Five minutes with our CGHDO.

Ad Aged:         CGHDO? I don’t recognize that acronym. Tell me what does it stand for?

CGHDO:         CGHDO? Didn’t I answer that question yesterday? CGHDO is Chief Ground Hogs’    Day Officer.

Ad Aged:         So what is it that a CGHDO does?

CGHDO:          Didn’t I answer that question yesterday?

Ad Aged:         Not that I’m aware of.

CGHDO:        As I said yesterday, I make sure nothing changes. Particularly nothing asinine. 
In fact the loonier it is, the more I make sure we keep doing it.

Ad Aged:        Give me an example.

CGHDO:       Well, let’s say an ad is due to release at noon.

                        I make sure to come in with enormous changes at 11:59.

                        I do this every day.

Ad Aged:        Uncanny.

CGHDO:       There’s more. Say it’s 2AM before a new business pitch.

                        It’s my job to make sure the copiers go down.

                        Before every new business pitch.

Ad Aged:        Anything else?

CGHDO:        Like I said before, I always come late to meetings.

                        That way whoever's leading the meeting has to start over and  

                        repeat what they've already said.

Ad Aged:        Our time is up. Thank you for talking today.

CGHDO:        As I said yesterday, thank you. Oh, one more thing...

Ad Aged:         Yes?

CGHDO:          As I said yesterday, thank you. Oh, one more thing...

Lies.

There's a Chrysler commercial running now that annoys the shit out of me.

It annoys the shit out of me even though Wieden and Kennedy did it and they seldom make a misstep.

For whatever reason it has a lot of silver balloons in it. Which has a nice artistic effect. I guess because they're celebrating something like Chrysler's 90th Anniversary.

I guess what irks me is not so much bad advertising but when advertising leads with a lie.

Somewhere in the copy the gritty VO says something like "celebrating 90 years of quality and innovation."

I don't know about you, but Chrysler and quality--at least if you lived through the last 50 or 60 years of American manufacturing go together about as well as Ted Bundy and Mother Teresa.

Yet there they are.

Balloons artfully wafting to the top of the screen.

Announcing their celebration of 90 years of quality.

Everyday, and I wish I were being funny here, I get about three or five emails telling me I've been chosen by something I think is called the Women of Distinction to pay some fee or another and become part of their organization.

As an industry--as a culture--I think too many people, companies and institutions are willing to lead with lies. They're too willing to assume that their "audience" are susceptible dimwits who will fall for such lies.

I think the reason blogs like this one, Dave Trott's two blogs, Rich Siegel's, Bob Hoffman's, Sell Sell's! have such followings is that we tell more truth than the "trade press."

When Adweek and Ad Age went into the re-printing press-releases business, they lost their reason for being.

I think the same is true with much of advertising, politics and interpersonal relationships.

In 60 years it's happened.

From We Try Harder.
To     We  Lie Harder.

Five minutes with our CCAMO.

Ad Aged:  So you're a CCAMO. That's a title I'm unfamiliar with. Tell me what it stands for, please.

CCAMO:  CCAMO. I'm the Chief Call a Meeting Officer. Whenever things get crazy, or busy, or threatening, whenever there's a lull, employee dissatisfaction, or, rarely, employee satisfaction, I call a meeting and straighten things out.

Ad Aged:  If there's a new business pitch on Friday and no work?

CCAMO:  I call a meeting.

Ad Aged:  And what happens at this meeting?

CCAMO:  I assign people to call small-group meetings. Other people I assign to produce hotsheets. Still other people I designate to stand over your shoulder looking anxious.

Ad Aged:  And then?

CCAMO:  Then, I call a meeting of all these people. I get everyone together in one big meeting and we settle things.

Ad Aged:  Like what, for instance, what do we settle?

CCAMO:  Well, for one, that we have too many meetings. So we have a meeting to discuss how we streamline things. Then we produce a spreadsheet--an unintelligible spreadsheet that designates who will be doing what and when it's due. But most of the lines on the spreadsheet we mark with TK for to come.  And that means....

Ad Aged:  That means it's time for another meeting, I assume?

CCAMO:  Exactly. Then we talk about the problem. At which point, I defer to the CIHAHSO, and we take it from there.

Ad Aged:  CIHAHSO?

CCAMO:  Chief I Have A Hard Stop Officer. He makes sure that the moment something is about to get done at a meeting, the meeting ends.

Ad Aged:  Well, thank you for your time today. Just one more question...

CCAMO:  Send me an email.  I can't answer now. I have another meeting to run to.

This should be red.

