The OODA Loop.

I came across an interesting acronym in Thomas Friedman's Sunday op-ed in "The New York Times."

Friedman says that the U.S. military trains its fighter pilots in something called the OODA Loop. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Friedman sums up the essential of the OODA Loop this way: "The idea is that if your OODA Loop is faster and more accurate than the other pilot’s, you’ll shoot his plane out of the sky."

It occurred to me that it would be wondrous and splendid in our business if more agencies made sure that it followed OODA principles.

If people were given time to OBSERVE how a client or a brand works.
If they were charged with understanding a brand's ORIENTATION in its market.
If only then would we DECIDE what the brand needed to define itself and to stand apart.
Only after we OOD-ed,
would we ACT.

Sometimes it seems to me, we ACT before we OOD.

And as we all know, that's backwards.

Success.

About a dozen years ago, I got "hot."

Hot for probably only the first or second time in my career.

I had a lot of spots--good spots--on the air.

And I had three print campaigns running simultaneously.

I could hardly open the "Times" or "The Journal" without seeing a full-page ad I had written.

People at the agency were pissed at me.

They asserted I had done something "political" or otherwise nefarious to achieve what I was achieving.

I remember having a conversation with my older daughter about it.

She was 15 at the time.

And being an Upper East Side teenage girl, well-versed in the petty bullshit that goes on in both 10th grade and ad agencies.

I remember saying to her, "It's taken me 46 years to become an 'overnight success.'"

In other words, it took me a lot of work to be able to do what I was doing.

Now, I am in LA shooting six new commercials.

It's my fifth month in a row where I'm shooting something I like.

I'll hear about it when I return to the agency.

I'll get excoriated for taking too much on. For doing too much myself. I've heard this throughout my career, "George, you're a one man team."

That's a pejorative.

Here's the deal.

I do what I do.

And I will continue to do so.

If I'm at an agency that gets that, we're fine and we're all better off for it.

If I'm at an agency that doesn't, that's filled with back-stabbing and petty jealousies,
I will eventually leave.

And I'll be better off for it.

What is our responsibility?

Almost 200 years ago, a small group of passionate English women helped abolish slavery in British possessions by starting a sugar boycott. You can read about this social activism in Adam Hochschild's great book "Bury the Chains." Hochschild

I think about this as I think about our gun crisis in America and the silence of corporations. In an era where we are bludgeoned with the notion that brands ought to engage with us in conversations, brands are silent about the issues of the day. Gun control, I believe, is one of those central issues.

What would happen, I wonder, if Apple ran an open letter to Congess? If Verizon, AT&T, IBM, Exxon/Mobil, General Motors and a few others joined in?

Sure, they might alienate some of their customers.

They might lose some business.

They might depress their stock prices.

They might even be harassed by the same Congress they wrote to.

But more than 20 children were shot multiple times by an assault rifle in Connecticut just a few weeks ago. And every four years, a Vietnam's worth of people die at the hands of guns.

Where are the voices of corporations (people, according to the tax code) who are such a big part of our lives?

What is their responsibility?

What is ours? As people, ostensibly of influence over our clients, over the giant corporations that are so important in our nation?

Surely, it must be more than silence.

Late night New York.

Last night I was once again visited by my old and persistent Nemesis, Dame Insomnia. She drops by often and is hard to get rid of. In fact, the only way to chase her away is to arise from bed, get dressed, accouter Whiskey my nine-month-old golden retriever, and head out for a late night toddle.

Usually on these sojourns I walk long-enough to chase her away—even if it takes three or four hours. These journeys have taken me and Whiskey all over Manhattan and into the South Bronx. We go without thinking, where our six feet take us. All in the hopes of “disappearing” she who must be obeyed.

Ninety-first Street between First and York Avenues is as desolate a street as you’re likely to find in Manhattan. When the city was industrial—really, not too many years ago, there was small industry here. A vinegar factory. A commercial bakery. A plumbing supply company.

The buildings on the street are of the broad-shouldered ilk. They are low and wide, with high floors and a squat demeanor. The industry has left and they house now gourmet food stores, Pilates studios, dog-groomers and other dilections of the near-rich white.

Still, there is warehousing here. Verizon one of the evil phone companies that deregulation of the telecommunications industry have visited upon the citizenry, stores its ugly black, white and red vans on 91^st Street along with assorted equipment they use to disrupt the service they promise is so reliable.

Their presence, and that of sundry other industrial concerns, lends the block a 24-hour life. There are comings and goings at all hours, which is fine because there are no residences on the block, except at its corners, which have been gentrified into condominium high-rises.

