On New Year's Eve, 1991, I was trapped in my office at a midtown high-rise. I was staying all night, or planning to. The agency was pitching the $200 million global account of Poughkeepsie Woolens, and I was leading the pitch. The pitch was January 6th--less than a week away. December had come and gone and we were nowhere.
It was just a few minutes before midnight and I was still at my IBM Selectric. Suddenly a man appeared in the doorway of my office. It was David Ogilvy himself, red suspenders and all.
"M'boy," (he always called me 'm'boy,' a term of endearment.) "What are you doing here on New Year's Eve, m'boy."
"Working on the Poughkeepsie Woolens pitch, sir."
"Well, m'boy. You know that unless your advertising is built on a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night."
"Yessir."
"You know, m'boy, the consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife."
I nodded.
"Well then, m'boy, let's see what you have." He walked to my typewriter and looked at the taglines I was writing. I had compiled a list of about forty.
"That's it, m'boy! That's the line!" And then he read it: "Poughkeepsie Woolens. We don't make woolens, we make the things that make the woolens."
"Y y you like it, Sir?"
"Like it? I love it! I'd pursue that line like a pig pursues truffles!"
With that he tossed me my coat, put on his and we celebrated New Year's in Time's Square together.
I miss the old man.
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010.
I've noticed from a lot of my Facebook friends that they are wishing goodbye and good riddance to 2010. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that 2010 was a particularly dreadful year.
I'm not really sure where this attitude comes from.
I'm not really sure what year in the 53 or so I have lived through would be or would have been something better than dreadful.
Yeah, I know, I'm hardly an optimist. But let's think about this.
During virtually all the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the specter of nuclear annihilation hung over us. We had red alerts during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a president in Reagan who seem to think a) Nuclear war was winnable and b) It's all some kind of a joke anyway.
We had Viet Nam and major metropolitan areas ravaged by race riots and drug-induced crime and mayhem.
New York in the 70s teetered on the brink of anarchy. Soldiers shot students in Ohio. Millions of people died of AIDs. In the 50s, 60s and into the 70s, millions of black people couldn't vote, eat in restaurants, use public transportation. Disney, famous for his mice and his anti-semitism refused to hire black workers for Disneyland until 1963.
We've lived through sundry genocides. In the former Yugoslavia and in wide swaths of Africa. Pakistan and India have been pointing nukes at each other on hair trigger for about the past two decades.
We've had Bhopal. Thousands of disappearances in Argentina. American support for fascist regimes in much of the world, Chile, Viet Nam, El Salvador.
And as for advertising, we've been looking back to some purported "golden age" forever. It always used to be better.
My point is simple. There's a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Every year has millions of offenses large and small that impel wise men to think of suicide. But we get through these offenses.
Work hard. Do your job well. Take care of your family. Be nice to strangers. Try to listen.
That's all we can do.
I'm not really sure where this attitude comes from.
I'm not really sure what year in the 53 or so I have lived through would be or would have been something better than dreadful.
Yeah, I know, I'm hardly an optimist. But let's think about this.
During virtually all the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the specter of nuclear annihilation hung over us. We had red alerts during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a president in Reagan who seem to think a) Nuclear war was winnable and b) It's all some kind of a joke anyway.
We had Viet Nam and major metropolitan areas ravaged by race riots and drug-induced crime and mayhem.
New York in the 70s teetered on the brink of anarchy. Soldiers shot students in Ohio. Millions of people died of AIDs. In the 50s, 60s and into the 70s, millions of black people couldn't vote, eat in restaurants, use public transportation. Disney, famous for his mice and his anti-semitism refused to hire black workers for Disneyland until 1963.
We've lived through sundry genocides. In the former Yugoslavia and in wide swaths of Africa. Pakistan and India have been pointing nukes at each other on hair trigger for about the past two decades.
We've had Bhopal. Thousands of disappearances in Argentina. American support for fascist regimes in much of the world, Chile, Viet Nam, El Salvador.
And as for advertising, we've been looking back to some purported "golden age" forever. It always used to be better.
My point is simple. There's a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Every year has millions of offenses large and small that impel wise men to think of suicide. But we get through these offenses.
Work hard. Do your job well. Take care of your family. Be nice to strangers. Try to listen.
That's all we can do.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Advertising and snow removal.
If you live in or around New York, or I suppose just about anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard, over the past week, you've been inundated with something on the order of 20-inches of snow. New York's mayor, the imperial billionaire Michael Bloomberg, has taken quite a lot of heat for the torpid pace of snow removal--particularly in the outer boroughs. I happen to like Bloomberg. The city for the most part runs efficiently. He seems to be a good manager. We've been relatively scandal-free. And we've had none of the bombastic neo-fascist crony politics of Rudy Guiliani.
