The funny business of change

     I've been freelancing and when I'm not freelancing I'm networking and trying to meet nice, smart people. To confess, the next stage of my career isn't all worked out yet, so I want to learn all I can; I want to gain some perspective; I want to see how other people are doing it. But, my god, it takes work. Before you can have a regular conversation, everyone wants to complain. I don't know if I'd call it cathartic, because when it's time to move on, there's no indication that anyone feels any better than Steven Wright on a rainy day; and, if it were not for an inner sense of timing to send us back to work, I get the feeling it would go on for hours.

     What do we complain about? We complain how the industry sucks, and generally, we get right to the point.

     ME: Hi.

     AD PERSON: The industry sucks, doesn't it.

And just try to start the conversation off on a different note.

     ME: Hey, what about those Yankees? Shame about Jeter, huh?

     AD PERSON: See that, every industry sucks.

     So far I've concluded there's not a single person in the industry that doesn't believe it sucks. Even the maintenance people believe it sucks, but they're not complaining, because if it didn't suck they wouldn't have the high turnover rate of workstations to keep them busy. From what I hear, here's what sucking:

     -Advertising is not what it used to be.

     -Holding companies don't work.

     -Holding companies are run by bean counters.              

     -Holding companies promote account people who don't know how to work with creative directors.

     -Holding companies are the root of all evil.

     -Creative directors are expendable and everyone knows it.

     -It's all about speed over quality.

     -Technology has everyone's head spinning.

     -There are no leaders.

     -Clients don't know how to be partners.

     -The pitch process isn't about finding a good partner; it's about finding the next campaign.

     -The smart ones lost sight of the fundamentals.

     -The dumb ones still don't know the fundamentals.

     -The kids coming out of ad schools don't know the fundamentals and yet know everything.

     -There isn't enough art.

     I could easily go on, but what's the point. We all know there's a lot to grouse about. And believe me, I don't let all these people grouse alone.

     Which brings me to today. Just this morning, I was returning a book to it's place on the shelf – Louise Gluck, Poems 1962-2012 – and I decided to read a poem first – just one poem, any poem. I flipped through some pages and stopped. I could have been presented with page 452, but I got page 361 and these 3 lines:

     "The master said You must write what you see.

     But what I see does not move me.

     The master answered Change what you see."

I quickly set the book on the shelf. Fine, maybe I should shut up and do something about it.

      

The Beaver Who Could Have Written a Sonnet

         A short time ago, a Beaver saw a pretty female preening by the stream and thought she had the cutest set of bucked teeth he had ever seen. Though he had always been a fussy romantic, and quite a rare bird in the animal kingdom, where animals are almost as animal-like as young male humans indigenous to college fraternities, it was true: The Beaver was in love. And his best friend, Bardy, was excited for him.

         “How will you win her over? How will you move her with your passion? Will you carve her a sonnet?”

         “Not me,” said the Beaver, “everybody does THAT!”

         Though the Beaver belonged to the species of New England beavers known as the Beaver poets, he had no intention of doing what the others did when they were in love. Chiseling a poem into the wood of a maple tree seemed unoriginal. He was determined to make an indelible mark on the world. He didn’t know exactly how he would do that, only that he had to do something new.

         He thought and thought and racked his brain until he remembered having learned in history class about the American Indians who sent smoke signals; and then he thought, ‘Now THAT was cool.’ He believed immediately that with his paddle tail, he could send the clearest smoke signals the world had ever seen – an appendage would surely be more controllable than a wet blanket.

         So the next day the Beaver waddled all the way to the top of the mountain, gathered some dry leaves and twigs, sparked a fire and kept his eyes peeled on the valley. When a couple of hours later he spotted her strolling with her girlfriend along the east side of the stream, The Beaver laid his tail over the fire, waited a few beats for the smoke to build up and then unleashed his love into the clean mountain air. The thing was, while a beaver’s tail may not have the nerve endings and hence the sensitivity of the rest of the body, it is not, unfortunately, without feeling, so it burned the Beaver quite a bit more than he anticipated.

         The young females heard an “OwwwOwwwOwwwOwwwwww!” echo across the valley (http://bit.ly/Ynatm3). Recognizing the sound of a beaver in pain, they craned their necks toward the mountaintop and saw a small cotton ball of smoke – and beside the fire, the Beaver, his mouth agape and his incisors to the sky.

