WTF.

Yesterday, I sent H, my account director and recently-licensed psychotherapist (one word) an article I thought would infuriate her from "The Economist."

Much of what I see in our troubled world is because of our societal descent into childish moral absolutism. Millennia ago, we might have called it Manichaeism, the Third Century AD religion embracing a cosmic dualism that saw the world as a constant battle between light and goodness and darkness and evil.

Certainly certainty is to blame here. And amerika's current political discord is evidence of our miasma. Our collective societal intelligence is devoid of nuance and over-flowing with judgment. Any transgression, whenever it took place, whatever the circumstances, and the result is banishment--cancelling.

I've seen buckets-full of this in advertising. Puffed-out pontificators saying "blank is dead," or that advertising's role is to clean the oceans of plastics when advertising as an industry no longer even pays 85-percent of its practitioners a living wage. Worse are those who absolutely believe that some binary gizmo can reach people through math or data science or surveillance, when the only thing that's ever reached people is a well-crafted (that doesn't mean honest) message repeated often.

Just now, I read another article from The Economist. This one on moral ambiguity. A much richer topic than absolutism.

The article grabbed my attention in part because of the photo above. I spent two starlit nights in Verona, Italy's 1st
-century AD Colosseum while at the Verona Opera Festival with my wife. We saw Puccini's "Turandot," and Verdi's "Aida." I've lived about 25,000 nights in my long life. Those two nights were among the best I ever had.

But onto horror, my metier. The Economist article begins this way:

Ouch. 

Today you get workmen's comp from a paper cut. 

But the point of the Economist article is in the Wally Benjamin quotation below. (I was the only one ever permitted to call Walter Wally.)

"There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." And the point is this: 

With the escapism and gelato, you get a lesson in the moral complexity of the past.

Graham Greene, Carol Reed, and Orson Welles said it best, as you'd expect, in this scene from "The Third Man." The best lines come at the end. So it's worth hanging in there for the requisite three minutes.

I realize a post on absolutism versus moral complexity is a little deep-dish for a blog on advertising.

I'm funny that way.

So I'll leave you with this, from Czeslaw Miłosz, a Polish poet, writer, diplomat and Nobel Prize winner.  Supposedly Milosz heard it from an ancient Galician Jew. 

Personally, if I worked again for any agency or holding company, I'd have it painted on the walls and I'd make human resources people memorize it.  They'd probably fire me for that.

It's Not Fun. It's Not Funny. It's Unny.*

I've been neck deep in an assignment for the past month and on Tuesday, the work was presented to the billionaire paying for it.

Billionaires paying you = good.

I didn't go to the meeting. My ex-boss, Steve Simpson went. Ostensibly because the billionaire is quirky as didn't want too many people in the room. I didn't really care, but truth be told (which it seldom is) account people have as many reasons to knock creatives out of a meeting as they do to add account people to the same meeting. Generally speaking, they're uncomfortable with people who aren't scripted. Which, also generally speaking, is people with an actual pulse.

In doing the work for the meeting--the thing I really care about--I added a headline to the mix at pretty much the last minute. It was one of those "perfect" ones. Just teetering on the edge of legal and inscrutable. I can't share it here because the work is still being made.

Because I wrote the line probably 36 hours before the meeting, I never even presented it. I just sent it to the super-talented designer/art director and [voila] it appeared in the deck.

Immediately I started getting text messages. 

"Can we say that?"
"Will so-and-so sue us?"
"I'm not sure about..."

It made people nervous. And we had enough work without this line and didn't really need it. But like I said, it was perfect. So rather than respond to the tsunami and edamame of worries, I just ignored everyone. Their frenzy eventually shifted to something else more important. Like should we center page numbers in the deck or put them in the right-hand corner.

Tuesday was the meeting. And late Tuesday afternoon, the eight people who went zoomed me in to tell me how the meeting went. They all had that "my horse just paid 17-1" gushy enthusiasm. That post meeting elation. Like getting the last bagel left behind in an agency.

The sternest of the group, who in about three weeks I could get to break her granite demeanor but once, was the gushiest. I'll call her "P." 

