Strategy.

There have been a lot of great strategies both within the world of advertising and without. For instance, I'm sure both Hitler and Napoleon thought they had a pretty good strategy when they invaded Russia. My guess is that the generals and planners and (ugh) strategists involved said to anyone who would listen, "this strategy will make me famous, rich and powerful."

Strategies are great.

But in the end, they are only pieces of paper or collections of bits.

What matters really isn't the strategy but what you do with it, how you adjust to the situation you're in. After all, no one not involved with your strategy has to cooperate with it anymore than the Russians did at Stalingrad, or Kursk, or Leningrad.

We spend a lot of times on strategies in our business. They have their own category of awards and people who create them are most-often unassailable because they produce something as pure and bright as a DeBeers diamond.

Strategies don't have to get their hands dirty and do the hard work you have to do.

That's up to you.

Black dog Monday.

Mark Harris, an American author whom I have written about before, wrote dozens of novels in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. The most notable, or popular, of these books were the four baseball novels he wrote which featured a left-handed pitcher named Henry Wiggen.

These novels, "The South Paw," "Bang the Drum Slowly," "A Ticket for a Seamstitch" and "It Looked Like Forever" follow the 20 year career of Wiggen as he progresses from a rookie hurler for the New York Mammoths to the end of his career as he tries to hang on one more year. Taken as a whole, the four novels are about making your way in the world, succeeding and about slowing down gracefully.

One of the pillars of the novels is a catcher and coach--a wise man who is also a university professor--named Red Traphagen. Traphagen is seasoned when Wiggen is raw. And like me--this I infer from the novels--Traphagen was born old, born serious, born grown up.

One afternoon, Wiggen is on the mound and Traphaggen is behind the plate. Traphagen accidentally catches a pitch with his non-glove hand in the way--a common enough malady for catchers--and he splits his finger open. Traphaggen takes off his mitt, looks at his bleeding finger and declares to one and all "That is sufficient."

Those are his parting words as he hangs up his spikes for the last time.

That is sufficient.

In our business we spend a lot of time, a lot of years dealing with the vicissitudes of the world. We deal with clients made horrid because they are consumed with fear. We deal with agency and holding company infrastructures that seem bent on installing screen doors on submarines. We deal with co-workers who seem more interested in grinding an axe than in putting pencil to paper.

Unlike Traphagen who had his university career to fall back on, we do not get to say "that is sufficient."

We have to put our tools of ignorance back on, crouch once again, and receive the pitch.

Customer journeys.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few days working with a winsome "experience designer" and a bright communications planner creating "customer journeys" for a client.

Doing these, I realize, is part of the new world we inhabit. A world where our end product hardly matters as long as we do a lot of meaningless work that doesn't really have anything to do with our end product. I think customer journeys are a perfect example of this.

It's been a long week. Of course when you're doing customer journeys, it would be valid to say, "it's been a long nano-second." A long week of working on customer journeys.

I'm packing up my bag in a minute and heading to the Metropolitan Opera to see Benjamin Britten's "Billy Budd." But as I was packing up, I realized something. I've never been on a customer journey.

I recently bought something fairly expensive. I called a friend who knows a lot about such things. He told me what to buy. I bought it.

When I bought new tires for my daughter, I called up her mechanic and said "what tires should I buy?"

Maybe I "went on a journey" when I bought my Macbook. But guess what? That journey started about 25 years ago when Apple started making great machines and doing great advertising.

Likewise, I bought my daughter a used Mercedes. That journey started 40 years ago when I began reading about the brand.

I didn't see a spot, then happen upon a guerilla event, then see an ad in an in-flight magazine, then see a tweet or a Facebook post about the product.

I think the definition of customer journeys should be this: journeys customers never take.

An operating principle.

One of the things I was always taught is that as a writer you should repeatedly ask yourself a simple question: Who the hell cares?

If your copy has points in it that satisfy no one but the client, that is if no one cares, you should fight ardently to take that copy out.

If no one cares, what's the point of having the copy in there?

Who the hell cares? as an operating principle for writing is pretty good.

Uncle Slappy and the raincoat.

Early this morning I was woken by a call from Uncle Slappy. From anyone else 6AM calls would bother me, but they're part of who Uncle Slappy is, so his calls are ok. The thing you have to remember about Slappy is this: he is so bursting with energy and life that he has to let it out. By the time he finally calls at 6, he's probably been up for two hours already waiting to call.

"Boychick," he said when I answered the phone.

"Hello, Uncle Slappy," I bleared.

"You know that Barbour raincoat the Goyim wear?"

"That's not fair, Uncle Slappy. I actually want one."

"Well, guess what? I got one."

"For this," I chided "you called me at six in the morning?"

Slappy was moving ahead like an avalanche. "I got it off a dead man."

There was a long and, I think, appropriate silence.

"You remember Norman Novotny from two condos over? He died and his wife gave it to me. We were the same size."

"You're wearing a dead man's raincoat?"

"He wasn't wearing it when he died. In his sleep he died. His wife gave it to me."

Slightly annoyed I told Uncle Slappy I had to go.

He left me with this: "Boychick. Do me a favor."

"Anything, Slappy."

"Pray for rain."

It's sad how things have changed.

Every agency has a person or a group of people whose job it is is to find "resources" when a project needs a copywriter and/or an art director.

This used to be a fairly simple matter. The person would go through their rolodex or Excel spreadsheet and say, "Oh, Marcia would be perfect for this, I'll give her a ring-a-ling."

After a few calls, a "resource" would be "acquired" and the "deliverables" would be on their way to being "ideated."

