When I was a kid in the advertising business I had the great good fortune of working for the in-house agency at the great retailer, Bloomingdale's.
The pay was low, the hours were long but I worked there at a special time--the store was booming--and a lot of the people were very smart.
One of the great plusses of working there is you got briefed on the ad you had to write right by the buyer or associate buyer of the merchandise. Their success depended on the quality of the ad. The good ones knew this and would brief the boredom out of you.
One morning the buyer of down comforters came into my little office. He was carrying an eider down comforter and a feather. He made me cup the feather in my hand. Almost immediately, I felt heat emanating from the feather.
The ad needs to be about this, he told me.
Today, the distance between creatives and the merchandise or service they are charged with selling is usually vast. Time pressures are so great creatives often don't have the time to muster up the empathy needed to understand the product and the customer.
Not only do most ads seem to use stock photography, they also seem to use stock language with stock benefits. What's more, agencies and clients seem to think they benefit from stock creative people. Creatives with no learning on a brand are often asked to work on it--and they're given no time to even begin to gain brand knowledge.
This may come as a shock to the bean counters who run the holding companies and who run clients' procurement departments. Ideas, ambition, talent and people are not interchangeable parts any more in advertising than they are in second basemen.
When everything is treated as if it's generic, work becomes generic. When the work becomes generic, the only differentiator is price. And when only price matters, everyone goes bankrupt.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Grow up.
The level of asinine has reached a new low, or a new high, in the advertising industry.
This comes from an agency in Poland called 8K and was reported in Adweek. 8k is letting clients "pay what they want" for the agency's services, which include "logos, letterheads, business cards, slogans, naming and sales letters." You can read the article here.
So far the agency has completed 23 assignments and received an average payment of $74. Just a little more than I made as a paperboy in 1969.
The article concludes with this bit of cockeyed logic: "Luckily for 8K, the publicity is worth a whole lot more."
I gagged at that line.
8K have publicized that they're cheap.
Cheap and desperate.
It makes me sad to see this misguided stunt.
At the very least, if 8K wants to give their work away--at least get equity in the company's they are doing nearly-free work for.
This is just pathetic.
Grow up.
This comes from an agency in Poland called 8K and was reported in Adweek. 8k is letting clients "pay what they want" for the agency's services, which include "logos, letterheads, business cards, slogans, naming and sales letters." You can read the article here.
So far the agency has completed 23 assignments and received an average payment of $74. Just a little more than I made as a paperboy in 1969.
The article concludes with this bit of cockeyed logic: "Luckily for 8K, the publicity is worth a whole lot more."
I gagged at that line.
8K have publicized that they're cheap.
Cheap and desperate.
It makes me sad to see this misguided stunt.
At the very least, if 8K wants to give their work away--at least get equity in the company's they are doing nearly-free work for.
This is just pathetic.
Grow up.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Drinking the Kool-Aid.
Today, across the country, hundreds or thousands or, maybe, tens of thousands of fast-food workers are planning to go on strike. They're hoping to boost their wages to $15 an hour.
The fast-food monoliths seem to be scoffing at this effort. The economics, they say, of the industry do not support those kind of wages.
That's probably true, but consider this: A fast-food worker making minimum wage would have to work full-time for 640 years to make what the CEO of McDonald's makes in one year.
There are those who say, "this is the way the world works, this is the business model, there's no going back." They accept this gross disparity, this sinful inequity.
I cannot.
Yesterday I posted a link to a clip from "On the Waterfront." In it Father Barry (Karl Malden) says "What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us."
Dignity, humanity, compassion seem to be relics of an earlier age.
Are you ready to give up on them?
The fast-food monoliths seem to be scoffing at this effort. The economics, they say, of the industry do not support those kind of wages.
That's probably true, but consider this: A fast-food worker making minimum wage would have to work full-time for 640 years to make what the CEO of McDonald's makes in one year.
There are those who say, "this is the way the world works, this is the business model, there's no going back." They accept this gross disparity, this sinful inequity.
I cannot.
Yesterday I posted a link to a clip from "On the Waterfront." In it Father Barry (Karl Malden) says "What happens to the least of us, happens to all of us."
Dignity, humanity, compassion seem to be relics of an earlier age.
Are you ready to give up on them?
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
There's something happening here.
There's something happening here.
This is going to be a long post.
I expect flak.
Feedback.