"You know that ad you wrote? "C," the client couldn't stop laughing. He LOL'd."

I really did say nothing, in sharp contrast to my usual "I told you so" proclivities.

One thing I've noticed through the years is how nervous the world is. Maybe because I'm no longer in the belly of the Madison Avenue beast, I'm more aware of some of the warning signs of horrors of the modern workplace.

When zoom calls are meted out in 25 minute increments, when people arrive a little late and out of breath, when one-third of the words exchanged are "I'm gonna have to drop off after 20 minutes," you know the places you're working with and the people too have a troubled pathology.

They've bought into the notion that the work we do is grave and serious. They've bought into the notion of their own importance. That meetings and the endless lip-flapping around work actually works and makes work better.

They've bought into the notion that somehow laughter and human emotion and reactions run counter to productivity because they've stolen time from what most corporate entities do best, which is worry.

When I have a client and it's more complicated than a moon landing to get them all together to take a look at my work, I know there's a problem.

The problem is this: all people really want from an ad is an idea, something interesting, or a laugh. They'll love you forever if you give them a joke they can share.

We take meetings as if we're stuck inside a boiling cauldron. We look for laughter through a thick slab of seriousness and worry that it will find us.

Get over yourself.

--

* Feedback I once heard from Steve Hayden, reviewing a cut.
Thankfully, not one of mine.

Missing: The News.

Early last week, BBDO received heavy coverage in the advertising trade press. Not only had (friend) Nancy Reyes ascended to Global CEO of the storied conglomerate, the agency had also hired another CEO, Jiah Choi, for its New York and Chicago offices.

What was missed amid all that personnel, or leadership news was the news. In journalistic parlance the trade press news buried the lede. They were so busy covering the "quotidian" that they missed the bit about the decimation of the industry.

In short, they covered the micro.

And they missed the macro.

As readers of this space know, I've spent a lifetime in the industry. And I've followed it like a sports fan. The wins and loses. The comings and goings. The rises and falls. 

BBDO was always, at least to my knowledge a big agency. A thousand or two-thousand person agency in their New York office. Size-wise, they were up there with McCann, Ogilvy, D'Arcy/Benton and Bowles (which morphed into Publicis.) They were one of the big shops. 

There was a time when the trade press reported on the size of agencies, their revenue, their billings, how many people they employed. Whether they were shrinking or growing. 

In fact, nerds like I, would savor the annual listing of who was doing how. A list like the one below came out every year. Some people, like me, saved them for handy reference. Back in 1992, you weren't totally off-base if you inferred one employee for every million dollars of revenue. So according to the number below, you could estimate FCB had had around 2,000 employees and BBDO about 1,600.

Today's ad world, and world in general, lives under the cacophony of 24/7 blather they call news. But we get very little real information about what's going on. You can read, almost every week of the year, about some agency winning some agency of the year award. 

It sometimes seems there are more agency of the year awards than there are agencies. There are certainly more trophies than there are good ads. I think I see fewer than ten "book-worthy" ads a year.

But that's not the point, either.

The point, or question, is this: is BBDO in New York really one-fifth the size it was a decade ago? And if it is, is it an anomaly, or just one-of-many of the shrinking once-upon-a-time behemoths that today are mere vestiges of their once-powerful selves.

Even if my numbers are wrong--and they probably are--and BBDO is down to only half of its peak size, why has this not been reported on? Why has this news been hidden from the public? Is it just this one agency, or is this "shrinkage" endemic? Is anyone bucking the trend? 

Finally, if agencies are really between 40% and 80% smaller than they were just a few short years ago, why are holding company chieftains earning between $10 million and $20 million per annum. Unless shrinkage has been the point all along. Shrinkage = Good for Shareholders.

I'd welcome answers from any agency or holding company scion who is willing to supply them. 

How many people do you employ? 
How many did you employ at your peak?

Same for billings and revenue.

ie, past the distraction of awards, what's really going on?

This blog reaches about 80,000 people a week. My guess is many of those 80,000 people want to know. My guess is that Ad Aged has more ostensible followers than just about any other advertising organ. So, here's a chance to explain things to people. Or if you prefer, make a monkey out of me.