In any event, the onslaught and subsequent clearance of snow has led me to think of advertising. Yes, it has.
Right now, at least in Manhattan, major avenues are clear, and many side streets are being cleared. However, at many corners, snow is piled shoulder high, with no path cut out from the curb to the crosswalk. It makes getting around difficult, treacherous and soggy.
It occurred to me that the city has done a good job of mass--clearing the bulk, but a shitty job of targeted--clearing the way for pedestrians. What you really need for effective snow removal and effective marketing is a mixture of big shovels and targeted shoveling.
Snow, in my metaphor, is indifference. Mass media (plows) can begin to clear it away, but to finish the job, you likely need one-to-one efforts (shovels.)
Too many clients, agencies, etc. in an effort to assert the primacy of their particular media have ignored that it is a combination of forces that will yield the most effective results.
In any event, the onslaught and subsequent clearance of snow has led me to think of advertising. Yes, it has.
Right now, at least in Manhattan, major avenues are clear, and many side streets are being cleared. However, at many corners, snow is piled shoulder high, with no path cut out from the curb to the crosswalk. It makes getting around difficult, treacherous and soggy.
It occurred to me that the city has done a good job of mass--clearing the bulk, but a shitty job of targeted--clearing the way for pedestrians. What you really need for effective snow removal and effective marketing is a mixture of big shovels and targeted shoveling.
Snow, in my metaphor, is indifference. Mass media (plows) can begin to clear it away, but to finish the job, you likely need one-to-one efforts (shovels.)
Too many clients, agencies, etc. in an effort to assert the primacy of their particular media have ignored that it is a combination of forces that will yield the most effective results.
"Yeah, but it sucks."
Last night my wife and I went to the Metropolitan Opera to see their production of Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande." It made me think of so much of what happens in the closed system of an agency.
Here's what I mean: The production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" was lavish. The orchestra was in fine fiddle. The performers were technically impressive.
But after two acts I turned to my ever-patient wife and said "Do you want to leave?" It's kind of hard to be critical of an opera. You're somewhat afraid that the fault for not liking it is yours--you're somehow not cultured enough or something. What's more, the tickets were expensive.
My wife looked and me and answered, "Do you want to leave?" Yeah. We both did. So, we walked out.
Very often at work, you are presented work that ticks all the boxes. The creatives relate to you the obstacles they overcame to get the work produced. The hoops that leapt through. And so on.
Yeah. I get it. I understand you worked through four weekends and missed Patricia's baby shower.
But none of that matters.
If it sucks.
Pelléas et Mélisande sucked. It had no power. It was languid, lazy and long. I don't know what demons Debussy was facing when he composed the opera. I don't really care how it was reviewed a century ago when it premiered.
All I know is I was bored silly.
And in the end, that's all that matters.
Here's what I mean: The production of "Pelléas et Mélisande" was lavish. The orchestra was in fine fiddle. The performers were technically impressive.
But after two acts I turned to my ever-patient wife and said "Do you want to leave?" It's kind of hard to be critical of an opera. You're somewhat afraid that the fault for not liking it is yours--you're somehow not cultured enough or something. What's more, the tickets were expensive.
My wife looked and me and answered, "Do you want to leave?" Yeah. We both did. So, we walked out.
Very often at work, you are presented work that ticks all the boxes. The creatives relate to you the obstacles they overcame to get the work produced. The hoops that leapt through. And so on.
Yeah. I get it. I understand you worked through four weekends and missed Patricia's baby shower.
But none of that matters.
If it sucks.
Pelléas et Mélisande sucked. It had no power. It was languid, lazy and long. I don't know what demons Debussy was facing when he composed the opera. I don't really care how it was reviewed a century ago when it premiered.
All I know is I was bored silly.
And in the end, that's all that matters.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The usefulness of niche.
Somewhere along the way, some book I was reading mentioned the 19th Century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner and a particular symphony he composed, his 9th, I think. So, I downloaded the thing and was smitten. There's not much that appeals to me more than 'Sturm und Drang' (storm and stress) and Bruckner's music seemed to capture that in spades. Since that original downloading, I've downloaded more Bruckner and have found most everything he's composed to my liking.
Last night, I, uncharacteristically did not go back to work after jury duty was dismissed. It's the end of the year and I've got everything pretty much under control prior to my upcoming vacation. What's more, the case we began hearing, another bout of devastation wreaked by drugs and American drug laws, was more than a little depressing. So, I decided to stop at the last place in my neighborhood that sells recorded music to see if they had any Bruckner. I was hoping against hope that they'd have some spectacular post-holiday 50%-off bonanza I could avail myself of.
