A bit more on storytelling.

I've been asked to give a talk on storytelling down at my clients. I recognize that "the narrative of storytelling" is all the rage today but for the life of me I am baffled by this. I hate the phrase storytelling. It has become a cliche. Meaningless and small. People start saying things like "I told the story of my week through my timesheet."

In any event, here's how I'm beginning my talk.

First with a picture of the original text of the world's oldest written book, "Gilgamesh."

And then the sort of text we are given to understand in meetings today.

To me, Gilgamesh above and Excel below look similar.

There are rows and rows of text. Enough to blur your eyes whether you are reading in the desert light of ancient Sumer or by the purple light of skyscraper fluorescence.

Stories exist to make complicated, almost incomprehensible things, easy to understand, easy to remember, easy to act upon. The best stories have a mnemonic quality to them. They have underlying their detail and complexity a simple to understand quality.

For instance, a scholar whose name I've forgotten said something like this: "All creation myths have either gods descending from the sky or rising from the mud." I had a professor in graduate school that summarized all of Western though through one sentence from John Huston's "African Queen." We do not need to make this complicated. Though that's what we do best.

There have been a spate of articles of late about the future of the American economy and where the next breakthrough is coming from. According to the "Times" the next big jobs in America will be held by people who can look at petaflops of data and find a story.

Truth be told, they don't even have to find a story. They really just have to find data that supports a story they've already conceived. That's what great leaders in history have been able to do. Think Winston Churchill in 1940, turning Dunkirk into a victory.

What I've noticed through the years--years of work and years of raising my daughters--is that institutions, workplaces, schools, government, clubs, etc. impose a rigidity on their subject. They expect a certain amount of soul sublimation. My kids went through this in high school. They were academicized to the point where their writing sounded like other academics, not themselves.

In other words we accept the speech, verbal and semantic patterns and vocabulary of the dominant institution. All of a sudden, we are on a plane and we are calling the thing in front of us "a tray table."

Nonsense.

When you let someone control your language you let them control your mind. It's really that simple.

So try to tell stories that have some you-ness in them.

Lou Goldstein, 1921-2012.

Lou Goldstein, a man who beat me--and nearly everyone else--in Simon Sez died on April 2. You can read his "New York Times" obituary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/nyregion/lou-goldstein-borscht-belt-comedian-dies-at-90.html?hpw

For those of you not Jewish and not from New York, Goldstein worked at Grossinger's--a fancy, almost exclusively Jewish Catskill resort, as a tummler. The Times defined a tummler this way: "A tummler (pronounced TOOM-ler) is someone who stirs up tumult or excitement. He was a jack-of-all-trades social director who was supposed to amuse the hotel guests with jokes, songs and shtick that might be better described as slapshtick, as they sat by the pool, emerged from lunch or headed for bingo.

"Perhaps the classic illustration was given by Mel Brooks, himself a former tummler.

“A tummler wakes up the Jews when they fall asleep around the pool after lunch...One of the things I had to do as the pool tummler was, I used to do an act. I wore a derby and an alpaca coat, and I would carry two rock-laden cardboard suitcases and go to the edge of the diving board and say, ‘Business is no good!’ and jump off.”

The part that really got me from Goldstein's obit was his "exit line" which is simply a joke Goldstein used to tell:  There's a wife who tells her husband after a bitter argument that when he dies, she's going to dance on his grave. The husband goes to his lawyer the next day and adds a new clause in his will. He wants to be buried at sea.

Memory aids.

Years ago during the tail end of the 60s (that decade that ended more or less around 1974 with Richard Nixon's resignation) I had a job waiting tables at the summer camp I went to. Most of my job was being a junior counselor and coaching baseball, but some of the time I did the hard work of working in the kitchen and serving 200 hungry kids and about 70 more staff before things got unruly and out of hand.

I never minded kitchen work. I didn't love it, there were other things I'd rather be doing. But we were in and out with such alacrity that it never bogged down into tiresomeness.

There was an old, black cook named Tony who ran the kitchen. He'd been doing so, cooking at the camp for decades. The rest of the year he cooked for a school system in Long Island, so this was his vacation. I think he enjoyed doing what he did and getting to know and kibbitz with the kids who helped him out.

