My speech to graduates.

I'm flying out to LA this morning--the whole family is going--to see my younger daughter graduate from college.

I've never been asked to speak at a college graduation, but if I were invited to give a commencement at an ad school, I think this is what I might say:

When you're in the real world, it's easy to get buried.

We can get buried with the daily efforts of life. Finding and apartment and affording one. Juggling expenses and commutes and all the quotidian shit that comes at you fast when you're heading off on your own.

We can get buried by the burdens of jobs. Of finding one, of keeping one, of performing in one and trying to find a better one, with bigger paychecks, greater responsibilities and more opportunities.

We can be buried under ambitions and pressures and agency politics. Buried under six page briefs and two-day deadlines and stupid bosses and obnoxious clients.

We can be buried to the point where everyday feels like the Bataan Death March.

It's easy to be buried.

It's not so easy to keep what you have today.

Which is a spark.

The spark of optimism.

The spark of fight.

The spark of not settling.

The spark of trying.

That's your real job. Whether you're a planner, or an account person, or an art director, or copywriter. Or whether you're anything else.

To take all the "no's," all the fears and all the doubts and burn them into oblivion with your spark.

Very few people rise to the top of our business.

It's notorious for chewing people up and spitting them out.

Of calling them "old" when they're not much older than you.

Of schmising and destroying their perfectly hewn ads.

That's life.

But the people with integrity, the people who will make it, the people who will rise to, dare I say it, happiness, will keep their spark alive.

In the words of my best friend's father, they keep laughing, keep learning, keep loving.

They won't be mere agency technocrats.

Or paper-pushers.

Or worse, supervisors.

They'll get up earlier than most and do something great.

They'll do something great and even if it doesn't get bought, they'll be better people for having done it.

They shot it wrong.

Today, the big news in New York is the much-delayed opening of the 9/11 Museum. I say much- delayed because to my mind, we should have proven our resolve as a nation and had the new tower and the memorial museum built and operating in a single year. Our ability to rebuff and rebound would then have served as a counterpoint to those who would like to tear down America.

In any event all over the news this morning they are showing the fountains built into the foundations of the two original Twin Towers.

The waters in these fountains cascade from street-level into the depths of the original foundations. From street level, it appears that the waterfalls are bottomless. That the water falls to infinity. This is the way the falls are meant to be viewed. At least that's my opinion.

However, the local news crews are all shooting from a story or two above. You can see the bottom into which the water falls.

It loses its effect.

It's sad when mutations like this happen.

When art is lessened by how it's displayed.

It's like looking at the Mona Lisa through a passing subway car window.

The artist, architect, copywriter or art director can do little about shit like this.

All of us, no matter what our business, work in the maelstrom. Cacophony is our metier.

Too often we spend hours and days making a commercial and we act as if people will be rapt when viewing it.

We miss the point that our spot is most likely viewed between chomps on a handful of Doritos out of the corner of one's eye while they're being screamed at to take out the garbage.

In short, no one looks at anything under ideal conditions.

That's reality.

That's Life 101.

So make sure what you have to say gets heard. In Dave Trott's paradigm, make sure you make an impact. Make sure you get noticed.

And then, whether it's 30-seconds on soap suds or a memorial to the dead, make sure your message is as clear as the ice in a dry martini.

Do those things and you have at least a chance of success.

Breasts in the Tempus Fugit.

I’ve been busy lately, running around town to different agencies and working fairly like a dog. It’s harder I think to do ten little assignments than one big one, and that’s what I’ve been doing. A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

In any event with all this work swirling around in my head, I woke up last night at precisely 2:19 by my wife’s glowing clock. I quickly threw on an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a bona fide pair of canvas sneakers (decidedly not of the $129 ilk) and headed with Whiskey, my 25-month-old golden retriever to my favorite haunt, the Tempus Fugit.

It was a beautiful evening and if Whiskey hadn’t developed a slight limp from playing too vigorously over the weekend, I might have by-passed the Tempus Fugit and just meandered along the river. But out of respect for her sore right front paw, we instead settled into our respective seats at the bar.

The bartender quick as a pixel brought Whiskey a small bowl of cold water and he drew me a Pike’s Ale (the ALE that won for YALE) for the umpteenth time. At the Tempus Fugit, they have for 90 years waged a winning war against warm beer. Their prime weapon in this struggle is the eight-ounce juice glasses in which they serve their amber. In three or four gulps you’re ready for another, without the suds growing tepid or flat on you.

The bartender pulled me Pike’s number two and I sat back in my seat. He began the evening’s disquisition.

“How goes man’s search for meaning in the advertising world?”

I swirled the amber still in my glass.

“There are plenty of ups,” I answered, “accompanied of course by more than the occasional down. In sum, I am not as busy as I'd like to be.”

