George-o-Nomics.

The other afternoon a friend chastised me.

The surprising part of that statement is not that I got chastised by a friend, it's that I have any friends left at all. 

My best friend--a friend for literally half-a-century--died two Christmas' ago, and I will never be over the loss. Just as I will never be over the loss of my baby sister, who died in 2007, when she was just 47.

I have friends scattered all over the world, I suppose. But my natural shyness keeps me from just picking up the Ameche and calling them. I guess I have a weird 1950s relationship with the phone. It's reserved for moments of importance, not just gabbing like the scene of teenagers in "Bye Bye, Birdie,” Ann Margaret notwithstanding.

In any event, my friend slapped my wrist.

"Why have you done nothing--not a post, or an ad, or a quip on Georgeonomics?"

He's right, I said to myself.

A missed opportunity. 

But still I temporized. 

"The posts I write on economics usually get the shittiest readership," I said. 

But really, I just hadn't thought about bringing a Universal Field Theory--the one Einstein was looking for--to the modern world of advertising. Or better, since there's nothing modern about advertising itself, advertising in the modern world.

I thought about it this morning.

Saturdays--before most people are awake--I try to do a little writing. The same way a pitcher might liniment his arm or a golfer might work on her short-game. Writing is my bread and jam, and I have to work at it to stay in fighting trim.

So, my wife out of the house for a trip to New Jersey, I sat down in solitude to write this.

One of the things that I find myself saying to my many clients and to people who come to me because they're seeking work, is that it makes sense to go back to the most fundamental aspect of what advertising and brands are.

They are promises to viewers.

Buy us and you'll get this.

Value exchanges.

Even teenagers might say, let's meet after school and I'll buy you a cherry Coke. You do this for me and I'll do that for you. Quid pro quo, before that 3,000-year-old precept was tarnished by a merkin-wearing fraud.

But brands today, and people today, seldom make promises you can pin up on a wall. Here's what one of the world's biggest advertisers says when you search for them: "P&G is improving everyday life as a Force for Growth and a Force for Good — for you, for the world, and for generations to come."

Jeez. 

I was just looking for laundry detergent.

Here's what one of the world's largest industrial manufacturers has to say about themselves: "General Motors is home to Buick, Cadillac, GMC & Chevrolet. Learn about General Motor's rich history and dedication to community, sustainability, & innovation."

Here's the "promise" of America's most-popular pharmaceutical: "Ozempic ® (semaglutide) injection 0.5 mg, 1 mg, or 2 mg is an injectable prescription medicine used: along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. to reduce the risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or death in adults with type 2 diabetes with known heart disease."

With all that I wondered.

What is the brand promise of the advertising industry to the people who work in the industry? In other words, in exchange for your time and toil and dedication, what besides money, does the ad industry promise to the people who are making the leaders of the ad-industry wealthy?

To help, I wrote a few starter thoughts down.

1. 
You will get paid for every hour you work. That's only fair.
No more 1AM nights and six weekends in a row with no compensation. This is a business. You get paid for your labor.

2.
You will be trained.
Like learning to ride a bike, learning to work in advertising will involve a certain amount of falling. But while you're learning, we'll have experienced people to run along-side you, hands near your handlebars, to help you balance and avoid catastrophes. We'll guide you until you can ride.

3.
You will be 'honested.'
No HR-derived bs. When you screw up (and you will--everyone does) you will be told. And told how to do better. When you prevail, you will be rewarded. We will apprise you with candor, even when it hurts. That's how people grow.

4.
You will share. And share alike.
When management gets rich, you will get more. We believe in one set of rules for everyone who works here. No multi-tiered systems where some get Jean Georges and others can't expense a tuna-salad sandwich on stale bread.

5.
You are an owner.
Everyone is a shareholder. As reported in "The Economist" in a 2016 article called "Fin-Tech: Moby Dick, Venture Capitalist,”

"A captain might get a 12th lay (one twelfth of the remaining profit). In Melville’s novel, Ishmael, who was new to the business, was originally offered a 777th lay but managed to haggle a 300th. Although that would probably have proved a paltry amount, it was a stake nonetheless, and set a benchmark for future pay. Ishmael’s friend Queequeg, a cannibal from the South Sea islands, got a 90th lay because he had experience with a harpoon."

There's more to all this, of course. And I'm sure the Private Equity people who own both the holding companies (and the awards shows) would disagree with 207-percent of it. But their MO is using companies as ATMs. And an industry's should be the ongoing viability of that industry. 

The world should not follow the practices of natural-resource extraction. Where wealth is removed and never replenished until there is no more.

When I started GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, I named it after myself not as an homage to my Titanic ego. But because I was selling my unique qualities and wanted that promise to be intrinsic to the company. 

I am anti-scaling. Because I've seldom seen scaling not affect quality in a deleterious way. 

I wrote my Clients' Bill of Rights and have it on my site. Clients seem to like it. Especially the ones who take the time to read it.

I know it's not perfect. But what is?

Time and Tide (Not the Detergent.)

I ran across a factoid in The New York Times last week that got me thinking. 

The information was in an article by Steven Rattner. Not only was Rattner the head of Lazard Freres, Lehmann Brothers and Morgan Stanley, he was also a principal of the Quadrangle Group and he managed Michael Bloomberg's billions.

Rattner was also Obama's "Car Czar." And accused of securities fraud--robbing pension funds--and fined $10 million, though he admitted no wrong-doing. That's the beauty of being a billionaire. You pay $10 million fines though you did nothing wrong.

Nonetheless, and though I hate to admit it, Rattner is brilliant. He writes periodically for the Times--and though I don't like him (my elder daughter and his went to prep school together and I've interacted with him socially--he acted as if I didn't exist) I admire his writing, and yes, his wisdom.