One day it was my job to make the toast for the kids. I placed bread, about 40 slices in eight rows of five on a large cookie sheet and placed it under the broiler. In a minute or two it was browned and I repeated the operation with another sheet while the waiters served what I had toasted.

Tony was watching to make sure I didn't screw up. Every couple minutes or so he would bellow--his way of reminding me to check the toast "Black is beautiful but not on toast."

It's a line I've never forgotten, though I last heard it probably 40 years ago.

No real point today.

Just don't burn the toast.

Sam Spade on Madison Avenue.

David Brooks, the self-described "moderate" columnist for "The New York Times" has a really brilliant op-ed in today's paper with a title I simply couldn't pass up. His piece is called "Sam Spade at Starbucks." You can read it here, unless the Times' firewall intervenes. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/brooks-sam-spade-at-starbucks.html?hp

Brooks' column is about idealism, but the need for idealism to be grounded in the hard, often brutal realities of life. I think Brooks' thinking has direct bearing on many of the issues and mania in our business.

What Brooks is talking about is the idealism of so many to attempt to change the world through extra-governmental intervention. Things like micro-loans, colorful wrist bands, and KONY videos. We embrace these acts while ignoring that these sort of efforts will fail to have lasting impact if bigger, institutional, structural changes aren't made.

The key sentences from Brooks--and I urge you to read his entire column (it should take you less than four minutes)--are these: "...there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on."

Now here's where I think the parallel to our business comes in. 

A lot of energy and time is spent in our business doing things that "show well." We chase after awards and build our reputations on things with a high-sheen of pangloss. We seem to have no appetite as an industry for work that does the hard infrastructure work that most companies need.

We don't laud and applaud the hardheadedness, the hard-boiledness that it takes to win over clients and effect change in their organizations. It's much more glamorous to send a lion or a pencil to yet another Scrabble ad or burrito restaurant in Tulsa.

This is not just about my personal disdain for the supercilious and superficial nature of the Awards-Industrial complex. 

It's about people who think the industry is about apps and toys and gimmickry. 

As I have said many times before in this space and in others, most client organizations don't even know what business they're in or what it is they sell. Our job is the tough job of defining, demonstrating and disseminating meaning.

It's the devil in the details. It's the quotidian. It's the acknowledgement that not all brands are cool and are going to do neato stuff.

Work, as a wise man once said, is work.

Starbucks, friends and the modern agency.

Yesterday over Madison Avenue there must have been a full-moon rising. I had four calls--spread about one every three hours from advertising friends who were suffering some sort of career distress. For whatever reason and probably related to the fact that I have been in therapy for more than 30 years, these four people turned to me.

One of the people--a group creative director at a big agency--met with me last evening at a Starbucks on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I treated her to a cup of coffee--a small one which they call a "tall" in Starbucks and as I was paying I realized what is wrong with our business--and it has nothing to do with "the changing media landscape," or "the death of marketing," or anything else.

When we ordered at Starbucks the woman behind the counter refused to give me eye contact. She didn't acknowledge that she heard my order. She never asked if there was anything else I wanted. When I said "thank you," she didn't respond. When I said "thank you" again--looking this time for a response, she muttered--reluctantly--no problem.

It occurred to me that the problems within advertising agencies are similar to the problems I experience at Starbucks.

1. There are really no "brands" among agencies. No code of beliefs and behaviors. We might have strictures governing logo usage. But that's not what a brand is.

2. There are fundamental lies built into our organizations. Just as a tall is not a small, most people in agencies are "mis-titled." They're creative directors who have little time to create and no authority to direct. Or copywriters who seldom write copy. In other words, the jobs people have to do have little to do with their capabilities.

3. Finally, we have, like Starbucks, eliminated grace, politeness and kindness. Most people in the industry from the top to the bottom work their keisters to the bone. They are never thanked. (If anyone from a holding company is reading this, a 3% raise every 24 months is not a thank.) The tone of official emails is most often either condescending or castigating. Senior management--much less holding company management--is like the captain of a foundering ship that never leaves the bridge. They don't know the people, who they are, what they do.