         “I have no idea what that crazy beaver is up to. He lifted his tail and smoke came out. Oh my god, I think he farted!”

         The beautiful beaver was repulsed. “Ugh! Can you imagine what that smells like if it smokes!”

         The girlfriend wondered, “Do you think a camper left behind some refried beans? I wonder why it was so painful?”

         “Who cares!” she exclaimed, “Ugh!” And she kept uttering, “Ugh.” Once she elaborated, “That thing could burn a hole through the ozone,” but she followed it with a quivering, “Ugh!”

         And so it was that the connection the Beaver had made was so disgusting, it indeed left an indelible mark on her brain. 

Moral: Be true even if not new; be untrue and they go, "PU!"

Butterflies and hacks.

     The other day, The New York Times ran a piece about two naturalists, Henry Walker Bates and Fritz Muller, whose ideas have led to surprising insights into how evolution works ("Solving the Puzzles of Mimicry in Nature", March 12). Much of their research concerns butterflies. I learned that no group of animals have contributed more to the science than butterflies. Who knew?
     In particular, Bates noticed a species whose bright wing patterns closely resembled other butterfly families in the area. Actually, this species mimics other butterflies – it's what they do to avert prey, because, apparently, to a hungry bird or lizard, these mimicked butterflies look about as appetizing as jellied moose nose.
     So, I get it: Rather than risk having a beauty all your own, they choose to blend in with those who have worked hard to be safe from extinction. Smart little flutterers. I know some creative people like that.
     The other night I saw a spot on TV that anyone would have sworn was the latest work from Barton Graf. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as funny or absurd. A quick search on my iPad informed me that, sure enough, it was created by a mimicker.

     It's the age-old dilemma: Risk rejection and the possibility that a client or boss will have you for lunch for exploring new worlds, or, court acceptance by doing what's already been accepted. Make work that resembles art. Or make art.
     It's funny but in the article, the mimicking butterflies were not even mentioned by name. It's as if they didn't matter enough. It's as if someone thought, "Why give their name if they're not worth remembering?" I mean, we all know what a Monarch butterfly looks like for a reason – it has a singular beauty.
     Make work that is forgettable. Or make art.
     Anyway, the article goes on to say that Muller discovered some other butterflies that were already unpalatable but still mimicked other beauties. Why would a butterfly do that? Well, if there isn't a name for Muller's family of mimickers, I have a suggestion: Coppius Catticus. It's got a nice familiar ring to it.

A captured audience

     I had been entrenched in World War I. I had just finished The Eye In the Door, the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, and while there were many thoughts and images ricochetting in my head, there was this one particular sentence about the poetry sparked by that war – by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves – that emerged from the smoke: "What had intrigued Rivers most was that human beings should respond to the highest mental and spiritual achievements of their culture with the same reflex that raises the hairs on a dog's back."
   Those poets, known now as the 'War Poets,' have become towering figures in literature, certainly in Britain. Their poems hit home and they stay with us. They capture the doom of the soldiers, driven by the remorseless generals into the welter of mud and slaughter. They make you feel the same horror that the soldiers experienced. Listen to this. It's by Wilfred Owen.

     If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
     Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
     And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
     His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin...
     My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
     To children ardent for some desperate glory,
     The old Lie: Dulce et decorum set
     Pro patria mori.

     The Latin is from Horace. I looked it up – it means, "It is sweet and right to die for your country." Yeah.
     So that's what I was thinking about when I visited MOMA the other day. I had forgotten about this particular iconic work being currently on display, but, the point is, there I was, sensitized to some kind of horror, and there IT was:

     I was vulnerable and I got hit.
     So I got to thinking: We're always looking to tap into a topic that is on people's minds, right? We hope that our message, with just the right timing, will feel like serendipity, a coincidental build on something that had been important to them. Do you remember Nike's commercial for Y2K (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhF7dQl4Ico)? That's what I'm talking about. When something like that happens, our message gets compounded and its emotion intensified. That's impact.
 

Post-modern headline goes here.

  By definition, anything post-modern summons up a modern movement or style that it intends to make "post." If, say, the original modern movement is about design and impressionism, the post-modern version would be about collage and consumerism. If we're talking about, say, family life, we could kitsch up "Leave It To Beaver" to display ridiculous dysfunction, version 2012. There's the "modern" part and the "post" part; the subject (family) and the technique (kitsch). Obviously, style has a lot of sway here. Nevertheless, going from a still-life of Picasso's guitar to Warhol's soup can is fun and clever in its criticism of modern life.

