Casing the Joint.

I became a Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director at Ally & Gargano when I was just 35 years old, way back in 1993.

 Of course the title was inflated. A sop to keep me quiet when I really could have used another $10K, not some initials. But that's beside the point. Nearly everyone today, especially those running giant advertising corporations though they've never written an ad, have inflated titles. The difference is, they were smart enough to get the money, too. I wasn't.

Anyway, as the main copywriter on the agency's most copy-intensive account, I was quickly charged with finding a new writer or two when the need arose. I started looking at portfolios and figuring out who to bring in for interviews and who to hire.

I like to think I got good at looking at books. 

Good and efficient.

Of course, those were print-centric days. 

A writer's portfolio would have at least 15 print ads in it. And no more than 20. You could flip through those ads like your were looking at playing cards. 

They were a quick read. About 90 seconds.

Usually after going through half the ads you could put the writer's portfolio case in either of two piles. "Scrutiny." Or "Reject."

Books in the Scrutiny pile would then get a lot of time and thought. They had earned that respect. The rejects went back behind reception. Someone eventually picked them up.

By the mid oughts, I was running an entire agency. A large, dull one. 

To help improve things, I wanted to elevate the quality of our creative department. I asked for a steady stream of portfolios at all levels to try to find people I thought were good.

It took me about a week to realize something distressing. 

After 15 years of looking at portfolios, I no longer knew how to look at them.

No longer could I discern through bonafide work who knew what an idea was, a turn of a phrase, a communication's hierarchy. I could no longer tell in an instant who had a sense of wit, impact or drama.

No/slow.

Yes/Success.

Also I could no longer tell who respected my time, and a general viewer's time.

Seemingly overnight I was being forced not to look at ads, but to view case studies. Some of which were as long as ten :30-second commercials. 

Why?

If I were hiring a contractor to build me a swimming pool, I'd like to see pictures of pools she built. Not a video on the success of various pools she built. I'd like to see the product, not the reporting of the product. 

Especially since about every 90 seconds in an agency someone blurts, "we're supposed to show, not tell."

I've never seen an interesting and convincing case study. I've never see a single case study as quick and credible as this:

Often age peers call me. Especially after they've been fired after 20 or 30 years in the business.

I warn them against case studies.

In fact, I warn them against portfolio websites.

I usually advise them to write a blog or ads for themselves. I say, "A portfolio is what you've done in the past. A blog is what you're doing now."

Usually, they hang up on me.

Read. The Manual.

Not by Bosch, b'gosh.

                

Listen up, creator.

The company I lead bought you and all your creations, primarily with other people's money. Even though I've never been in the human-creation business before and know nothing about it, I do know that our profits ain't maximized--they never are. If me and my small coterie of rich know-nothings are to walk away at the end of all this with massive amount of our, not other people's money, there are going to have to be some changes made. Big changes. 

First, we have to figure out a way to increase our margins. And then increase the margins on our increased margins. Looking at you, you have way too many parts. That's costly, and there's no need for all that excess. Your very construction is costing me money.

Like, why two nostrils and two eyes? That seems a waste. Add to that a brain with two lobes and two separate ears. This is just stupid. I know people like having all that stuff--I know people trust and believe in all that stuff. But this is costing us profit. Why do we need snot and earwax and saliva? Waste.

Ergo: Mergers. Consolidation. Smooshination.

Meet the Nostreye. A combination eye and nose. No long will we have separate seeing and smelling apparati. We have a new, more agile entity, and we'll run it out of Kansas City, where office space is cheap. No more high-rent brains. We'll be combining the neuron-functions of your back-office. It will be much more effective. You know, cheaper. 

Next, the brouth. We'll combine the brain and the mouth. That will reduce the costs of expensive parts and eliminate any delay between thinking and speaking. Now we can make baseless assertions unabashedly, like "it's all about data," or "programmatic is everything," or "AI will make advertising more effective," or we can spout meaningless-isms like "borderless creativity." So what, there's no evidence of the efficacy of any of this, if the brouth says it, it must be true. Because because.

Formerly, humans had two ears. What for? An unnecessary cost for those who harken back to the eighties and believe in listening. You know Denisovians and Neanderthals. Listening to clients and to the needs of people, pish. We don't need ears at all. We don't need to listen at all. It's an AI-future and a predictive algorithm can tell us all we need to hear and all we need to know. And then make it for us at virtually no cost. (We don't pay for ideas. Old fashioned. We steal them, a la mode.)

Besides, without ears, we save money. We'll still keep the word ear, of course, but we'll fold its operations and bottom-line into another body part--and that will save us even more money. Friends, behold the rectear. An ass combined with former listening devices. The better to hear asses with.

See what we've done?

