Trash

The above title is the name of a New York Dolls song, which I thought I might be able to reference in something about the Sydney Opera House, but, when I thought about it, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sydney Opera House and what I had recently learned about it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to use it one day for something else, if for no other reason than the fact that I love the song and I love the band.

Anyway, I learned that the original design for the opera house was the result of an international competition. As the story goes, there were three judges going through entries and they had narrowed it down to a few finalists. Then came Eero Saarinen, the famous architect who has now been immortalized in crossword puzzles for his odd four-lettered first name. Arriving late to Sydney, he saw the final entries and wasn’t crazy about any of them. So he started going through the trash. And there, among the rejected entries – and mind you, there were some 200 hundred entries – he landed on a little something by a Swede named Jorn Utzon which he thought was outstanding.

Several years later, the American architect, Louis Kahn, wrote that, “Light didn’t know how beautiful it was until it was reflected off this building.”

I’m thinking of getting a little photo of the Sydney Opera House for my office. It would be a reminder to think twice before killing an idea.

Midnight in Wherever*

A week or so ago my wife and I were in Cannes and one night we decided we'd forgo the bouillabaisse and rosé for a movie. This is an unusual thing to do in Cannes. I know this because there were only seven or eight people in the theater.

We just thought it would be cool to see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, walk out of the theater with the afterglow of Paris and still be in France. I love that movies can do that. Perhaps it's not such a good idea with something by Wes Craven, but, from the good reviews of Woody Allen's movie, we thought this could make for a lovely evening.

And Minuit a Paris was really lovely. I thought Owen Wilson played a credible Woody Allen. I thought Marian Cotillard was enchanting and, good god, so beautiful. And I thought it was funny when Owen Wilson's character, Gil Pender, realized that he doesn't want to live literally in the past because, whether in the Renaissance, the Belle Epoque or the 1920's, there would be no Zithromax. I decided I needed to download some Sidney Bechet so I could conjure some of this mood at will, like when heading home on the commuter train from Manhattan.

Now, I wonder if the thought of going to the movies in Cannes had something to do with the ad festival. The festival encourages us to think globally, to think how something might play in other countries. Maybe while I was studying the shortlisted print and outdoor ads, strolling up and down the gallery of ads and being blown away by several of them, I was thinking about the potential effect of artful communication. I'd like to think so.

All I know is that great work takes people to places they want to go.

*The photograph above is from the beautiful book, Paris by Night, by Brassai. Brassai was from Hungary.

Learning about advertising from a 3-year old.

I recently viewed 3 readings of Billy Collins’s poem, “Litany” on You Tube. One was by Billy Collins (http://bit.ly/cfldS); one was a recitation by a three-year old (http://bit.ly/bkZIYm); the other was a by a guy who read and smoked a pipe at the same time (http://bit.ly/j7wNqZ). Not surprisingly, Billy Collins was smart and funny and wonderful. And for second place, it was between the 3-year old, who had memorized the poem, and the guy with the pipe.

Admittedly, the guy who read the verse and smoked a pipe at the same time was impressive, especially when his pipe went out and he non-chalantly loosened the tobacco, tamped it and lit it up again. All while reading! Did I mention he had a beard that made him look quite – quite! – erudite?

And admittedly, the three-year old didn’t appear very erudite. Occasionally, he looked around the room at his toys that seemed to beckon him, a distraction which subverted any erudition that he might otherwise have exuded and made it impossible for us to imagine him at dinner parties using words like “droll” and “Nietzschean.”

Nevertheless, despite this obvious handicap, the 3-year old was remarkable. Seriously, a few of his lines flowed with surprising ease, so naturally that I forgot he was reciting a poem. I heard the words as someone would speak them. His approach was appropriate, because if you’ve read Collins, you know that he can be a deceivingly complex poet who very often uses the colloquial and its rhythms. This child may have been flawed and lacking in polish, but he was impressive. The little guy deserved second place.

