I adapted this from today's Maureen Dowd.

What to do when things go wrong.

First: Declare any new revelation old and unimportant. “That’s not new news. We’ve handled that already.”
Second: Blame somebody else. Hopefully someone who’s just recently left the company.
Third: Say black is white. “We welcome this loss. It will make our business stronger.”
Fourth: Demonize someone.
Fifth: Blame the victims.
Sixth: Throw gorilla dust. ie Make up a solipsism. “The way to deal with dangerous drug dealers is to get them in therapy and back on the street as soon as possible.”
And finally, seventh: Use the omnipotence defense. As in, “I can’t be wrong because I can’t be wrong.”

George Orwell and advertising.

Pursuant to just about everything.

"In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

They blew it. Again.

In just the past seven days or so, two Madison Avenue behemoths, JWT and Y&R have appointed new head honchos. Naturally, neither of these appointees come from the ranks of creative. And almost just as naturally, JWT and Y&R and countless other agencies will declare, declaim and otherwise defecate that creative is at the center of all they do. It's at the center perhaps, but it sure as heck ain't at the top.

The best agencies of all time, I'll make this really simple, are run by creatives. Just like the best restaurants are run by chefs. And the best schools are run by teachers. There is no disputing this.

Ammirati & Puris. (AD and copywriter)
Ally & Gargano. (AD)
Scali McCabe Sloves. (AD, CW)
Goodby Silverstein. (AD, CW)
Doyle Dane Bernbach. (CW)

I could go on.

The issue here is manifold. First is that agencies--especially those affiliated with holding companies--have tried to routinize the processes of running ad agencies. They've tried to best practice what is inherently a business that relies on nuts. Creative people tend to be less orthodox in their methodology (the good ones are every bit as methodical as business people but just in their own ways.) Therefore, their peregrinations, moods and attitudes scare the money men who run things now. Therefore in most advertising agencies creatives are isolated and left in a corner to be rolled out like a dancing bear in the circus. Second, good creative people tend to think in macro, not micro terms. They see tectonic movements in popular culture and respond. This means they are "different." Different is to be shunned. Finally, creative people don't usually play golf. And at the end of the day, golf is all that matters.

99 lies. A work in progress.

1. I will never lie to you.
2. We're all in this together.
3. The only thing that matters is the work.
4. I'm a straight shooter.
5. I like it.
6. This place is not a sweat shop.
7. I hate calling you on the weekend.
8. If the client doesn't shape up, we'll resign the business.
9. We will get you the help you need.
10. You don't have to make these changes, they're just my two cents.
11. We're going to give you consolidated feedback.
12. It's good for the category.
13. Just one thought.
14. I'll call you right back.
15. We finished second.
16. We're all about work-life balance.
17. Lunch will be served.
18. If we make a good impression with this presentation, we'll win more business.
19. No one in the company is allowed to use car service.
20. Raises are capped at 4%.
21. There's a hiring freeze.
22. No one's getting a bonus this year.
23. This business is supposed to be fun.
24. This is a meeting to help you clear your calendar.
25. I always have time for you.
26. I'm not complaining.
27. It's going to get better.
28. You won't take the hit for this.
29. I really like what you've done so far.
30. Don't worry, this is a one-time thing.
31. In the future you'll have a much longer turnaround time.
32. Yes, we have an internal bidder/a bid from a contractor we always work with, but everyone has a fair shot at the contract.
33. Can you give us a break on the price for this project? We can make it up to you on future ones.
34. This is our last change.
35. I know we told you this is a rush job, but can you put it on the back burner for a moment and work on this one instead?
36. Sorry I haven't had a chance to look at it for the past two weeks. Here are my changes -- I need these back before my meeting starts in an hour.
37. Have a nice day.
38. I want to know if anyone has a problem.
39. I know we've sold out on this project, but we'll get our integrity back on the next one.
40. We can easily combine concepts A and B.
41. We need to do this to show the client it won't work, they'll never buy it, so don't spend a lot of time on it.
42. I loved the copy.
43. I hope you don't mind but I made a few minor changes to your script before showing it to the client.
44. We're interested in trying something different.
45. I'm not worried about face time.
46. We're focused on the results, not the process.
47. It's not my call.
48. That's my final offer.
49. This meeting will help clear up any points of contention.
50. This meeting will bring us all to an understanding.
51. This meeting will be a more productive use of your time than whatever else you might have been doing.
52. This meeting is a chance to get your opinions heard.
53. Bonuses for the management have been waived and are being redirected to feeding the homeless and caring for abandoned animals, without any pressure from outside sources.
54. This is only between those in this room.
55. The call/meeting will only last 30 min/1hr/90 min.
56. Please, just this once.
57. This is an unusual situation and request.
58. Market research will help us find the answer.
59. I'm counting on you.
60. All we need is this win.
61. We aren't political.
62. We'll be making a decision in a few days.
63. We have a great relationship with this client.
64. I have a hard stop.
65. We all have to suck it up a little bit.
66. The money will always be there.
67. You were overpaid when we hired you.
68. You've got an attitude problem.
69. It is what it is.