I wandered last night onto 91^st Street, having heard about an after-hours place called The Tempus Fugit. I walked past the street number three times before I found it, hidden behind industrial doors painted slate grey and showing 20 years of dents.

Behind those doors was a vintage liver-colored bar, complete with brass rail, with 10 or 12 stools along with four or five rickety tables for two or four pushed hard against the far wall. In all The Tempus Fugit was no more than 15 or 20 feet wide and maybe 25 feet deep. A small place, but inordinately the right size.

I made eye-contact with the ancient bartender—the only other human present—and immediately glanced down at Whiskey. A silent indication that I intended to bring her, though she’s under-aged, into The Tempus with me. He gave me a nearly imperceptible nod and Whiskey and I walked in and I sat on a stool one in from the end.

I ordered a Herzmorder, complete with an umlaut over the “o”—they had it on tap—and secured a bowl of water for Whiskey.

“Insomnia,” I offered when the bartender brought me my brew.

He scanned his 400 square feet. “You beat the crowd.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Me? I've been here forever.”

“No, The Tempus Fugit. How long has the bar been here?”

“Since Prohibition,” he explained. “We opened behind those doors to cheese the bulls, and we just never closed.”

“I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years and never--” He cut me off.

“We get that a lot.” Without asking, he drew me another Herzmorder and slid it along with a small wooden bowl of Spanish peanuts along the bar as he walked back to me.

“Apnea?” He asked. “Nocturnal myoclonus? Tell the doctor. It’ll make you feel better.” He leaned over to listen.

“I have a lot going on. I’m getting old. I’m staring down the barrel of,” I stammered “of obsolescence. Non sum qualis eram,” I said in Latin: I am not what I was.

“Latin,” he said stating the obvious. He gave me quid pro quo: “Sum quod eris.” I am what you will be.

“An old man,” I laughed. “But one people count on.” I drew a long swig of my Herzmorder, finishing off the umlaut and wiping my lips dry.

I left a $20 on the bar.

“On me,” he said shoving the bill back my way.

“Veni, vidi, ibam,” I agreed. I came, I saw, I went.

And Whiskey and I walked home. It was time. I was tired.

More graffiti.

Two of my favorite bits of graffiti are from long ago and far away.

When I was a kid, Consolidated Edison--Con Ed--the electric company had the slogan "Clean Energy" emblazoned on all of its many trucks. Someone graffitied it as above.

And when I was a slightly older kid--20 years old and wandering the savage 70s streets of Chicago, there was a street gang called "The Latin Eagles." They would "tag" every underpass, elevated stanchion and culvert in their turf. Someone boldly graffitied their graffiti, again, as above.

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls..."

A New York cab ride.

I've been away from New York for ten days, vacationing in warmer, calmer Caribbean climes. But it didn't take long for me to be reminded of how much I love the city.

Somehow my wife and I navigated our way through the maze of customs faster than most of our other fellow passengers, and magically our baggage arrived on the beaten carousel early and in tact. I hauled it all onto my broad shoulders and my wife and I scampered to the taxi line.

The JFK taxi line is usually something out of Hieronymus Bosch--writhing bodies wrestling duffle bags and rollers, usually with screaming kids in tow. But tonight my wife was like Botticelli's Venus. Somehow she ascended--magically--to the front of the line.

Quickly, before our luck had time to change, I wrestled our bags into a Toyota Prius hybrid. I was helped by my driver--all 5'3" of him. He handled the bags with the strength of a long-shoreman.

I got in the cab, gave the driver our address, and then, as I always do, I checked out his name, Boris Andreyev, and his hack number, which was under 500,000.

If you study cab drivers as I do, you can judge how long they've been driving by their number. Newer drivers log in at around 560,000. A forty-year-man is in the 300,000's. My driver, I estimated had been driving 30 years. I was off by five. He'd been driving since 1977.

I've been talking to cab drivers since about that time. I love their stories, their successes, their frustrations. Talking to them is just one of the million things I love about New York.

"Where are you from," I began.

"I am from Siberia. I drove a tractor-truck there in the oil fields. But came here with my parents and my sister and my wife in 1977. I started driving a cab the first day I arrive. I am 64 now. In three years, I retire."

Boris didn't need a lot of interstitial coaxing to talk. But I tried anyway to hold up my end of the conversation.

"I've always wanted to go to Russia," I said. "St. Petersburg in particular--to see the Hermitage."