We can no longer sense the world around us with any acuity. We've virtually eliminated all humanity and empathy. And we've saved scads of money--which we can plough into our salaries and more data and AI, giving the impression that via buying various houses of cards, we can prevent our house of cards from collapsing. 

Now we can send ceaseless messages that people deem boring and irrelevant ceaselessly. Can't you see the wonderful efficiency of it all. Look at our margins! So what that our clients have lost billions of equity in brands they've built over decades and decades. We've improved their next-quarter margins.

Next, what's with the two arms and two hands? Waste times two. Machines can do most of the work--and better than humans ever could. Why by a Biedermeier when you can have an Ikea. We'll leave our "people" with just one arm and one hand for filling out timesheets and fake award entries. How else can they show their creativity?

Same with legs and feet. We'll get rid of one and we'll still have a "leg to stand on."

That's a little appendage joke. 

Wait, what do you mean that as a result of these constructive and intelligent business transformation changes we're half the size we were three years ago? We haven't won a piece of new business in a decades? And clients are defecting in droves? So what we're about to sell off the few remaining constituent parts that have a scintilla of value left.

So what! 

Didn't you see me holding up a trophy in the south of France, going to sleep in my stateroom in my rented yacht, and working with my attorneys to make sure, after all my work, I receive at least a $100,000,000's worth of parting gifts, a seven-figure salary in-perpetuity, and I get to turn over the company I saved/eviscerated to someone with even sharper talons to continue the vulturing I advanced with such skill. 

Now, as they say, "let's see what real transformation looks like."

Platitude Attitude.

I was feeling bad. So I bought a positive affirmation t-shirt.
I'm ok now.

Like many people, I suppose, who read this organ, I am fully-ensconced in the "Apple ecosystem."

I have an Apple watch on my wrist 16 hours a day.
An Apple tablet by my bedside.
An Apple phone in my ass-pocket.
And an Apple computer covering my groin.

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning (after peeing like a racehorse) is strap the aforementioned watch onto my left wing. Heaven forfend I miss counting a step. And each morning, I get a dopey "affirmation" from that watch telling me "way to go!" or "keep it up!" or "you're doing great!" I don't remember them exactly because these statements are so insipid that they fairly turn my duodenum. They seem to light the way for our world today. [cf. big beautiful bill.]

My wife, my Simca and me during better times.
When we dressed well and drove on the beach.
Also, I had a jawline.

The time I drove the Simca into the forest to learn more about ursines.

If you don't have a red interior, you don't have a car.

Though I drive a 1966 Simca 1500 with over 427,000 miles on it, I would love a new car. However, I am the child of Depression (and depressing) parents. In the parlance of Iowa hog farmers, I was brought up to "use every part of the pig but the squeal." In other words, as much as I'd like a new car, I ain't getting one till the Simca gives up whatever snail-eating French ghost put it together back when Napoleon was still languishing on St. Helena.

No, that's not me on the Gingham Coast longing for Chinese food.
It's Napoleon longing for some V.S.O.P.

Like many old men in love with an older woman, I often cast my eyes toward a younger and satisfyingly well-turned ankle. That might not pass muster in some circles, but there's a reason there are nearly nine-billion people on our dying planet.

As such, I often go to bmwusa.com or even bmw.de and digitally build myself a new BMW. I did so last night. That led to this blogpost--and this bit of ontology.

To "build" my $65,000 car, I am asked to make some simple choices. 

• Model.
  
• Engine size.
• Drive train.
• Sport or standard.
• Color.
• Upholstery.
  
• Wheels.
• Options.
  

With each one of these choices, the car, nominally digitally reconfigures itself so I can see what it might look like. And with each step along the way--mind you, I'm spec-ing a car that costs more than most people make in a year--I get a second-grader's bullshit pablum encouragement the sort you'd get from a $12/hour soccer coach.

I get pandered to.

Does anyone anywhere really think anyone anywhere needs glad-handing like this? Is this what the technologists who ruined modern communications mean when they spout "using data to serve customers better?" Do this typographic wet-farts serve any purpose except making some client marketing person feel like they peed in your swimming pool? Does anyone anywhere believe such imperatives are leading me down the purchase funnel? That they make me feel "special"?

Mind you, BMW was a brand built on the understanding of its customer. BMW, at least in the US, had a tough, brusque, challenging voice. A voice of authority, integrity and teutonic toughness. 

They never pandered or talked down to people. They never said how "smart" you are. Yet their ads made you feel "in-the-know."

Maybe this is a leap and I've put too much brown-sugar in my oatmeal this morning, but those blue and white spiritual pukettes above remind me of advertising's "awards-industrial-complex."

That complex is propagated, promulgated and promoted by people who need shiny affirmations (that they've paid for) to reassure them that their work is good.

