The biggest issue confronting advertising today.

Today everyone knows that everything is a lie. Communication, whether its a TV spot, a tweet or a fart-o-gram, it's a lie.

We don't believe our government whether that government is dimmycrat of repulsican. We don't believe in why teenagers are dying in lands 10,000 miles away via weaponry American companies have sold overseas. We don't believe that the economy and the massive infusions of capital we were told were going to revitalize it will do anything for any but the super wealthy. We don't believe that Doritos are now nacho cheesier. Or that elections will be fair. Or even that football is anything other than uniformed brain damage.

Every day our inboxes are flooded with lies called spam. On television we see unreal people promoting unreal products with unreal benefits. It's all a bunch of lies. Every computer we buy has been first marked with a "come-on" price that is a lie. Every car, every phone contract, every airplane seat, every promise about taxes and budgets and unemployment statistics and growth in the economy.

No one believes anything. Why should they.

We as an industry should be thinking about re-creating trust. Re-introducing honesty. And putting blather and bombast to rest. Nope. Every week for the last 2,000 or so, we've had the biggest sale of the year. I guess we like it this way.

My blood is boiling.

There's an item on the news today that British Petroleum--an ugly company with a beautiful logo--is being fined an OSHA record $87 million dollars for shoddy maintenance and safety measures that resulted in an explosion that killed 15 workers in a Houston-area refinery.

We are supposed to feel that this fine (which BP is fighting) is just recompense for BP's history of criminal negligence.

In 2008, BP earned $25.6 billion in profits.

The OSHA fine they received is 1/3 of 1% of those profits. Equivalent to someone making $100,000 being fined $300. For killing 15 people.

Tried and true meet dumb and dumber.

I just read a theater review of a new production of Sophocles' "Antigone" in The New York Times. It said the director Anne Bogart is a "member of the New York avant-garde establishment."

This line really struck me as an example of what is wrong with our "creative community." Almost by definition, you can't have an avant garde establishment. The minute you are part of an establishment, you are no longer avant garde.

One of the phrases I often jab clients with is an oxymoron of my own creation: "proven breakthrough."

Here's the deal clients and agencies, you get one or the other. If you want avant garde and breakthrough, you don't get establishment and proven. My point, I hope, is simple: Creativity is the result of experimentation. It's grasping the un-explored and hoping its surprise and intrusiveness will be salutary. You can't do that in a risk-free way. Despite agency committees, client conferences, focus group insights, the reports from Dynamic Logic and the "intelligence" of best practices, there is no creativity without risk.

A marketing mystery.

Working in a big city ad agency you tend to work for big clients who have sophisticated marketing organizations with MBAs running up and down the hallways like roaches in Spanish Harlem when the lights come on.

Why is it then that some of the best marketing ideas seem to come from people who aren't professional marketers? This one comes from the man pictured above, Otto Penzler and was reported recently in The New York Times. Penzler owns and runs The Mysterious Bookshop here in New York City, and he didn't want to be eaten alive like most every other independent bookseller in the country.

So, "he began commissioning annual Christmas stories from popular crime writers and giving out free copies of these stories as thank-you gifts to the shop’s customers." Boy, talk about a CRM strategy! This year, Penzler "had an even niftier idea... He lined up some of the most famous mystery novelists around and asked them for 10-page riffs about their best-known characters."

Now Penzler has taken those riffs and published via Little, Brown & Company a 402-page omnibus of these stories.

You can't hardly spit these days without hitting a big box bookstore. But I'm betting that a guy like Penzler won't go down without a pretty vigorous fight.

The big 3.

The "big three" automakers used to be the "big four." American Motors (which had previously combined two failing automakers) went out of business, or was subsumed by Chrysler about 30 years ago.

I started thinking about this last night as I read IPG's report on its diasterous 3rd quarter, in which its total revenue fell by over 18% and total number of employees fell by 5,000 people. This data made me ponder, will IPG be Madison Avenue's American Motors?

On a lark, I went to interpublic.com and read Interpublic's online "profile." I wonder how close it was to American Motors in its waning days. To that end, I've re-written IPG's profile as if it were an automaker.

IPG (Original):
We are one of the world’s premier advertising and marketing services companies. Our agency brands deliver custom marketing solutions to many of the world’s largest advertisers. We cover the spectrum of marketing disciplines and specialties, from public relations and consumer advertising, to mobile and search engine marketing.

American Motors (in my mind.):
We are one of the world’s premier auto-making companies. Our automotive brands deliver custom automotive solutions to many of the world’s largest countries. We cover the spectrum of automotive category specialties, from trucks and cars, to four-wheel-drive vehicles.

My father dies and dies again.

When my father turned 46 he had a very rough year. He was convinced that this was the year he was to die because 46 was the age at which his father died. Somehow that symmetry made utter sense to my father. He was really little different from the ancients who read entrails or saw signs in eagles swooping or ravens flying. He believed that his death was pre-ordained and he would be struck down some time over the next 12 months.