Except they had no Bruckner.
What's happened in our world is we've become bell-curved. Every industry aims to satisfy no one or nothing more than the mass of the mass. Anything that's not wildly popular disappears from view. (Yes, I can find Bruckner on iTunes, but I'm making a point here, or trying to.)
What we are experiencing is a massification of everything. Everything we can buy has to appeal to literally hundreds of millions of people lest it cut against the grain of some MBA's "go to market strategy."
What we're left with is a great bland middle muddle of nothingness. You can buy things that manufacturers (or, more accurately, marketers) want to sell you, but you can't buy exactly what you want unless it coincides with what is most wanted.
Think I'm wrong? Try to find an iPod case that protects the screen and doesn't have a belt clip. Try to find a garbage pail with a lift lid that attaches to a cabinet door. Try to find an oven-range combination with an upper oven and a lower one. Try to find Bruckner in a chain store.
My guess is that my idiosyncratic wants are shared, in toto, by millions. But because they're not shared by dozens or hundreds of millions, my wants are not met.
The same sort of group think, of course, pummels our industry as well. We see commercial after commercial that appeals, I suppose, to some purported mass. If I see one more Hyundai commercial with 20-something skinny-jeaned hipsters singing Christmas carols I think I'll shoot my TV like that guy from Wisconsin did.
I guess my point is simple, or at least I think it is. Useful, important, moneyed groups of people are being ignored by marketers and advertisers.
One last example. Saab.
Saab used to make a quirky car that had great appeal to about 35,000-50,000 Americans a year. I'm sure there's a great deal of money to be made in selling that many cars if that's how many you want to sell. But someone, somewhere (probably Detroit) said, "we can sand down the rough edges of Saabs and they'll appeal to many more people. Look, BMW sells 300,000 cars a year. With GM showrooms and marketing muscle, we can dramatically improve Saab's sales.'
Except they destroyed the brand. By making what made it special generic. By trying to make it appeal to everyone, it lost all the appeal it ever had.
Last night, I, uncharacteristically did not go back to work after jury duty was dismissed. It's the end of the year and I've got everything pretty much under control prior to my upcoming vacation. What's more, the case we began hearing, another bout of devastation wreaked by drugs and American drug laws, was more than a little depressing. So, I decided to stop at the last place in my neighborhood that sells recorded music to see if they had any Bruckner. I was hoping against hope that they'd have some spectacular post-holiday 50%-off bonanza I could avail myself of.
Except they had no Bruckner.
What's happened in our world is we've become bell-curved. Every industry aims to satisfy no one or nothing more than the mass of the mass. Anything that's not wildly popular disappears from view. (Yes, I can find Bruckner on iTunes, but I'm making a point here, or trying to.)
What we are experiencing is a massification of everything. Everything we can buy has to appeal to literally hundreds of millions of people lest it cut against the grain of some MBA's "go to market strategy."
What we're left with is a great bland middle muddle of nothingness. You can buy things that manufacturers (or, more accurately, marketers) want to sell you, but you can't buy exactly what you want unless it coincides with what is most wanted.
Think I'm wrong? Try to find an iPod case that protects the screen and doesn't have a belt clip. Try to find a garbage pail with a lift lid that attaches to a cabinet door. Try to find an oven-range combination with an upper oven and a lower one. Try to find Bruckner in a chain store.
My guess is that my idiosyncratic wants are shared, in toto, by millions. But because they're not shared by dozens or hundreds of millions, my wants are not met.
The same sort of group think, of course, pummels our industry as well. We see commercial after commercial that appeals, I suppose, to some purported mass. If I see one more Hyundai commercial with 20-something skinny-jeaned hipsters singing Christmas carols I think I'll shoot my TV like that guy from Wisconsin did.
I guess my point is simple, or at least I think it is. Useful, important, moneyed groups of people are being ignored by marketers and advertisers.
One last example. Saab.
Saab used to make a quirky car that had great appeal to about 35,000-50,000 Americans a year. I'm sure there's a great deal of money to be made in selling that many cars if that's how many you want to sell. But someone, somewhere (probably Detroit) said, "we can sand down the rough edges of Saabs and they'll appeal to many more people. Look, BMW sells 300,000 cars a year. With GM showrooms and marketing muscle, we can dramatically improve Saab's sales.'
Except they destroyed the brand. By making what made it special generic. By trying to make it appeal to everyone, it lost all the appeal it ever had.
Soviet history, 1917-1953.
