You can't keep the dinosaurs from the tar pits.

Just read an article in The Economist that is all about the dying newspaper industry. It has direct relevance on the dying ad industry. Here's the story's lede: "Some of America’s most venerable newspapers face extinction, unless they evolve." Substitute agencies for newspapers and you get the drift. And here, you can read the whole kit and kaboodle:

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11316500&top_story=1

As an Ad Aged public service to Madison Avenue, I have an idea for the big agencies whose growth is down, who can't win new business and who have been propagating the same media mix since 1971. The same advice applies to interactive agencies who see a web site and four small banner ads as the solution to everything:

Hire a very highly paid CEvO (with a large staff). This is an entirely new title, post and sinecure that will help you deal with change. And what does CEvO stand for, you query?

Chief Evolution Officer.

That'll help.

A pharma commercial of the future.

Now that the pharma industry spends more on marketing than on R&D, I thought we could take a brief look into Ad Aged's exclusive crystal ball and see what's coming.

We are on the porch of a Victorian home, a distinguished older man and his still pretty wife are each sitting in classic Adirondack chairs.

MAN: June and I are in our golden years, but we still enjoy life.

WOMAN: Biking, gardening, going to yard sales.

MAN: Holding our arms out and spinning in a field of high grass.

WOMAN: And of course, playing with our genetically-modified grandchildren.

They laugh. ECU gentle hand caress.

MAN: Then one day I woke up and I couldn't fa-shizzle my nizzle.

WOMAN: His nizzle was important to both of us, and without its fa-shizzle...

MAN: So, I asked my doctor about FaShiNutroXine.

WOMAN: FaShiNutroXine.

MAN: My doctor said FaShiNutroXine could put the fa-shizzle back in my nizzle. Though side effects sometimes include goiters, corns, barking like a hyena, projectile vomiting and projectile diarrhea. If your fa shizzle is nizzled for over four hours, call your doctor. See our ad in the Saturday Evening Post.

WOMAN: FaShiNutroXine.

MAN: Ask your doctor. And get the fa-shizzle back in your nizzle.

WOMAN: And the fo' sheezy back in yo' neezy.

They lean back and laugh heartily, again caressing each other's hands.

GM is doing better.

General Motors lost only $3.25 billion last quarter. That's only $250 million a week or $1.5 million an hour. Or $25,000 a minute.

The $2 billion a year GM spends shooting cars on winding roads in California (essentially the same spot they've been airing since Dinah Shore sang "See the USA in your Chevrolet) must really be doing the trick.

How many of your clients are brand managers at Tab.®

Glenn, a friend and gifted creative, has listed Brand Manager at Tab® as his job title on his Facebook profile. When I asked him about it, he replied thusly:...that is just an old joke between me and someone who used to be (or still is) at Og****...the Brand Manager at Tab, his job is to sell less Tab every year than the year prior."

Like any good joke or observation, this one resonates because it has a foundation in the truth. Here it is 2008 and a majority of clients actually still believe "new media" is really new. It isn't. For a large percentage of consumers, the internet, mobile and the like are no longer new. They are vital forms of communication. Yet for the most part, marketing dollars are still allocated as if it is 1985.

"I'll have another Tab."

This is about clients who continue to lose market-share but continue to test their advertising to make sure it tests well. It tests well, yippee! But does it work? That doesn't matter--it performed to our metrics.

"I'll have another Tab."

This is about agencies that produce formulaic commercials with self-proclaimed celebrities that communicate nothing except that those self-proclaimed celebrities are ever-richer (and increasingly less relevant.)

"I'll have another Tab."

I could go on and on. And so can you.

Drink up. And have another Tab.

Some thoughts on AdWeek's agency report cards.

AdWeek's report card is a bit like a pre-pro book. When you get a pre-pro book, the first thing most people do is turn to the personnel section to make sure their title and place in the pecking order is correct. Vis a vis the report card, the first thing most people do is see how their agency did, and then, I suspect they check the twelve or fourteen other places they worked that are listed in the report.

With more than a trace of schadenfreude, I noticed yesterday last three "real" places at which I have most recently been employed (I won't say gainfully) have plummeted in the rankings since I left.

Introducing the Incredible Shrinking Agency.

Here's my thesis: agencies crumble because management, creative and account, prize loyalty above ingenuity. I am inherently disloyal--not in a nefarious, political, back-stabbing way, but in a way that, I believe, puts innovation and creativity above slavish dedication to direction. In other words, for better or worse, I make waves. In the parlance of Adam Morgan's "The Pirate Inside," I am a denter. I make trouble in organizations because I don't conform to the status quo. I want change.

So they make it hard for me to stay and I leave.

Now, I'm not attributing agency shrinkage to my departure alone. But I am saying this: agencies and managements that promulgate loyalty above innovation, change and creativity are doomdead.

Film-making advice from Preston Sturges.

