Advertising advice from Bill Clinton.

When you love advertising as I do, when you live it and breathe it, you find it all around you. Over the last week or so, I've been watching the party conventions, reading, of course, op-eds in the "Times" about those conventions and seeing advertising lessons everywhere.

Both of today's lessons come from Bill Clinton by way of Roger Cohen. You can read Cohen's full column here: Cohen.

Clinton's first dicta is simple, and its impetus was the lack of "how," of explanation in Governor Romney's acceptance speech. “When people are afraid, explanation beats eloquence any day.”

In other words, cut the crap and tell us what you're going to do. We don't need fancy. We need smart. We need action. We need doing. Not just saying.

Clinton's second phrase was directed at President Obama. What Obama must do, according to Clinton is something he's not very good at. He must "explain in plain language how the United States came to its present pass and how he plans to set the country on a path to growth and jobs again. That in turn will explain why a second term would differ from the first."

In short, he has to (in Clinton's words) "put the corn where the hogs can get to it.” 

In other words, communicate simply, honestly and clearly.

 

 

The United States of Focus Groups.

Joe Nocera, the financial writer turned op-ed columnist for "The New York Times" has a sentence in his column today which underscores much of what is wrong in our world and in our business. In an article about the Democratic and Republican conventions called "They're Not What They Used to Be," http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/opinion/political-conventions-are-not-what-they-used-to-be.html?hp he remarks: "I wound up thinking, do we really need three days and nights (and it would have been four if not for the hurricane threat) for the Republicans to “frame” their “narrative” and “humanize” their candidate?"

How many times, in how many meetings a day do we hear such marketing drivel? Framing a narrative? Humanizing a brand?

The Republicants (and the Dimmycrats will be no better) aren't saddled like we are in advertising, with humanizing a brand, however. They can't even humanize a person.

Mitt is still an amorphous lump of Mormonism who walks as if he's wearing an adult diaper. His running mate seems similarly unable to have a conviction or to tell the truth. It's one thing to lie about tax cuts, or vouchers for Medicare--but to lie about your marathon time is beyond the pale. No one who's ever run a marathon (and I've run 12) has ever forgotten their best time. And no one who is not a dyed in the wool cheater, liar and fraud would lie publicly about their time. No decent person would claim to run a sub-three when they in fact ran a four plus.

The Repugnants also seemed to trot out a different tagline every night. "We Built It," being just one.
"We Legitimized It" being another and "Masturbation is Murder," being a third.

It remains to be seen if the Dumbocrats will have one theme or many. And if they can frame a narrative that excuses the mediocrity of the current administration. Supposedly, this year's "hope" and "change" will be "forward," which sounds to me like a slogan maybe the Post Office can adopt if the Obamaites have any signs left over.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs when neither candidate or neither party--each of which has access to the best communication minds in the country--can come up with a compelling narrative, much less a vision of the future. I can conclude only that each candidate tested his messaging and everything performed slightly above "norms." That is, every message is so boring it neither offends or inspires, just like 99% of all advertising.

That's enough for right now. I'll just leave you with this.

Back in 1964, reactionary Republican (who would be a mainstream Republican today) Barry Goldwater had a slogan: "In your heart you know he's right."

The Lyndon Johnson campaign countered with something that at least had balls: "In your guts you know he's nuts."

Some thoughts of yore.

I was born in the waning days of 1957--about ten decades ago it seems, or ten millennium if you think about all the ways in which the world has changed.

We were armed and aimed at the Russians, and they against us. World War III was being fought in Korea, Vietnam and outer space. There were Nike missile installations just a few miles from the house my parents bought in White Plains, to escape the sturm und drang of New York.

In much of the country, black people still couldn't vote. They went to schools that were separate and unequal and they had only just been able to play major league baseball. Pumpsie Green, the Red Sox first black player, was still more than a full-season away from playing in the big leagues.


This was a world without computers, without cellphones, without color televisions. This was a world of elevator operators, segregationist senators and cold-war cataclysms hanging like a specter over everything.

Still, it was, in many ways, a simpler time. Today, because they are today's problems, the issues of the world seem more intractable. You could find a way to negotiate peace with the Soviets. You can't negotiate with global warming. Or with the anti-fact-ers who wish to deny its presence. Likewise, though we were armed to the teeth against Krushchev, at least we knew who our enemies were. We knew how to track them. Today, if Israel attempts to destroy Iran due to Iran's looming nuclear capability and its promise to obliterate Israel, mass destruction could come from anywhere. A frightening prospect.