In short, what is destroying our business is not fundamental flaws in the "agency model." What has destroyed it absentee ownership. Ownership that is absent even when they're present.

Uncle Slappy spins a tale.

I was up early this morning having lost yet another round of my long-running fight against insomnia. I didn't mind, however, because Uncle Slappy was awake, listening to the BBC on the radio and sipping a demitasse-sized cup of thick, black coffee. He and Aunt Sylvie are heading back to Boca today (I've persuaded them to eschew the train and fly instead) and I welcome spending every minute I can with the old man. I never really got to know my own father, but knowing his brother has had its compensations.

Uncle Slappy was for over 50 years the Rabbi of a small Upper East Side congregation--Beth Youiz Maiwom Mannow--so he's given thousands of sermons. As you might expect, the man can tell a story like nobody's business.

"Did I ever tell you," he snuck to his story on little cat feet, "did I ever tell you about your distant cousin Moshe Schlesinger."

"I don't know him, Uncle Slappy."

"Well he's a cousin removed more times than beer stains from a frat-house sofa. But here's the thing about Cousin Moshe, Moshe was a blind mohel."

A mohel is a Jewish man trained to perform ritual circumcisions on Jewish boys eight days after they're born. Thus fulfilling a covenant with god.

"In my business, as you know, as a Rabbi, I was often asked to recommend a mohel. And Moshe, blind Moshe was the best I've ever seen. Moheling, after all," Slappy went on, "is all in the hands. It's not in the eyes. And Schlesinger had the hands of a god.

"You've heard of Maya Angelou. You've heard of Michelangelo. We called him Mosheangelo. He did in cock, what Michelangelo did in rock.

"The poet of the penis. Genghis Schlong, the Penis Genius, the Sultan of Schvanz they called him. He was a living legend. If Michelangelo had wanted David circumcised he would have called Mosheangelo. He was an artist. Without hesitation I recommended him.

"Naturally, life ain't easy for a blind mohel. Some parents couldn't make the leap of faith on Moshe. They heard he was blind and they'd go with a more conventional mohel choice. Mosheangelo hung up his scalpel about 20 years ago, sold his "bris kit" and opened two Carvel ice cream stores in the Bronx. Soft-serve you can also do blind. There are only two basic flavors."

I kept waiting for a point but Slappy stopped here and finished his coffee and shuffled off to the guest room--his bedroom, to finish packing.

He left with this exit line.

"It should be a quick flight back to Boca. It's straight downhill."

A conversation with a daughter.

My older daughter is currently a doctoral student, in the first year of a multi-year program to become a Clinical Psychologist. I'm lucky enough, blessed really, to enjoy an incredibly close relationship with her. We've had our rough patches over the years--what father and daughter haven't--but we have ironed most things out, and those we haven't, well, we enjoy or appreciate the wrinkles. They give our relationship some necessary texture.

We talk a couple times a day--usually in the morning when she is on her way to work or to her clinical placements, and also in the evening when she is on her way home. This is good. Time for us to connect and have a virtual glass of whiskey together and to prepare for or decompress from our days.

This evening my daughter went on. That's her prerogative. She's my daughter, she's 24, and as someone once said to me about her, "she has a lot under her hat."

She talked about some of her co-workers at her residential site that deals with kids from violent and/or abusive backgrounds. How some--many--of the permanent staff hasn't the patience with their patients, they regard them with disdain, as people to be lorded over, as trouble-makers and pains in the ass.

My daughter on the other hand is out to change the world. She's mad at a world that produces children like these and who, having produced them, shows them so little love, attention and care. A world that can't seem to find the hope in their hearts to help them.

I told my daughter that she is an idealist. She isn't merely trying to get her degree and pass some patients along, she is trying to change the world. I told her the challenge in her job and in life is to continue to hold onto your idealism. To not get blase, cynical or jaded.

The same, of course, holds true in our business.

I have been in it for almost 30 years now. Since 1984.

