The Leopard

     A Leopard approached the leader of the litter and said, "Sir, I think I would like to try something else."
     The leader was incredulous. Even though leopards are basically solitary animals, he was one of those types who can't imagine why anyone would ever want to be disloyal to him. "What do you mean? How could you do this to me?"
     "I was thinking that I might try hunting for monkey. I know how you love eating birds, but hunting a more clever animal might be more challenging for me; and I have to say, I'm a little tired of eating birds. They all taste like chicken."
     "Fine," said the leader, "no sweat off my spots. You may do well for awhile, but mark my words, you'll miss us. You'll be a flop with those monkeys and end up coming back a beaten and crushed woman, which, of course, will give me great pleasure."
     The Leopard bolted, left the litter and soon discovered that she felt about eating monkeys the way others felt about eating frog legs and tripe. Whether her aversion was irrational or not, didn't matter. Monkey, she thought, was gross. It was like eating a human being and that was really gross, because humans put all sorts of things into their systems that couldn't possibly be any good for anyone in the food chain.
     So the Leopard went back to hunting birds, though not with her old litter. The simple truth was, even if she never hunted monkey again, she enjoyed knowing that she had the option and that maybe one day, in an effort to hide any reminder of the fouler primate, she might try to filet the thing. One way or the other, it no longer mattered if she was back to eating bird ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time. Somehow it now felt more rewarding.

Moral: No one sticks around where they can't express themselves or eat something once in awhile that doesn't taste like chicken.

Category profiling

     Not too long ago I read the sequel to The Woman Who Walked Through Doors. I sought out Paula Spencer, because its heroine became so real in the original that I wanted to spend more time with her. I wanted to see how the once battered house cleaner in Dublin, a widow and alcoholic was getting on 9 years later. Paula’s an amazing woman, with an inspiring tenacity and sense of humor, and her story was told with such empathy that it’s perhaps surprising a man wrote it. But I guess if you know the author, Roddy Doyle, it shouldn’t be surprising at all.

     For that matter, it shouldn’t be surprising that a human being directed a movie about an alien (ET), that Joyce Carol Oates wrote perhaps the best book ever on the sport of boxing (On Boxing), that Dylan could go electric, Bill Murray could play serious roles or I could write something other than an ad.

     The typical labels of our business are just as unreliable. Personally, I have never sought any category experience. I have gathered a bit of it, a range that some might even consider enviable, but I don’t consider myself a CPG guy or a car guy or a healthcare guy, a luxury goods, retail, financial or technology guy. In the course of my career, I sought out promising assignments and somewhere along the way discovered I was better at certain things than others, but products per se could never define the areas that were fertile for me. When I was asked to run another car account, I turned down the job to avoid being labeled a “car guy.” Yet I work in a business that insists on pigeonholing us, especially in new business pitches.

     I’m no expert, but I do have a few theories, a few categories that are probably more useful to a creative director than anyone else, but might generally be a good place to start.

     As I see it, there are people who are really good at producing many ideas for a given task. Once there’s an idea, it’s like they become fluent in it. They’re good at pooling things out. And last I heard, integration, or whatever we call it these days, is kind of important.

     Other people are really proficient at showing shifts in thinking. They come up with a variety of ideas. They’re flexible. They create a Gerry Graf style campaign one day and a Hal Riney one the next. Tell me, what client doesn’t like to see a real assortment of ideas before committing to one?

     Some people show unusual, remote and clever solutions. They’re what we call “out there.” They might think of new uses for a particular media or come up with the next Cannes Titanium winner. If you’re looking for attention-getting differentiation, it’s good to have some of this.

     Still others excel at building out details. A great platform of an idea surfaces and someone like this thinks through and crafts all the appropriate minutiae–execution, execution, execution.

     One other quality comes to mind. In our business, creativity works most effectively when it is channeled through empathy, creating communication that touches people to their core. In the same way that, say, Dickens could put himself in the shoes of a hundred compelling characters, someone else could succeed on Mercedes-Benz one minute and chewing gum the next. Some people just get a kick out of putting themselves in various consumers’ shoes, whether Timberland or Manolos.

     I’m sure there’s deeper and better thinking than this. I’m sure there are, for instance, educational studies about the nature of creativity and approaches to identify creative individuals. Regardless, we need something to reevaluate what is too often a superficial criterion for new business, consultants being way off the mark here and supplying a disservice to their clients. No wonder the work portion of a pitch has so much baring, given there’s so little else to go on. I guess I just don’t see enough science being applied–sadly, very little discipline for a task upon which, especially in this economy, so much is at stake.

     Those are my thoughts on the matter. Now, if it’s all the same to you, I think I might go write an ad.

Don't be an ass

     One of the pleasures of the holidays is visiting with relatives who express points of view that are different from my own, usually on subjects pertaining to religion and politics. Part of being in the holiday spirit is, after all, being in the state of knowing everyone around you shares your opinions on everything, as if under one great big mistletoe.

     Yeah right.

     When you think about it, it’s not the difference of opinion that bugs us; it’s the assumption that we’re in agreement. And this is just on top of all the usual presumptuousness around the holidays.

