My advertising heroes. Part 2 in a sporadic series.

Last week, staring into the creative abyss all writers, at times, face, Rob Schwartz, CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day suggested I write a series of posts about some ad luminaries—who either inspired me, or did work that helped define the industry.

Today’s post is more about inspiration than seminal work, because it features work by my father, Stan Tannenbaum. 

My old man escaped from West Philadelphia’s Jewish ghetto through advertising—a hot profession in the 1950s. He first went to work for his brother, Sid Tannenbaum, who ran an agency in Philly called Weightman Advertising. 

From Weightman my old man worked across river from Philly, in Camden, NJ where the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was based. Then, in 1954, he moved to the ‘big time.’ To New York, where he joined a top-ten agency called Kenyon & Eckhardt.

My father spent the lion’s share of his career there—and rose from copywriter to Chairman of the Board. His work, to be honest was never as “creative” or award-winning as the best work of the day. Nevertheless, he was my father, and there’s something to be said for that. I think. 

My old man’s first spot is, of course, dated. But a classic side-by-side comparison--and for the time, a dramatic one.

The Brylcreem spot shows a side of my father I happily glommed onto--his glib turn of a phrase. 

In this case Brylcreem's tagline entered the vernacular, "A little dab'll do ya." Which, really, father notwithstanding, ain't bad. 

Finally, an ad for Macleans toothpaste. For years, my father's work for this brand was dull and, yes, insipid. However, this spot, created amid the cultural and creative revolution in the 1960s when its effects had filtered down to even the most "package-goodsy" of agencies, is not without its sex-appeal and wit.

Like my old man himself, it's actually not half bad.
-

In Homer’s Odyssey, which I read as painters paint bridges, finishing one end only to start immediately over again at the other, Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom says, “Few sons are the equals of their fathers. Most fall short, all too few surpass them.”

Certainly, when it comes to making money and acquiring lofty titles, I didn’t equal my father. However much I’ve fallen materially short, I’ve been able to surpass the old man in career longevity. This week, I will complete my 60^th circle of the sun and I believe I am doing the best work of my long career—and more of it, more quickly.

-->

None of that’s important here. Just an observation about fathers and sons.

Some thoughts on Leonardo.

I just finished Friday night, late, Walter Isaacson's new book, "Leonardo Da Vinci."

I never read his previous book, Steve Jobs. Though I did read Isaacson's book before that on Albert Einstein. I have nothing against Jobs, or Isaacson for that matter. I just feel, as a student of history, that we need some time to reflect on an historical figure before we write about him. The Steve Jobs book seemed to come too soon. 

In any event I eagerly awaited Isaacson's 600-pager on Da Vinci. For one thing, there's nothing like a biography to take you away from our current wretched era and discourse. Second, for all my vaunted edu-macation, I know nothing about Da Vinci that I couldn't have learned from Classic Comics in eighth-grade. 

I've seen the "Mona Lisa" twice and I saw the "Last Supper," last time I was in Milan, but what makes those two works of art unsurpassed, I couldn't tell you. I suppose if I were to leave my office now and jet to see those works of art now, I'd come at them with more knowledge than I did the last time I saw them--I'd look at them differently and see things, meaning and technique, I hadn't noticed before, but still, the most interesting thing about Leonard is not these two paintings, his Vitruvian Man, or his fanciful flying machines.

For me, the thing to ponder on is the meaning of the last words he wrote in his mirror script in his voluminous note-books:

“Perche la minesstra si fredda."

"Whatever, the soup is getting cold."

That's all today, on a foggy and global-warming Monday in New York, as it seems like our economy will soon crater and the rich are planning on eating the poor.

Sometimes, the world is unimportant--it will go on spinning out of control, no matter what. Sometimes it's best to let relationships with the wife, the kids, your friends, your co-workers just go chugging along. Sometimes, even when you get in early, you should eschew work, I think, and take care of yourself.

After all, the soup is getting cold.

My advertising heroes. Part 1 in a sporadic series.

Rob Schwartz, CEO of TBWA/Chiat/Day New York suggested I write a series of posts about some ad luminaries whom our younger generation might not know of. When the CEO of "Chiat" suggests something, you listen. So, here goes. A look at three representative ads by a copywriter whose work I admired.

When I started in the business, way back in 1984, the highest-flying of New York agencies was Scali, McCabe, Sloves. If you aspired to be a copywriter, you wanted to work for, learn from, be tortured by the middle of the three names: Ed McCabe. 

I never got lucky enough to land a job at SMS—though I did work across the street from Scali, at an agency where McCabe cut his teeth: Ally & Gargano. During my long apprenticeship—when I was learning the business, and how to write, by pouring over old awards’ annuals, I found myself being stopped by McCabe ads more often than just about anyone else’s.

There was a punch-in-the-face style to McCabe. At a time when there were a lot of cute word-plays in ads, McCabe’s ads, as often as not, got down to an essential and blunt truth.