Our own work should be so effective. If engagement is to take the consumer unaware, our creativity must not smack of advertising or affectation. It should be “smart,” just without the quotation marks. Most of the time, I would venture, it should touch the part of us that we have in common with each other – it should touch the child within us all.

Don't be a lawyer joke.

Recently, my wife and I had to take a PTO to square away some legal matters concerning our appartment in Chicago – not at all how I'd like to spend a day off. Nevertheless we flew to the Second City, checked into our hotel and headed down the business side of Michigan Avenue. Once ushered into our lawyer's office, my wife sat on the couch, while I antsily snooped around the room. I scanned the spines of the tomes and journals, noted the obligatory diplomas, attempted to read an entry or two of his day planner for something juicy, spotted some folders on his desk and wondered which one was ours, and read a couple of lawyer cartoons that were taped to the wall which weren't very funny. My god, this was a dull place. On the floor beside his desk, he had one of those big boxy briefcases that contain a filing cabinet worth of case folders –– you know, so he could transport half his dull office home with him every night. I sat down.

I theorized that his world was filled with all kinds of promises – promises that are broken and promises that are kept. When people break the law, they break a promise. There is an initial agreement, a lot of discussion about the interpretion of the law, but the existing law doesn't usually change, in which case we promise to uphold it. Hey, we had a tenant that broke a promise –– that was why we were in Chicago in the first place –– she wasn't paying her rent. While we hadn't met our tenant in person yet, she promised to be a bitch.

Anyway, we attended the hearing, the judge ruled in our favor and the law gave us a new promise: The tenant would be evicted.

A couple of days later, back in New York, there was this hour-long meeting scheduled to talk about work. I didn't know why there was this meeting, perhaps it slipped onto my schedule while I was away, but it seems there are lots of meetings that I attend whose purpose is not clear, so I didn't question it. The thing was, the creative team was asked to share their thinking, but they didn't have any real ads yet. They believed they had a cool idea; they even seemed excited about it, just the executions weren't ready to be shared yet. So in swooped the critical thinkers.

Everyone had their opinions; everyone hypothesized about what the ads should look like. Ugh. The meeting that was only scheduled for an hour, and probably would have only taken an hour had we full-fledged ads, ended up taking 3 hours. Serious concerns were bubbling up like club soda. It was excrutiating, everyone trying desparately to establish a predictable premise to which we could be gladly held. 'Promise us,' they seemed to say, 'that the work will clearly come out of the brief.'

Well, a serious creative department should avoid making promises. I don't like promises. I don't believe that we should be in the habit of making them.

Ironically, just two days later, the team revealed their thinking and while it wasn't at all what anyone had in mind, everyone loved the work. Even more surprisingly, the work was on strategy.

You see, if we had made a promise, serendipity would not have been able to happen. If we had made a promise, something that was half-baked may have been trashed. If we had made a promise, the unexpected would not have materialized.

So leave the promises to the lawyers. They feed on predictability.

(P.S. I feel it was somewhat of an achievment to have written this post and resist the temptation to tell a lawyer joke. But we all know the problem with lawyer jokes, right? Lawyer's don't think they're funny, and no one else thinks they're jokes.)

The thoroughly amorphous brief.

Ever dare your fellow presenters to say something stupid in a meeting? It's a fun game. You can play it at dinner parties, too. You come up with a ridiculous word, the silliest you can think of, and you weave it into your presentation. I once gave it a go and had to say the word, "dunderhead." When I said it, though, "dunderhead" only made me look like one.

It's hard to accommodate agendas. I once had a client who forbids all words beginning with "un." Having something to do with certain negative words, his theory only made me thirsty for a 7UP and, unsurprisingly, gave him a headline that was unsmart.

  We do this sort of thing all the time when we write pithy strategy statements. These directives read with the terseness of a tag line. Very often, they contain the well-chosen word that sings “written,” which, like a cheerleader, cheers its personal agenda on into the finals.