     So if I can dare to assume that there’s more bad advertising during the time of year when there’s the most advertising, then ‘tis the season for assumptions. Hey, do you hear what I hear? It’s the consumer crying out:

     Don’t assume I like you. Don’t assume I’m in the market for your product or that I care or that I’m interested. Don’t assume like some sort of psycho stalker that my disinterest is a sign I might someday come around. Don’t assume that if you’re happy and cheerful and ALL blue-sky and optimistic, my feelings about you will change. Don’t assume – NOW! – that I want your new gizmo. Don’t even assume I want your product now that it’s on sale. Don’t assume that I’m more likely to like you if I see people I like liking you. And don’t assume Like means Love. Don’t assume that I’d like you if I can choose the color and add racing stripes. Don’t assume I’ll like you if you send me a note with my very own name on it. Hell, don’t assume I’ll feel like you know what I want, if you know a lot of details about me already, because that’s just creepy.

     No, the consumer doesn’t hate us. The consumer doesn’t care. And the consumer won’t care unless we accept automatically that he or she is different and has an opinion all her own. Exactly what my Aunt Connie hasn't done since I can remember.

Details are not for morons

 A psychologist friend of mine was saying how she loved graduate school but dreaded the mandatory course on Statistics, that is, until she learned of its practical importance. She illustrated her point with a little dialogue:

GUY: Let’s go to the Chinese restaurant in town. It’s kind of crowded but the food is good.

WOMAN: How crowded is it?

GUY: What do you mean?

WOMAN: What’s a lot of people?

GUY: I don’t know, a lot of people is a lot of people.

WOMAN: Well, is it always crowded?

GUY: Since it opened, it’s becoming crazy popular.

WOMAN: Okay, how big is the room?

GUY: Pretty big.

WOMAN: What’s that mean?

GUY: For the size, it's getting pretty crowded. 

WOMAN: You’re such a moron.

 The preceding dialogue was brought to you by someone who doesn’t know the value of details. It would have been helpful to know the size of the room, how many people were in it or the restaurant’s rate of growth so we could predict how crowded it would be on that day. Here’s another situation:

 We open on a baby giggling hysterically. We cut to other babies giggling, then we cut to kids laughing, teenagers laughing, young adults, middle-aged adults and then old people, all belly laughing. We cut to a super: “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them.” The message is brought to us by Volkswagen. It’s a familiar message to the car category, and, for that matter, it could be for a comedy club, an amusement park, a game or a toothpaste that brings out your sparkling smile. It’s a grand statement, that life is best spent joyfully, and grand statements can potentially be very compelling because they get to the heart of life. But unless you have an unexpected message for that product, it needs proof, even the appearance of proof, to make it appear special. It needs detail.

 And what about our recent presidential race?  As voters, we were frustrated because one candidate offered no details and asked us to trust him, while the other candidate promised to be nothing like the other guy. Many of us felt it was moronic.

 If you were going to invest in a product, any product, you would undoubtedly want to show good judgment. Why would we leave out the thing that would make others feel good about a decision? No one wants to find out that they are vulnerable to manipulation, not even consumers.

The impossibility of advertising.

Suit: I want results,

it’s what I am tailored for.

The pinstripes impress

consistency and routine;

the arm hole is snug

to allow arms a swing;

the trousers cut slim

to guide the knees; 

and I stride forward, 
progressing directly 
with hardly a break

to my goal
and my goal after that.

My achievements 
will
be 

linear

like kissing buttons.

Sneakers: We wanna play

and run,

because to get there,

we have to go
and just know

before we know why,
chasing a notion

wherever it takes us,

down side walks

and side streets.

Goals?

Creativity isn’t a goal–

we’ve got a good feeling though,

up in the air.

Creativity is activity

for good soles

a pivot point,

a toe spring...

Lemons and peaches.

  Lately I’ve noticed the dearth of ads that pose strong, compelling arguments. I have a problem with that, because I think it’s a big part of what we get paid to create. I also think that arguments can be made creatively, which is to say that a good strong one will sell product. I’m not talking about something that reads like a lawyer’s proof. I’m talking about a whole argument that doesn't feel like a whole argument. In fact, we may not see the whole argument but it’s there. It’s there, but not there. Because with the right execution, any missing link ends up being conjured up.

  When I was a kid, this was essentially how my dad would persuade me to do chores around the house. He rarely posed the entire argument. A simple order – “Clean the garage, Marty,” stated in a certain tone, and it was all clear: ‘If you don’t clean the garage, then you will become dead meat.’ My Dad understood the finer points of rhetoric.

  Let’s take a little ad you may have seen once or twice, a really succinct ad, and one that both leaves plenty to the imagination and epitomizes creativity: the Volkswagen “Lemon” ad. Though there is only a product shot and a one-word headline, the syllogism, or what Aristotle called an enthymeme, is complete. There are premises that present facts, or accepted opinions, and a simple deduction is made. And it is far from random:

If a car that looks absolutely perfect in the factory is said to be flawed, because there are 3,389 inspectors and they can detect shortcomings that the average person can't see, then those engineers must be really anal retentive Germans and the Beetle I buy won’t be a lemon at all – it’ll be a peach.

