Brand USA.

Karen Hughes, a Bush crony announced today that she's leaving her job as undersecretary of state. In that job she was responsible for improving America’s reputation and standing overseas.

During Hughes' tenure, favorable opinions of the US have plummeted. In Indonesia, the nation with the world's largest Muslim population, the numbers went from 75% favorable pre-Bush to 30% in 2006. In Turkey, another nation with a huge Muslim population, the US has declined from 52% favorable to 12%. US reputation among our traditional "friends" has also slid precipitously. Germany from 78%-37%; Spain from 50% to 23%;France from 62% to 30%. And even among our greatest allies, the Brits, our standing has declined from 83% to 56%. Read the whole megillah here: http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1019

As much as I'd like to, I can hardly fault Hughes for this decline. The Bush administration, our elected officials and our silent selves have made this or allowed this to happen. What worries me is that once a brand earns the reputation as untrustworthy, a liar, a bully, or irrelevant--once the damage is done, in other words, it's hard to undo.

To my mind, resurrecting brand USA is the most important job for whomever assumes the Presidency in January, 2009.

Miami and Detroit.

Just a little over two years ago I went to a portfolio review in New York sponsored by the Miami Ad School. I was so impressed I offered jobs to five different students. I felt in general the work was refreshing and media agnostic, with a strong under-pinning of strategic insight.

Since then I have participated in two more portfolio reviews sponsored by MAS. Now let me tell in two words you why the work coming out of the school has slid dramatically downhill: It's derivative.

A couple years ago, "environmental" work in books was relatively fresh and unexpected. It was a new way of intruding upon our frontal lobes. So a spec ad for dental floss on subway doors with a line about getting into hard to reach places, was fun, smart and impactful. Plus, the portfolios from a couple years back reflected a diversity of ways to reach people--there were all kinds of "touch-points," including ads that showed the ability to write and think strategically.

Now, every book I see from MAS seems to have a toilet paper logo at the bottom of an escalator with a line like, "never runs out." What's happened is obvious to me and it's the same thing that happens in real life. The MAS students say,"these are the ads that got people jobs, so let's do ads like that." In the industry we do the same thing, "this is the piece of music, or the director, or the cliche or the technique that's getting attention, so let's do it, too." Copying something else is the essence of brain-cell-destroying conservatism.

This is supposed to be a business about originality, not for originality's sake but for impact's sake. Now all those kids are thinking differently exactly the same way.

A metaphor for many things. Too many.

Money.

I just heard a report on NPR about a dam built in Mosul, Iraq under US auspices that was apparently constructed on swampy ground and, so, represents fraud and a waste of $27 million. Some government spokes-shill was expressing all kinds of contrition. How could such a thing happen? $27 million wasted?

Our government's protestations remind me of Captain Renaud in Casablanca who shuts down Rick's place because as he says to Rick, "I am shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here." In the next moment of course, one of Rick's employees hands Renaud a wad of cash and says, "Your winnings, sir."

$27 million of fraud in a country where billions of American dollars are stolen everyday. In fact, Vanity Fair magazine reported not long ago about $9 billion in cash that somehow just "went missing." http://www.vanityfair.com//politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710?printable=true¤tPage=all

I bring this up because years ago an agency I worked at was attacked by government "whistle blowers" for some time-sheet miscreance. I'm not endorsing what the agency allegedly did, but the government went after the agency with incredible fervor. Why? Because agencies are fun to attack. No one would ever protest an attack on an ad agency, we are perceived as smarmy and profligate--and that's on a good day.

I fear the same thing is happening here. Some government official will now say they're going after waste and fraud. God forbid some realist like myself protests the insignificance of this investigation. He'll be lambasted and labeled "pro-fraud." I believe this is what's commonly known as a red herring. Some thing's fishy all right. And it stinks.

360-degree reviews.

Of all the nonsense visited upon the world by Human Resources professionals (even the term "human resources" makes me gag. So technocratic and un-human is it) perhaps the most invidious is the 360-degree review.

Yes, in the spirit of feckless and responsibility-free collaboration, in an effort to make everything an ostensible learning experience, or a team-building opportunity or to make sure that "everybody has a seat at the table" (what fucking table. I don't see any table...) companies now ask everyone to solicit opinions on their performance, their behavior and their character from, say, half a dozen different people from half a dozen different departments.

Here's an analogy: "Roy is doing my root canal this afternoon. He didn't go to dental school but he got a really great 360."

