Thinking about hold music.

I was talking to a friend at an editorial house who had to put me on hold. Their hold music was pretty good. A bit bluesy. Like something you might listen to even if you weren't on hold.

Then I started thinking about what would happen if your hold message coordinator had Tourette's Syndrome.

"Hey, let me put you on hold for a minute."

Fuck you fuck you suck fuck fuck fuck shit head fuck face.

Now that's progress.

Are you comfortable with this?

Every day I get a couple dozen emails that enumerate the changes the client wants to make on an ad or a poster. Almost invariably the account people ask, "Are you comfortable with these changes."

When I was at Ally & Gargano this quotation was attributed to Carl Ally: "Advertising should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Today all we want to do with our work is make sure everybody is comfortable with it. And I'm not comfortable with that.

Reasons for Leaving.

A friend of mine recently was called for an interview at one of the Madison Avenue behemoths. Given the economy and the industry he showed up for the interview. He met first with an HR person who handed him an application that sought to replicate all the information that was on his resume. This friend is in his 50s, so it seemed to him somewhat irrelevant to have to write down where he went to high school, but he did.

As he complied with the form, however, he began getting angrier and angrier. Then the final straw. Under employment history there was a 1"-square box that asked you to fill in "Reason for Leaving."

"For the life of me," he said, "I couldn't think of what to put in that box. How do you encapsulate office politics, petty battles, ego conflicts, lack of opportunity, wage freezes, broken promises, head games, lack of support in a box?" he asked. "Even if the agency you left was the Madison Avenue equivalent of Utopia, there had to be some scintilla of bad feelings as your 'Reason for Leaving.' I thought and thought and couldn't come up with an HR-acceptable response. Finally,desperate, in one box I wrote 'Swine Flu,' in another I wrote "gambling addiction." In yet another, simply "cancer," and in the last "death of loved one." These are all things HR thrives on. My guess is, they'll call me back."

A sign in Chinatown.

Poetry exists in the world. You just need to be on the lookout for it.

I don't u.m.derstand.

One of the things I never have and never will understand is wearing clothing that displays type across your ass. Asses have their reasons for being but I don't think those reasons include being a surface for reading.

Today I went for a run in Central Park and I saw a woman with UMASS festooned across her not insignificant keister. The UM was across her left buttock. The ASS was across her right.

Um, ass.

Truth in ass-vertising, I guess.

Don't bother me, I'm branding.

These days, we hear the word "branding" as frequently as Adolph heard "Heil." "It needs more branding," we're told. "Dial up the branding." "Brand it." "Oh, you could put some branding on that hang tag."

Listen.
Listen.
Listen.

Slathering a logo on a communication like a fat guy swabs mustard on a frankfurter isn't branding. It's slathering logos on things.

Brands are characters, beliefs, stories, truths.
And logos are logos.
Yes, they represent brands.
But in and of themselves--they are just logos.
They can evoke meaning but only if they're imbued with meaning in the first place.

Don't tell me to make something red, or make the logo bigger and tell me that those directives are about branding.

Those directives are about hacking.

Will bing be the thing?

Microsoft's bing--it's 879th Google-killer, is coming. Which, I suppose, is propitious because I have been thinking a lot about Microsoft lately and if, in a sense, Microsoft is the 21st-Century version of the American auto industry.

By that I mean, Microsoft is looking to extend their market dominance if not hegemony by throwing their weight around rather than by building a better, more innovative product.

bing is meant to be Microsoft's answer to something they call "search overload." Throughout their 2:46 video on bing.com they trumpet bing as not search, but decision. The hackneyed video ends with this line: "The world doesn’t need just another search engine, it needs a decision engine."

I dunno. This seems once again like Microsoft is proclaiming something like eminent domain over the world of search. I use Google probably two-dozen times a day. Google, as my 17-year-old pointed out, is a verb. It's that entwined in our daily habits. And it will take more than the "divine right of Microsoft" to get me to change my habits.

bing might very well be superior to Google. Just as American automakers are now saying things like "Buick scores higher than Toyota on Initial Quality Surveys." But, and here's my point, product superiority is not enough. Companies and consumers are in relationships--a relational continuum that stretches from outspoken disdain to fervent advocacy. My sense is Microsoft (like GM) is at the wrong end of that continuum. It will take more than a new and potentially better product to ameliorate the residue of bad feelings that Microsoft has fomented.

--
BTW, I found both the Bing Crosby photo above and the video of Bing singing a wonderful song from the 1942 movie "The Road to Morocco" on Google. It wasn't an issue for me.

The joys of holding companies. Cont'd.

One of the pleasures of being at the top or near the top of the agency food chain is that you get to revel and otherwise cavort in administrative work. So my inbox gets filled with expense reports notifications.

This evening I received this one:

"The above expense report has an expense of $5.46 for toothpaste – our policy does not reimburse for personal toiletry items. Either I can reject this so you can remove OR I can remove when I process for payment. Please advise.

Thanks!
Accounts Payable Specialist"

It doesn't harpoon often, but I am speechless.

Drobkin.

From a site called oldjewstellingjokes.com

GM does it again.

I just noticed a banner ad for GM's Buick, Pontiac and GMC divisions. The ad offers ("to qualified buyers") on ("most 2009...vehicles) 0% financing for 60 months. That's five years.

Now one of those GM divisions, Pontiac, is already being eliminated and GM itself is facing bankruptcy. In other words, GM is at a "green banana" crossroads. As in don't buy green bananas, you might now be around to see them ripen.

Seriously, taking a five year bet on a General Motors vehicle is like painting your house with water colors.

Sooner or later, it's going to rain.