“I wonder,” he said “if you know the Greek story of Phryne. It occurs to me that it might be relevant in your current situation.

“Illuminate me,” I said darkly.

He took my glass and dipped it into a sink of warm soapy water, then into a basin of clean water. He then took a dishtowel and wiped it clean. He pulled me my third and last Pike’s of the evening.

“She was considered the most beautiful woman in all of Greece. But on this particular day, she was being tried as a courtesan on charges of seduction and impiety.

“They were about to indict her—and probably sentence her to death, impiety was serious in those days. Today, of course, it’s a sitcom.”

“You digress,” I steered.

“Of course. In any event just before she was to be indicted, she tore her dress and displayed her perfectly-formed bosoms. ‘Could you resist these?’ she asked the jury.

“With that, they acquitted her.”

“They don’t teach you that in law school.”

“You may be having a hard time right now. Work is a little slow. But your special attributes—your way of taking mush and making it interesting, your analogous perfect breast will win out.”

“I’m flattered,” I said.

I started to pay.

“On me,” he said.

Thoughts on briefs.

Through 30 years in the business, the phrase I've probably heard more often in advertising than any other is "the brief sucks."

I've heard it at every agency I've ever worked at and I've worked at some of the best. I've heard it on virtually every assignment. I've probably even said it myself once or twice.

Here's what people are missing when they blame the brief.

The person who writes a brief spends X hours doing so.

The person who creates the ad spends 10X hours doing so.

I think to create work you have to live and breathe an assignment.

Just the other day I got an inquiry about my day rate. The potential client asked "that's for an eight hour day?" I replied, well, I usually work about 10 hours. From 9-7. Then, of course, there's the hour I think about the assignment on my way to work. And the two or three hours I think about it when I'm home. For me, writing an ad is a full-body experience.

Advertising is not (yet) a time-clock industry no matter how hard the timesheet people try to make it one. You roll things over in your mind during both your waking and sleeping hours.

It's only natural for the person who creates the ad to go deeper than the person who creates the brief. 

Last week I had an assignment and was given the slimmest of briefs. I found out that the one product we were selling was available in 168 different versions. 

The account people didn't know that. I'd wager the client doesn't either.

I found it out.

Because it's not a brief that we produce.

We're supposed to go further.

12 Things no one in advertising ever said.

1. Great 162-page Powerpoint presso! Let's put that on the air.
2. I chose this job because they had the best holding company culture.
3. The creative here isn't too good, but we have the best HR department.
4. My last agency was too quiet. I love working elbow-to-elbow at one 200-foot-long continuous desk.
5. Wow! Did you see that sponsored post on Facebook last night?
6. I have no idea what Company X sells, but I love their UX.
7. You're right.
8. Please use more buzzwords, I almost understood that last sentence.
9. 110 decibles! Damn the noise-canceling headphones. Airport-level noise helps me concentrate.
10. Those old people are so experienced, I could really learn from them.
11. Yes, the world's largest ad spend comes from Scrabble and Lego. How else could they win all those awards.
12. There's an intelligent discussion today on Agency Spy.

News and trust.

I am reading a book right now called "The Invention of the News: How the World Came to Know About Itself" by Andrew Pettegree. You can find out more about the tome (500 pages) here.

Basically, the book goes through a variety of Middle-Ages revolutions and how they affected communications.

News of Kings dying, of people being hanged, of Crusades being organized and propagated, of heretics being burned was originally transmitted by word of mouth. Since most people in the Middle-Ages hardly ever left the town they were born in, this news most often came to town via itinerant travelers or the King's men. In fact, in the Middle Ages, news was not considered credible unless you knew who it came from.

Later, say the mid-15th Century as paper, the printing press and courier services arrived, news became more widespread, people slowly became accustomed to reading the news. But most people still preferred to hear things first hand.

The internet of the day was, of course, the inn or tavern. There was a reason England was Merrie. There was one pub per every 20 adult males.

Eventually, people began to trust written news because it came from writers and presses that had developed trust over time. But much of the news was transmitted through balladeers who would sing news and what we would today call an "editorial." These ditties were the viral videos of their day.

I'm working my way through this. And working through the parallels to our industry and our times today.

There will be more to come on this topic.

Because there's nothing like reading a book on the Middle Ages to help make you realize that nothing today is new.

Uncle Slappy tells me the famous Moth Joke.

This is Uncle Slappy’s famous “Moth Joke.” For the last thirty years or so he has said to me about every two weeks “are you ready to hear the Moth Joke?” I’ve always said “Yes,” but until yesterday, he never told it to me.

He finally spilled the beans yesterday. I’m not sure why he decided yesterday was right, but he did. Here is the joke transcribed verbatim:

A moth flies into a podiatrist’s office and the podiatrist says to him, “What’s wrong?”