Snort snort snort. (That's the sound of a bull shitting.)

Look, as far as senior creatives go, chances are you want professionals who've spent years in the business learning their craft. You hire them for their brains and passion and talent. Sometimes those qualities are accompanied by a certain volatility or even brusqueness. Those ups and downs are often what make an exceptional person.

360s, however, and the HR people who propagate their use, have brought the Lithium-ization of our workforce. We want friendly, like the person who greets you at TGI Friday's. We want conciliatory and kind, like an ur-Mommy. We want compromise and a saccharine egalitarianism. In other words, we want people who won't offend--who would do well in focus groups.

Those aren't the people who lead great companies, make great advances, produce great creative.

Take your choice. A sandbox where we all get along. Or a place you're proud to work.

Introducing the "Worsties."

Ad Aged has invented a new advertising award. One that, despite the proliferation of self-congratulation that infects this industry, hasn't yet surfaced. The award is called the "Worstie." And, dear reader, with your help, I will announce the inaugural winner in about a week. Here are my nominees:

1. Interactive agencies that have web-sites less well designed than those normally done by local pizza places or small municipalities in Croatia.
2. Creative Directors who can neither create nor direct, but instead are expert pontificators.
3. Actors who arch one eyebrow for comic effect--the extent of their repertoire.
4. Spokes-apples.
5. Agencies that post bios of their top people but don't include creatives.
6. Other (your nominees.)

I know we destroy the polar ice-cap and may possibly threaten every carbon-based life-form on Earth, but some really good people drive us.

Hummer's latest defilement of what was once God's green Earth is so horrendous I feel like quoting Sartre, to wit: "I laughed so hard I cried." http://adage.com/article?article_id=121560

You see Hummer's new ads feature "Hummer Heroes." Good samaritans who drive Hummers to deliver water to Katrina victims, etc. Therefore the ruination Hummers and other gargantuan SUVs designed for people with non-distended penises visit upon the environment is perfectly acceptable. Right?
Thomas Friedman wrote a column in yesterday's NYTimes called "Did We Do That?" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
In it he quotes Nate Lewis, an energy chemist from the California Institute of Technology who asks, Is man’s cumulative impact on the climate now as responsible for the weather as Mother Nature herself? “That is the question Katrina really introduced for the first time — the sense that soon, if not already, what we used to call acts of God are really acts of man,” Professor Lewis said.

More lies from GM. Earning them more bad karma. No wonder they've lost a point of market share every year for the last 30. Being bad for the world (and lying about it) isn't good for business.

Everything's a 'mash-up.' And so can you.

Two of today's most annoying cliches are in the title above. Ad-Something just did a "Creative Mash-Up" conference. What the heck is that? A mash-up sounds like something that happens on the L.I.E. on Sunday night driving back to the city. And 'And so can you,' made famous, or notorious via the title of Colbert's new book and made vomitous by dozens of writers who seem to be using it in every third headline, especially the writers in the NYTimes, where I saw two permutations of such in the past couple of days.

For those hordes of new readers who are new to Ad Aged or in case you've forgotten, here is the link to Orwell's important essay "Politics and the English Language." It can teach you more about advertising, communication and, yes, politics than anything else you're likely to read. So read it. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

If you're way too busy to bother with one of the great minds of the 20th Century (George Orwell, not George Tannenbaum) here's a pertinent excerpt:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

More on Applebee's.

The new commercials for Applebee's are airing during the World Series. They are even worse than I thought they'd be. They feature a spokes-apple with a female Amos 'n Andy voice. Entirely offensive.

Further, nothing she says is funny. The spots lay there like a lox. Or an apple. A wormy one.

Steal a base, get a taco.

Taco Bell, the company running and running and running one of the most god-awful commercials I've ever seen during the baseball post-season (something about an older brother teaching his younger brother his rules of life) ran a promotion during yesterday's game. It had a fairly simple proposition. If someone stole a base, all of America was eligible to get a free taco at Taco Bell during certain hours on a certain date. Read all about it here: http://adage.com/article?article_id=121563

Ad Aged felt the promotion was a little crass. It seemed to have crossed a line between what I always believed should be objective reporting and what is commercial shilling. Frankly, not that I'd ever eat at Taco Bell, but it turned me off to the chain even more.

Finally, since Taco Bell linked a taco giveaway to running the bases, I couldn't help but make this connection: Taco Bell gives you the runs.