There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.
I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' memoir "Hitch 22." In it, he cites the above limerick written by one of the foremost historians of the Red Revolution, Robert Conquest. If you get in the mood to improve your vocabulary, to hone your use of elegant imprecations and curses, and you feel like reading a bit of good writing, pick it up. Not sure that you need read it cover to cover as I am, but if you do, you're likely to find something funny on nearly every page.
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.
I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' memoir "Hitch 22." In it, he cites the above limerick written by one of the foremost historians of the Red Revolution, Robert Conquest. If you get in the mood to improve your vocabulary, to hone your use of elegant imprecations and curses, and you feel like reading a bit of good writing, pick it up. Not sure that you need read it cover to cover as I am, but if you do, you're likely to find something funny on nearly every page.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Snowy New York.
It's snowing like a sonovabitch and cold as a witch's teat outside, as Salinger's Caufield would say. The wind is blowing hard, particularly on the avenues where there is no shelter to block its progress. The tide is going out and accelerates the wind as it blows down the East River and into the bay. What a perfect night to have my wife send me out for a 3-4 pound kosher chicken cut into eighths.
What I realized while walking to the kosher butcher is I can't begrudge my wife sending me on this mission. Making chicken is my wife's hobby and this is how she shares it with me. I like to read or watch Josef Von Sternberg silent movies. Three arrived in the mail over the weekend, "The Docks of New York," "The Last Command" and "Underworld." My wife likes to make chickens. We all have our hobbies.
I bundled up my big red jacket--the jacket I wear only when it seems like the world is ending. Underneath it I wear a hooded sweatshirt. I've got a big Russian hat on and leather gloves lined with cashmere. I walk past the doormen, looking nervous and hangdog. Yesterday was thousands of dollars in tips, today it's shoveling and snow-blowing.
The snow is only, at this point, about four inches deep and traffic still moves, though it moves gingerly. Usually I am an inveterate jaywalker, rushing across avenue against the light, when there is an opening. Not today. Every red light has three or four cars skidding through it, unable to stop. The garbage trucks are out, girded with plows and chains, they are clearing in force, looking like a convoy accompanying ships and guarding against U-Boats.
The rabbi-butchers are pissed that I'm in their store. Their sense of duty demands that they stay open until closing time, but they're irked I wasn't in earlier. They growl and point me to the chickens, already cut-up and waiting for my wife's uxorial ministrations.
And now I walk home. It seems to have gotten colder during the five minutes I was in the butcher shop. I make it back to my building. The doormen are out with shovels. My wife is out with her spatula.
What I realized while walking to the kosher butcher is I can't begrudge my wife sending me on this mission. Making chicken is my wife's hobby and this is how she shares it with me. I like to read or watch Josef Von Sternberg silent movies. Three arrived in the mail over the weekend, "The Docks of New York," "The Last Command" and "Underworld." My wife likes to make chickens. We all have our hobbies.
I bundled up my big red jacket--the jacket I wear only when it seems like the world is ending. Underneath it I wear a hooded sweatshirt. I've got a big Russian hat on and leather gloves lined with cashmere. I walk past the doormen, looking nervous and hangdog. Yesterday was thousands of dollars in tips, today it's shoveling and snow-blowing.
The snow is only, at this point, about four inches deep and traffic still moves, though it moves gingerly. Usually I am an inveterate jaywalker, rushing across avenue against the light, when there is an opening. Not today. Every red light has three or four cars skidding through it, unable to stop. The garbage trucks are out, girded with plows and chains, they are clearing in force, looking like a convoy accompanying ships and guarding against U-Boats.
The rabbi-butchers are pissed that I'm in their store. Their sense of duty demands that they stay open until closing time, but they're irked I wasn't in earlier. They growl and point me to the chickens, already cut-up and waiting for my wife's uxorial ministrations.
And now I walk home. It seems to have gotten colder during the five minutes I was in the butcher shop. I make it back to my building. The doormen are out with shovels. My wife is out with her spatula.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Good writing from Jonathan Swift and A.O. Scott.
"Gulliver's Travels" with Jack Black is reviewed in today's "New York Times" by A.O. Scott, writing as Swift.
Well worth the three minutes. That is if you like satire, wit and skill.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/movies/24gulliver.html?hp
Well worth the three minutes. That is if you like satire, wit and skill.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/movies/24gulliver.html?hp
Irony.
There's a guy on jury duty with me who works for the New York Department of Sanitation. (This is one of the joys of jury duty--seriously--you are thrust together with a fair degree of intimacy with people with whom you would normally have no intercourse.) I noticed him a couple days ago, wearing his jacket with the Department of Sanitation crest on its front, a big DSNY in orange on its back and the slogan "New York's Strongest."