Even as a young boy, I grew up old. My father had a 1949 Studebaker, my mother a 1951 Plymouth. Old cars in the days when cars didn't last more than four years. What's more, at an early age I was exposed to "old" movies. Jimmy Cagney in "Public Enemy," Edward G. Robinson in "Little Caesar," Humphrey Bogart in "The Roaring Twenties." Even as a ten year old I was on a different plane than my friends. I had different reference points and I admired different people.

The suburbs of New York, back in the 50s and 60s, still had milkmen, still had vestiges of trolley tracks that would appear whenever the asphalt thinned. There were street sweepers with their rubbish bins mounted between over-sized wheels. There was a hurdy-gurdy beggar who plied the downtown streets of my home town.

Today, everything, or nearly everything seems gone. We still pantomime dialing a telephone. But we haven't actually dialed one since the 70s. We still remember subway tokens. The 10-cent toll over the Henry Hudson Bridge ($4 today or $2.20 with EZ-pass.)

My wife and I get seltzer delivered to our apartment, ten 26-oz. siphon bottles to the case once a week. The bottles, clear or blue or sometimes green, are etched with the names of old seltzer bottlers.  Today at lunch we had a bottle marked "Louis Sisskin Good Health Seltzer." Bottles of Sisskin's are available on e-bay, but I can find no other evidence of who he was or where he carbonated. It's just possible that the gleaming new high-rises that have replaced the dilapidated old tenements of old New York sit on the site of Sisskin's old plant. But I'll never know.

 It is possible that we are living in the best of all possible worlds in the best of all possible times. Scholars like Stephen Pinker point out that this is--despite all the wars and skirmishes and the tarnish of Arab Spring--one of the most peaceful times in the history of the world. Further, despite the troglodyte impulses of the Republican party, more people have more wealth than virtually any time ever. Even poor people have electricity, indoor plumbing and luxuries virtually unthinkable just a few short decades ago.

That said, there are times when I siphon myself a cold glass of seltzer and I wish Louis Sisskin were around. Just so I could thank him.

The "Lost Art of Drawing."

The famous architect, Michael Graves, had a brilliant op-ed in Sunday's "Times," called "Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing." You can read it here: Michael Graves article

I think Graves' article can be extrapolated to our industry, to advertising. First, Graves laments how it has become fashionable in his industry to declare "the death of drawing." He wonders: "Are our hands becoming obsolete as creative tools? Are they being replaced by machines? And where does that leave the architectural creative process?"

But Graves believes that architecture should not divorce itself from drawing. He says that drawing is part of the thought process.  Drawings, he says "express the interaction of our minds, eyes and hands."

Again, and I think this is germane to advertising, Graves divides drawings into three types.
1. The referential sketch
2. The preparatory study
3. The definitive drawing

Graves calls the referential sketch the "record of the architect's discovery....it is not likely to represent reality but likely to capture an idea." Graves says, "These sketches are thus inherently fragmentary and selective. When I draw something, I remember it. The drawing is a reminder of the idea that caused me to record it in the first place. That visceral connection, that thought process, cannot be replicated by a computer."

The preparatory study is "part of a progression of drawings that elaborate a design."

Here are the parts I really liked: "With both of these types of drawings, there is a certain joy in their creation, which comes from the interaction between the mind and the hand. Our physical and mental interactions with drawings are formative acts. In a handmade drawing, whether on an electronic tablet or on paper, there are intonations, traces of intentions and speculation. This is not unlike the way a musician might intone a note or how a riff in jazz would be understood subliminally and put a smile on your face."

And "As I work with my computer-savvy students and staff today, I notice that something is lost when they draw only on the computer. It is analogous to hearing the words of a novel read aloud, when reading them on paper allows us to daydream a little, to make associations beyond the literal sentences on the page. Similarly, drawing by hand stimulates the imagination and allows us to speculate about ideas, a good sign that we’re truly alive."

East River brothers.

Last night was another of those all-too-frequent evenings where I was visited by my old nemesis, insomnia. She kissed me awake around 3 and led me out, with Whiskey my pup, for a long walk, once again, along the river.

The East River, as we call it in the City, is not a river at all. It's a tidal strait that connects the turbid waters of the Long Island Sound, to the turbulence of the New York Harbor. Centuries ago when the Dutch were ascendant, the Dutch called the Connecticut River the East River, the Hudson, the North and the Delaware, the South. The names have changed over time and as New York and its Grid became dominant, the strait assumed its current name.

Old New Yorkers, and I count myself among them, will sometimes called the FDR Drive, which runs parallel to the East River, the East River Drive, the highway's name before Robert Moses gripped New York and made it powerfully his own.

There used to be tanneries, glue factories, abattoirs and a host of effluents that teemed into the river. Its filth was the butt of many jokes when I was a kid. But things have cleaned up since the 70s, and today there are jet-skiers in the river and the occasional kayaker.