Maybe rebuke.
Maybe someone in my agency will even say something.
But here goes.
Something is rotten in the state of advertising.
The advertising press--if there is one--is so busy chasing the banal and quotidian, so fervid to capture the frenzy of yet another new media ephemera, that they are missing and not reporting on the real macro-economics that have eviscerated our industry and so many others.
Yesterday, I received a note from a noted internet friend, in response to my metaphorical post about 3-D printing. This friend had risen to the board level of a vast multi-national agency. And then, he spoke out and got himself axed.
It cost him money. But he kept his soul.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Here's his mildly edited note:
"Your post took me back to my days when I had the misfortune to sit on _________'s Worldwide Board.
This is going to be a long post.
I expect flak.
Feedback.
Maybe rebuke.
Maybe someone in my agency will even say something.
But here goes.
Something is rotten in the state of advertising.
The advertising press--if there is one--is so busy chasing the banal and quotidian, so fervid to capture the frenzy of yet another new media ephemera, that they are missing and not reporting on the real macro-economics that have eviscerated our industry and so many others.
Yesterday, I received a note from a noted internet friend, in response to my metaphorical post about 3-D printing. This friend had risen to the board level of a vast multi-national agency. And then, he spoke out and got himself axed.
It cost him money. But he kept his soul.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Here's his mildly edited note:
"Your post took me back to my days when I had the misfortune to sit on _________'s Worldwide Board.
"The only time my peers would look up from their
Blackberries was when the global Financial Director went through the numbers upon which
their bonuses depended.
"Never once did they
evince any interest in or express any sense of responsibility for the
thousands of people who worked hard to make those numbers and secure
those bonuses.
"Alas their attitude was typical of the way
boardrooms have been behaving across the world and across industries for
the past 20 years.
"And it isn't just the folks earning $7.25 who are being treat like shit.
"It used to be said that the assets of any company
went down in the lift each evening. But over recent years things have
changed and now staff are regarded simply as a cost. And the constant
aim is to keep costs down, or cut them when the profits that translate
into C-Level bonuses cannot be maintained.
"Hence the ever widening gap between the panjandrums you refer to in your blog and the "squeezed middle".
"Problem
is, it isn't just a monetary squeezing that the middle are
experiencing. It's also the loss of pride and status that comes with
the realisation that the bosses will hire and fire regardless of skill
or commitment - just to sustain their salaries and bonus payments.
"I once sent an email to the CEO of Un-named Company - and the rest of the board telling him that "a 19th century
plutocrat would have been embarrassed by the autocratic way he ran the
business."
"That was the start of a very enjoyable long goodbye
which culminated in me telling him "he'd had too many people blowing
smoke up his arse for too long and that if he objected to me swearing at
him then he needed to get out more".
"It was well worth the loss of the astronomical
salary I'd have earned if I'd kept quiet and joined the great hog wallow
round the boardroom table.
"Five years on and a
quick look at the Un-named Company's website tells me that their snouts are
still in the trough. And the squeezed middle gets ever more strung out
and alienated."
"Here are a couple more thoughts about the C level carve-up of the corporate spoils.
"While
the stretched middle are regarded as a cost and see ever decreasing
value placed upon their contribution, those at C level have propagated
the myth that their individual contribution can make or break a
business.
"This rationale allows them to demand six (seven) figure
salaries for switching to sectors in which they very often have
absolutely no experience, bonuses for simply turning up for work, golden
handshakes when they come in, and golden parachutes when the leave.
"No one at Board Level questions this, because they all have a vested interest in the racket they are running.
"The problem also proceeds from the spread of what I see as the American style of "managing upwards."
"I always thought that managers looked downwards and
their first responsibility was to the people who reported to them i.e.
they knew a) who was working for them, b) what they were doing, c)
whether they had time and resources to do it and d) when to step in and
help them complete the task.
"Management upwards is, however, a very different
approach. This demands that the manager's first priority is to manage
the experience and expectations of the person above them. This means
that they spend most of their time ensuring that their boss remains
untouched and untroubled by the day-to-day functioning of the business.
"They, themselves, rise and fall not by their ability
to ensure that it functions productively (As you and I know,
productivity is best achieved by a happy and engaged workforce.)
"On the contrary, their destiny is shaped by their ability to manipulate
information and practice politics in order to (that dreaded phrase,)
"raise their profile."