Please, answer.

I'll publish anything anyone legitimate tells me. Just not anonymously.

Too much is being done anonymously already.

A Guest Post from the Next Generation.

Steph Cajucom and I worked together on IBM at Ogilvy starting in 2014 and lasting until 2017.

She was young and I was already old. And also gruff. Steph probably had to report to me on some things and was probably initially intimidated as hell. 

But she did it. And when I worked with her and her ideas and copy, I noticed something. A willingness to work, to listen, to think, to improve, to learn and to push. To push herself and to push back when she needed to.

Steph rose through the ranks at Ogilvy--quickly becoming the MVYP (most valuable young person.) When people would ask me about her, I was ready with a simple, one-sentence epigram that summed up Steph's talent, drive, intelligence and humor.

"Steph is the next generation," I would say. In short order, people would quickly understand.

As she's traveled hither and yon through the ad industry, Steph and I have stayed friends. A couple of weeks ago, we had a Zoom. A friendship/mentor/protegé kind of thing. I said to Steph, why don't you write a post for my blog.

Unlike most people who are [er] dilatory when I make the offer, Steph leaped at it. (She's a leaper after opportunity.) It's below. And it's great and wise. 

If you're a muckety-muck and you need great people, you need Steph. If you're a young person trying to make her way in an industry, you need Steph. If you're a client and you're tired of agency-complacency, you need Steph.

Here, first, are two pictures from Steph's garden. Followed by her "Clip and Save" post.

What Happens When I Water My Flowers.

What happens when I water my flowers is that they grow. No, they flourish. Because when I water my flowers and care for them, they thrive. 

What happens when I pay attention to my flowers? When I notice their leaves are wilting on a scorching hot day. Or that they’re turning yellow because I watered them too much. What happens is they feel cared for. They feel healthy. So their limp leaves fill up with life. Their stems stand tall. They take up space. From their roots to their petals. They reach for the sun and stretch as far as they can go. 

What happens when I make sure my flowers get sunshine? When I move them from the darkness into the warmth of the light — they get richer. Their colors get deeper. They bud and make basil. Or thyme. Or tomatoes. They feel happy and fulfilled so they produce happy. Because happy is contagious. And they have enough happy to share, to give, to grow elsewhere while still having some for themselves. 

So why in the fuck are we talking about flowers on George Tannenbaum’s advertising blog? And who the hell is this? 

Well, thanks for asking. I’m Steph Cajucom. A writer, group creative director, and creative person who’s had the pleasure of working for George and the endless honor of having him as a mentor/ad-dad. But back to your first question. We’re talking about flowers because as a creative, I very much feel like one. I feel like we all are. We’re living, breathing things that need sunshine, water, food, attention, and care to grow. And as a creative leader, I want to give that to my teams, mentees, colleagues and clients, so we can all grow together. So we can be our best, happiest selves and make the best work we can.

And for 14 years. 14 FUCKING YEARS. I forgot to water my own damn flowers (the figurative kind). I hit the ground running to build my career. I started as a receptionist at mcgarrybowen and split time working the desk with working as a creative until 2 years in I officially became a copywriter. And from there, I continued my sprint. Giving the water for myself to hours of decks, presentations, shoots, rewrites, headlines, and bonus ideas. I gave all my attention to every idea, every agency, every colleague, every work-related thing. I rid myself of sunshine, except for cigarette breaks and dog walks, because the work needed the sunshine more than I did. It needed it more than that vacation to Montreal or my best friends’ birthday parties or, at its worst, a funeral. Because dedication meant sacrifice. Commitment meant masochism. 

And yes, I am extremely thankful for the opportunities, the work made, the lessons learned in that sprint. But after 14 years, it took a toll. I found myself barely standing as a limp, lifeless flower. Petals on the ground. Leaves sweeping the dirt. Producing what I did not even have to give. 

So what did I do? 

I stopped. Took a pause. And started to learn how to water my own flowers. 

 

It started with talking to mentors, colleagues, my therapist, and maybe a psychic (but we’ll save that story for another time). Their words of wisdom, support, and care felt like oxygen. Like water. Like the thing I needed to bring life back to my leaves. Like a thing I continuously need to feed my growth. 