The moth says, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Better I should tell you what’s right! At work, I’m not sure my boss knows who I am, much less what I do. Frankly, after all the time I spent on the job, I’m not sure what I do.

“The when I get home, it’s even worse. I see my wife, but there’s nothing there. It’s like there’s no connection whatsoever. We hardly talk. We hardly relate to each other at all.

“And then there’s my daughter. I don’t know what’s up with her any more. She says hardly a word, locking herself in her room. There’s no love, no togetherness. I don’t understand her at all.

“Worst is my son. A loser. A sad, flabby, directionless man overwhelmed by the callousness and indifference in the world. A man with no future. What makes that even more painful is what I see when I look at him. I see me.”

The podiatrist takes this all in and finally says “You don’t need a podiatrist. You need a psychiatrist. Why did you fly in here?”

And the moth says, “Your light was on.”

The "Merger," part 2.

The merger between Omnicom and Publicis has been declared stillborn. Maurice Levy and John Wren will go back to their corner offices, lick their wounds and pay their teams of attorneys.

Apparently, the two holding companies could not agree on personnel decisions. Omnicom's insistence that certain of their people take certain roles left Publicis feeling that the merger was more like a takeover.

Both parties agreed to kill the fix. If one alone backed out, they would have been subject to a $500 million kill fee.

Yes. You read that right.

The shocking thing about all this of course is how little has to do with making or distributing ads. The supposed "work" of our business is a mere sideshow.

The money that can be wrung from it (hence battles like the Omnicom Publicis one) comes from a simple equation. There's a lot of cash. And low overhead.

There are those who mark the decline of the modern advertising industry to about 1987 when Bob Jacoby, then CEO of Ted Bates, pocketed $175 million when he sold his agency to the Saatchis. When clients saw that amount of money floating about they rebelled.

I know what function holding companies fulfill for shareholders. And maybe that's their sole purpose. To wring every thin dime from every corner.

But to my mind, a company or a holding company should deliver, also, a good product.

Gap should be great at jeans. Chevy should be great at cars. We should be great at ads.

But in the process of wringing those dimes, we have lost our greatness.

We're only really good at making a few rarefied rich people richer.

Future un-shock.

It was reported yesterday that the NBC Universal has paid $7.75 billion for the rights to six Olympic games from 2022 to 2032.

I'll admit it's weird to even think about 2022, much less 2032. Who knows what viewing will be like eight years from now, much less 18? Who knows what our living rooms, or even our laps will look like? Will we be sitting on virtual furniture and serviced by virtual robots while we snack on virtual Doritos and explode with virtual flatulence?

Who knows how our days will be structured in 2032 when we're watching the Summer Olympics beamed from Mars. Will we be telecommuting to paperless offices where our sole job is to create 140 characters of marketing bliss?

Projecting that far into the future of viewing is an awesome task. I wish I could have sat in on the meetings between NBC Universal and the International Olympic Committee.

I wonder, even, what the games will be like. I mean, how much more exciting will ice dancing be in the future.

Here's my guess.

Things will be pretty much the same in 18 years.

We'll go to work and work like dogs for too little money and no job security. We will come home via too crowded transit systems whether they be subways, commuter trains or freeways. These systems will continue to be underfunded because the plutocrats and oligopolies that rule the land will still have found ways not to pay tax.

We will come home exasperated and exhausted. Most of us will not be going to the hot new shuffleboard-place cum bar in a newly colonized, newly whitenized territory of Brooklyn.

We'll drag our sorry asses home.

Feeling like a cross between Ralph Kramden and Willy Loman.

We won't particularly feel like talking to our spouse or dealing with the kids.

So will turn on some sort of viewing device or activate the implants in our retinas.

We'll sit back, maybe with a plate of genetically-modified Monsanto-approved ice cream at our side. We'll worry about our weight and our cholesterol, but decide to shut out the world.

We'll sit back, like I said, and we'll watch.

We'll complain about how bad the coverage is and how commercials aren't as good as they used to be.

And then we'll watch ice dancing until we fall asleep.

Signal vs. noise.

In the constant battle between signal and noise, noise has won.

We surround ourselves with Buzz-Feedy junk and act as if we are getting news.

We immerse ourselves in social networks and while away hours reading the banal solipsisms of our virtual friends or seeing what they had for dinner or mulling over a cat that needs adoption.

We willingly turn over our private data to giant corporations and whistle while they market us to death.

In advertising, noise has won as well. It has overwhelmed cogency. It has inundated signal.

177-page decks.

72 sponsored Facebook posts.

Dozens of tiny banner ads that are all but unviewable.

Vines. Tweets.

All supersede our real job of clarifying and defining the brands we work on.

We're meant to create clarity.

What we create is a mess.