You wasted your clients money. You rock!

Way to go!

That trophy will cover our $7B drop in revenue!

They don't find that assurance from their agency, from their client, from their industry, and they don't find it from a resultant sales-gains or upsurge in brand reputation. 

It's yahoos in sports arenas (usually 45-pounds overweight) wearing face-paint, over-priced team regalia and shouting "we're #1." They're not athletes but they're quick to say, "we won." No, you sat on the vinylette sofa guzzling suds.

If, as a profession, advertising is ever-again to have viability and a soupçon of respectability, maybe we need to actually start appreciating the actuality of what we do. Or what we're supposed to do: Have a positive material effect on the fortunes of the brands who pays us. 

As they used to say at Ogilvy, back when it was a credible and viable agency, the goal is "to be most valued by those who most value brands."

That syllogism is lost today.

We're too busy self-applauding and trophy-izing. Rather than being cold and hard and demanding in what we expect from ourselves, we seek only praise. 

There were thousands of trophies handed out at Cannes. And I've never seen any of the work that won any of those trophies on my TV set or any site I visit or any billboard I drive by or any installation that beckons me.

Yet we live for trophies. Better, maybe we're dying for trophies.

They're like the affirmation socks you can find online.

And we need this, apparently, right down to our toes.

If Cannes trophies were foot ware.

Look Ma, No Hands.

Years ago--almost twelve years to the day--I was in a horrific car crash at one in the morning on the Grand Central Parkway, heading west, not far from the neon of the Jackson Hole Diner.

I won't go into excruciating details here. Let's just say the 20-year-old bald-tired Lincoln Town car I was being gypsy-cabbed home in from a delayed flight into Laguardia spun out of control at speed and crashed into a concrete barrier. It bounced off that barrier and rebounded into another barrier before coming to a stop half in the fast lane and half in the shoulder of the highway.

When I came to, I could see the particulate matter from the driver's airbag drifting down like the downy flakes described in Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." In my addlepated state, I heard Frost's faux-New England accent slowly reading:

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

I called an Uber from that shoulder and a car came and got me

took me home. The ambulance that arrived reluctantly allowed

me that prerogative. I didn't go to the hospital until six hours

later when the pain grew too intense.

In the hospital, I went through a battery of the latest diagnostic

tests. Nothing showed anything amiss. Then an intern put his

actual physical ear to my chest. "I hear a rattle," he said. That

sent all the other doctors scurrying and concluding. With that

vital piece of information, a diagnosis fell into place.

Right now, I am reading the odd little book above. It's a book

about a set of forensic techniques called "experimental

archaeology." The basis of experimental archaeology is simple.

Looking at old documents and sifting through soil for pottery

shards and ruined temples and palaces can tell us a lot about

times long ago. But trying to learn and live with ancient mores

and ways tells you even more.

So Kean looks to find food on a parched veldt of 75,000 years

ago. Or makes beer and bread (the 30,000 people who built the

pyramids were paid in such) the way the Egyptians did 5000

years ago. Last night I read a bit on the best maritime

navigators the world has ever known--the Polynesians,

Melanesians and Micronesians who lived in what we call

Oceania today.

The navigators had no maps and no compasses. Stars are good

at night when the weather is clear, you can navigate by them.

But what about when the weather isn't clear and you can't see

the heavens?

The those navigators--men and women who explored distances

greater than any European, in boats that were longer and

roughly three-times as fast, would actually lay in the hull of their

ships and feel, yes, feel the currents.

It's way more complex than that. They probably used all of their

senses and absorbed hundreds of thousands of navigational

clues. Like my car-crash story above though, they laid hands on

the world around them to better understand the world around

them.

To that end, not too many years ago, I read the obituary of the

guy who founded Dollar General stores. Someone asked him

how he determined where to locate them. Finding the right

location, not far from people whose budgets need stretching but

close to people with money, as you'd imagine wasn't easy. And

he was great at finding sites. He said, "I look in car parking lots.

If they have oil-stains in them, I know it's a good location."

Right now half the people in the world seem to be trying to

convince the other half of the splendors and the efficacy of

artificial intelligence.

The word "artificial" should be a red flag.

There are all sorts of tools, algorithms, white papers, blue

ribbon commissions, powerpoint presentations, Ted talks and

such we can use to convince the convinceable that we have a

machine-made way that will invariably get us to an insightful

answer. In fact, the ad industry so over-uses the word "insight" it

incites me to anger. If ten-trillion dollars is being invested in AI,

five billion is being spend marketing it--the better to cram it

down our throats and up our keisters.

Still, there's really nothing as good as smelling, touching,

hearing, tasting, seeing and thinking. And thinking some more.

Those are the components of Human Intelligence.

I worry about a world that no longer believes in such things.

Or humans.