Agency mantras.

Some years ago, I was the ECD of one of the world's larger interactive shops. A greviously serious place that believed in boring people into customer-hood. As an antidote to all that gravity, I proposed that we use the ever-so-common phrase "click to play" as our mantra.

Today running back to the office from an invidious mix, I saw the sign above. Those seem like words an agency could live by.

I have nothing more to say.

Do(n't) it yourself.

There's an article in today's New York Times about consumers in this economy looking to save money by doing it themselves. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/us/17blunders.html?hp

The article is basically a litany of people who have ruined their bathrooms by installing their own toilet, or infecting their privates by waxing their own bikini, or coming out spotted by bleaching their own hair. That incident concluded this way: “We had to go in and do corrective color,” Ms. Brewer continued. “I charge by the hour, and I worked on her for four hours. So by the time it was over, she ended up spending close to $1,000 to have her hair corrected when it could have been $175.”

In every case the lesson is the same and is found in the article's title: "Even to Save Cash, Don’t Try This Stuff at Home."

I think about this because I've noticed more and more clients looking to do things themselves or more and more agencies doing the same. Clients choose to write copy. Or agencies volunteer to do things they used to hire, say, directors for.

Behaving in such a way may not cost money but it could cost success. Hiring the right people brings two things to a project, an outside perspective (an avoidance of group think) and professionalism. In the end those two things add value and are worth the money.

Customer control.

There's a terrific scene from a 1996 movie called "The Big Night," a movie that features, among others Tony Shaloub and Stanley Tucci. Here's the plot summary from IMDB:

"Primo and Secondo are two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in America. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat..."

In my favorite scene from the movie, a customer orders spaghetti with a side order of risotto. Primo refuses to prepare the dish because it is simply wrong. You don't have spaghetti and risotto together. You just don't.

It's always seemed to me that this scene has a lot to teach us, especially in the internet era where "the customer is in control."

Contrary to prevailing wisdom, customer control kills businesses. There was a time when newspapers and network news were run under the aegis editorial control, ie. serious news and information was covered. Then came the pandering to the lowest common denominator and wars were forced off the front page for the likes of Miss California's breasts or Alex Rodriguez's needle-marked ass. Viewers got what they wanted, then later they found out that really wasn't any good and they turned off.

The same pattern has held in entire industries. Consumers demanded low prices from airlines. Airlines complied. Sacrificing everything that made travel bearable, service, reliability and, I believe, eventually speed and safety. Retailing has also followed suit. It is impossible to get service or find what you want in any number of big-box outlets. Eventually people will find other places to buy books, or electronics or pcs, like Amazon.

My point is quite simple. Yes, you have to listen to customers. But more important you have to have your own beliefs, standards and core values.

As always.

Minute by minute, assignment by assignment, as communicators we must focus on getting through to people. There's no sense creating a piece of elegance and beauty if it is not noticed, if it is nothing more than wallpaper.

More often than not, breaking through, getting noticed, being intrusive involves being a pain in the ass. It's so much easier for clients, agencies et al to decide simply to blend in. No one is offended. I've heard it expressed this way--from an ex-client: "Fly low, fly slow and try not to crash."

I'm thinking about this this morning as I picked up my next book, Freeman Dyson's "The Scientist As Rebel." Early in Chapter 1, Dyson quotes a rebel who changed the world, Albert Einstein:

"When I was in the seventh grade...I was summoned by my home-room teacher who expressed the wish that I leave the school. To my remark that I had done nothing amiss, he replied only, "Your mere presence spoils the respect of the class for me."

I bring this up because often creatives and creativity "spoils the respect" of the best-practice-ites, of the incrementalists, of the status-quo-ers.

But it is our job. Not spoiling respect. But questioning, challenging and in the ungrammatical words of Apple and Chiat/Day do(ing)something different.

Two years ago today.

Two years ago today my younger sister died in a motorcycle crash. Today I am dimming my lights, shutting off part of my brain and crying inside for the loss. I leave you today with this poem.

"Break, Break, Break"
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.


Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill:
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

All the news that's fit to retch.

From The New York Times

May 12, 2009
Rotten Office Fridge Cleanup Sends 7 to Hospital

Filed at 8:14 p.m. ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill. Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday, after the flagrant fumes prompted someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

What they found was an unplugged refrigerator that had been crammed with moldy food.

Authorities said an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment -- she can't smell because of allergies.

Last night at the "Pointies."

Last night at the posh New York hotel the Walnut-Castoria, the PowerPoint industry honored its own--the best of breed powerpoint presentations.

Once again, for the third-year running, "Hot Pockets!" took home the Grand Pointy. A spokesperson for the Pointies said, "It doesn't matter that work is unpalatable, unbelievable and virtually unwatchable. It doesn't matter that work doesn't drive sales, change attitudes or motivate people to act. What matters is that the powerpoint presentation selling the work is brilliant. A melange of the insipid combined with a soupcon of incomprehensible."

What's wrong with America. Business. The military-industrial complex. And advertising.

I just read an item in Ad Age: "Campbell-Ewald Holds on to $146 Million Navy Account"/
Incumbent Wins Four-Way Review for Business That Began a Year Ago. http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=136572

Consider these words: a "review...that began a year ago."

A year to choose an agency.

WTF.

Mass media. But not TV.

The New York Times ran an article today about a 20-minute video that is getting more viewership than just about anything this side of The Star Trek movie. Here's what the Times had to say:

"So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web."

You can read the whole megilleh here. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/education/11stuff.html

I'm writing about this for two reasons.

1. It's important to see how we're ruining our world.
2. This is new mass media. Seen on our biggest network.
Not NBC, CBS, Fox or ABC.
The internet.