  A few years ago, I had a brief with the word "mojo." With that as a guide, the first 3 campaigns I reviewed depicted the benefit as some sort of voodoo power, as if the wholesome product came with a hex or something. Had it been described as "an energetic feeling," we would have been better off. Clever strategy statements are often misleading.

  I want neutral. I want the right amount of vagueness, with all the edges rounded off, void of fancy words and style agenda. Facts, however, I do want – lots of them.

  I want facts about the target until the target becomes a human being; I want facts about why the target should buy it and specifics about what they should buy this instead of. Tell me what makes him or her tick. Whether I understand them or not, give me as many facts about this business as possible. Like the points on a Seurat canvas, the facts add up to something. A ton of them give the creatives a gut feeling, a gestalt toward which they can work; not only that, but enough facts will create a vibe against which a creative director can judge work.

  That's not to say a brief should lack focus. We should be aware of the objectives and constraints, work within specific and agreed bounds, bounds that every one understands and appreciates. However, the briefing document should restrain from admitting any executional preferences.

  Yes, it's difficult. Journalists have struggled with the subtlety of yellow journalism for centuries, and when you think about it, it's impossible to be totally objective. Our instinct tells us that we will improve our writing if we are reductive and succinct, so in coming up with one word that says what 3 words say, we come up with words that draw a little too much attention to themselves. Strunk and White gave the best advice of all: “Just say the words;” I would only add, and give us facts – give me liberty and give me facts! Diffusing our prejudices with facts, grounds the document in the realities surrounding the problem.

  I did some poking around. BBH once distinguished between "What is the product?" and "What is the brand?" I like that.  JWT harped on the "key response." I like that, too. BMP liked to ask, "What do we know about them that will help us?" Russell Davies went through a, "What is it FOR?" phase. Chiat asked for the most "disruptive" thought. Fantastic. Why not think about all these approaches, so I'm swayed by none of them.

  When we start out, we are describing something amorphous, which we are encouraging the team to create. Let’s keep it that way. It’s really okay. The brief doesn't have to be perfectly articulate or pithy. It doesn't have to be crisp or quotable. It doesn't have to be crafted, except to be neutral. It simply has to be ambitious.

Post blues

The blues give a lesson in survival. They teach us that sometimes it's good to vent, declare our complaint, declare our complaint again and then see where the words and the rhythm lead us. It's catharsis. It's sublimation. It's how we get stuff off our chests.

So you know those profit margins, the absurd criterion for determining what is and what isn't billable hours, the economies of scale that have no basis in what could improve our product, all that emphasis on PR and agency profile and agency report cards, the CFO's that don't understand where to put the money, the mad men and women who keep accounts in their hip pocket, the management with no managing skill, the plagiarizers, the memorizers and the self-promoters...well, fuck you. FUCK YOU! You give me back pain, acid reflux and you exacerbate my insomnia.

What am I gonna do about these things? Some would say I really don't do very much, this being pretty much all I do. Fine. It makes me feel better to write about it. It cleans the slate. It cleans the slate so I can do a better job at work. See, Creativity can be a useful tool for Creativity. And a blog can be like the blues.

It's not lousy advertising. It's...

I have to believe that knowing how advertising uses language makes it possible for us to make better, more informed and honest advertising. Now I don't usually get political but I recently found something offensive that was, essentially, not good advertising.

House Republicans last week promised to drop a provision in their No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act that would redefine rape. With this qualification, financial help would only be granted to those who had been "forcibly raped." This would add layers of gibberish and semantics, layers of testimony and bureaucracy to the court system that would frustrate

enough victims to save valuable tax dollars.

Yes, the effort was dropped and no doubt that was a good outcome. I just find it appalling that "forcible rape" was even considered.