I started making more time for things I love. My family. My friends. Walking. Reading books. Going to museums. Exploring. Watching absolute-trash-reality-TV. All the things I need to both ground myself and grow my inspiration. 

I’m focusing on my health, for once. Taking up yoga. Taking breaks for walks. Real walks, not just cigarette or dog walks. EATING MEALS instead of strapping myself to a seat and a laptop for 12 hours straight. I’m finding more ways to stop treating myself like a machine and start treating myself like a living, breathing thing. Like a flower that needs humanity to grow. 

And I’ve started my own thing. I’m not sure what this thing is yet. A creative consultancy perhaps. An LLC for freelance. A platform to connect up-and-coming talent to mentors, recruiters, and more. Maybe it’s all of it. Maybe it’s none of it. But what it is, for sure, is a way to work that doesn’t kill you because it puts people first. Because when you put people first you get the best work. You get true growth. In every aspect. Instead of a bunch of wilted flowers trudging along, you get flowers that are reaching for the sun, stretching as far as they can go. 

So all of this is to say — as you move forward in your career, please don’t forget to water your flowers. 

Teddy the Toad.

My wife is quick to remind me to lighten up.

Sometimes after reading a few of my posts, about global systems collapse, the rise of authoritarianism or Mark Read's suits which are always one-size too small, she'll say, "George, it's almost Friday. Take your foot off the gas, already. Lay off the gloom. Write something funny, or slight, or uplifting."

I'd love to.

But, damn, funny is hard. I'm much better at misery.

And I've had more practice.

That said, I'm right now about one-third of the way through a book called "The Jazz Men" by Larry Tye. As I've written so often, the story of amerika is the story of race and this book makes that clear. Here's a paragraph from a review of the book in the strictly-paywalled Wall Street Journal that will explain what I mean and just maybe send chills down your spine, if you still have one.

One of my strengths, or weaknesses as a human, is that I turn almost everything I read, hear, taste, smell, and see into fodder for my writing and my profession. While I read The Jazz Men, I'm highlighting passages. Then I go back to the highlights and download recordings mentioned in the book by the people who populate the book. 

It's a good way to learn.

To learn is to be alive.

For the past couple of weeks I've been partnering on a large assignment with my ex-boss from Ogilvy. While I was ECD and Head of Copy, 'S' was Chief Creative Officer. My position was subordinate. He had achieved great advertising fame. And I had to carry a lot of water for S and the agency.

A lot of creative people didn't get along with S. To inspire people he used neither carrot nor stick. He set a standard and you had to meet or surpass it. That was on you. If you took the job seriously you were fine. If you phoned it in, or waited for someone else to step up, you were fricasse.

As I've written in this space before, when you work with or for people better than you it makes sense to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. I've worked with a handful of geniuses or genius-adjacent people in my life, from my baseball manager from 50 years ago, Mexican League Hall-of-Famer (as a player and a manager) Hector Queztacoatl Padilla (aka Hector Quesadilla) to Amil Gargano, Mike Tesch, Chris Wall, Steve Hayden, Steve Simpson, Errol Morris and Joe Pytka. If you're working with them, and you're not taking notes you're screwing yourself and your future.

This morning, I was thinking about S's style of writing and his style of creative direction and his style of improving things. I am vastly more prolific than S. S has the skill and the distance to nudge my work better. 

I was thinking about that as the song, "Teddy the Toad" as rendered by Count Basie and his Orchestra and writ by Neal Hefti sometime in the 1950s came through my ear buds.

I really don't know anything about music.

But Teddy taught me something about creative direction and S's style. The orchestration is lush. The band is full. There's not  much of Basie in the piece. It's trombones and other brass. But listen. Listen. Particularly after :25, when there's little Basie at all. Listen at least from :50 to 1:20. You'll hear what I mean.

Every 20 notes there's a tinkle.

Basie.

Wit. Pace. Irreverence. Dissonance. A smile.

A sound byte. That's all. 

A touch. Understated.

