Breshnev and advertising.

I have just finished Martin Sixsmith's history "Russia: A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild East." It is a vast and compendious book and at least one part of it reminded me of advertising.

That part involved Leonid Brezhnev, who led the Soviet Union for 18 years, longer than anyone save Josef Stalin, in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.  Brezhnev achieved his position by sticking close to Nikita Krushchev during World War II and afterwards. He was attached to troops but saw little fighting during the Great Patriotic War. Nevertheless as his ego inflated, he rewrote Soviet history to make himself a key player during the key battles of the war. He became a hero of the Soviet Union by being present not during historic moments but instead present when history was being re-written.

Towards the end of his life Brezhnev appeared in public festooned with the medals you see above. He wore more medals than Marshall Zhukov, arguably the greatest general in all of World War II, though Brezhnev saw little if any actual fighting.

He didn't do the job but he was compelled to pretend he did.

There is much wrong with the advertising industry. And, I believe, much of our woes are self-inflicted. Too often we are treated by clients as infants. We don't solve serious problems for them, instead we look to propagate and aggrandize ourselves.

We forget that our job isn't to pin medals on our chests but is, rather, to drive a reaction, a response from viewers. We are here to make a business difference, not a cosmetic one.

On Ogilvy's website for instance, http://www.ogilvy.com/#/The-Work/Galleries/BoO3_scrabble_tag.aspx/ , there is a ten-million-dollar piece of film promoting--you guessed it--Scrabble.

It will be wildly heralded.

It will garner acclaim and awards.

It is meaningless.

I am 54 years old and a rabid consumer of all types of media. I have yet to see a single Scrabble ad outside of an awards book.

Another fictional medal on an artificially puffed-out chest.

A night in San Juan.

As I do so often after dinner I went for a walk this evening along the waterfront. It's our last night in San Juan, Puerto Rico and I haven't much explored the lonely, abandoned wharves of the old city harbor. Some years ago, container shipping moved from San Juan south west to Ponce and nothing has replaced what is now gone. What's left are old warehouses rife with broken windows and the rusted machinery left behind when the port relocated.

There's something I love about abandonment. I guess I'm used to it, comfortable with it, and in cities all around the world I have sought it out, looking through shattered glass and faded paint for what was before what was disappeared.

It had rained all day in San Juan and no one was out. The emptiness added to the melancholy of the night. Steam lifted off the water in the harbor and the clouds hung low making a night like the nights they used to show in British movies of the early 50s, a night shrouded in mist and fog and smoke.

I was alone amidst the old piers, walking with no one, unsure of where I was going or how I would get back once I got there. But I felt no compulsion to head home, or even to check my iPhone for directions. The best way to find something along the waterfront is to get lost.

Ahead of me, on a rotted pier jutting out into the water like a finger from the hand of Ichabod Crane I saw a clump of Puerto Rican men, drinking and smoking and fishing and laughing under the halo of a single 60-watt. I walked slowly to them.

"Buenos noches," I offered.

"Buenos noches," they replied.

"Has cogido muchos peces?" I asked..."Have you caught many fish?"

The shortest one in the group stepped forward and spoke to me, "No venimos a pescar, vamos a llorar a los peces que han escapado de nosotros." We do not come to catch fish, we come to mourn the fish who have gotten away.

"Si," I replied, "yo entiendo."

A dog barked in the distance and I knew that was a sign to return to my hotel, to mourn my fish who have gotten away. I bid the Puerto Rican men goodnight. I wished them luck and walked, alone and melancholy, mourning that which has escaped.

In remission.

I've been remiss.

On vacation in Puerto Rico and I haven't written.

There have been logistical reasons. With my wife and kids--or kid--now that my older daughter has returned to her home in Boston, I've gone scuba diving nearly every morning. That means I'm up in the fives or, today, the fours, and out of the hotel for the next ten or so hours.

No time to write.

And when I return, I laze--deservedly I think--by the pool.

Not the place to write.

So, I've gone dry.

Also, I must say, much of my typical Ad Aged writing is spurred by the chaos, absurdities, banalities of everyday advertising life in New York. That's been gone this past week. And replaced by the chaos, absurdities, banalities of resort living. Not the usual fare of Ad Aged--Uncle Slappy notwithstanding.

So to those brave few who are used to seeing a post or two every day, I apologize for my lack of transmission.

Like I said, I've been remiss.

Bill Cullen.