Take a look at his ad for Horn & Hardart’s, an early “fast-food,” no-frills restaurant. McCabe’s simple line of copy: “It’s not fancy. But it’s good.” Nothing, nothing, nothing in the ad is without purpose and meaning. And wit.

 Now, look at perhaps McCabe’s most famous ad: “Drive it like you hate it.” I’ve retyped the copy—the way some people might try to ape Leonardo.

When Volvo came to the U.S. from Sweden in 1956,

Chevy was the “hot one,” Ford was the “safe one” and

Volkswagen was just catching on as the “funny one.”

            We’d like to say that Volvo immediately caught on as

the “tough one.” It didn’t.

            At first only “car nuts” bought it. They figured if a Volvo

could hold up under Swedish driving (no speed limits), survive

Swedish roads (80% unpaved), withstand Swedish winters

(30° below), that a Volvo would hold up under anything.

            They figured right. Volvos were driven right off showroom

floors onto race tracks where they proceeded to win more

races than any other compact ever made.

            Volvos are still winning races. But that isn’t why they’re

bought today. Volvos are being used and misused as family cars.

They’re safe. And on the highway they run away from other

popular-priced compacts in every speed range, yet get over

25 miles to the gallon like the little economy cars.

            Volvo is now called the “tough one.” And it’s the

biggest-selling imported compact in America today.

            You can drive a Volvo like you hate it for as little as

$2565. Cheaper than psychiatry.

Again, packed with facts, not adjectives. And not a single extraneous word or false note. As I re-typed it, 50 years after it was written, there wasn’t a single word, much less sentence I wanted to change.

In fact, the ad served Volvo not for a few weeks, but rather, a few decades. Their brand became the embodiment of McCabe’s copy. Strong. Honest. Practical. Understanding. I have particular hatred for Volvo’s current lifestyle work—partly because it desecrates the soul and meaning of their brand, at least to people my age, who actually make enough money to buy a Volvo.

The third ad, for Perdue. McCabe built a company, and a category. Chickens weren’t branded before he branded Perdue. And he did it with a tough logic and an avian bit of wit.

“It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”

An ethos that survives for Perdue today, even if their current advertising is innocuous and banal.

-->

A swing and a miss.

I got a late start this morning.

While I am usually sitting in my home office and scribbling in the space by 7 or 7:30, I had things I had to do this morning and could not sit down to write.

I tried again--my plan B--in the car I take to work, but again, no dice.

Now I am at my table at work with 12 minutes to go before the onslaught of meetings hits me, and I haven't a thing to write about.

Back when I played for the Seraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League (AA) so many summers ago, I had an extraordinarily bad stretch where I went 19 games, 74 at bats, without a hit--a skein of futility rarely matched at any level.

Hector, the Buddha of the Bush Leagues, was stoical about it.

"You keep swing," he said, "the hit come."

But I kept swinging and missing. A streak not unlike the great DiMag's, only mine was bad, while his was unsurpassingly good.

I fear I'm entering another such fallow period. Perhaps it is the gloomy, for me, time of year, and an almost paralyzing amount of work.

Whatever.

As Hector told me nearly 43 years ago: "You keep swing, the hit come."

Surveillance. Continued.

When I returned home from Iceland Monday night, after a week away, our mailbox was fairly stuffed to the pupik with about 11 or 14 pounds of mail. Most of that mail consisted of thick glossy catalogs featuring skinny models selling things to an increasingly fat population. They were sent by companies I've never done business with and, likely, never will. 

These catalogs will sit around for a few weeks like fallen leaves from an over-grown marketing tree, and then in a cleaning tsunami, they'll be tossed out and make their way to a landfill in Staten Island.

Also, amid this data-driven onslaught was a small but intimidating letter-like-object from the company I work for.

It was one of those faux envelopes designed by an accountant to be two-cents less per thousand to mail. Where you have to have pull apart three sides of tiny perforations--as if you are tiny-handed like our president, or are perhaps a shoe-making elf with the requisite manual dexterity.

This piece of mail looked officious and daunting--Kafkaesque is the word--so my wife beckoned me to go through the baroque labor of opening it.

Inside was an offer to sell me insurance from a third party insurance company.

In other words, my company is selling my private information to third parties to market to me.

Yesterday in the Linked In feed of someone I respect, I saw a notice about a "human data company." Ostensibly a company that uses data to help consumers rather than just sell to them.

I'm not buying.

Data--and someone convince me otherwise--is merely a marketing term (and a good one) for surveillance. We are being stalked by the corporate state 24/7 and sold to constantly.

I don't want my habits, predilections, peccadillos, key-strokes, mouse-and-eye-movements tracked and marketed to.

These practices--cookies, tracking, impossibly Soviet agreements to terms and conditions are marketing, surveillance, gone wild. It's overstepping on the part of marketers--overstepping in jackboots.

I can't be alone in this.

I can't be alone in thinking of Garbo.

I want to be alone.

Reflections from a cold place.