That makes the piece great.

Elevates it.

Basie.

Creative Direction.

Happy Friday.

Working at Working.

I've always loved swimming, ever since I was a little boy. 

I learned to swim in the turbid waters of the Long Island Sound from some strapping Italian kid my mother probably paid a dollar an hour. I also learned at the YMCA on Mamaronck Avenue in White Plains, which I found out a few years ago, was segregated, no Black people allowed in the pool, when I was learning way back in 1961.

The reason I bring up swimming is that there are styles to getting into the water. Some people hike up their metaphorical trunks and leap in. Or they run full-speed ahead into the drink. Other people tiptoe in on little cat's feet. It might take them an hour.

No matter how you get wet, however, if you want to swim, you have to get wet.

I think when it comes to advertising, a lot of ad agencies, ad people and clients don't understand that.

You can't swim, if you only get in up to your waist.

Many clients (and agencies) come to me for ads and advice. Once we agree to a scope and a fee, I get to work. Whatever they've gotten before from their agency or their creative people, they'll likely get more from me.

I don't believe advertising should wade in only waist-deep. I don't like always-on inundation. The always-on bit is usually an excuse to produce a lot of shit. Not a lot of value.

Advertising, when it's good, is fun and good. It helps people make decisions and learn something about what they're thinking of buying. Also, when it's good, it's usually based on a strategy that allows a certain degree of prolific-ness. If the strategy is sphincter crushing, you can't do a lot of work. If the strategy is strong, ideas beget ideas.

With all that in mind, I'm repurposing a blog I wrote at the start of the year about how to be a blogger. 

I'll start with this chart. 
There are four ways you can show up as a brand, a creative or an ad agency.

1. Active-Positive. Energetic brands doing generally good things.
2. Active-Negative. Energetic brands doing generally bad things.
3. Passive-Positive. Lazy brands who do generally good things.
4. Passive-Negative. Lazy brands who suck.

Here's how to be in the right, or upper-right, box. Where you do good stuff and a lot of it.

 

1. If you're in the "content business," be in the content business. Make content your job. Make being interesting, thoughtful, controversial, provocative, dumb, funny your job. 

 

Most of what's important in life is not something you can do as a dilettante. You can't be a friend on a part-time basis, or a partner, or even a co-worker. I'm pretty sure the Cubs' Hall-of-Fame short-stop Ernie "Let's Play Two" Banks, never phoned it in. 

 

Creativity and commitment to readers, viewers, customers, clients is about commitment. All of the time. Not when the mood hits you.

 

2. Put your readers up on a pedestal. Dilettantes care more about their perceived performance than what they do for others. Serious people care more about their audience than they do their egos.

 

That doesn't mean you pander to them. Ever. It means you do your best always.

 

In fact, I'll go a step farther. The central issue in communications in the era of artificial intelligence, the central issues for communicators, brands included, is this: "How much do your care for your audience?" 

 

It is surely easier and cheaper to press a button and have a machine produce a skein of cliches, hoary images and banalities. If you doubt this for a moment, look at all the brands that are perfectly OK with running a video with "auto-generated" captions. 99.999999999999-percent of the time there's a major subject-object split between what's said and what's captioned.

 

Who cares, right? 

 

Except semiotically--that is, what such performance shows--is an utter disregard for people. If you don't care, it shows.  

And, again, 99.999999999999-percent of communications show they don't care. No matter who, what or how they're written. Whether it's Bob or Bot.

 

3. Read. Read. And read some more. The key, the one key, the only key to being good at writing is reading. Reading.

 

Reading leads to riches. Interesting things to say. Interesting ways to say it.

 

I just read these sentences from a book review in the weekend Wall Street Journal. I learned some things. And enjoyed the writing. I like a good list and a good nickname. I'll probably steal from this someday.

"The trouble with Times Square dates to the late 1960s crime sprees that threatened the very future of the area as a commercial office zone. The downward slide continued through the 1970s and early ’80s. In early 1978, Ms. Sagalyn reports, there were 40 pornographic-movie houses, 54 bookstores, 30 topless bars and live sex shows, 63 massage parlors and 33 'prostitution-prone' hotels. In 1981, the police started patrolling the pavement west of Seventh Avenue, deploying helmeted tactical patrol officers wielding batons—the feared Hats and Bats unit."