My father wore his emotions on his sleeve but despite that, he was a lousy communicator. For virtually the whole year it was clear that something was worrying him, something was going on inside his head that was tying him up in knots, but no one could get at what it was.

The thing about believing you’re pre-destined to die at a certain time, the good thing about it that is, is that you are relieved of a lot of responsibility. There’s no reason to exercise or to stop smoking or to stop having five or six drinks every night. If you’re going to die anyway, what’s the point? Why fight it? Go with the flow. So that’s exactly what my father did, living his 46th year in as sybaritic a fashion as he could afford.

Some years earlier than this, when I was just about eight or nine, was the closest I had come to facing death. My father took me from our house in Yonkers to Philadelphia to go to the unveiling of his mother’s tombstone on the one-year anniversary of her death. He took me, not my older brother, and went without my mother. None of which I thought about at the time. He just told me we were going and we got into his 1962 Ford Country Squire station wagon with the red interior and went.

My mother must have backed out of going at the last minute because she didn’t like my father’s family. There were probably words over this, but my mother's inertia prevailed. As a consequence we were running late and had to leave the house in quite a hurry and without lunch. I remember stopping at a white brick Mobil gas station just over the George Washington Bridge on the Jersey side. Mobil’s symbol at the time was a red Pegasus horse and I could hardly take my eyes off of the creature. A winged horse as we flew through New Jersey.

They had a sandwich machine in the little office of the gas station and though the notion of eating a sandwich out of a machine in a gas station in New Jersey sounds pretty distasteful, somehow, either because I was very hungry or because I was pleased to be alone on a trip with my father, the sandwich was outstanding. I think it cost forty-five cents.

When we finally got to Philadelphia where my grandmother’s tombstone was being unveiled, my father parked the station wagon and told me to sit tight in the car and not open the doors for anyone. He then left me there because he was afraid the scene at the cemetery would be upsetting to me. I sat alone and looked out the window at the red brick wall that ran around the graveyard. I was somewhat scared by the large and gloomy trees that lined the streets. Where I lived, the trees were spindly. These however were wet with rain and their leaves hung low, casting shadows. Between the looming trees and the mossy brick walls and sitting in the car alone for what seemed like a long time, I remember feeling very alone. I wished I had a winged horse and I could fly and find my father.

That was all some years earlier and now, some years later, my father was convinced that he was going to die. As each month of his 46th year elapsed, my father was more convinced that this was the month his number was up. Finally, after 12 increasingly stressful months, my father had somehow made it through the entire year without perishing.

I suppose as an homage to surviving his pre-ordained last year on Earth, my father decided to once again to travel the 90 or so miles to Philadelphia to visit the graves of his parents. It was while he was there that he discovered that his father hadn’t died when he was 46 but rather he died when he was 50. 50, not 46.

It wound up that my father didn’t die for another 27 years. Yet we had no more trips alone together to Philadelphia or to anywhere else for that matter. And when my father turned 50 and believed it was time for him to die again, I had already left my parents’ house for college. So he had to worry about dying when his father did all by himself.

Twitter, the musical.

My friend over at the Ad Contrarian (http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/) predicts that someday there will be a Twitter Musical. I decided to jump the gun and write what is sure to be a hit song from that yet-to-be-staged extravaganza.

"I Twitter Therefore I Am."
(Plaintively.)
How can I tell
My relations and friends,
The things that I’m doing,
My life without end?

The burgers I’m eating,
The shoes I just bought,
Doing the things,
An egotist ought.

How can I chronicle,
Every move, every cough?
And prove in the process,
I’m always on, never off?

It’s all about me,
I’m the world’s epicenter,
It’s all about me,
I’m not just a venter.

I am important,
Only I matter,
I am as key
As a fireman’s ladder.

I sum up my life,
In 140 character bursts,
You know all my lasts,
And you’ll know all my firsts.

It’s all about me,
I’m the measure of things,
When it comes to self-centered-ness
I’m the king of all kings.

Oh,
I tweet, therefore I am,
Oh, tweetito ergo sum,
I’ll tweet and I’ll tweet and I’ll then tweet some more,
I wish I had more room.
I'm sure I'm a bore.

REFRAIN
It’s all about me,
I’m the measure of things,
When it comes to self-centered-ness
I’m the king of all kings.

I am so interesting,
Follow me, follow me,
The things that I do,
Oh, the things that you'll see.

My cab ride was bumpy,
My dinner was cold,
I called to complain,
And they put me on hold.

and out...

My father shows me the ropes.

When I was around 12, it was decided I needed to get a job. Getting one would teach me things like responsibility and the value of a buck. I would know what it was like earning a living by the sweat of my brow and the muscle of my arm.