Today, of course, nothing is that simple.

I happened upon this description of one of these people recently.

English as she is spoke.

"One of the original purposes of this blog was to decry the demise of the English language. I am not one of those esthetes who believe English is sanctified. I understand that the strength, and the reason for the world-wide vitality of English lies in its mutability. It is a living language that accommodates new usages, dictions and patterns.


That said there are certain linguistic affectations that make me want to poke my eyes in. (You can't really poke eyes out, can you? They must be gouged out.) One of them is the usage, "I gifted them with a $100." No. You gave them $100 as a gift.


But that indelicacy is not what's troubling me.


Last night I got an email from a company that read (names have been changed):


"We explore the aspirations of connected culture and the imagination of provocative thinkers whose ideas, visions and innovations will shape tomorrow's business landscape. As co-founders of ________ we have nurtured many relationships with thinkers who are transforming how we will navigate the future.

"We are looking for a business arrangement with a forward thinking group such as _____ led by us who wants to anticipate the coming age of coherent business.

"We are also currently looking to develop this property into a next-generation futures' portal with content and services with real-world engagement platforms."

I read these words four times and don't know how to respond. 

I don't know what you do. 

I don't know what you want. 

I don't even know what you're proposing.

Five minutes of hotdogs.

As long-time readers of Ad Aged know, I love the obituaries that appear in "The New York Times." It's not some morbid fascination with death that makes them interesting, rather it's the lives, loves, wins and losses of the great and small people the Times decides to catalog. Almost invariably there's something interesting, crazy or thought-provoking in Times' obituaries, attributes that make them well-worth the time.


In yesterday's digital edition I came across the death notice of Fred Hakim who died at the age of 83 on April 25th. You can read the obit here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/nyregion/fred-hakim-times-square-hot-dog-vendor-dies-at-83.html?ref=obituaries


Until 1997 when they tore down seedy, sordid and squalid Times' Square Hakim ran the seven-seat hotdog stand memorialized in the five-minute documentary pasted above. His wisdom shines through in the obituary. It contains gems like this: "'A knish? It’s potatoes,' he explains to an off-camera customer. 'Potatoes inside, outside, every side.'"


Times' Square was a different place 15 years ago. Virtually every third store was involved in some aspect of the porn business and there were still peep shows a-plenty. There were no national chain restaurants and the few hotels around the Great White Way were, at best, frayed and down at the heels. An ex-partner of mine used to call the hotel the Milford Plaza the Mildew Plaza. And that was kind.


Guiliani, the neo-fascist warlord and self-proclaimed hero of 9/11 is credited with cleaning up New York in general and Times' Square in particular. And unquestionably Times' Square is, today, family friendly--if you don't mind exposing your family to truck-sized tourists who don't know how to walk in a city.


Many people of my ilk lament the passing of trashy, threatening Times' Square. I don't. I live in New York and Times' Square was out of control and a symbol of New York's decadence, depravity and decay.


That said, I do think New York, of all places, could have lived with fewer Dave & Buster's,  fewer Coldstone Creameries, fewer Red Lobsters.


And a few more hotdog stands run by guys like Fred Hakim.

Lessons from a 20 year old.

One of the great joys in my life is having two grown or almost daughters who are so surpassingly intelligent and "on" that nearly every day they teach me some thing or show me some thing I wouldn't have learned or noticed without them. In fact, if I had to be simplistic about it, I'd say that's how you can tell if you've done a decent job as a parent: do your kids teach you things.


Today I got an IM from my younger daughter who said she was having a conversation with a friend about teachers at the college she attends.


She and "Ta" broke teachers into two categories in a way which I think is instructive. One: there are those teachers who teach a subject... vs. ...Two: those teachers who teach students. 


It seems to be that the same division can be found in most advertising. The first category is occupied by most brands. They have a curriculum. They need to tell you about their squeezable softness,  their lemon-freshness, their miles per gallon. They approach the world with the stance of a pedagogue: you will listen to what I have to say and you will learn.


The second category is concerned with what their audience needs and wants. Teachers and advertising in this group are most often more involving and entertaining. They care about what is getting through to their target.


What's striking about our business is how frequently we forget the most basic rules of communication and salesmanship simply because we have a boss, client or next quarter breathing down our necks.

My 20 year old knows better than that.

Yogi Bear.

I'm one of those people who is a sucker for a really good nature documentary, the kind produced by the BBC and narrated by someone on the order of David Attenborough. If you've ever tried to take pictures in nature you know how excruciatingly painstaking it is. You might once in your nautical life catch a glimpse of a school of fish compacting itself and swimming into a tight ball. To capture that perfectly on film is a wonder to behold.

Of the many fascinations of nature videos, not the least are those animals who disguise themselves to capture unsuspecting prey. They wait silently sand-colored on the bottom of the sea or perched limb-like in the branches of a tree before they strike.

As humans we like to think of nature, of wildlife as a lower order than mankind. Because we can easily kill and eat most species, or at least wear them if they don't taste good, we speak of denizens of the seas and forests as 'dumb animals.' Even Yogi Bear who proclaimed himself smarter than the average bear never went to college or held a job.

It occurred to me this morning that Facebook might well be worth the $100 billion the savants have valued it at.

This morning, like nearly every morning there are serial posts from "friends" claiming they have gotten a free Macbook Air, a pair of Ray-Bans or some other delectable simply for answering a survey or clicking on a link.

These are posts from people who have fallen for some disguised inducement. They've fallen for the flounder that looks like sand.

We are as dumb as animals.