A summation.

Well, we wrapped five days of shooting in LA.

Six commercials.

Over 80 shots.

Five early calls followed by five late nights.

A lot of work and now, one stage is done.

Now post begins.

It's always hard for me being on set because I don't really mix well with others.

My mind is on Egon Schiele or Edward Curtis.

And downtime talk usually centers on Tosh 2.0.

Or Lindsay.

Or some thing or someone I regard as puerile.

Nearly every day I feel more and more distant from those around me.

Their film references and mine are usually separated by forty years.

They talk about tracking shots and never saw Renoir's in "Boudu, Saved from Drowning."

It's a little depressing some times and it worries me.

To my mind, our "culture" is so vapid I can't seem to warm to it.

I know I should, but I don't want to be a part of it.

That probably makes me obsolete. Or, better, lends to my obsolescence.

But I have something others seem to lack.

I can take a Rubik's cube of a brief and make it four words.

And from that, good can come.

A thought can be expressed in an
understandable, credible, intrusive, memorable and interesting way.

Palettes and styles change.

But the fundamental things apply.

And that's why they still need me.

--

BTW, the picture of the painting above is George Bellows' "Men of the Docks."

It was painted over 100 years ago, in 1912.

It's still good.

Machine guns vs. snipers.

In my meanderings I came upon a quotation by Michael Caine about John Huston the great film-director, actor, and writer. 

Caine said: "Most directors don't know what they want so they shoot everything they can think of--they use the camera like a machine gun. John uses it like a sniper."

It's not hard to see the parallels to our business.

Nearly everyday we are subjected to meetings and presentations that are unfiltered. 106 page powerpoint decks containing two pages of thought.

We listen to people who call statements like "people drink coffee in the morning," an insight.

We see teams present 24 "ideas" in "answering" a creative brief.

In other words, we see machine gunners.

We need more snipers.

People who think first.

People who edit.

People who think.

And most of all people people who filter.

Roy Grace, late of DDB esteem, once said that a Creative Director's job is to "take out the garbage."

I wonder if today he'd be as overwhelmed as Staten Island's Fresh Kills landfill. I wonder if he could handle the flow of trash.

I wonder if anyone can.

Country George and the Fish.

A long time ago, probably after reading Holden Caulfield's ruminations about where Central Park's ducks go in the winter, I wondered about what fish do in ponds and lakes when the water freezes.

What I learned is that fish can lower their metabolism. They "slow down" in effect, lower their pulse, so they can survive adverse conditions.

I've always envied this ability in fish.

I wish when I was stuck on a long plane flight, in shul during the High Holy Days, or, most often, trapped in some endless and mindless morass at work--the usual messy stew of indecision and pontification--I was more like a fish.

I wish I could lower my metabolism until it all just goes away.

Agency models.

You can't spit in the environs of metaphorical Madison Avenue without hearing some gasbag spout about the need for 'a new agency model.' You know, how the old model is 'broken' and we need to outsource this or that function to Upper Lesotho or we'll all go belly-up (except, of course, for the heads of the holding companies who, though never having created an ad, pocket salaries and bonuses that are routinely in the eight digits.)

Having worked almost three decades in the business, I think I know more about agency models than most. And I probably know how to make an agency profitable--very profitable.

Acknowledge that no matter where you work or whom you work for, 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Get rid of the dim bulbs, the slackers and the talkers and hold onto your workhorses and you'll make a mint--agency models be damned.

And there's one other thing you can do.

Agree with all clients that after a certain number of reviews of work, the agency will introduce a "dumb fee." A charge for statements that are so blatantly boneheaded they could make your hair curl.

"I know we haven't met any of our dates, but why are you late?"

"I know we haven't approved the copy, but why haven't you recorded it?"

You know, that sort of thing.

An advertising life.

As long-time readers of Ad Aged may know, I am a third generation ad guy.

My father, born in 1928--back when dinosaurs roamed the earth--had a 30 year career in advertising, and went on to teach advertising at a major American university.

My uncle, my father's brother, was born in 1913 and had an even longer career in the business.

He owned, for decades, Philadelphia's largest ad agency.

In short, advertising has been in my family lineage for 100 years.

Only a century or two short of the amount of time my ancestors were raped by Cossacks.

Despite of, or maybe because of all that, growing up I never pictured myself in advertising.

I pursued, almost to the time I was 30, an academic career, hoping to teach English literature at a quiet, decent college or university.

That didn't work out for me.

And having no money for rent sobers up a lot of aspiring academics. Or at least it sobered me up.

I got a job, where else, in advertising.

It's been 29 years now.

I guess I'm looking to outlast my uncle and my father.

Speaking. And not.

Years ago I did a pro-bono campaign for the last jazz radio station in the New York area. I was doing research--actually just frittering time away reading about jazz--and I came upon a quotation by Dizzy Gillespie. "It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play."

It occurs to me that there is a parallel in our business.

"It's taken me all my life to learn what not to say."

There are so many opportunities in business, at work, with clients, at meetings to shoot off your mouth. To over-react. To blurt. To shout. To say without thinking.

What most people don't realize is the indisputable power in speaking last.

In measuring.

Thinking things through.

Relaxing.

And breathing.

Or as Dave Trott might say, "letting the ball come to you."

Try it some time.

Learn what not to say.

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.