Once years ago, my older daughter who is an accomplished open-water swimmer was going to enter a 2.4 mile race in the waters off Manhattan. She persuaded me to try a half-mile swim, though for the life of me I couldn't bear the thought of entering waters that when I was a child were considered open sewers. Fortunately, my daughter backed out before race day, and I was, like a witch who emerged from trial by dunking with her life, spared.

Whiskey and I walked, as we almost always do, north. I don't like walking south. The promenade narrows and the terrain is less interesting. There's also an interruption around the UN that disturbs the peace I find when I travel in the opposite direction. So, as I said, I go north, where the people are fatter and the crowds thinner.

Walking north there is a flagpole across from Gracie Mansion, a tall, naval mast of a flagpole that has at its tip the US Flag and on a cross spar the flag of the City of New York, an orange, white and blue affair with the seal of the city on it--a Dutchman and an Indian, and the green-leafed and white flag of the city parks department.

The land around the flagpole circles out over the river, an ideal spot for observing the turbulence of Hell's Gate. There were two Puerto Rican men in the overhang tonight, from the looks of them, twins around 30.

They knelt down in Diane Arbus-like unison and beckoned Whiskey and me over.

"Buenos noches," they said in perfect New York Puerto-Rican-Spanish, leaving the esses of their greeting off in true New Yorican-style. I greeted them back, imitating their island twang.

My dog looked tired, in fact she lay down at my feet, and we three humans leaned against the curved cast-iron that bowed in a semi-circle over the water. One of the twins began talking, looking at the churn of the current, not at me.

"Mi hermano and I married twin sisters," he began. "We are twins and they were twins." He took a long drag on the night and spit twice into the water. He was in no rush to tell his story. And I was in no rush to hear it.

"For one year all was fine. But soon it became clear that mi esposa and I, we loved each other."

The other man spoke now.

"And mi esposa and I se odian. We hated each other."

We all three now spat into the water.

"We cannot stand to be with each other at night. So mi hermano and I walk. Though he loves his wife, he walks with me."

"I would rather be home with my wife. But he is my brother and him I must be with."

Again we spit.

Splat. Splat. Splat.

Whiskey was up now, she pulled against her leash. I left the brothers to themselves, bidding them a buenos noches with no esses. And let Whiskey lead the way home

The two ways of writing.

There are two ways to write an ad, or a manifesto, or even an email.

The first way is as you might expect. It involves order, planning and discipline. In common parlance, it's writing when you have a rough idea of your beginning, middle and end.

The second way is equally important and equally effective.

It comes into play when you're stuck with a problem.

Or your partner and you aren't connecting.

Or he's unavailable.

Or you have an idea you need to work out alone.

This kind of writing is like Jackson Pollack's painting.

Let your words splatter over the page.

Don't start out trying to form something eloquent.

Just start dipping your brush into the paint, your fingers on your keyboard.

Type.

See what comes out.

See what's behind the part of your brain that's smart, that seeks order and logic.

Let your words drip.

Go.

Give yourself an hour and type. Type about anything. Don't worry if it makes sense or not. See what happens.

Then don't read anything you've written. Instead take a walk around the block. Before you come back to the page, walk away from the page.

When you do come back to what you've written, there's probably something there.

A thread to pull.

A pattern that presents itself.

Find what's good in what you've written.

And start again from there.

Maybe this manner will work for you.

Maybe it won't.

But sometimes it works for me.

A clean, well-lighted deck.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the absurdity of our business.

About 65 page decks talking about strategy.

About two-hour meetings about a 30-second commercial.

About 200 hours producing work two dozen people will see.

I was thinking about how much we talk.

And how little we say.

I wondered what would happen if an agency had a directive.

Self-imposed.

Write your decks like Hemingway would.

Or McCabe.

Or Bernbach.

Design them like Krone would.

Or Glaser.

Or Lois.

Take out everything that doesn't matter.

Everything that's windy.

Everything that gives you linguistic gas.

In short, what if an agency remembered this from Hemingway, and took it as creative direction:

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” 

The replacements.

The National Football League season is about to mercilessly start, though no one ever intended 400-pound men to wear 75 pounds of equipment and bang into each other in the ever-longer-lasting heat of summer. But no matter, sport is quaint, but money is where it's at and money is what the National Football League is about, so it's coming and there's nothing we can do to escape its hormonal/steroidal apocalypse.

Yesterday's "Times" ad column--what's left of it, it's now written by people who are not reporters, they're press-release-sifters--called the NFL and its 181-million viewers, "the greatest advertising delivery vehicle ever invented," and I think that's about right. There is no sport involved. It's about selling tires, nachos and beer.