  Well, I know that there's an increasing amount of kitsch, absurdism or whatever you want to call it, and it's supposed to be cool and sooo Brooklyn, but I'm bored with it. Juniors want to do Skitttles for American Express, except there's no point. It's just style. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no such thing as originality, so why try to be original when we can be silly, ironical and gestural for the sake of it – I get it. You give up and...'Whatever.'

  But I recently saw a campaign from Sao Paulo for Mitsubishi that alluded to something modern without crossing the line into kitsch.

  When I turned page 31 of my Archive Magazine and saw this ad, I was at first jarred by its datedness – like, 'Was this an old issue?' It reminded me of an old BMW or Volvo ad, just slightly off and dare I say, subtle. The headline read, "Unfortunately, over the years the landscape has weathered more than the car." It's referring to the advertising landscape, but it's also referring to the automobile landscape. The art direction isn't so campy that I remain grounded to the literal; it becomes a metaphor for how other cars are stuck in the past.

  The ad won't win at Cannes or anything, it's not that good, but I found it effective and refreshing to see some restraint from kitschiness. In the wrong hands, style could have easily distracted from the substance and the benefits. In the right hands, Mitsubishi got the balance right, a little bit of craftsmanship enabling a smidgen of sincerity to come through.

  I guess I'm so entrenched in the cynicism of the day that it felt ironic to play off the current trend. I was surprised. Maybe this is post post modernism. Whatever.

Is Bill Bernbach Really Dead?

    I generally don’t interview a junior unless there’s an open position or some extraordinary reason, such as the kid is the son of the holding company’s CEO. But a recruiter friend told me about a VCU grad who had a “writer’s writer book” and “a very interesting story.” The way she said “a very interesting story” intrigued me enough to schedule him in.
       I met Bob, and he actually appeared quite normal – on the thin side, plaid shirt, chinos, and presumably into vinyl. His story began simply enough, too. Since graduating in June, Bob hadn’t yet found a job, having spent many hours working LinkedIn and pounding the pavement until one day, exhausted and discouraged, he sought solace in the New York Public Library. On the third floor’s main reading room, way in the back of the south hall, he found a spot with only one other person at the table. And that’s where Bob saw him – saw, and spoke to Bill Bernbach, the Bill Bernbach.

         “So you’re saying, you had the equivalent of an Elvis sighting with Bill Bernbach? In the Public Library?” I said, with one eyebrow on the top of my head.

         But the kid was serious; he swore he had seen the legend himself. Mr. Bernbach was wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and dark tie – just like he does in old photos and on YouTube. “Hey, no ad guy dresses like that unless they’re in the cast of Mad Men or they’ve been transported from the 1960s,” Bob reasoned.

         Ahh, youth. I remembered one time, in high school, I thought I spotted Bigfoot, but it was only a nightmare in which Cousin Itt attacked me for hitting on Morticia Addams.

         “Bill told me that he had to come back to Earth, said there are so many possibilities these days for creativity that he could not contain himself, even in heaven.”

         “I suppose it must have been difficult for Bill to be in a place where no one has to try harder.” I then glanced at my watch and wondered why I get all the nut jobs.

         Bob continued. He reported that Bill wanted to take a risk and open a new agency…

         “Because ‘the riskiest thing we can do is not take a risk’? I know.”

         “Exactly. So Bill began to network and meet a lot of influential people. The first person he met was a CFO.”

         “A CFO?”

         “Actually, Bill was supposed to meet the head of the network, but the head of the network passed him off, joking that the CFO made all the decisions anyway. Bill described him as having a square forehead, square shoulders and square legs, a very no-nonsense CFO. And while Bill tried to talk about ‘properly practiced creativity,’ the CFO thought he was talking about getting creative people to increase both their workload and their billable hours – being very determined to get those damned round pegs into square holes.

         I knew the type well. For guys like that, a big idea is allowing creatives to make bathroom time billable to food and beverage accounts. “Perhaps that is the new creativity,” I commented.

         “Yeah, it was discouraging for Bill. The second person he met was a CEO. And this CEO started off by testing Bill. Imagine testing Bill Bernbach? He asked, ‘Who, so far, has made the best use of Pinterest?’”

