When buildings fall on people.

When two people die from a crane disaster in New York it has a greater impact upon us than when 127,000 people die from a cyclone in Myanmar or scores of thousands die from an earthquake and its aftershocks in China. But that's not what this post is about.

This post is about buildings that fall on people, mine disasters that kill, toxic waste pumped into ground water, defense contractors who steal billions. Politicians can breath through their mouths and make their speeches and gain their photo ops. But these things will continue to occur because the potential penalties are out of whack with the profits these companies can earn. In other words, the risk of being caught is far outweighed by the potential rewards.

If the penalty for murder were a $5,000 fine and 40-hours of community service, the homicide rate would likely increase. If the fine for shoddy work in constructing a luxury high-rise where units start at $1.7 million is $250,000, where's the incentive or the imprecation to abide by the law?

Another example of e-coli conservatism at its pernicious worst.

The three types of loyalty.

Loyalty is a word you hear with some frequency within the padded walls of most agencies. And since agencies, like virtually all businesses--including government--are social organizations, I thought I'd spend a moment or two ruminating, or even fulminating on the topic.

There are, I conclude, three types of loyalty.

There's loyalty to your boss. As long as your boss recognizes you for your talent and supports and promotes you--even if you happen to be more talented than he or she--you owe that person loyalty.

There's loyalty to your craft. This is adherence to your belief of what good is and being unwavering and uncompromising in that.

And then, most important, there's loyalty to yourself. Belief that your essential talent, determination and such are deserving of respect and reward. This sort of loyalty overlaps with integrity. The moral standards you adhere to in order to uphold your standards. You don't steal. You don't connive. You speak your mind.

The mistake people make is they forget the third type of loyalty--loyalty to yourself. People who ignore that loyalty inherently believe loyalty cuts only one way. Their refrain is usually something like: they give me a paycheck, I give them loyalty. You know, the "I guess I'm lucky to have a job" loyalty.

All I can say to that is, grow up and be loyal.

Some brief thoughts on briefs.

Nearly every agency I've ever been sentenced to has had a tussle or two about how crappy their briefs are. They blame mediocre work on mediocre briefs. The fulminate and put together committees on creating a better form. They then demand a certain scrupulousness on creating briefs and so on.

I believe in the brief. But there is something way more important. That is the absolute drive to do work that people haven't seen before. That informs, moves, entertains. It's really that simple. Do something good. Have the leaders of the agency sell daily to the client the need to breakthrough and be different. In short, the briefs we should be fighting over are not the individual ones for ads on the "$49.99 Call Your Fucking Estranged Mother Plan." The briefs we should be fighting over are simpler: Who are we as an agency and what do we do? That's the only brief that is really important.

There's a Sprint ad in the WSJ today.

On the front page of the Marketplace section. It's absolutely awful. Type, type and more type announcing their Simply Everything Plan.

The ad has a ton of asterisks. But since Sprint has an agency that cares, Goodby, this is how the mouse-type reads:

"Okay. Take a deep breath. What follows wasn't our idea. And there's a lot. But rest assured, our plan won't disappoint. Fact is, when things seem too good to be true, a laundry list of legal text is par for the course."

In other words, Goodby, a good agency made something ok out of something horrid.

Etched in the annals of dumbness.

The daily onslaught of dumbness in modern Amerika knows no limits. From street signs in Manhattan that have elected to abbreviate “avenue” as “av” (to save a letter?) to being twenty-fourth in line for take-off this morning at LaGuardia, to a president who gives up golf during a war he started in order to show his sense of sacrifice, as Vonnegut might say, “and so it goes.”

This morning I got on the Delta Shuttle to Boston. I’ll admit I think there’s a battle raging between supermarket owners, airlines and movie theater owners as to who has the worst management, but this was a new one on me and left me nearly as speechless as I get.

A message is printed (at an upward slant, of course) on the “other” side of the Delta-branded vomit bag so you can also use it during a stopover to say your seat is occupied. And that message says, in all caps: “I’LL BE BACK.” Just what I want my vomit bag to tell me.

A poem.

nothing says spring.

nothing says spring like puerto ricans fishing
for carcinogenic fish
in
a
river
declared dead
three decades ago.

pulling up
condoms and
plastic bags.
not bass.

--e.e. cummings

How many people in your agency fit this description?

"He's a 40-watt bulb in a halogen world."

[ ] 1-5.
[ ] 6-10.
[ ] 11-19.
[ ] 20 or more.

Mrcn rlns chrgng fr bggg.

American Airlines is seeking to improve its bottom line by charging you $15 if you choose to stow a bag. Apparently all that baggage adds weight which costs fuel. That being the case, I wonder why my 110-pound daughter should pay the same as the typical 300-lb behemoth who heads out to Chicago for business.

The headline of the post is "American Airlines charging for baggage" written without vowels. I wrote it as I imagined a world where things we take for granted as free now come with a price-tag attached. Blogspot charging for vowels. American Airlines charging an "engine maintenance fee." Imagine a "cup fee" at Starbucks or a "lid fee." How about a "vote-processing-fee" in November? Not a poll-tax, that would be un-constitutional of course, but a simple counting fee. Or an Eliot Spitzer genital-fondling fee. Schtupping is included, but anything more than that entails a surcharge.

I'll leave it at this. American Airlines will only alienate its already alienated customers. Alienate is too mild a word: people will hate them more than ever. They will take it out of the staff. There will be lawsuits when bags are lost. This will be a public relations nightmare. The carrier will be in chapter 11 sooner with this policy than without.

In short, AA's charge for baggage policy is about as rapacious 19th-Century robber baron as you can get. If the marketplace offers choices, people will choose to fly someone else.

"We know why you fly" is American Airlines' slogan. I'm pretty sure the reason we fly isn't to be barraged by annoying and petty charges that piss us off.

Fad vs. Fact.

In the early days of the internet, companies sprouted like marijuana plants in California. They spent millions upon millions on TV commercials or, nominally, to create a brand. Then when the initial capital was spent, there was nothing left. Because there had never been any there there. They were fad-based. Not fact-based.

This week, Synarchy named a new CEO. And Crispin lost, after just 13 months, the portion of the Nike business they had wrested from Weiden & Kennedy. This leads me to ask a very simple question: Can I see your portfolio? What brands has your leadership built, transformed or regenerated? I cannot cast aspersions toward Crispin for Burger King, but what else? Haggar slacks? VW? It remains to be seen if Crispin will be able to make Microsoft cool.

As for everyone else, those figureheads at the head of companies, what have you done? Wrung costs out of a system? Retained employees? Presided over 3.7% growth?

Fads and people who are faddish get big jobs. Then they fail. And everyone once in a while, perhaps, substance will prevail.

A sunny day in New York.

This is by Andre Kertesz 60 or so years ago.