I suppose this sort of thinking is not uncommon. We advertisers do it all the time. We say that a TV channel isn't a number on your remote, we say it's HBO; we call a used car previously owned; and we call a large coffee a Venti. We create shades of gray, split hairs, craft our connotations and our euphemisms to play off subjective tastes. When we hype our claims, we try to do it with a qualifying wink. And let's face it, most of our work doesn't really involve ethical considerations. There may be more nourishing cereals but Cap'n Crunch is not the devil incarnate.

"Forcible rape" however is gross. I remember having the same reaction to "free fire zone," a phrase first used during the Vietnam War, which makes blowing everything away in a certain area sound like free stuff is being given away after a store has burned down. "Free fire zone" and "rape" are never good. They are never even not-so bad. There are ethical considerations involved.

Webster's says "rape" is "sexual intercourse with a woman by a man without her consent and chiefly by force or deception." Oxford says it is a, "violation of a woman." So "forcible rape" is still "rape," meaning that someone is attempting to hide what is meant.

I don't want to hide what is meant. Deception is deception. Lying is lying. "Forcible rape" is fallacious advertising.

Good feels a whole lot gooder after a lot of bad.

Chicken soup. Turkey broth with pastina. Tea. Crackers. Ginger ale. Toast. Pills. Nose spray. Wooly blankets and piles of pillows, all warm and fluffy. That was my week, largely spent sick in bed. Then there was my wife who said, “Oh, poor baby.” It’s almost a shame to feel better.

This morning, as if being jarred from a dream, she said, “You’re feeling better –– go get the newspaper and, while you’re out, pick up some lettuce at the market." As I said, it’s almost a shame to feel better.

But then on TV and online, I witness the Egyptians who succeeded in liberating themselves. Peaceably. If real joy is best appreciated when it is relative to its opposite, Egyptians are experiencing something truly wonderful.

And it makes me feel good to feel better.

This post has no pictures.

How do you get people’s mouths watering? How do you get them salivating? Flipping the stations recently, I realized that PBS's Lidia Bastianich always does it for me. There's something about her auntly appearance and her genuine Italian-ness that I trust. I can see visiting her, gorging myself at her country table and then waddling to her living room to nod off in her La-Z Boy, completely content. (I don’t know why exactly she would decorate her house with a recliner a la Frasier Crane’s dad, but she’s all about comfort so it seems fitting.) Lidia, oh Lidia... 

And this reminds me of a night on vacation in Mexico a few months ago. My wife and I were out to dinner at a new restaurant and we struck up a conversation with the maitre d’. It being new and all, we were curious. And being just before the rush of reservations, the room wasn’t too busy for him to chat with the friendly Americanos.

 We asked what he was doing to get the word out. I mean, we had just had a scrumptious, lovely meal––people should know about this place. 

 He said he was relying a lot on word of mouth. To spark some buzz, he was doing various things, like collecting email addresses and inviting hotel managers in with the hopes that they would recommend it to guests. He qualified, however, that he didn't feel comfortable with advertising. An ad agency would presumably want to photograph the food, and the chef would never allow that. The chef wanted his guests to be “surprised” by how good the food tasted and that photography would set up “false expectations.” The chef was firm about this.

 And that reminds me of something I recently read in “I Wonder,” a truly wonderful book by Marian Bantjes. Apparently, in Islam, Muslims have an aversion to the depiction of heavenly or earthly creatures, so as not to challenge God. There’s a desire not to stunt the imagination with the depiction of things; but rather to create amazingly intricate and beautiful ornamentation. The thinking is that the greatest sense of awe and respect comes from the release of the imagination, unrestricted by literal thinking.

 There’s something to that. Done right, it demands the highest level of creativity, which will seem to most people a lot riskier than a nice product shot.

 And the restaurant? As this was an inspiring meal, I am compelled to say that if you ever vacation in Cabo San Lucas, give Casianos in San Jose Del Cabo a try. Call for a reservation at +52 624 142 59 28. I’m hoping it will be very busy.