Try reading. It will usually improve your writing. Or at least give you "Hats and Bats".

 

4. Understand that what you do is important.  What you say matters. How you say it matters, too.

 

Not long ago, Frank Bruni wrote an important article in The New York Times called "Our Semicolons, Ourselves." If you care about communication at all, you ought to read it.

 

 

If I ran a holding company, or even something as picayune as a global ad agency, or even a department or a group within an agency, or if I were involved in a client relationship, I would make it required reading. Assuming anyone can read anymore--or blithely (and stupidly) doesn't remark TL/DR, which essentially means, "it's too much work to get smart."

 

All that leads me to believe that of the roughly 80,000 readers this blog gets every week, about 12 people will read this. That's how much the modren world cares about reaching people and influencing them.

 

Bruni quotes University of North Carolina professor, Molly Worthen. (Agencies, take note. That is if you're not to busy with your latest lust of self-congratulation for yet another $49.99 Triple Play Bundle commercial, or Winter Sale-a-Thon.)

Worthen notes that “transmitting ideas into written words is hard, and people do not like to do it.” [But] "someone who performs that task gladly, quickly and nimbly in most cases ends up the default author, the quarterback to whom others start to turn, out of habit, for the play.”

In terms of advertising and brand communications, if you communicate well--people begin to listen--and respect you. 

However, agencies, and most clients (those who don't hire me) forget this part: "The clarity, coherence, precision and even verve with which you do that — achieving a polish and personality distinct from most of what A.I. spits out — will have an impact on the recipients of that missive, coloring their estimation of you and advancing or impeding your goals."

 

In other words, Bruni writes "Good writing burnishes your message. It burnishes the messenger, too." Or as I've used as my tagline since 2020 when I was fired from Ogilvy for being TL/DR or TS/TM (too smart, trouble-maker) "Good writing is a business advantage."

 

I'll say that last bit again because good writing also bears repeating: "Good writing is a business advantage."

 

If you're a potential client reading this and you're not working with me, call me. I won't repeat my tagline for a third time.

 

If you're an agency and you're not working with me, nyeah nyeah nyeah.

 

5. Give yourself a brief. A hard one. In our currently boundary-and-hierarchy-less era, so much writing is 'anything goes.' There are no rules and for much of the 'page,' no end of the page. What's more, so-called responsive design (which isn't responsive to either the needs of readers or writers) doesn't even allow for proper line breaks.

 

It's up to you to force a discipline on yourself. The almost-daily ads I do for GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, are a good example of what I mean. 

 

They follow a format.

They have to tell a joke in about eight words. That's the length that works according to their design. 

 

Writers used to know things like this. Approximately how much time people are willing to waste without a pay-out. Today, most writers make the giant mistake of thinking people care. It reminds me of trying to watch sports on TV. There's so much announcer-blabberating that you can hardly see the game.

 

In other words, pay attention to how you're treating the viewer.

 

6. Do something. Do something different. I sat in many a casting session with Academy Award-winning director, Errol Morris. During my first, I expected to witness genius. What I heard were those to sentences over and over again.

 

So much of being interesting is actively doing something different. But it's not enough just to be different. I don't think mustard-flavored ice cream or a gingerbread ATM makes a lick of difference in the real world. Different has to be substantive or it's just a stunt. 

And substantive takes thinking, invention, creativity and meaning. Not just standing on one foot and whistling Dixie. That takes work. 

 

I dunno. 

It makes sense to me.

 

7. Basics. If you want to be like, if you want your brand to be liked, "do exactly what it says on the tin."

 

Make a promise. Keep a promise.

Don't rely on an algorithm to keep people happy.
They never will and they never can. 

Don't call people targets.
Or saturate them with so many dumb messages that they feel they've been marketing cluster-bombed.

Try a little respect.

Of intelligence.

Of their throes.

Of their lives.

Kindness is nice too.

Human-kindness. 

Not a machine-learning grimace.