In the article I linked to above, Rattner cited a study by M.I.T economist David Autor that claims "60 percent of jobs in 2018 were in occupations that didn't exist in 1940."

That got me thinking there's a heuristic present that most of us don't realize is working on us.

I think most people believe that they're living in the most tumultuous of times, times in which the cosmic carpet has been pulled out from underneath us.

There are agencies I've worked at where the agency seeks to capitalize on the supposed craziness of the world. Every presentation this agency makes and about 97-percent of employees are running around touting the advent of some technology or another, or some human behavior of another that is evidence that the world is tilted on its axis in a way it's never been tilted before.

Therefore, because everything is crazy now more than ever, we as ad people working in ad agencies have to throw out everything basic and find some new way to create or use some new technology to deliver creative or to reach a new customer-mind-set. There is never a shortage of good reasons to throw away the basics and principles behind 200,000 years of established human behaviors.

Lately, I've been quoting Comrade Vladimir Ilyich Lenin quite a bit. Specifically this: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Lenin's statement is evidence, I think of my heuristic. A heuristic based on the idea that we believe all the past--whether it was the past of our childhood or years, decades or centuries ago--was at all times other than our own, to have been peaceful, stable and calm. Conversely, our presents are all tumult--times of massive upheaval, upset and change.

But if 60-percent of today's jobs are in occupations that didn't exist when our parents or grandparents were young--that means we live--always and forever--in the craziest of times.

As Dickens wrote 164 years ago in "A Tale of Two Cities," 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only...

Undoubtedly, tumult sells.

We have to 'adjust to a new world' sells.

Generation blank is like no generation that's ever come before it sells.

Everything is different sells.

And only the brilliant people who work at our agency understand all this. That's why you need us, sells.

There's no money, really, saying that the fundamental things apply. 

Digging for simple, basic human truths is hard work. It's much easier to proclaim that in these tumultuous times--times that are unlike anything anyone has ever experienced--we alone have the answers. 

What better counterpoint than this: Dooley, noted.

 

 

Shhhhhh.

Almost two decades ago I was hired to unmoribund a giant agency that was never anything but moribund.

You might just as well have asked me to wallpaper the Grand Canyon. Not only had it never been done. I'm not sure it ever could be done.

But this was a long time ago. 

I was more gullible.

And the "we're gonna be famous" spiel was newer then. They threw a lot of money at me. I fell for it and I took the job.

I don't know a lot about organizational hierarchies and shit. When the conversation turns to matrixed reporting and flat structures and lines of command, I'd rather gargle with strychnine. I turn off faster than a teenage boy in an ice-cold shower.

When I worked in agencies, I never worried about hierarchies or org charts. I took a two-step shortcut.

1. Who did I need to impress.
2. Who did I need to beat.

That was all the bureaucracy I worried about. I'd try to do work that the key people loved. And I'd try to be better than the person or people who were thought of as the best.

There was less I had to remember. 

I knew what I had to do.

I still follow those dicta today.

When I got to this agency, however, there was a big problem. It's the problem at 99.79% of all agencies and client organizations.

There are so many directions being thrown your way that your brain frazzles. You don't know what you're supposed to do or who you're supposed to listen to.

Sometimes when I'm driving, I'll use my car's GPS. My wife will turn Waze on on her phone. Soon, I'll be getting two sets of directions, often contrary, at once.

That's what a lot of jobs are like these days.

When I was a kid working in the advertising department at Bloomingdale's, I had a very smart boss: Chris Rockmore. 

Somehow I got a giant ad to write and everyone from John Jay the legendary creative director to Marvin Traub the CEO of the store had their way with my copy. In addition to the buyer, the department head, the assistant buyer and half a dozen others.

Before long I got about 64 rounds of changes and I went to work trying to sort through them all and make sense of things. 

I was 23 or 24 at the time. And I had 23 or 24 competing sets of directions.

That's when Chris came into my office.

We didn't have computers in those days. We had IBM Selectrics. None of your copy was backed up. It existed only on copy paper.

Chris took my paper with the only copy of my copy and burned it with a match.

"You'll never write anything good trying to figure out what everyone and his cousin wants," he said. "Write it your way."

Years later, at the agency I described above, I realized everyone there was similarly stymied.

I sent this note to the creative department.

Every day on Linked in, I see about 92 posts titled "how to write copy." As if my way should be your way. As if anyone knows what they're talking about.

I prefer this:

Hearing voices.

You hear voices.

You're listening for what your partner might think.

Or the person in the next cube.

Or the account person.

Or their boss.

Or their boss.

Or their boss' boss.

You're worried about my voice.

The senior leadership team's voice.

The executive leadership team's voice.

You're hearing a lot of voices.

And you're listening to them.

Most of them tell you things like,

'don't do that.' 

'You can't say that.'

'That doesn't explain the whole story.'

'That might offend someone.'

You're worried about the clients.

The summer associate.

The associate brand manager.

The brand manager.

The senior brand manager.

The group brand manager.

The product manager.

You're worried about twelve focus-group people in Parsippany.

And twelve more in Bloomfield Heights.

And twelve more in Bala Cynwyd.

You're hearing all those voices.

Not to mention the voice of the CMO.

The CMO's husband.

And the CEO.

All those voices are rattling around in your head when you work.

They've drowned out some more important voices.

What do people think?

Really think?

What do they need?

What are we doing for them?

We've let that voice be drowned out.

And they've drowned out your voice, too.

The voice you were hired for.

The voice that says, 'I believe in this.'

Or 'this is how people speak.'

Or 'this made me laugh.'

There's a lot of clamor in our agency.

If you pay attention to it, it's like working with your head in a blender.

Take it out of the blender.

Find some quiet.

And listen.

To you.

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