Further, when I was 12, kids had free-time. Or at least I did. My day wasn’t scheduled with activities like soccer practice or piano lessons or, really, anything else. So, lest I hang out after school and thus get into trouble, I was to get a job.

And so it was that I answered an ad in our neighborhood six-day-a-week evening paper “The Daily Argus” to become a paperboy. Not only did you get something like three cents a house a day for delivering your paper, you also got to keep all your tips (these were the days in which, for the most part, women didn’t work, so they were at home to answer the bell and for tips.) There was also a chance, though I never quite figured out how this part worked, to earn “valuable prizes,” I guess for signing up new subscribers or something.

In any event, after a few weeks of waiting, I got a route not far from my parents’ house. It was a short route, as I remember it, of just 43 homes, though that went down to 41 for Saturday delivery because two houses went away for the weekend. As a paperboy, you had a route book, a bag which could hold the papers you had to deliver and a little collection bag, canvas with a heavy brass zipper, for when you collected payment from the houses on your route. You’d take all that money, ride your bike over to the newspaper office where they would count it and give you your three cents per house per day.

You had to keep all the records straight in your route book. That is, I delivered to the Mihailovich’s every day, they paid for the week and gave me a 25-cent tip. That was the way it worked. If everything went smoothly, you could make $10 or $15 a week, (3 cents times 43 homes times 6 days plus tips.) And if you got lucky and had someone like Mrs. Skinner on your route, you were in clover. She gave a dollar tip every week no matter what and sometimes even a couple of cookies as well.

A lot of times things didn’t go right. The guy from the newspaper office would drop the papers on your corner and would give you 39 instead of 43. Then you had to ride your bike home and call for your missing papers and wait. Also, you might catch hell from a customer if you delivered the paper late. They would say things like, “The old paper-boy always had the paper here by 4:15.” It was a politer era, of course, and we didn’t dare say the things we wanted to say.

Then there were the days of rain, snow or howling cold. The newspaper company drummed into us the idea that newspaper delivery was an august responsibility. We should keep in mind Herodotus who wrote: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” We were the couriers—the grease that kept the wheels of democracy spinning. Somehow the wheels would stop if we didn’t deliver the paper one rainy day.

But the toughest part about being a paper boy was the distance between the street and the stoop. Jumping off your bike, running up the walk and then back again was a time killer. If you wanted to get through your route and still have some time to goof around with your friends, you had to toss the paper from the street to the stoop. This is where my father excelled.

One evening with a paper that was laying around he showed me how to efficiently fold it into thirds and then tuck the shorter third into the open end of the longer third. Once you had that conquered, you smacked the paper loudly on your thigh. Smack. The paper was now officially folded and ready for tossing. Now you repeated this 43 times or so, filled your paper bag and went off on your route.

The old people in the neighborhood hated when you tossed the paper. So did the newspaper company. I guess they thought that it looked slovenly, or that the paper would wind up in the bushes or coming apart, or that somehow, “we were beating the system” by figuring out a way to not have to get off our bikes and run up the walk.

But to my father, my tossing the paper was everything. It allowed me to break the rules, make more money faster and incorporate his wisdom into the process. That was basically everything he admired. On the few days he was around when I was tossing papers, there was hardly any sound he like hearing more than hearing me slap of the paper against my leg. He had taught me something.

Ah, hubris.

This from David Brooks of The New York Times.

"Humans are overconfident creatures. Ninety-four percent of college professors believe they are above average teachers, and 90 percent of drivers believe they are above average behind the wheel. Researchers Paul J.H. Schoemaker and J. Edward Russo gave computer executives quizzes on their industry. Afterward, the executives estimated that they had gotten 5 percent of the answers wrong. In fact, they had gotten 80 percent of the answers wrong."

A history lesson.

Right now I am about 7/8ths of the way through a wonderful book called "The Poison King, The Life and Legend of Mithradates Rome's Deadliest Enemy." Adrienne Mayor, the author makes the whole thing very readable and very learnable-from.

What I think makes this history fascinating is its congruence to the world today. I'm not talking about the seismic struggle between East and West or superpowers vs. rogue states. I see parallels to these struggles which took place around 85 BC to the advertising industry today.

Let's think about Lucullus, a Roman emperor as a holding company. Basically what Lucullus did was conquer cities (agencies), enslave people (those with jobs), rape people (those without jobs) and send almost unimaginable riches back to his home base. Also, to extend the metaphor, if an enemy general was captured, he wasn't usually killed right away. First he was paraded into Rome as a symbol of that which was taken over and then he was killed. Think about the heads of agencies subsumed by holding companies and then essentially castrated by those holding companies. One more thing is compared to the number of soldiers killed (The Mithradatic Wars were notoriously bloody) very few generals lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers might perish for every general. That's kind of the way it seems in agency layoffs.

Finally, and I guess there's some perverse satisfaction in this, empires go belly-up. The territories they've conquered break off and re-establish themselves. At which point the whole megillah will begin again.