"Which means that
aspirant middle managers (who want to escape the squeezed middle) are
complicit and, indeed, try to become junior partners in the C - level
carve up."
-
On the Waterfront. On Madison Avenue.
I might have told you this one before but I feel like telling it again.
When I was a Master's student at Columbia University, I decided to do a thesis on something called "The Watts Writers Project." This was an attempt, in the wake of the Los Angeles Watts riots, to get inner city youths involved in writing. The thinking was that there were unheard voices that were ghettoized. They needed to escape and be expressed.
One of the men who led the project was the noted screenwriter Budd Schulberg. Schulberg was Hollywood royalty. Not only was he the son of legendary film producer B.P. Schulberg, he was also the screenwriter behind one of Hollywood's best movies, including "On the Waterfront," featuring Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint, and "The Harder They Fall," featuring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger.
I decided I would seek out Schulberg and learn about the Watts Writers Project from the horse's mouth.
In those days, of course, there was no internet. But there was a vast phone room in Grand Central Terminal, which had in its center a huge bank of phonebooks from around the country. I headed down there and searched these phonebooks until I found Schulberg's number.
Then I mustered up my courage (I was only 21, after all) and called him and set up a dinner and an interview.
It also sent me on a jag of reading everything Schulberg wrote and seeing every movie he was involved with.
As I think about the disparity between the monied panjandrums and low-wage workers, in our business and others, I think about this scene from "On the Waterfront." The scene with Father Barry in the hold.
We could all do with watching it now and again.
And thinking about our fellow man.
When I was a Master's student at Columbia University, I decided to do a thesis on something called "The Watts Writers Project." This was an attempt, in the wake of the Los Angeles Watts riots, to get inner city youths involved in writing. The thinking was that there were unheard voices that were ghettoized. They needed to escape and be expressed.
One of the men who led the project was the noted screenwriter Budd Schulberg. Schulberg was Hollywood royalty. Not only was he the son of legendary film producer B.P. Schulberg, he was also the screenwriter behind one of Hollywood's best movies, including "On the Waterfront," featuring Marlon Brando, Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint, and "The Harder They Fall," featuring Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger.
I decided I would seek out Schulberg and learn about the Watts Writers Project from the horse's mouth.
In those days, of course, there was no internet. But there was a vast phone room in Grand Central Terminal, which had in its center a huge bank of phonebooks from around the country. I headed down there and searched these phonebooks until I found Schulberg's number.
Then I mustered up my courage (I was only 21, after all) and called him and set up a dinner and an interview.
It also sent me on a jag of reading everything Schulberg wrote and seeing every movie he was involved with.
As I think about the disparity between the monied panjandrums and low-wage workers, in our business and others, I think about this scene from "On the Waterfront." The scene with Father Barry in the hold.
We could all do with watching it now and again.
And thinking about our fellow man.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Art. And Science.
I heard a report last night on National Public Radio about a new documentary on Johannes Vermeer, the mid-17th Century Dutch Master. (No, he wasn't a cigar.)
The film is called "Tim's Vermeer," and in it, the filmmaker Tim Jenison seeks to paint a Vermeer using the scientific technology he believes Vermeer employed to paint his remarkable works.
You can listen to the report here: Vermeer.
Jenison used an assortment of camera obscura technologies, mirrors and lenses and via those technologies replicated a Vermeer. It was all done in an attempt to unravel the way in which Vermeer and others were able to create their surpassing art.
It made me think, of course, of what we do and how we do it.
Too often, I think, we extol the how and ignore the what.
We are meant to create work that excites, provokes, informs and motivates. We are meant to incite lust, desire and passion for our clients' brands. That's the what of what we do.
I personally don't give a rat's ass on how we do it.
If we do it through pushing pixels, an Alexa camera or hot lead.
The science of what we do is the how.
That's for text books.
The what--the Vermeer part of advertising--is what matters.
The film is called "Tim's Vermeer," and in it, the filmmaker Tim Jenison seeks to paint a Vermeer using the scientific technology he believes Vermeer employed to paint his remarkable works.
You can listen to the report here: Vermeer.
Jenison used an assortment of camera obscura technologies, mirrors and lenses and via those technologies replicated a Vermeer. It was all done in an attempt to unravel the way in which Vermeer and others were able to create their surpassing art.
It made me think, of course, of what we do and how we do it.
Too often, I think, we extol the how and ignore the what.
