Some thoughts on babies and bathwater.

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Even the gloomiest person has a general, Candide-ish view of the world. That is that as time goes on, progress (and the people behind progress) generally improve things. You might even say that much of our contemporary world abides by the notion that the old ways are often pretty stupid.

Certainly, you wouldn’t want a blood transfusion via the sharpened nib of a bird’s feather. You wouldn’t want to drive on the L.I.E. in a Model T. And who would want to watch Game of Thrones on a black-and-white Philco with a nine-inch screen?

Naturally, technology progresses over time. That’s why we buy a new iPhone when our old one works just fine. We inherently buy into the idea that newer must be better. Our consumption-driven society is, in fact, founded on that premise.

But what if that premise is wrong.

That in the words of Wordsworth, by “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

What if modernity just plain sucks?

That Facebook is an invasion into your bloodstream that tracks your every action and sells it over and over, accumulating their billions according to the value of your clicks?

What if your beloved iPhone (the one you’re likely holding right now) has destroyed your attention-span and made you so susceptible to the serotonin rush we get from seeing a red-dot with a number inside it that we, as a society, can no longer think straight?

What if technology has ruined our democracy, weakened our brains and cost us our freedom?

Way back 2,500 years ago or so, the Greeks discovered that building curved fortifications was smarter than building forts with right angles. Spears, javelins and the ballista from catapults would do less damage to rounded walls than flat walls. A missile that hits obliquely and from an angle is not as powerful as a dead-on hit.

The Greeks conveyed that information to the Romans. And for about 1,000 years, curved fortresses were all the rage throughout the Roman world. This got carried over to a lot of the Medieval world, too. Look at the 13^th Century Cathedral Basilica of Saint Cecilia in Albi, France and you get the general idea.

Except, people decided to stop building things that way. They forgot what the Greeks had discovered and the Romans had executed.

In Northern France they built new-style fortresses. With shear walls, facing projectiles head on.

There was no material reason for this architectural shift.

But it became the style.

The old way, rounded walls, though superior, was rejected because it was old.

I wonder as I look at the wasteland of modern marketing communications, if we have similarly rejected things that worked—that always worked—simply because they’re old. And as we all know, the old ways are dumb.

In my many rotations around the sun, I’ve read some of the oldest books in Western literature. Gilgamesh (the oldest), the Iliad, the Odyssey, most of Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles etc. I’ve read Virgil’s Aeneid. Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Shakespeare. And Chaucer.

Today, 99% of all people reject those stories because they’re old. Just as we reject the simple logic of Bernbach. The myth-making archetypes of Leo Burnett. The unassailable logic of Ogilvy and Gossage. The punch in the face facts of McCabe and Gargano.

They’re old.

They wouldn’t work today.

Our consumer is different.

People won’t like them.

They’re old.

So we've decided that surveillance and microtargeting and small and insignificant and noisy and obnoxious and short and information-free will carry the day.

That's modern and the modern way.

And that has to be better, it's modern.

Right?

An old friend needs work.

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A friend, an esteemed friend I’ve known through the business since the early 80s, sent me a note on Monday. Though it was just an email—a mere collection of inconsequential pixels, really—you could smell in those pixels the rancid sense of sadness that can come, unfortunately, with age.

That’s not fair really. My friend wasn’t sad because of her age. She was sad because of how the industry is treating her because of her age. How the industry is treating her because (like me) she gets in before nine—and can’t really abide people who get in at 10:47 and then complain how busy they are. How the industry is treating her because she cares more about the real-market-efficacy of her work than she does about a for-profit-awards-industrial complex. How the industry is treating her because of the way she calls bullshit on the bullshitters, and refuses—as much as it’s possible today—to stoop to use meaningless jargon.

“I’d rather be pilloried,” she wrote “than to go to a scrum.”

Reading that, I did that most old-fashioned of old-fashioned activities. I picked up my phone and called hers. Imagine that, having a genuine talk with someone—not a series of misspellings called, in today’s patois, a text conversation.

“Beth, what’s going on?”

“George, I think I’ve had enough. Enough of everything I don’t need to enumerate.”

“No, you don’t,” I agreed.

“I think it’s time, in the words of Huck Finn, ‘I light out for the territories.’”

I laughed at that.

“You mean the Hamptons,” I asked. Beth had a small place not far from the water.

“No, I’m not ready to retire,” Beth said. “I have more energy than anyone I know. Outside of you, of course.”

“Of course,” I of coursed. “So what?”

“How do I start a freelance business? How do I get people calling?”

“Beth, you’ve been working for the last 35 years for some of the biggest brands in the world. You’ve won scores of awards. I think I read something by Rory Sutherland last week or the week before where he said, “everyone over 50 in advertising is great,” on the basis of survivorship alone.

“Yeah, I read that,” she said. “And that’s great that he feels that way. But how do I get things going for myself? I’m tired of working for the man when I’m older than the man I’m working for by 20 years.”

“I dig,” I said anachronistically.

“Can you let your readers know? Post something on your blog,” she asked.

“Sure, though I don’t suspect it will do much good. No one reads this digital rag. No one who’s in the position to hire you, anyway. It’s mostly idlers, neer-do-wells and fellow members of the lumpenproletariat.”

“Look. Just do it and spare me the modesty.”

“Sure,” I said. “So long as I get 10% of everything you make. You know, finder’s fee.”

“Five percent. That’s fair.”

“You old people drive a hard bargain,” I said as I hung up the phone.

Consider it done, Beth.

Five Minutes with our COO.

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AD AGED:

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today. I realize as COO, Chief Operating Officer, you must be exceedingly busy.

COO:

To be completely obvious about it, Chief Operating Officer is quite a demanding job. But my title is completely different. I am also a COO—but a Chief Obvious Officer.

AD AGED:

I’ve never heard of that title. What is it that you do?

COO:

It’s simple, really. Obvious, in fact. I say things that are absolutely banal and trivial but in today’s insecure, needy and dumbed-down era, they pass as profound because I say them loudly, I repeat them often and then I post them on four or a dozen social media platforms.

AD AGED:

Faux profundity, give me an example.

COO:

Ok, here’s a recent tweet: Brands understand that today’s consumers have gone public about their privacy concerns.

AD AGED:

That’s excellent. Completely obvious and banal.

COO:

Yes, and what makes it so brilliant is that it’s completely devoid of any sort of proof or data. It’s just an unfounded assertion said with some degree of assertiveness.

AD AGED:

I see. So you keep yourself and your company in the news while blurting things of absolutely no value.

COO:

That’s what influencers do. Here’s one, in today’s data economy, leveraging insights from data is paramount. Television viewership has decreased while OTT and stand-alone are standing alone in an OTT way.

AD AGED:

Profoundly superficial.

COO:

Yes, and in a profound way. People with nothing to do, no discernment of their own and who are smitten by the 9-watt glare of internet celebrity pass these thoughts on, and all of a sudden, I’m an Oracle.

Here’s one I just came up with. Complete hooey that people embrace because it contains a slim semblance of sense:

AD AGED:

Go on.

COO:

A CEO works for his employees. And leads from the front.

AD AGED:

Wow, you almost had me nodding. Yet it’s totally vanilla and altogether meaningless.

COO:

You’ve heard the term witticism, of course.

AD AGED:

Yes, your statements don’t exactly sound like they emanate from Oscar Wilde.

COO:

I know that. That’s why I’ve trademarked the coinage, nitwitticisms.

AD AGED:

That’s good. Can I use that?

COO:

Yes. With proper attribution, of course.