I still fight for buckslips. I fight for banner ads. I fight to hold onto the soul of a speech I write for a client or a line of copy. I fight to make good ads--I don't always win, but I fight--because I hold onto my idealism that good work matters.

It's easy in our industrial advertising age in which we are beckoned to output tonnage, to give up. It's easy to lose hope amid the petty technocrats who allocate and usability and timesheet you nearly into oblivion. It's easy to say "it doesn't make a difference." Or "it's just a job." Or "I just have to get this done."

It's easy to give up your idealism.

Every time you hear a computer chime, an angel loses his wings.

But the quest to be human, is a quest to--amid all the iniquities and inequites, amid all the banalities and bastards, the quest to be human is the quest to keep caring. The quest to keep your ideals. The quest to hold onto hope.

If you've lost that, you've lost.

The loneliness of the long-copy writer.

I am old-fashioned.

I believe, and will never waver, in the power of words.

I think one of the reasons the web has been so ineffectual as an advertising vehicle is because design--not ideas--has made the rules.

There's nothing, for some products or services anyway, like a well-reasoned argument as an ad.

Amid the cacophony of the modern open plan advertising agency, amid the noise of your neighbors, the constant popping up of windows, beeps of instant messages, and chimes of meetings about to commence, copy--arguments for your brand--need to be written.

You need to pull down your spiritual blinds, shut out the noise and write.

Last night I wrote until 2 in the morning.

The TV was off.

My wireless was severed.

And I wrote.

Even if you're not a writer, even if you're an account person or an art director, even if you're not in advertising at all--you should try it.

Think as pure as glacial ice about what is important.

Then convince non-believers why.

Don't worry about style.

Or length.

Or big words.

Forget about being euphonious.

Or alliterative.

Or anything but simple and clear.

Face, as Hemingway said, "the white bull that is paper."

Even if that paper is a screen.

Just think. And write.

There's nothing like it.

Press the button.

Many years ago I was new at an agency and laboring (as I have so often) without a partner. I was in the middle of one of those frightening assignments. You know the type--come up with a campaign the client likes or we'll lose the account.

As I said, I was new at the agency and solo. I was also reporting directly to the president of the place. In short, I was nervous.

In any event I worked all weekend and wrote over the course of those 48 hours something close to 50 scripts that I thought were pretty good.

But I was afraid to send them to my boss. I was afraid they weren't good enough. That I'd be canned practically before I started.

The morning after I'd written all those scripts I spoke to my therapist. I told him I was afraid of sending the scripts.

I'll never forget what my therapist said to me. "Send them, George. Remember, your good is other people's excellent." I went into my office after that and emailed them to my boss. An hour or so later, he told me the dozen or so he liked. I was a "made man."

When you get stuck with an assignment and your brain feels like it's full of cotton balls, when it feels like nothing is clicking, keep going, keep working, keep thinking, typing, sketching, creating. Keep doing, in short, what you've always done to see an assignment through.

Then say to yourself "Your good is other people's excellent."

Then trust yourself.

And press the button.

Some thoughts on social media.

1. ·      When someone says something is “hilarious” it isn’t.
2. ·      Things that “will change everything” won’t.
3. ·      Every video, even those that are around 30-seconds are about a minute too long.
4. ·      If your life is so interesting, in god’s name why are you posting so much.
5. ·      Why am I friends with so many people who can’t spell?
6. ·      Statements like “Nothing is impossible, even the word itself says ‘I’m possible’” are usually ungrammatical and always stupid.
7. ·      The update with the least consequence gets the most likes.
8. ·      Social media is usually done all alone.
9. ·      Most people expressing outrage online have no idea of the real issues.
10. ·      Disney World isn’t any more interesting when someone else goes there.
11. ·      I will never care when someone—especially your kid, scores a goal.
12. ·      Anyone who announces the death of a loved one online should be in therapy.
13. ·      Most cool “never-before-seen” film techniques were done better in the 1930s.
14. ·      Old girl friends aren’t as pretty as they used to be.
15. ·      Old girl friends aren’t as sane as they used to be.
16. ·      You don’t have enough talent to shoot a chocolate cannoli so it looks appetizing.