         “How did Bill do?”

         “Having been up in heaven, Bill had a truly global view, so it was easy, and he cited a campaign for UNICEF, where users click on photos from a 13-year old girl in Sierra Leone to see what she needs to live.”

         “How’d that go over?”

         “The CEO complimented him and emphasized how important it was to innovate.”
         “What happened next?”

         “Bill said we shouldn’t be so concerned about being the first to do something, otherwise we get caught up in a race for the next technique, where we’re so anxious to do things differently and do them better and more technologically innovative than the next agency that that becomes the goal of the ad, instead of the selling of the merchandise.”

         “And how’d that go over?”

         “Like a good ad in a focus group – the CEO got all huffy – “You calling me a loser? If there’s a race, Mr. Think Small, then I’m going to be in it – and in it to win big.’ Naturally, Bill moved on.”               

          “Naturally.”
          “And this time he met a CCO who claimed that advertising was dead. Advertising was dead, print was dead and TV was dying, he claimed.”

          “I wonder if he exhibited goth-like tendencies when he was younger.”

         “Could be.”

         Now personally, I don’t think that the death of print is an entirely bad thing. I once had to pick up the September issue of Vogue magazine for my wife and suffered a hernia, so I was curious how Bill would react.

         “Bill asked him if clients aren’t paying us to sell things anymore.”

          I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised that Bill wouldn’t make this a media issue, but I was surprised that Bill’s comment sounded a little smart-assy. “Was Bill losing patience?” I asked.

         ‘“Look,’ Bill said, ‘it comes down to what it has always come down to: The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly. Seriously,’ Bill concluded, ‘Is that dead?’ To which the creative director responded, ‘Bill, you’re over thinking it. There’s a 12-year old mentality in this country and every 18- to 40- year-old has one.’”

         “Bill didn’t like that, huh?”

         “Fortunately, there was a small patch of common ground. The creative director told Bill that it’s all about conversations and Bill agreed, ‘Word of mouth is the best medium of all.’”

         “That’s hopeful.”

         “But, you know Bill – he had to get to the bottom of it:  ‘Word of mouth may be great, but at some point we have to make sure the words are right, define the terms and adapt our techniques to an idea, not an idea to our techniques.”

         “Yeah, well, most conversations are boring. Have you listened to the dialogue on Jersey Shore? I suspect that Snooki’s baby is already speaking at a higher grade level than his mother.”

         “Bill told him, ‘The difference between the forgettable and the enduring is artistry – and there’s no long-lasting persuasion without it. The essence of impact is saying things the way they’ve never been said before.’”

         “Who could disagree with that?”

         “The creative director did sort of agree, insomuch that we establish a point of view and it has the kind of impact that creates an open conversation. And Bill agreed – sort of – if we don’t merely establish chatter about a product but are intentional about revealing part of the persuasive argument in the conversation.”

This was beginning to remind me of a girlfriend I had in my twenties. She was gorgeous and had an incredible body and I so wanted to make it work, but every time she opened her mouth, I was disappointed and only reminded that there was no veering off the path to a breakup.

“Bill told him that being provocative is a good thing, as long as we are sure our provocativeness stems from our product. The creative director became defensive and, as proof of his work’s effectiveness, boasted about the number of ‘hits’ that it always sparks. Well, Bill brought up the whole Pepsi Refresh thing that involved 60 million people but lost 5% of business and told him, ‘You can say the right thing about a product, or a friend can tweet the right thing about a product, and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.’”

         “I suppose the guy didn’t ‘like’ that. (Get it?) So, forget all those people – why can’t Bill get an account and start something on his own?”

         “He said that Sir Martin threatened him with a machete.”

         “Oh my. What’s Bill going to do now?”

         “He said he would return to heaven via Smith & Wollensky’s, wanting first to grab a single malt scotch with Bob Levenson for old times’ sake. In heaven, he said, he could always hang out with Aristotle and talk rhetoric. In heaven, it’s impossible to ignore what we know to be true.”

         The story being over, Bob leaned in and abruptly hit me with, “So, do you have a job for me here?”

         I was impressed. “First of all,” I said, “I liked everything except one thing: C’mon, Sir Martin with a machete? A :45 with a silencer, maybe. Anyway, why’d you make all that up?”