Perhaps the greatest comedy director of all time is someone you've never heard of: Preston Sturges. In a kinetic burst of manic energy, Sturges wrote and directed seven hits, seven classics in four years--an output that I can't imagine will ever be matched.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
The Lady Eve (1941)
Christmas in July (1940)
The Great McGinty (1940)

No advertising point here, just something worth thinking and laughing about. Sturges' words of wisdom:

“A pretty girl is better than a plain one. A leg is better than an arm. A bedroom is better than a living room. An arrival is better that a departure. A birth is better than a death. A chase is better than a chat. A dog is better than a landscape. A kitten is better than a dog. A baby is better than a kitten. A kiss is better than a baby. A pratfall is better than anything.”

What would happen?

What would happen if you left your laptop in the office,
if you didn’t bring your computer home one night.
If your voicemail light stayed red for twelve hours,
your in-box stayed full.
What would happen if on one day you left at five and sat on a bench in the sun.
What would happen if you didn’t rush home.
Didn’t pick up the pace to make the light.
Didn’t worry about catching the next train.
What would happen in you called an old friend and reintroduced yourself.
What would happen if you went to a movie in the middle of the day.
Or stayed on that bench and read a book.
What would happen if the TV stayed off and the answering machine picked up every call.
What would happen if you held your child’s hand and walked the dog an extra long way.
What would happen if you sent someone flowers.
Went to the public library.
Or rowed a boat in the park.
Would the clocks stop ticking?
The wheels of commerce grind down.
The economy sputter and die.
Would your house fall apart.
Would illness impede you.
Would your children turn their faces from you.
Would you die, die an ungainly death.
What would happen if

Deer Prezzydent Bush,

Thankyou for the genneruss rebate on my taxes. I can reely uze the $600, after all though I am makeing only an avrage amount of munny, I pay taxes at a rate hier than hegg fun managers and the like.

The only problum is, do I uze the rebate for food or rent??????

Pleeze help.

A newspaper closes.

One of the oxymoronicies of the advertising industry is our obsession with print now that print has virtually no role left.

Before TV, print was the glamor medium. Beautiful artwork, lustrous language. Then during TV but before the internet, print was a complement--a rational reasoned argument to TV's image-making power. Now in the internet age, that role--and others--is filled by websites, web content, banner ads and more.

All that to say, in post-literate America, print and newspapers (which were invented to carry print ads) are dying. According to the NYTimes, another paper-paper, another grey lady, bit the dust yesterday, though it will continue to publish online. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28link.html?ref=business

None of this, however, changes much how agencies view print or clients buy print. We still walk into pitches with eight-page manifestos that never run and spreads that never see the light of day. We still spend hours and hours struggling over headlines and body-copy few people read. And we've yet, as an industry, tried to formulate a new role for print.

I believe that the era of visual-punny print is dead and has been dead for years, but no one has told art-directors, award shows or clients. There is still room for well-reasoned and concise reasoning. Clearly stated. Beautifully laid out. There is still room for Lois-like print power (of the sort I wrote about in yesterday's post.) There is still room for a Marty Puris-like ode like this: "The man who controls corporations ought to be able to control his own car." Internet advertising, which does not place a limit on the amount of words you can use--keep writing, there's always more you can say--or a premium on visual cleverness (why bother, you can fall back on SISOMO, SIghtSOundMOtion.) In other words, the flaccidness of internet creative has also allowed traditional print to get worse. We don't need copy points--the web will handle that. So let's just be goofy.

There is still room for print like that, I think. But no one does it anymore. The glib, facile and simplistic (which is different than simple) is easier. See above. One is good. One sucks. One built a brand, an ethos, a category. One built parity and me-too.

Us vs. Them. A mock dialogue.

Where do you, where does your agency sit?

That’s not what the client asked for. We know more than the client about the consumer. (That’s why we’re agents, not vendors.) It’s more important to meet the needs of the consumer than meeting what are sometimes the internal political demands of the client.

It’s due ASAP. Is it really? Or is it due because you’ve scheduled a client meeting prematurely? When will the work run? Can we have an interim meeting to show them what we’re thinking without spilling the beans?

They want last year’s work re-skinned. I suppose that’s ok, since nothing in the world, or nothing their competition is doing has changed since last year.

You didn’t hit every point on the brief. The brief was a client agenda—a negotiation, not a communication. This is too much information for our audience to take in.

We have to show it to low-level clients first. We show work to people who can both approve and disapprove. Not to people who only disapprove or people who try to improve.

Use stock photography. So we will stand out in the same way everyone else does. Do you go to a restaurant and ask for canned and frozen ingredients?

It’s only online content. You have one brand. Not an online brand and an offline brand. The same principles and integrity you demand from your traditional agency must be applied to content. Is the work on brand? Does it impart useful information? Is it brilliantly executed? Is it interesting, watchable?