Sunday night, my last night in Iceland, my wife (and I) decided that while we had seen the Aurora Borealis--the Northern Lights--three days earlier, you should never pass up the chance to see them again.

It's kind of like seeing whales in the wild, or a good fireworks display, or Ray Charles when he was alive. You grab whatever chance you have, you roll the dice, and you go for it.

However, in Icelandic, there's an ancient saying:
"ekajonfjoll drotollodottir kfjanhollarson."

It means, roughly translated that "Iceland is one cold mother-fucker." So as we headed out on a 41-foot ship to get away from the light pollution of Reykjavik, my wife and I had on layers, then layers on top of the layers. 

My hat wore a hat.

The ship cut slowly through the frigid water as the other passengers scrambled for seats on the top-most deck. My wife and I had arrived early and had already found our perch.

People were fussing. Fussing with their cell-phone-cameras, fussing with snacks, fussing with their clothing for warmth. One man lost his cell-phone at the bottom of a cavernous pocket. He was fairly apoplectic cursing and fretting over his ill-fortune. Nevertheless, my wife and I settled in and looked at the stars.

I don't know much about astronomy--but I quickly recognized the Big Dipper, vivid like in an astronomical atlas. Further along and low to the horizon, I spotted Orion's Belt. After two hours or so we saw a shooting star. Breathtaking, literally, not in the way a really good tuna-salad sandwich is described by the be-whiskered set.

For whatever reason, the people who ran the excursion decided that they'd interrupt the still of a Sunday night on the water in late November with bad 1960s rock and roll from America.

Hang on, Sloopy, they urged. Sugar, Sugar, they saccarhined. 

I pulled my hats down over my ears, to no advantage. I wanted nothing but quiet--the quiet of the waves and the luster of the silent stars. But popular taste--even at 66-degrees North prevailed.

We saw no Northern Lights that night. Conditions were good on Earth--but solar flares--emanating from our Sun, 93 million miles away refused to cooperate. Some people cursed the Sun--the innocent Sun--and wanted their money back.

I thought a lot in Iceland about the quality of alone-ness. Of being out of the mainstream--away from New York, even away from a tiny Yonkers-sized city like Reykjavik. 

I thought about hopping a flight to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, or Grimsey Island, 40-miles out to sea off the north coast of Iceland. I thought, if only, if only, I were there, with the stars and the quiet, and maybe a good book and Whiskey, a warm sweater and a bit of love, well, how bad could that be.

Now, it is 14 hours later and I am in a shopping-mall-cum-airport about to fly back to New York. A frenzy has gripped so many. The mania to shop, to buy, to consume, to get a bargain, to do the next thing.

Maybe the next thing should be to spend some time doing nothing at all, but looking at the stars and wondering if they are looking at us.

There’s no such thing as precision.

For as long as men have been dropping, or firing, or even throwing ordnance at each other, people with epaulets on their shoulders have called it “precision bombing.”

Precision bombing was tried by both the Allies and the Central Powers during World War One, a trifle over 100 years ago, but abandoned. The promise was way ahead of reality.

In World War Two, all sorts of “advances” were made in precision bombing. Various bomb-sights and electronically-guided rockets and artillery shells were supposed to all-but-eliminate collateral damage. Various droppers-of-bombs claimed accuracy, under certain conditions, of 100 yards, or even 25 yards.

However, by the summer of 1944, by which time the Allies had had a lot of “target practice,” precision bombing was largely a fanciful notion. It took, for instance, 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft German power-generation plant.

In Korea and, later, in Vietnam, despite some success with laser-guided bombs which could strike within 20 feet of the intended target, most of the bombs dropped in those wars came from B-52s, which didn’t even make an attempt at precision bombing.

Precision bombing, we were told, had really arrived by the time we attempted to wipe Iraq off the map in 1991. However, despite their purported advantages over “dumb” bombs, precision bombs accounted for less than 10-percent of the ordnance dropped by American imperial forces.

In Sunday, November 19ths' “New York Times Magazine,” there was an article entitled “The Uncounted.” Here is its subtitle: “An on-the-ground investigation reveals that the U.S.-led battle against ISIS — hailed as the most precise air campaign in history — is killing far more Iraqi civilians than the coalition has acknowledged.”

In other words, precision ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.

This post, however, is not about bombing, though I suppose it could be. It’s about not believing men (they are largely men) who wear epaulets, either real or figurative one. That is the people who issue proclamations.

In marketing, I believe, those who use of the word precision—as in precision-targeting—are as full of bombast and deception as are our generals.

Whether it’s my personal email, my social newsfeeds, or the reprobate marketers who call my various phones—willy-nilly better describes their efforts than precision.

I don't believe, because I have never seen, the right message, to the right person, at the right time. If such precision is more than a chimera, how come it hasn't happened to me, once, in the 20 or so years I've been online?

So as far as precision marketing goes, I’ll be precise about this: I’ll believe it when I see it.