wish I were named after a sporting good
and had a billion dollars.

I wish I tied my dog to my car's roof.
And drove.
I wish I looked like a Ken doll.
And had a Barbie wife and Ken doll sons.

I wish.
I wish.
I wish.
I wish I were Romnipotent.

What's more...

Pursuant to my previous post that was pursuant to my previous-er post--this low-bid jag I'm on is all about answering the question in the subtitle of Ad Aged, to wit and forsooth, "Will Madison Avenue become Detroit?" Well, current course and speed, my answer is a resounding "yes."

If as an industry we don't believe in the efficacy of our industry, it's effectiveness, if we fall prey to impecunious louts who treat advertising like Heinz treats tomatoes ("Bring in another truckload at twenty-nine cents a pound) we are doomed to un-planned obsolescence. We are costly, disposable, out-sourceable, low-bid-able.

Low-bid advertising is offensive, irrelevant, invisible and expensive because it is meaningless. Good advertising, based on intrusion and measurement works. Therefore it is worth paying for.

Pursuant to my last post.

The deleterious effects of our low-bid economy are everywhere and they make my blood boil. So today we end up with cheap products that wind up more expensive, growth-hormones in our farm-grown Chinese fish and lead in our brand-name children's toys. And crappy one-off advertising that does nothing.

But here's the thing that really rubs my goat the wrong way. Where are our industry leaders? (I won't for a second say, where are our national leaders? They're at a focus-group facility some place reading poll results and back-pedaling.) You see, low-bid is in many cases synonymous with low-risk. And if we had industry leaders they would be speaking out about this.

Instead, Chief Creative Officers are wanking on about minutia, agency presidents are blathering about new media modalities, Bob Greenberg is incomprehensible, and no one, no one is saying advertising takes time, money, intimacy and intelligence for it to be effective. Advertising is not a cost-center--it is a profit center. It should not be low-bid, low-risk.

Is there an agency person out there willing to make a speech entitled "Why an "Expensive" agency winds up being cheaper." Naw. I'm off to the Hamptons.

The "low bid" economy.

All over America things are being built. Highways, levees, bridges, houses, housing projects, mine-shafts. Even ad campaigns.

In our current MBAelstrom of thought, when those projects are put out for RFP, if they don't go to a crony, they go to the lowest bid. According to Alan Weisman's new book, which will soon be a classic, "The World Without Us," the results of low-bidding are crashing around us everyday. (Even in Iraq--the war that was supposed to cost us nothing, remember.)

In advertising, which this blog is nominally about, Clients wind up with low-bid creative (Hot pockets!), low-bid innovation, low-bid client service and worst, low-bid results. And those CMOs that buy into the low-bid adconomy? Their average tenure is down to a new low...23 months. Let's low-bid them adieu.

It's joke time!!!!!!!!!!

The George W. Bush Library is being designed by the eminent architectural firm of Robert A. M. Stern.

The George W. Bush Library. The Adolph Hitler Fun Park. The Britney Spears Bhurka Shop.

OK. Revenue is vital. But nevertheless, there are times when you have to turn down an account; when the assignment, or the people are so odious and malignant that the moral and morale cost outweigh the revenue gained.

Collette Dickinson Pearce, the great English Agency of the '60s, limited its size to ten clients and fired the worst each year and only then would take on a new one. In the movie "Big Night," Tony Shaloub wouldn't serve a guest risotto with a side of pasta because it is just wrong. Obvious, I know. But sometimes we have to have something called scruples.

PS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbj9otRPdiM

A few more words on dumb titles.

In a recent post I carped about the proliferation of meaningless titles. This is endemic in all businesses today, but, I think particularly rife in ours. If a baseball team had similar title proliferation each would have a "Chief Going into the Hole and Making the Peg Officer," a "Chief Short-Hop Officer" and the like.

Great players, whether it's in sports or business can do many things. A good copywriter or art director or, god-forbid, media director should have ideas. Thus, perhaps, eliminating the need for a "Chief Idea Officer."