What struck me about this guy, this jacket and, if I may extrapolate, this demographic is that they actually wear their clothing without a sense of irony.
Ironic clothing is of course all the rage among the hipster set. They wear their trucker caps and other accoutrement, flaunting really, their ever-so-coolness.
Here's the thing. You can call such wardrobing irony. I prefer to think of it as misanthropy. A mocking of people different than you. It's not nice. It's ignorant. And it's a form of bullying.
Christopher Hitchens in his memoir "Hitch 22" draws a distinction between those who earn money and those who make it. Those who earn it build things and make things and do things. Those who make it manipulate markets, engage in sleight of hand and financial hocus pocus.
It's easy to make fun of people. It's easy to think that your hipster tribe is what everyone else aspires to be. It's easy to distance yourself from the reality of how people live, think and act.
Our job as advertisers is, in a sense, to love people. To understand. And through understanding find what's important to them and appeal to them.
Sorry for the polemic.
What struck me about this guy, this jacket and, if I may extrapolate, this demographic is that they actually wear their clothing without a sense of irony.
Ironic clothing is of course all the rage among the hipster set. They wear their trucker caps and other accoutrement, flaunting really, their ever-so-coolness.
Here's the thing. You can call such wardrobing irony. I prefer to think of it as misanthropy. A mocking of people different than you. It's not nice. It's ignorant. And it's a form of bullying.
Christopher Hitchens in his memoir "Hitch 22" draws a distinction between those who earn money and those who make it. Those who earn it build things and make things and do things. Those who make it manipulate markets, engage in sleight of hand and financial hocus pocus.
It's easy to make fun of people. It's easy to think that your hipster tribe is what everyone else aspires to be. It's easy to distance yourself from the reality of how people live, think and act.
Our job as advertisers is, in a sense, to love people. To understand. And through understanding find what's important to them and appeal to them.
Sorry for the polemic.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
You gotta have heart.
If you're a believer, as I am, that we are living through an era of panem et circenses, in which the masses are appeased by spectacles and such, you probably disdain sports as much as I do. I see no appeal and derive no charm from hopped up money grubbers playing meaningless games.
What's more, over the years, sports have gotten worse. With the advent of the 24-hour sports cycle, the proliferation of statistics threatens to overwhelm. Coverage begets data which begets more coverage which begets more data. If you want to know how good a player is, don't look at how his team performs, or what he does, consult, instead, some computer program.
This same miasma of analysis has, of course, taken over our business and those, too, of our clients. We rarely consider our gut reaction to spots. Let's look at the data is our shibboleth. Consider how we "review" people, with convoluted language and abstruse measurements that are all but meaningless. (In an advertising agency, there should be one criterion for review: "It's Friday before a Monday new business pitch. I would/would not call on this person.")
All that being said, with the New York Knicks moderately resurgent, I did read an article on the sports page this morning about a point guard for the Knicks whose name escapes me. He is favorably compared to another guard whom the Knicks, last year, passed up on drafting. And then came the kicker. The Knick's coach had this to say about his guard: “The biggest thing is that it’s hard to measure heart," D’Antoni said. “And he has a big heart. And when he gets ticked off, he’s ready to roll. You also don’t calculate what that means to the other players, who feed off that energy and that meanness and that toughness."
Heart.
It's what's missing from most analysis.
What's more, over the years, sports have gotten worse. With the advent of the 24-hour sports cycle, the proliferation of statistics threatens to overwhelm. Coverage begets data which begets more coverage which begets more data. If you want to know how good a player is, don't look at how his team performs, or what he does, consult, instead, some computer program.
This same miasma of analysis has, of course, taken over our business and those, too, of our clients. We rarely consider our gut reaction to spots. Let's look at the data is our shibboleth. Consider how we "review" people, with convoluted language and abstruse measurements that are all but meaningless. (In an advertising agency, there should be one criterion for review: "It's Friday before a Monday new business pitch. I would/would not call on this person.")
All that being said, with the New York Knicks moderately resurgent, I did read an article on the sports page this morning about a point guard for the Knicks whose name escapes me. He is favorably compared to another guard whom the Knicks, last year, passed up on drafting. And then came the kicker. The Knick's coach had this to say about his guard: “The biggest thing is that it’s hard to measure heart," D’Antoni said. “And he has a big heart. And when he gets ticked off, he’s ready to roll. You also don’t calculate what that means to the other players, who feed off that energy and that meanness and that toughness."
Heart.
It's what's missing from most analysis.
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