Thursday, July 31, 2008

"Mwa, mwa, mwa," we go.


Last week I went to the emergency room, visibly shivering, not quite with chattering teeth, but had I not been sick it would have been spastic. In the previous 9 hours I had visited the bathroom something like 587 times. 

"How are you feeling?" asked the nurse at reception.

"Freezing."

"You have a fever?"

I gave a small grunt to indicate, 'Yes.'

"Okay, let's see, " she says, as she pokes an instrument in my ear. Now I don't know why she is poking something in my ear–it's not my ear that hurts–but I don't have the energy to question her. Actually, the way that I feel, I would let her poke me with whatever she wants–she could poke my naval with a lead pipe and I would not squirm. But then she says, "102. Yes, you have a fever." So I guess it was an ear thermometer.

I shiver up and down to indicate that I heard her.

"Have you thrown up?"

I shiver from side to side to indicate, 'No.'

"Do you have diarrhea?"

I shiver from up to down.

"When did you first start having diarrhea?"

"11:00."

"And since then, about how many times have you gone to the bathroom?"

"22."

"22 times?"

I shiver from up to down.

"You counted?"

Because each visit was a memorable experience, I shiver from up to down.

"Thank you," she says.

I shiver from up to down.

"Very good," she says.

I shiver from side to side, because this is NOT good.

"Okay, let's get you to a room with its own bathroom."

I nod to indicate, 'Yes, that is a good idea because even though we are in a hospital, the idea of not making it to a bathroom in time to avoid soiling my adult self frightens me.'

I am escorted to my room, I take off my clothes and put on one of those gowns that tie in the back and I lie down. To keep me warm, I get myself under a thin faded cotton sheet instead of the 8 blankets that I am looking for. After 5 minutes the doctor walks in reading my chart.

"How are you feeling?"

I think, 'What, is he testing me? He has my chart.' But to be civil, I respond, "Freezing." 

"And I see you have diarrhea."

It was reassuring to know that my doctor could read. I shiver from up to down.

He asked a few more questions, but the point is, the dialogue, once again, showed off my eloquence. Then the doctor told me what the prognosis was–that, basically, it was a virus for which I could do very little except let run its course. He expounded on viruses, but I didn't hear much of what he was saying. I was disappointed. To be honest, once he told me that there wasn't a pill he could give me or a miracle he could perform, my mind turned inward. He gave me tips on how to stay hydrated–I remember hearing, "Gatorade" and "water" and thinking, 'Yeah right, doc, like you want me to give this unfriendly alien in my lower intestine something to drink only so it could spit the stuff out, are you kidding!' but mostly, he sounded like an adult in a Charlie Brown cartoon–"Mwa, mwa, mwa."

Looking back on it, I thought about all those people we try to talk to that are in pain, the target of a lot of pharmaceutical advertising. Pain is distracting. Pain is preoccupying. Pain is totally self-centered. And, Pain wears the hell out of us. How do you talk to someone with Pain?" You make one simple point at a time. And keep to short sentences. Even punchy fragments.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Stopping at a light and thinking about creative direction.

I was recently driving along and wondering what the subject of my next post would be, when I was reminded of an article I read a few years ago about how the brain develops. (I don't remember the exact article but I do know that it alluded to research by Dr. Harry T. Chugani, about whom there is lots of related information.)

It seems that our brains have these synapses, junctions between various transmitter cells along which all the information that goes toward stimulating ideas must pass. When we are infants, a new one is established with almost every new idea, but after awhile, we begin to run out of room and a way to organize a whole mess of them, so our brain gets very practical. It cuts down on the number of new pathways and develops the ones that get the most traffic. By the time we reach our early teens, our brains have half as many of these connections that we did when were three. Some of them have atrophied and withered away, while the other pathways become important to us.

These are the roads that receive the most traffic, the ones that develop and become most productive, where information stimulates a receptor, the receptor gets excited, and sparks fly – "Eureka! I have a great idea!" Shakespeare had a language superhighway; Beethoven a music
superhighway. Of course not all roads are superhighways. When information travels along the back roads, these neurotransmitter vehicles don't move as quickly, nor can those pathways carry the same load. But on the highways, well, the highways allow for the big 18-wheeler ideas.