For at least a decade now, advertising pundits and new-media landscapers have been declaring that print is dead.

And maybe it is.

I seldom have time to read the paper edition of "The New York Times." Even my paper issue of "The New Yorker," often gives way to the pixeled press. And books, well, about nine months ago, I finally gave in a bought an Amazon Kindle.

Still.

Still.

When it comes time to get a platform, an agenda, a concept, words on a flag, or--heaven forfend--an idea down to its purest essence, when you're letting a client know what business they're really in, there's nothing like a line--a single line--written on a piece of paper. There's nothing like the power, the focus you get from writing six or nine defining and powerful words.

On Friday, in the mail from London, one of the authors, Alfredo Marcantonio, of "Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads," sent me a complimentary copy of another book, a 3.8 pound, 256-page cinderblock called "Well-written and red." It's a collection of stellar ads for "The Economist."

And in this particular case "stellar ads" might be a redundancy. Because for a couple decades, The Economist has run nothing but stellar ads.

Let's think about what these ads do.

They define the ethos, the brand promise, the very being of the magazine.

The compliment the viewer for their intelligence, surprising them with wit and intelligence.

They are clear as ice.

They are "unique-ifying." No other journal, tv show, newspaper or magazine can match them. The Economist is one of a kind.

Oh. And they do those other things too. Drive subscriptions and single copy sales. Way better, probably, than "Save 40% on your next 12 issues."

If you're a writer, or a strategist, if you work in 'new business,' I'd recommend getting your nail-bitten fingers over to amazon.com, post haste.

You won't just be a better writer for buying the book.

You'll be a better thinker.

And surely, that couldn't hurt.

The Cubs. The Mets.

Good

bye

Leo....

Yesterday I got a call from my financial advisor, a mensch from the Windy City.

He called me because some funds I had purchased were coming due and he wanted my ok to repurchase said funds.

That's all well and good, but WOW! the Cubs had just defeated the Cards and would be playing either the Mets or the Dodgers for the National League pennant.

For those uninitiated in the woes of the North-Side Ursines, the Cubbies have not won a World Series since Teddy Roosevelt was President, way back in nine teen oh eight.

Back in 1969, the Cubs seemed ready to break their dreadful six decades of losing. They were leading the National League and seemed unstoppable. They also had Hall-of-Famers or HoF caliber players dotted through their line up.

Ernie Banks who amassed 512 lifetime four-baggers. Ron Santo, the best third baseman of his era. The quiet and powerful Billy Williams who swatted 426 homers in his career. They also had a good backstop, Randy Hundley and probably the league's best middle-infielders, Glenn Beckert at second and Don Kessinger at short.

On the hill they had the great Fergie Jenkins. And the nearly great Don Holtzman (a member of the Jewish Baseball Hall of Fame) and Bill Hands, who clocked 20 wins that season.

900 miles east, however, were Destiny's children, the Mets of New York, helmed by the quiet patience of Gil Hodges.

I was at the big ballpark as the Mets swept the Cubbies in a three-game set in late September. The Mets? Who in their previous seven seasons had finished last six times.

But the Mets went that year quickly from the "Amazins" to the "Inevitables."

They roundly kicked Chicago heinie.

And 55,000 New York accented hooligans, myself among them, derisively jeered the Cubs' manager--former manager of the Mets' predecessor teams, the Dodgers of Brooklyn and the Giants of Harlem: Leo Durocher.

We sang as the Mets rose and the Cubs sank, "Gooooooooooooooooodbye Leo, Goooooooooooodbye, Leo. Weeeeee hate to seeeeeeee you go."

The Mets won.

The Cubs lost.

And this year, they meet again.

Goodbye, Leo.

Payday in the Mexican Baseball League.

For many people, today is payday. 

I suppose no matter how old you get, or how much money you wind up making, there’s something nice about payday. We’ve lost something, I think, when paydays went electronic.  It was much nicer when someone would come around with an envelope that had your check or your paystub in it. 

I know that’s getting all Thornton Wilder, “Our Town” on you, but if I ever decided to hang up my own shingle and if I ever have a staff, I think I’d pay them all with an actual physical paycheck and an actual physical handshake.

That’s the way things went when I played ball for the Saraperos de Saltillo down in the Mexican Baseball League going on 41 years ago. I remember one afternoon in late June sitting in the locker room with a few of the other boys.

Hector Quesadillo came out with a shoebox filled with envelopes. He’d walk over to say, Issy Buentello, hand him his dough and shake his ham.

“Bueno?” Quesadillo would ask.