When I was a kid we had a very different media world than the one we have today. Growing up in New York we had the most television stations in the country--seven--the three networks and four additional channels if you count public television. If you were sick in those days you mostly stayed in bed. We had a 13-inch Emerson portable black and white TV that did sick duty. We'd adjust the antenna and tune in to whatever was on.

What was on in those days were a lot of game shows. When I'm sick these days (it happens about as often as an ice age, thank god) I don't turn on the TV, but in any event I don't suppose TV then was any dumber or any better than TV today. At the very least it was a way to pass the time in pre-internet, pre-texting, pre-connectiveness days, and when I was sick I had the set on for hours.

There was a game show host in those days named Bill Cullen. I never thought of game show hosts as "personalities" or celebrities. They asked a bunch of dumb questions, kibbitzed maybe a little and generally moved things along. In facts, one of my high school friend's dad was a game show host and I always thought of him as a bit of a dim bulb.

Bill Cullen for whatever reason seemed to be everywhere--on a couple of different game shows. He was recognizable by his thick, owlish glasses that gave him the aura of intelligence, though nothing he had to do on the show required any. Cullen would also never move from behind the podium, never greet contestants or walk around in any way, shape or form.

Cullen's immobility lead to the fairly preposterous rumor that he had no legs. Once you heard this rumor you examined every one of Cullen's movements or lack of them. All it took was one half hour episode to convince yourself--the man simply did not move.

Of course in those days we didn't have the internet or the constant onslaught of celebrity gossip. I don't know why I thought of Bill Cullen this morning; I probably hadn't thought of him in 40 years.

In any event, I'm on vacation.

And this is good enough.

Thoughts on 37,000-year-old graffiti.

One of the extraordinary things about our species is how utterly immutable we are. That is we really don't change, through wars, revolutions, upheavals, new technologies, etc. Another thing that stays the same is the number of people who have no ability to read history so they spend their wind and time proclaiming that all is new, different and everything that went before is dead.

Just recently researches have found 37,000-year-old cave drawings in a rock shelter in France. These are the "oldest evidence of any kind of graphic imagery." Many of the images depict images of the female vulva. In other words these cave drawings differ, in all likelihood, very little from what we see in public restrooms and on subway walls.

Yesterday, I went scuba diving with my wife and kids. There was a couple on the boat from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The boat anchored in water that was a vivid turquoise, the likes of which you see only in travel magazines. I turned to one of the Brooklynites and said to him, "It ain't exactly the Gowanus Canal, is it." He turned to me and with all the gravity of a confirmed Leninist he replied, "Someday."

Listen, for as long as time exists the will be graffiti of female vulva scrawled on walls. And for as long as time exists the Gowanus Canal will be a sewer.

All the blowhards saying this is dead and that is dead and this will change everything, remember this: very little ever changes.

Another call from Uncle Slappy.

Uncle Slappy called early this morning as I knew he would. It's Mother's Day and Uncle Slappy isn't one to miss an occasion to call--even if it's a fairly spurious one like a Hallmark holiday.

"Happy Mother's Day back to Aunt Sylvie," I say, somewhat weakly.

"Oy, Aunt Sylvie," intoned Slappy. "58 years we've been married. 56 mothers' days we've been through together. She still doesn't know how to make a piece of toast."

Toast--the decline thereof--is one of Uncle Slappy's favorite subjects. He traces the decline of America as a world power to the loss of our ability, as a nation, to make a decent piece of toast.

"I took your Aunt to the Embassy Suites this morning," began Slappy "for an all you can eat Mother's Day Brunch. $14.95. And lox they had twirled up in little curls. A big Waring toast making machine, too, a conveyor belt for toast.

"You know how I like my toast, boychick. Dark. Not just warmed or singed. Toasted. They had the speed of the toaster conveyor so high you could get dizzy watching the bagels go by. They were barely even hotted after one time through.

"I turned the speed down and got myself a nice bagel dark. With the lox, delicious. But a ruckus this caused because there was a backup at the toaster like the Mosholu Parkway during rush hour. The Puerto Rican maitre d' came over and readjusted. All of a sudden no more line, but no more toast."

"It sounds like it was mayhem at the Embassy Suites, Uncle Slappy."

"And Aunt Sylvie was beside herself. Even on Mother's Day, she said to me, you have to a ruckus cause.

"What Sylvie and most women don't understand is that toast is inviolate. In fact, if you made a ladies perfume that smelled like a toasted bialy you'd have to beat the men off with a stick."