I will update this list throughout the day. Please respond with suggestions.

Beep beep. Flash flash. Vibrate.

1905 is considered by people who know about these things Einstein's annus mirabilis or "miracle year." Not only did he receive his PhD. that year he also wrote the four papers which first earned him his fame.

During that year Einstein subsisted by working in Bern in the Swiss patent office. It was pretty boring work and Einstein could do his patent work with one part of his brain while unraveling the mysteries of time and space with another part.

Undoubtedly Einstein had a lot to deal with. It's never hard starting out and he was a stranger in a strange city. That said, I wonder if the world would be a different place if Einstein had had some of our technologies.

We walk around, we sit in our work spaces and we are assaulted by a barrage of flashing lights and whirs and beeps. My two blackberries flash that someone's sent me an email. My desk phone light says someone wants me. My Microsoft calendar sonic brands me into submission telling me when I'm due here or there. My IM beeps. Things vibrate and not in a good way.

I know we can block these things. We can un-tether ourselves from social media, stick our berries of color in our desk drawers and eschew email. But despite that we know we have all that looming over us. Someone wants us for something. Or, perhaps more pointedly, something that you're not doing at the moment is more important than doing whatever it is you are doing. That's why a flashing light beckons.

The other night I saw "Aida" at the Metropolitan Opera. A cast of hundreds. Sets that we're literally 100 feet high. Amazing voices and performances. Amazing music and emotion.

There were no "quick cuts" in Aida. No eye-blurring, head-jerking, whiplash-inducing suddenness. There was a story that took time and space to develop and tell. I suspect Verdi would have frowned on music videos--though he might have created their forerunners.

What we face today is a global attention deficit disorder. A panic response to the demands of the momentary.

I think that may be why nothing very worthwhile ever gets done.

Our guest columnist gets ontological.

While Mr. Big Schott gets ready for his work, Sylvie and I sit in the kitchen having a muffin, corn, and a cup of coffee. Mrs. Big Schott is cooking up a storm it being Passover dinner tonight and all four burners are burning and the oven is on too, it feeling like an oven with all the cooking going on.

So, I did what a normal person would do, I open up the window a bit, we should have some ventilation. A minute or so later Mr. Big Schott walks by and says, "Close the window, Uncle Slappy, it's raining outside."

So I say to him, "If I close the window, it will stop raining?"

That's the only way to deal with a big schott. Stump him.

A guest columnist.

My Uncle, my father's brother, Oscar "Slappy" Tannenbaum was the rabbi at a small east side congregation, Beth Yuiz Miwo Mannow, for over fifty years. They made him Rabbi Emeritus a few years back and stripped him of his congregation. Said he was too old and opinionated.