We are meant to create work that excites, provokes, informs and motivates. We are meant to incite lust, desire and passion for our clients' brands. That's the what of what we do.
I personally don't give a rat's ass on how we do it.
If we do it through pushing pixels, an Alexa camera or hot lead.
The science of what we do is the how.
That's for text books.
The what--the Vermeer part of advertising--is what matters.
Monday, December 2, 2013
The 17 best blog posts ever written.
Journalism, that once noble art, has been superseded by articles that all begin the same way. The (number) best (noun) ever.
The 21 best beaches.
The 36 best slices of pizza.
The 44 best movies.
The 18 best condiments.
The 61 best time timesheets.
The thing about such lists is that they're enticing.
But dumb.
Oh, I know. They get clicks.
And that's all that matters.
So eyeballs see web ads.
There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, that the paucity of space (as well as its concomitant price) and the scarcity of channels was a small stop-gap against airing absolute crap.
But now cable channels and YouTube videos proliferate like rabbits infused with Spanish Fly.
There's more room for absolute garbage than ever before.
Worse, we get enticed by it.
We click.
And waste time--that one thing (besides compassion) that we have too little of.
The metaphor that's apt is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. An eddy of plastic garbage that's estimated to be as large as six million square miles--roughly 10% of the size of the Pacific Ocean.
This is what's produced each day and stored on hundreds of square miles of servers.
Garbage.
The 21 best beaches.
The 36 best slices of pizza.
The 44 best movies.
The 18 best condiments.
The 61 best time timesheets.
The thing about such lists is that they're enticing.
But dumb.
Oh, I know. They get clicks.
And that's all that matters.
So eyeballs see web ads.
There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, that the paucity of space (as well as its concomitant price) and the scarcity of channels was a small stop-gap against airing absolute crap.
But now cable channels and YouTube videos proliferate like rabbits infused with Spanish Fly.
There's more room for absolute garbage than ever before.
Worse, we get enticed by it.
We click.
And waste time--that one thing (besides compassion) that we have too little of.
The metaphor that's apt is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. An eddy of plastic garbage that's estimated to be as large as six million square miles--roughly 10% of the size of the Pacific Ocean.
This is what's produced each day and stored on hundreds of square miles of servers.
Garbage.
Some thoughts on 3D printing.
There are dozens of not hundreds of people at my agency who have, for the last year or so, been all heated up about the wonders of 3D printing.
For the life of me, I can see no good coming from such technology. Psychopaths and terrorists will make infinitely reproduceable handguns with which they will bring down planes and shoot innocent school children. Other psychopaths and terrorists will pirate intellectual capital and create seven-cent knock-offs of even more crap we don't need.
What I really don't understand about this 3D printing fanfare is what in god's name it has to do with marketing. But today's agency is filled not with creative people but with pseudo-technologists who believe that because something is new, it is good. Such people have no ability to ponder the ephemeral nature of new.
They sell sizzle, not steak. And are interested in neither when the sizzling dies down.
In any event, the global corporation I work for saw fit to move my desk this morning. In the old days, before we were line-items on a "stacking plan," the human equivalent of cord-wood, some bright young person would have printed a welcome sign for all those moving into a new space. The new floor plan would have been enlarged and mounted on foam-core. Someone would have thought to make the unsettling a bit less unsettling.
But that is the old, pre-global world. Where humanity and consideration played some small role.
Today, that is all gone.
The malefactors of great wealth, the billionaires whose wealth has grown on average by $400 million over the last decade, deem all humanity a dire inconvenience.
Take the owners of Walmart, the slave employers, who claim that paying people a living wage and subsidizing their healthcare would ruin everything. Places 6,7,8 and 9 of America's richest people are occupied by those owners--they have a combined net worth of $140 billion, a far cry from the $7.25/hr. they claim they can afford to pay.
This is globalization.
And it's applied to our industry too.
The chieftains get millions and tens of millions. And somehow proclaim with a straight face that the business model is broken, that raises are frozen, and that costs must be contained.
Are they putting cheaper motor oil into their Porsches?
Starting today, in response to all this, I am going to try to make a 3D model of myself and send that model to work.
This model, by all appearances, will be me. But not quite.
It will labor a little less efficiently.
It will be a little less good.
It will be somewhat hollow and, just maybe, it will care less.
And no one will be able to tell the difference.