“Bueno.”

He went around to all the other guys. Diablo, Garibay, Sanchez, Suena, Adame. Even some of the clubhouse boys.

Hector finally made his way over to me. 

I was the newest kid on the team and the youngest at just 17.  I wouldn't be 18 for six more months. The only job I had ever had before playing ball for the Saraperos was a game room attendant at an amusement park near my parents’ apartment. I made sure no ruffians from the Bronx burned the place down and I cleared coin slots that got jammed. That paid $2.30/hr., minimum wage at the time.

Hector searched through the few remaining envelopes for mine, found it, then handed it over.

“Bien haceis, mi hijo.” You are doing well my son.

“Gracias, me gusta aqui.” Thank you, I like it here.

I opened the envelope. There were two clipped packages of bills inside. One with 2160 pesos, my meal money for the month, $12 a day while on the road for 15 days. The second sheaf was my monthly pay, 2400 pesos—about $200.

“Gracias,” I said again to Hector, shaking his hand. "Me gusta aqui."

He reached into his the side pocket of his turquoise Saraperos windbreaker. He took out two 50 peso notes, folded them in half and handed them to me. 

“Poco mas, mi hijo. Un bono.”  A little more, my son. A bonus.

I had hit two doubles the night before. For that, Hector had awarded me an extra eight dollars.

He shook my hand again.

I’ve had thousands of paydays since then. All of them bigger. And dozens of bonuses, naturally more than eight dollars.

But I’ve never had a payday that meant more than that first one.

Crisis management.

For about the past 96-hours I've been dealing with an assignment that's not been making the progress it should be making.

That's a round-about way of saying we've created a lot of decks but not a lot of work. And certain people in both the agency and at the client are, rightfully, getting fed up.

So, people have sprung into action.

Project Managers have descended like mosquitoes on a bare forearm in the Amazon.

About four times a day there's a hot sheet issued.

About six times a day, half hour check-ins are stuck on everyone's calendar, regardless of what else they have on their calendar.

People are running like mad on various hamster wheels.

Perseverating. Finger-pointing. Back-stabbing.

About 35 years ago, I worked as a night-shift cashier in a large liquor store just off of Rush Street in Chicago. I would arrive just before 4PM, walk to the back, find my cardboard time-card and punch in.

There were two things I really liked about that. One was the feeling of "official-ness" I got from my time-card. It was made of a heavy grade of paper and it was not to be trifled with. Neither was the ca-chunk of the time-clock stamping your card. These were symbols of authority made of real hard-core materials. And everyday I wanted to be paid, I had to, in a sense, hand something in to be stamped.

Too often in our business we deal in vapor.

We say, amorphously, that we are "working on something," or "we have a few ideas," or "some thoughts."

But, guess what, we hand nothing in. We literally show up empty-handed.

I think our business and our world would be better off if we always had to show up to meeting with an actual physical manifestation of things we had done or were working on.

Some copy on a sheet of foolscap.

So scrap artwork, a sketch or doodle.

The outline of a spot or a long-form piece.

All on a piece of paper.

That you need to hand in.

And get stamped.

Like a time-clock.

It works.

Reflections on baseball and advertising.

For about my entire lifetime, people have been declaring the sport of baseball dead. It's declined of course since its Babe-Ruthian heyday when it was the only game in town. It was a game built for the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Wide open spaces and no time clocks. It's no longer the "National Pastime," football is, or masturbation,  or mass murder, but as evidenced by the four playoff games on television yesterday, the old game keeps on ticking.

I fairly OD'd on baseball yesterday, watching the better portion of the Cubs vs. the Cards and the Astros against the Angels. By the time the game I wanted to watch, the Mets vs. the Dodgers came on, if I watched any more horsehide, I would have exploded like a fat man at a pie-eating contest.

In all, though, the game looked healthy. The level of play was good. Pitchers were strong, and hitters were larruping line drives into the October ether. Cut off men were hit, bases were stolen and one Cub hit a foul out to Sheffield Avenue, reportedly landing in a platter of Mrs. Polchevski's pierogis. Further, despite all the proclamations on the death of baseball, the game seems a necessary antidote to the din of football.

Football is like a rush-hour commute on the Long Island Expressway. Everyone out there is marked for fiery death. Baseball still meanders, and there's something nice in that.

I suppose somewhere in all this there is a parallel to advertising. It's been declared dead as often as baseball. It's supposed to be a relic of a bygone time. To hear the neo-hipsters tell it, we all grew up hypnotized by the boob tube, bombarded by the same messages over and again on the three networks until our brains were programmed to really fret about ring around the collar.