Anyway, Rabbi Slappy is up from Florida with his wife of sixty years, my Aunt Sylvie, staying with me in our spare bedroom. The other morning when I was writing my blog he asked to give it a try. What follows is his post.


My big schott nephew, Mr. Advertising executive has me over for the holidays and how do you think I feel? As helpful as an eggshell in the kugel. Is there anything I can do, I ask Mr. Big Schott. He looks me up an down like I'm a veal chop, and says, relax Uncle Slappy, why don't you for a little while watch on the Philco the schvartzes jumping up and down in the basketball. But I'm not dead, I tell Mr. Big Schott, you want I should go to the grocery? Twenty people you are having over for seder tomorrow. What are you I kibbitz, a seder masochist. But Mr. Big Schott says, Uncle Slappy, sit. Watch the Philco and relax. I get up and leave anyway. Mrs. Big Schott asks me to go to the grocery to get some coffee.

Everywhere I look these days I wonder as I wander. And everywhere I wander I wonder, what's the big schmear about Starbucks? Personally a good cup of coffee, I believe, is a pleasure, but to my taste buds, I'm not so sure that anyone has ever improved on the taste of a nice cup of Savarin, in the big red vacuum-packed can so it should stay fresh, not the flimsy bag you get for $10.99 at Starbucks. Slow, also, Starbucks is. Me, I'd rather have a Yente than a venti!

All this Starbucks and I started to think about supermarkets. It used to be you could pick up a two or even three pound drum of Savarin in a dozen different supermarkets, now it's as hard to find as Vitalis. There was Bohack's, King Kullen, Waldbaum's, Finast, Daitch Shopwell, the A&P and more. Now, zilch. The Italianishe D'Agostino and the Food Emporium. Emporium, my tuchas. Emporium we don't need. A nice grocery with Savarin, we do.

I walked from Mr. Big Schott's apartment on 83rd Street up to the Polo Grounds looking for Savarin. And my cupboards are bare. Even the Polo Grounds are gone. No more. replaced by big k-nocker housing projects.

I came back at ten. And Mr. Big Schott was furious. Where have you been for six hours Uncle Slappy? I was worried silly. And also I forgot the coffee.

Vus kenist steen?

A bit of old New York.

150 years or so ago, New York City was virtually out of clean fresh water. So they embarked on an infrastructure building program to bring water from an upstate watershed to the city, building giant reservoirs and aqueducts.

I ran through a park in Harlem this morning and saw this person-hole cover. I thought about infrastructure. How people and governments used to invest. And how inalienable rights like access to clean drinking water weren't once under siege by tea partiers who would declaim that such beneficence was contrary to our founder fathers' notions of individual freedom and states' rights.

People used to care. And further, they cared that others didn't care.

Ignoring 1/5th of a billion dollars.

I just heard on NPR that well-over $200 million was spent on advertising over the past twelve months or so for and against the recently passed health care bill.

When you consider that probably 95% of the people had already resolutely made up their minds as to their position on the matter and that 40% of the population doesn't vote, this is a staggering amount of money to reach what in my estimate amount to about eleven swing voters.

I was lucky enough not to see (or at least not to remember seeing) any of these spots but I reckon they were just a lot of words. But no definition of what the health care debate was really about.

I hold, and will always hold, that 99% of clients don't know what they sell. They think they're selling a computer while Apple (one of the 1%) is off selling creativity.

No wonder everything is eminently ignorable.

Hu's on First?

Are you Andy Sung?
Andy Sing?
No, Andy Sung.
Andy Song?
No, Andy Sung.
No, I'm Andy Sun. Andy Sing is on 14.
I'm looking for Andy Sung.
Andy Song?
No, Andy Sung.
Andy Sun?
No, Andy Sung.
Andy Song is across the street.
Sung not Song.
Oh, Andy Sung. He's no longer with the agency.