"A lifetime in the Hermitage you could spend and not see an inch. The city St. Petersburg is so beautiful. Once I drove my truck 8,000 kilometers from Yekaterinburg to Kiev. They gave me 30 days to make the trip. I did it in 15 and so spent 15 days on 'wacation' in St. Petersburg.

"By train you can go 600 kilometers in two hours and be in Moscow. In Moscow every subway station is like a museum."

"I've heard that," I said, trying to keep the conversation from being too one sided.

"America a small country," he said. "Russia big. 12,000 kilometers from East to West. 8,000 from North to South."

He jumped now to Samarkand, the Uzbeki city situated on the Silk Road.

"Samarkand. You know who founded it? Do you know? Guess."

"Ghenghis Khan," I offered.

"Alexander the Great. The greatest of them all. 10,000 pounds of gold he made the city with. Samarkand."

We were now approaching my apartment on 83rd Street. My wife went to pay the fare with a credit card.

"Ach" he said. "You are killing me. Cash please."

We paid him cash and I lugged our baggage into our lobby.

"Thank you," I told him and he thanked me back.

It was good to be home.

My hope for 2013.

Here's my wish for 2013.

It's simple.

It's one sentence.

Just three words, actually.

Let's get serious.

Let's not spend time on things 'that will change everything.'

Let's do work that moves clients' business, not just the egos of those involved.

Let's stop valuing valueless companies in the billions.

Let's stop talking about things like "mobile strategies" and "likes" and "conversations" that have never been shown to produce a dime.

Let's stop talking about story-telling if we're not willing to get stories time to develop.

Further, if you, yourself mark yourself as a storyteller. Don't say so. Tell stories.

Also, if you're a storyteller, you might want to actually read some great storytellers.

Let's stop smirking at blatherfests like SXSW and start telling the people who are paying for those trips (in the form of a cruddy stock price, a two-year raise cycle, a deflated salary or a Ebenezer-esque bonus) what you actually learned. Learned that was of value to our business.

Let's show ROI.

Let's assert to clients that we make a product--marketing communications--that we are not a "service" and that we shouldn't, therefore, be treated like mere vendors.

In other words, let's make ourselves important again.

By doing important things for clients' businesses.

Not by being self-important.

Let's get serious.

The way things should be.

Schedules are made and agreed to.

If the client misses a date, the schedule gets pushed.

It doesn't come out of creative.

If the date can't be pushed, production should find a way to make the client pay more for services rendered.

I don't know why so many people can't understand basics.

On boxing and advertising.

I am reading right now a bit of a divertissimo, the boxing writing of one of the 20^th Century’s great writers, A.J. Liebling. If you have the slightest scintilla of interest in really fine writing, I suggest with great enthusiasm that you pick up and read his collection, “The Sweet Science.”

It hardly matters whether or not you care about boxing. Liebling’s voice is so secure, his eye for detail so adroit and his turn of a phrase so euphonious, that every page, yes, every page, brings joy and laughter. It’s often said, I have observed, by people when praising a book, ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ Liebling I have to put down often, in the same way you would need a moment of reflection after seeing Willie Mays patrol centerfield or Joe DiMaggio lash a double.

Much of “The Sweet Science” concerns the impact of a new medium—television—on the fight business in America. Fights were televised every Monday and Friday night—at the behest and via the dollars of brewers and razor blade companies. Consequently people stopped going to their neighborhood arena to see live pugilists battle. These club fights then dried up, and with them the opportunity for young, raw fighters to gain experience out of the limelight.

I wonder if a similar effect has been felt by our business. Young people have no time to learn their craft in out-of-the-way gyms. Today’s condensed timetables mean they can’t be nurtured like fighters were, by old hands. Things are too fast now. A day out of Miami Ad School, you’ve got banners due to the client.

In one of his essays Liebling quotes a ring denizen named Eddie Shevlin. Shevlin was a coach who—unorthodoxically-- had his charges spar dozens of rounds a day—four or five times more than the prevailing wisdom. Shevlin’s reason was simple “You never learn anything until you’re tired.”

I think there’s real wisdom in that.

I think in our business, like any other, it takes hour after hour, day after day, week after week of practice to finally figure out what you’re doing.

I think you need the tired-ness that derives from hard work, repetition, trial and error and, mostly, failing. You need the speed bag, the heavy bag, the medicine ball, the jump rope, the road work, the shadow, the being hit, the prelims, the bouts, the round-robins to develop.

It takes a lot of work to get yourself in the position to learn--to find yourself tired.