         “Because it was fun. And I wanted to put my thoughts into a story,” Bob answered.

         He was a smart kid, Bob. And after I looked at his book, I told him that, too. “You’re a smart kid, Bob,” I said. “You understand what an idea is. You also understand that ‘Nothing,’ as the great man once said, ‘is so powerful as an insight into human nature,” because your little story managed to hit on a lot of my problems with the current state of the business.”

         Bob’s eyebrows fell a notch – I think he could hear a “but” coming.

         “But,” I said, “I don’t have anything right now for you, unfortunately. The holding company keeps tight reins on our budget, so all I can do is bookmark your site.” Bob seemed to understand. I did ask that he keep in touch, however, and I sincerely hoped that he would. I also advised him to keep his options open. I told him that I would do the same, especially the part about keeping options open. 

A budding planner

In college, my friend Mitch and I would get stoned, make that trek to a frat party across the quad that seemed to go on and on, and play a fun game we called Back Story. I realize now that it’s not a very clever name, but we probably thought it was clever enough, everything being slightly enhanced and all.

Here’s how it worked. First thing was to wend our way to the bar, grab a plastic cup and get a beer. Then we’d locate a spot against a wall that would provide a good vantage point to scope and study the crowd for unsuspecting victims. Of course, given the hazy circumstances, I don’t remember the specifics of any of the games, but I do remember the gist of them. Let’s say, for instance, we spotted a nerd.

“See that guy?” I’d say, “his name’s Elmer.” Elmer was not his real name, of course, but since he looked to be a forerunner of today’s computer geek – which meant, at Lafayette College, that he was an engineer major – he looked like an Elmer.

“Before he went out tonight, he called his mom to ask what he should wear,” Mitch would say.

“Definitely an engineer.” And then, partially because we were in a delusion of increased perception and partially because it was just more fun, we’d add something loopy. “He’s got a twin sister named Edith – Edith and Elmer…uh…

“Norbertwinckle,” Mitch would say.

Now, if you ever got stoned in college you know how important it was to find occasion to giggle at dumb things. “Norbertwinckle” would have satisfied that need.

In terms of the game, whoever would riff the loopiest lines, the whacked-out clincher that could not (no way!) be topped, would win the round and force the loser to fetch more beer.

“Yeah, and Edith and Elmer Norbertwincle are twins. When they were in fourth grade, they had matching pocket protectors.”

                “Nice. You know, just yesterday, I saw Elmer riding across the quad on a brand new bicycle.”

                “Really now?” I’d say with a stupid grin, meaning that, as long as my reality was suspended, I was going to enjoy suspending disbelief.

                “Really. Rumor has it that one night he was walking back to his dorm and a beautiful cheerleader rode up to him on that bicycle. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, ‘Take what you want!’ So he took the bike, figuring her clothes wouldn’t fit him. Really.”

                Bang zoom! Mitch did it again.

                The interesting thing was that while we usually began a round by playing into a stereotype, the subsequent lines, admittedly aided by the cannabinoids, demanded an increased dosage of imagination. The victims became real. Sort of.

                “Oh look, there’s Huxley,” Mitch said to kick off Round 2. Huxley wore a striped rugby shirt, khakis, topsiders, had blond hair – you get the picture: Huxly was a prepster.

                “I heard Huxley sends his rugby shirts to the dry cleaner and has the collar starched permanently up.”

                “I heard that when he was an infant he had baby penny loafers.”

                “I heard he has a plaid bong.”

                “No way – he doesn’t get high.”

                “Fine. I heard his family has a summer house and all the curtains are seersucker.”

                Obviously this could go on forever, but Mitch had a talent for this sort of thing.

                “I heard he formed his own glee club that only sings songs from Frampton Comes Alive,” he’d say.

                Yes, it was a cruel game. I am not proud of it. I even thought twice about admitting to it here, but, hey, this was college and our maturity was up in smoke. I brought it up because I’ve been wondering what happened to Mitch, and, as I reminisce, I think Mitch would make a good planner. He found it fun to put himself in other people’s shoes; he’d be good at bringing the consumer to the forefront of the process and our imaginations. And it would be fun to work on a project together. If I found he wasn’t so good at it, or was just a little rusty, I think I’d know how to loosen him up. And if that didn’t work out, he could always go back to the medical profession. Yes, I heard Mitch became a doctor.