For the life of me, I can see no good coming from such technology. Psychopaths and terrorists will make infinitely reproduceable handguns with which they will bring down planes and shoot innocent school children. Other psychopaths and terrorists will pirate intellectual capital and create seven-cent knock-offs of even more crap we don't need.
What I really don't understand about this 3D printing fanfare is what in god's name it has to do with marketing. But today's agency is filled not with creative people but with pseudo-technologists who believe that because something is new, it is good. Such people have no ability to ponder the ephemeral nature of new.
They sell sizzle, not steak. And are interested in neither when the sizzling dies down.
In any event, the global corporation I work for saw fit to move my desk this morning. In the old days, before we were line-items on a "stacking plan," the human equivalent of cord-wood, some bright young person would have printed a welcome sign for all those moving into a new space. The new floor plan would have been enlarged and mounted on foam-core. Someone would have thought to make the unsettling a bit less unsettling.
But that is the old, pre-global world. Where humanity and consideration played some small role.
Today, that is all gone.
The malefactors of great wealth, the billionaires whose wealth has grown on average by $400 million over the last decade, deem all humanity a dire inconvenience.
Take the owners of Walmart, the slave employers, who claim that paying people a living wage and subsidizing their healthcare would ruin everything. Places 6,7,8 and 9 of America's richest people are occupied by those owners--they have a combined net worth of $140 billion, a far cry from the $7.25/hr. they claim they can afford to pay.
This is globalization.
And it's applied to our industry too.
The chieftains get millions and tens of millions. And somehow proclaim with a straight face that the business model is broken, that raises are frozen, and that costs must be contained.
Are they putting cheaper motor oil into their Porsches?
Starting today, in response to all this, I am going to try to make a 3D model of myself and send that model to work.
This model, by all appearances, will be me. But not quite.
It will labor a little less efficiently.
It will be a little less good.
It will be somewhat hollow and, just maybe, it will care less.
And no one will be able to tell the difference.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thankful.
Despite my almost constant gloominess in Ad Aged, despite my despair over and disdain for what's become of what was once a great and highly-paid industry, I have, believe it or not, a lot to be thankful for.
Here's a short list.
1. My agency tolerates my blogging. In the four years I've been with them, I've removed exactly two posts.
2. I am surrounded by energetic young people who for the most part give a shit and want to do good things. Sure some of them are afflicted by millennial malaise, but most of them care and work hard. Some of them even want to listen to a guy who has more than 30 year's experience.
3. My main client is, after four years of day-in and day-out with them, showing some signs of appreciating the fight I am fighting against them, for them.
4. My main client, when I was hospitalized over the summer expressed concern as to my well-being and urged me to come back slowly. I appreciate when you are treated like a human in an age where spreadsheets rule.
5. I work with a great partner and a great producer who 'have my back' and make me better.
6. Ditto. I have an account partner who pulls on the same oar as I do.
7. My kids are growing up good and strong and smart. I believe they will make a difference, however small.
8. My wife tolerates me, not always the easiest of tasks.
9. Though I am often disconsolate about work and work related issues, I still have my gusto and energy.
10. I am almost healed from this summer's cataclysms.
11. I'm zeroing in on 4,000 posts on Ad Aged, and I'm not tapped out yet.
Here's a short list.
1. My agency tolerates my blogging. In the four years I've been with them, I've removed exactly two posts.
2. I am surrounded by energetic young people who for the most part give a shit and want to do good things. Sure some of them are afflicted by millennial malaise, but most of them care and work hard. Some of them even want to listen to a guy who has more than 30 year's experience.
3. My main client is, after four years of day-in and day-out with them, showing some signs of appreciating the fight I am fighting against them, for them.
4. My main client, when I was hospitalized over the summer expressed concern as to my well-being and urged me to come back slowly. I appreciate when you are treated like a human in an age where spreadsheets rule.
5. I work with a great partner and a great producer who 'have my back' and make me better.
6. Ditto. I have an account partner who pulls on the same oar as I do.
7. My kids are growing up good and strong and smart. I believe they will make a difference, however small.
8. My wife tolerates me, not always the easiest of tasks.
9. Though I am often disconsolate about work and work related issues, I still have my gusto and energy.
10. I am almost healed from this summer's cataclysms.
11. I'm zeroing in on 4,000 posts on Ad Aged, and I'm not tapped out yet.
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