Deep tissue global advertising

 

A couple of months ago, I was on a much-needed vacation to Mexico. I had been wound pretty tight so I signed up for one of the hotel’s massages. La-di-dah, right?  Well, it was nice, really lovely, and it made me imagine how regularly transforming one’s body into jello might be a healthy thing for me to do.

  Anyway, about halfway through my hour, there came, I sensed, an awkward silence. It felt like I should say something. I mean, it’s sort of like being stuck with someone in an elevator for 20 floors, except that one of those people is completely naked (granted, with a towel draped over his butt) and the other person is dangerously (or wonderfully) close to rubbing someone’s private parts. These are intimate circumstances. Maybe someone should say something.

  I really did want to compliment her, though. Her hands were magical, the way they rubbed out the tension with the oil. Instead of just lying there like a lump, luxuriating in each ooh and ahh, I should make the effort to speak. How selfish and one-way of me. After a deep inhale, I re-entered the world of the social.

 I actually got a little chatty. To no avail, though. She hardly responded. I had forgotten completely that she didn’t speak English very well. Yes, she had greeted me when I entered the spa, directed me to the little room, and I had indeed heard her thick accent. How could I forget that? Albeit only for a moment. Well, for a moment, I assumed we spoke the same language because we had communicated; we covered territory, in fact, that I wouldn’t experience with any other person on the planet except my wife.

Some things are universal, I was reminded. The right touch, the right glance or the right idea translates everywhere, across borders and barriers. I mean, she spoke to me! And I was completely sold on her services. 

Me, me, me.

As a kid, I was obsessed with biographies. While other kids were reading this and that, I was devouring the books on a half a dozen shelves that made up the biography section of the elementary school library. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Jim Thorpe –– I gobbled them up. But then, just like that, I lost interest. A few rows down, I found the Hardy Boys, Treasure Island, Charlotte’s Web and more.

I think biographies became too much about other people. I still read one occasionally –– in fact, Patti Smith’s Just Kids is on my nightstand right now –– but biographies are generally not my thing. Fiction was able to take me to more places that I wanted to visit, places with treasures that were valuable to me.

It’s a pattern.

Just after college I had a girlfriend who accused me of being self-centered. She was probably right. So I moved on, most likely in search of a relationship in which it could be all about me without culpability.

Then I was an early adopter of Twitter. I lost interest, ignored it and eventually dissolved the account. People’s little trivialities weren’t important enough to me.

Ah, but then I re-engaged with it.

Twitter had become something quite different. It could convey something important or potentially important to someone I valued. Currently, Open Culture, Brain Pickings, Mashable and Dave Trott, make it feel like my own personal newspaper. In Conan’s tweets, I even have my own funny pages. It’s been around awhile now, but it feels like it’s been around forever, the way I rely on my little stream of bits and bobs and, often enough, inspiration.

Such are human beings. People want to connect. They are driven to connect. It’s like there’s an automatic yearning, and an implicit standard that pertains to relationships ­–– it says that if the relationship is superficial, press on. So press on we do for something deeper and meaningful. Or we move out. It depends on how much me there is for us.

If brands are like relationships, and I believe they are, this is why social networks are not enough. Commerce and real brand building takes place in communities of interest. And the best communities are communities of importance. That’s where we ultimately find a home in which we can thrive.

It’s also why creativity is so important. Because nothing can communicate real love like something that has been supremely crafted, and nothing can communicate real love more than mediums like film and installations. Those things can become personal. They speak directly to me, with deep emotion, just like the best fiction engages me and allows me to discover stuff, all on my own. Conversations are a good starting place. Biographical facts about what I do and about what you do are necessary to gather information and establish common ground. But art –– or even something with a little art in it –– speaks to me like nothing else.

I was never interested in advertising, not really. But communication and the power of ideas – that’s been my obsession. I’ve remained, and will probably remain, obsessed with how to really move people, compel them. For me, nothing is more fascinating. And I will find out ways to do that – Wherever. And if Wherever can’t do it for me, I will go elsewhere.