Semantically, linguistically, philologically, I don't know what this proliferation says about us. I suspect it's a agency's way of saying our business is so complex and involved that we need many, many specialists to provide you with the myriad services you need. Taken further, it's probably a way to obscure what we do so we can charge more.

Ed McCabe, all 5'3" of him, created a brand, a company and an entire industry with the words "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." I wonder if he could have gotten that positioning past a Chief Something Officer.

Politically incorrect.

Alberto Gonzales, appointed by our president and approved by our congress, to uphold and enforce our laws (in a nation governed by laws) resigned on Friday, The New York Times reported this morning. Like his namesake, Speedy, reputedly the fastest mouse in all of Me heeee co, Gonzales was meant to protect the "leetle mouses" from the metaphorical fat cats who, left to their own devices, will torment us all. He's gone now, off to a right wing, neo-fascist Think Tank, I'm sure, a seven-digit book-contract, a Fox TV show and who knows what other mammon the gauleiters of the goose-stepping Bush administration are accorded.

Where is our rage? I wrote my "representatives" not long ago, Hilary and Chuck and Carolyn, and did not even receive a form letter back. We are deep in the meniscus and it's sad. As Preston Sturges wrote in "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock," "A man works his whole life in a glass factory, one day he picks up a hammer." Make mine a sledge.

This makes me a little ill.

I know that the new trend in agency naming is to call your joint "Molten Newt" or "Cesium 138." But GSD&M's new name sets a new sort of standard, if you ask me. GSD&M was originally named for its founders whose last names started with G, S, D and M. OK. But to encourage the "new generation" of leadership, GSD&M has changed its name to "GSD&M Idea City." Kind of like Circuit City I guess, only with ideas. And everyday low prices.

They're even looking for a "Chief Idea Officer," and their CEO will now become their Vice Chairman, "overseeing innovation." Oy Vey.

Of late I have seen more Chief titles than I can shake an Excel spreadsheet at. As Alben Barkley (Truman's veep) said, "The vice presidency isn't worth a bucket of warm spit." I feel much the same way about Chief Digital Officers, Chief Innovation Officers, Chief People Officers, Chief Pixel Officers, ad nauseam. What, exactly, do you do here all day?

And what's it like in Idea City? Do they have a football team (the Inklings)? How are housing prices? Can I find a nice pied a terre if I just want to visit on weekends? Idea City. Yeesh.

A party.

Some time either tomorrow, Sunday, or Monday, will be my 100th post. To commemorate this august event, which uncannily enough is taking place in August, I've planned some festivities. This event will be something on the order of a grand opening of a new Home Depot, so fasten your seat belts and stay tuned.

The good enough agency.

Jay Chiat, I think it was, famously said "good enough is not good enough." True. But this post is not about good enough in the "Chiatian" sense. Instead it's about some thoughts by child psychologist and educator Donald Winnicot, who propagated the notion of the "good-enough mother."

A little background, to Winnicott, the good-enough mother tries to provide what the infant needs, but she instinctively leaves a time lag between the demands and their satisfaction and progressively increases it. As Winnicott states: "The good-enough mother...starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant's needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant's growing ability to deal with her failure" (Winnicott, 1953). The good enough mother stands in contrast with the "perfect" mother who satisfies all the needs of the infant on the spot, thus preventing him/her from developing.

I wonder if more agencies should think about this contrast. Clients (and I'm not being condescending here) in this metaphor can be thought of as babies. If all their needs are met immediately, perfectly, they will never develop patience and maturity. They will never accept dissent, strong opinions, even defiance. They will grow reliant, dependent but not trusting.

The good enough agency would not ignore the client, but instead, help the client to develop independently and maturely over time. Ultimately what the child/client learns is a sense of self.

I am neither a psychologist or an account guy, but this makes sense to me. Is your agency good enough? Because that's better than perfect.