It's about to kick off, the NFL mammoths are, and not with professional referees presiding but with, from what I glean, "replacement" referees who have neither the skill nor composure to adjudicate a game in which two tons of mean slams into the opposing two tons of meat with intent to kill.

We have disposed of the professionals, of the trained, of the experienced. Bring on the replacements.

Replacements infect our everything.

Our ads are rife with them.

Stock photos instead of real. Replacement visuals.

Cliches instead of thoughts. Replacement copy.

Hyperbole instead of emotion. Replacement soul.

We are a world which has embraced the replacements.

In hipster heaven our arms, back, legs and necks are sloganeered in permanent ink. Replacement wisdom.

Our clothing, our shoes, our handbags, our glasses are festooned with brand logos. We rely on brands for our identity. Replacement personality.

We labor under the delusion that every snapshot is a photograph. And never look at the work of masters. Replacement taste.

Because we're too lazy to read, we rely on idiots, windbags, professional pontificators, limbaughs, coulters etc. for our opinions. Replacement judgment.

In our business, where our goals have mutated from building brands to winning awards, we rely on pay-per-trophy award shows to affirm our worth. Replacement qualifications.

This is what we have come to.

A plasticized, synthetic, naugahyded world.

Throw out the originals.

They are trouble.

Here come the replacements.

Commodities.

There's certainly no shortage of bad advertising in the world--and there's no one in advertising who isn't responsible for at least some of it. We all fail now and again, despite the vigor of our effort or the nobility of our aspirations.

Perhaps the central cause of most failures comes not from thinking viewers will find it hilarious seeing white men dance badly (bad dancing has replaced the one-eyebrow-raise as the sure-fire laugh-getter that no one laughs at) but rather the underlying belief that the product or service you're advertising is a complete commodity.

A commodity to such a point that there's nothing important to say about the product or service, so let's not even try.

The Avis ads I've pasted above are a case in point. Avis apparently rents cars that have both radios (always magically tuned to a song you like) and space inside them. Those attributes appeal, of course, to busy businessmen who will suddenly break into song in their own private Malibus.

I'm sure some pea-brain of a MBA, on either the client or agency side, said something like this to the creative team: "Our insight is that the space inside a rental car is a private zone where our target can get himself ready for the challenges that come."

That's an insight on par with this one. On hot summer days fat people like ice cream.

50 years ago Avis developed an ethos to differentiate itself from a bigger, richer, more-established brand. We try harder.

Today the company and its agency is run by cowards who rather than try to do something smart, something unique, something ownable they instead write un-believable drivel acted by un-real people.

99 times out of 100 you advertise something that has no differentiating assets. Your job as marketing practitioner is to find one. A creed. A fact. An idea.

It's not just to cast for white people dancing.

Walking north.

It's only Wednesday, but I've already had a helluva week. I'm not busy at work--which is rare. I'm experiencing that lull that comes before a big shoot. That stillness before a storm. But that's ok, I'm enjoying it.

There is still, of course, the daily dosage of drudgery to attend to. Small ads that need to be done, well and on-time. And meetings called by people whose job it is to call meetings. Agencies are teeming with meeting makers these day, people who, like cardboard actors, come to life only when amphetiminized by powerpoint.

My youngest daughter is home for the first time since late May, and my oldest is coming home today for 48 hours or so. The new puppy roars to the rafters. And my wife is back and forth from LA like a tennis ball at the US Open. In all, the usual delicious mayhem of family.

Last night, with the Republicans glowering on TV, fat and pale like marzipan, I headed north, as I so often do, for a walk with my dog Whiskey along the river.  There was not a dark face in attendance in republican Tampa last night and once I got north of 96th Street, there was not a white one--except for me. Up here I was safe from the dying elephant bellows of New Jersey charlatan governor Chris Christie. I was safe from the Stepford wifery of Ann Romney who spun a Horatio Alger tale of she and Mitt accomplishing the American Dream, oMITTing the part about starting with a $50,000,000 nest egg.

Up north, amid the as-yet-un-gentrified precincts of Harlem, I was happier, away from those parts of America where they don't believe in minimum wages, health care, pollution controls, Darwin, taxing the rich, unions and global warming.

Whiskey and I walked north. North through the broken sea wall of the East River Drive, collapsing into the drink. North past the Triboro. North past the projects where the great ballpark the Polo Grounds used to be, where Willie Mays caught Vic Wertz's flyball and wheeled and made that throw to second.


We exited the promenade around 165th Street, four miles from my apartment and walked through the broken asphalt of Highbridge Park, leaving the park at Yeshiva University, not far from the original Washington bridge over the Harlem River, a span that predates its more famous namesake by almost 50 years.

Whiskey's tongue, by now, was as long as my forearm. I found a gypsy cab manned by a fat Dominican, got in, and headed $20 home.