For a creative director–for any manager, for that matter–the implications, I think, are pretty clear.

The only way to assume someone is working at full capacity is to make sure she is working on her four-lane highways. If we could direct a creative person down one of those highways, she would have a good chance at flourishing. On the other hand, what if we directed her according to our own tastes, the way we would do it, or according to the creative-award-style du jour? And wouldn't it be tragic if someone got fired without us knowing what that person was really good at or what would have really inspired her?

I've heard of (we've all heard of) creative directors that are like traffic cops. They give the red light to those ideas they dislike and the green light to those they approve. And that's the extent of it, which is to say that the creative director doesn't really direct much creative.

To be an effective creative director, one has to really know a person, know the person so well that you know what her extraordinary talent is and at what she is just so-so. You can't be a great creative director, or be relied upon to provide great creative direction on a regular basis, unless you do. Only then can the creative director apply the right tools of teaching, inspiring, bolstering and setting expectations.

Anyway, that's the gist of it. And off I drove, I believe it was down a two-lane thoroughfare. 

Sunday, July 20, 2008

It's not 'New Yorker' readers Obama team should be worried about.


The Obama team was not happy with The New Yorker folks. And while I don't think this cover will do much harm to their campaign, and I do think that they should probably lighten up a bit, maybe they have a point.

Had it been inside the magazine, they probably wouldn't have had a problem. It would communicate with New Yorker readers who would get the joke, understand that it pokes fun at the suspicion that Obama may be a scary Muslim. It's an ongoing bit on The Daily Show.
 
But what if on the newsstand it catches the eye of some burly racist? In that half-second, the cover reinforces his prejudice. If you've ever sat in focus groups you know that there are a whole lot of literal people in the world and someone is going to say, "So Obama IS Muslim! That sum-bitch!"
 
Fortunately, its placement is not next to Guns and Ammo, where more burly racists would see it than next to The Atlantic Monthly. Even still, if you're on the Obama team and thinking that every single solitary vote counts, then you might get a little testy.
 
So I wonder about our responsibility to those outside a target audience. What about an ad for Grand Theft Auto that adults find disturbing? What if an ad is loved by the consumer, but stockholders detest it?

I suppose there are times when we should simply try to find another solution, however tempting it would be to go forward with something that we're almost certain would meet our primary objective. No doubt it would be a tough decision. Like, what if you're the illustrator and you're an Obama supporter? Do you pass on the opportunity to be on the cover of The New Yorker?

Communication from the grave.

Recently I saw a cartoon by Harry Bliss. A mother and daughter stand at a grave site–the daughter sadly holding the flowers, the mother looking at the ground before the headstone with her mouth agape in disbelief. A bony hand is reaching out from the dirt. The caption reads, "Oh, that's just great. Now you want to reach out to us!" Timing is absolutely everything.

The hack in the backseat.


 So I'm in this cab. On the front dashboard, the taxi license says the driver was Sikh.

 A few moments after I told him my destination, he started to speak some Middle Eastern language. I figured there must have been a little English strewn in there somewhere but had missed it. No matter. Cleverly, I pretended I hadn't heard him.
 
 After a few seconds, he started talking again. Damn, I thought. Not that I had anything against him, I just hate being in a conversation where I can discern only one in 10 words and have to nod as if I know exactly what he's talking about.
 
 "Excuse me?" I asked.
 
 He didn't respond.

 Then he started up again. I still had no idea what he was talking about.
 
 "Excuse me?" I said at a level he might actually hear.

 This time, he turned and looked in the direction of my utterance. And that's when I saw his phone. He was talking on the phone. He had Bluetooth technology. He wasn't talking to me.
 
 Oh.
 
 Reflecting on this moment, I thought it was kinda like the one-way conversation that some advertisers have with young people who've grown up with computers.