None of that was ever true, of course. We made fun of advertising then as we disparage it today. It presents a false, usually idealized image of the world, but really, we've always known that at some level we were being lied to. You only need pick up a Mad Magazine from the 50s, 60s or 70s, to kill the myth that my generation grew up as complacent demoral chugging automatons.

I guess the point is simple and a spin on Winston Churchill's statement that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

Advertising sucks. Television sucks. Consumerism suck. Interruption sucks. Football sucks. Baseball sucks. The LIE sucks.

It all sucks. Except they suck less than all the others.

Which is why millions of people ate billions of Doritos and watched men in double-knits battle into the night.

Just.

About 30 years ago I had a writing mentor in the business called Ed Butler. Ed had plied his trade at Doyle Dane--and done some notable VW ads there. But he really hit his stride when he joined Ally & Gargano when he did outstanding work on Travelers Insurance.

Ed was a craftsman. With him, there was no rushing of copy. And a good last line was about as important as the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. You had taken the hill against the enemies of our profession: crassness, speed and apathy.

Getting approval from Ed on a piece of copy wasn't that hard, however. He respected my taste and liked my writing. As long as I did what I thought was a good job, as long as I had a good in and a good out and not too many damned things the client demanded, I was ok.

Ed told me this story once that I've thought about often. He was working at an agency called Marschalk and they were pitching against Della Femina for the Chemical Bank account. Before those agencies and that bank were merged out of existence, all three entities were good-sized companies. Chemical was one of the largest banks in New York.

Ed told me that the tagline he had created for the pitch was "The Chemistry's Right at Chemical." Which he thought was pretty good. Until he saw the tagline Della Femina presented: "The Chemistry's Just Right at Chemical."

That "just" to Ed made all the difference. "I knew we were beaten," he said. "Their line was so much better."

I suppose this story in our current uncaring epoch sounds quaint and musty.

But, like I said, it's always stuck with me.

Because the people who care about touches and nuance are the people you want to work for and the people you want to emulate.

With consolidation of everything afflicting our business, as well as the painful crush of faster deadlines, we have to do all we can to hold onto our standards.

If only because they're so easy to abandon.

More baseball memories.

The American baseball playoffs started last night in something called the "wild card" game--the teams in the fourth and fifth position in each league would play each other, the winner advancing another round. The loser going home, presumably in disgrace.

The game pitted the Yankees against the Houston Astros and was won, in a convincing manner, by the Astros, who held the once-mighty Yanks to just three hits. The Astro's pitcher, a gritty left-hander called Dallas Keuchel, limited the Yankees batsmen to just three hits over six innings. Keuchel is bewhiskered as if he were playing for the old "House of David" barnstorming team. But he, and three other Astro arms, who came in and shut the Yankees down in innings seven, eight and nine, did the job last night.

Another game happens tonight, this time pitting the Pirates of Pittsburgh against the Cubs of Chicago. The Cubs have not won a World Serious, as Ring Lardner's rook would say, since, well, since Ring Lardner was writing, back in 1908, a woebegone streak of 108 years.

Of course, the Astros, in their 55 year history, have never won a series. So if you're a fan of Cinderella stories, you're pulling for a Cubs-Astros final, but the likelihood of that is slim.

Speaking of the House of David nine, they were a be-whiskered baseball troupe of decades gone by, members of a devout religious order in Benton Harbor, Michigan and hirsute acolytes of the Spirit of Shiloh, regarded as the Seventh and last messengers.

I never got to see the House of David play, but Keuchel last night, at least let me pretend.

When I was a kid, there was a barnstorming team called Eddie Feigner, "The King and His Court," who would travel the country and offer to take on "all comers."

Feigner was, perhaps, the greatest softball pitcher in the history of the game, and was so dominant that his "court" consisted of just four other players who would take on full teams of nine. Feigner is credited with 9,743 victories, 141,517 strikeouts, 930 no-hitters and 238 perfect games. In a celebrity charity softball game he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Maury Wills and Harmon Killebrew in a row.

I saw them play a team made up of local stars in a small White Plains stadium in the late 1960s when I was just a boy. He spent much of the game pitching from second base, rather than the mound, yet struck out the majority of beer-bellied firefighters and cops he faced.

Baseball is all-too-serious and professional for antics these days. Pitchers' arms are multi-million dollar investments and the games are too do or die to allow us to let our hair or our beards down.  But I enjoyed myself, last night, watching Keuchel, tie up the hated Yankees.