"Put Aunt Sylvie on," I asked Uncle Slappy. "I want to wish her Happy Mother's Day."

"Too late," replied Slappy, "she's in the kitchen scraping the burn off a bagel."

Horst Faas, dead at 79.

I never heard of Horst Faas, but his photographs changed my life. They may have had a hand in changing world history.

Faas died yesterday after spending most of his adult years as a photographer and editor for Associated Press.

He covered sports, revolutions and most famously Vietnam. Both of the shots he was most associated with were turned down by higher-ups. Faas persuaded them to publish them anyway.

No matter what field you're in, it seems there are always higher-ups looking to kill stuff. Usually for no good reason. Usually there good reasons to fight those higher-ups. Sometimes you win.

Thank you Herr Faas for fighting.

Working over your copy.

When I was young in the advertising business I had the great good fortune of somehow not getting a starting job in an advertising agency. Instead, my first job was as a copywriting in the in-house advertising agency of Bloomingdale's department store.

At Bloomingdale's the ads weren't conceptual but they were plentiful. You might literally have to write and produce 15 ads a week. They might be as prosaic as "Plush, pure cotton towels now 25% off," but you got in the habit of churning the stuff out, meeting with buyers, getting their input, then turning that into an ad.

One time I had an ad to write that required real writing, not just a listing of specs. I labored over this for half a week. By the time I showed it to my boss for approval it was, I admit, a real mess. He said to me something like this, "you've corrected this to death." He then tore up my copy and told me to start fresh.

It was great advice. If copy feels worked over it's probably no good.

That was a long time ago, working at Bloomingdale's. I was there for two years before my portfolio was good enough to get a real agency job--a job I took a pay cut to accept.

It was a relief to leave Bloomingdale's for a real ad job. But I never forgot the lessons I learned there.

Coming apart.

Charles F. Murray, author of "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, is nothing if he's not controversial.  In his book he decries the splintering of our nation. He sees a world where we are divided into "Belmont" and "Fishtown."

Belmont is well-heeled, well-educated, well-parented and well-married. It is a world that is much like America was during the booming 1950s. Fishtown is different. Households are often led by just one parent. College is largely out of the question. Greater poverty, drug use and unemployment are prevalent.

Most disturbing by Murray's accounts is the bifurcation of our society. Belmontites and Fishtowners seldom come into contact. They don't work for the same companies. Shop in the same stores. Live in proximity. Go to the same schools.

A similar dichotomy exists in the modern American advertising agency. It seems some part of the agency looks at the media market and says 70 to 80 cents of each marketing dollar are spent on TV. TV is most important.

Others say, I never watch TV or find it banal. I spend my life online, therefore apps and Facebook and Twitter are most important.

There is a divide. A coming apart.

What seems most redolent is a divorce between the rarefied circumstances of agency people and people who actually consume.

Do we, anymore, know our consumer. Know how they live, think, feel, buy? Do we understand their concerns, fears, senses of humor?

No.

We're too busy trying to be cool.

It's what I do.

Just yesterday afternoon around one,  I got an email from a friend I met through blogging. Was I ok he asked? Here it was almost three in the afternoon and I had posted nothing for the day.

It's rare that Monday through Friday I don't post something by ten or eleven.

I write Ad Aged the way a serious pianist practices every day or a long-distance runner goes out for a run. I don't feel right if I don't write.

Writing is what I do, I'm a writer. Of sorts, anyway.

For me writing Ad Aged has been an important aspect of my life. It's help me find both my voice and an audience. It doesn't matter, really, that my voice is sometimes inconsistent, that I sometimes talk about things that have nothing to do with the original intended purpose of my blog.

It also doesn't matter that my audience is small. Sure, I wish I had more readers--who doesn't? But a big readership wasn't why I started this thing.

I started this because I have always--always since I was a little kid--felt the need to write. Ad Aged fulfills that need. Also, I need the pressure of writing on deadline. I need the push, the demand, the accomplishment of writing my blog.

Of course, there are times when I think I should write less--and better. But I think I am sharper, more keen simply by doing things daily and quickly.

What's more, I started Ad Aged when I was unemployed. It was my way of saying to an industry that had seemed to have forgotten me that I am not to be forgotten. I am here. I am writing. I am doing what I do.


So, I write. Everyday. Or nearly so. Even when I am in Puerto Rico with my family for the next two weeks I will try to write.


It's what I do.