  With the right creativity, a complete argument can be made. I think some of us have forgotten that (there are plenty who don’t know it, but that’s a whole other problem).

  For instance, in the name of sparking conversations, because it’s all about the conversation now – right? ­– we may create a lot of chit chat but the argument is often left incomplete. And sometimes we make it all about a higher order benefit and present an argument that is ultimately unfounded. Do we think persuasion is impossible? Are we afraid consumers will think we’re too pushy? Did we ever think that maybe the creative doesn’t leave out the right things? Could it be that the creative isn’t really creative? All I know is that we still need to seal the deal. Even if parts of the argument are given out piecemeal, in different media.

  Of course, that presumes we are still in the business of persuasion.

Bird shit

 Have you seen the TV ad for Obama with Big Bird? (http://bit.ly/Rb0yzL) With mock seriousness, it spoofs Romney as the candidate who knows that the real enemy of the economy is not Madoff and the Wall Street “gluttons of greed” but the yellow-feathered devil incarnate itself.

 I think the ad reeks of ad people being addy.  I think it schtinks (a morphing of “stinks” and “schtick.”) Howard Fineman, in The Huffington Post, did, however, elaborate a bit more than me. He wrote, “It’s not just that crusading for avian rights is silly, or that PBS funding is somewhat indefensible. It is that deficit-reduction is a Republican issue, not a Democratic one. Has anyone told the president that the annual deficits have been more than 13 trillion a year?” The Democrats have more important issues to be talking about.

 Dave Trott recently pointed out (http://bit.ly/SQgbic) that President Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic Convention, bequeathed to us advertisers words to live by. “When people are hurting,” he said, “explanation trumps eloquence every time.” The Big Bird ad team should have been listening. Along similar lines, a teacher of mine at SVA said, “Better to be clear than clever, than clever and unclear.” However you look at the spot, the conceit dominates the point.

 And, it would have been nice if that ad team had thought about the audience. Combining the language from each of those two quotes, here’s a more fundamental one:  “When people are hurting, seriousness about their problems trumps self-indulgence every time.” I said that.

The first presidential debacle

The other day, I had all sorts of clever openings being pitched to the creative director inside my brain, openings that would engage and dazzle with amusement, openings that would perk up a droopy head in need of something uplifting after the first presidential debate. Now that I’m in front of my keyboard, I have no idea to where those words vanished. Whatever.

What happened to President Obama? Instead of being outraged at the clear shift from the hard-right platform that Romney had been running on for two years, Obama kept looking for the right logic to retaliate. When Romney accused the president of “trickle-down government,” a comment not often launched at Democrats and Socialists, Obama cleared his throat and remained in search of the perfect set of facts. When Romney attacked the Dodd-Frank reform, Obama didn’t remind people that the law limits greedy chicanery like the derivatives trading that led to the 2008 crash, he stayed the course, ever rational and professorial.

He’s a smart man, Obama, but you get the feeling that while he obsesses about the substance, all that other stuff, however much a reality, he finds difficult to endure. While he had the facts on his side, he lost the debate. So what happened?

He forgot the fundamentals. The moment Romney claimed he had no plans to lower the taxes of the wealthiest 1% (WHAT?????), I suspect Obama was taken off track; and, being internally driven and focused on the argument, he delved into his notes and thus into a proclivity to neglect the audience. But this is about winning over people’s minds, and in being such, Obama became unable to arouse in the audience the one thing that makes persuasion possible: Emotion. You can have all the facts in the universe, but it is emotion that has the power to modify people’s judgments.

Look, this is 2000 year-old stuff, going all the way back to Aristotle’s Rhetoric: If you believe you have suffered a slight from someone who is not entitled do so, from someone who does not have the facts straight, from someone who has just attempted his biggest flip-flop ever, there must be some sort of outrage. The speaker has to highlight such characteristics of the case that are likely to provoke outrage, even anger in the audience.

I keep a quote handy that pertains to this exactly. It’s from an 18^th century writer named George Campbell. He writes, “So far, therefore, is it from being an unfair method of persuasion to move the Passions, that there is no persuasion without moving them.” I keep this quote handy because it reminds me that rational people, like Obama and a whole lot of clients, seem more comfortable with cold facts and juicy RTB’s – while doing what is necessary to move the passions feels like play-acting and fluffiness.
               Persuading people demands that we put ourselves into someone else’s shoes and figure out what the most effective emotional appeal would be for them. It demands style and artfulness as well as the correct rhetoric. It means that perhaps this little post could have benefited from a clever opening.

Give diversity a chance

The other day, I read John Heilemann’s article about Joe Biden in New York Magazine. It was a fair article, balancing the gaffs with his mettle and making the point that you have to give Joe a chance to prove himself, because, as we all know, Joe Biden will sometimes say stupid things.

In the beginning of his term – remember? – he several times made us cringe, especially when he said that, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama” with a “generated crisis.”  But, despite a difficult start with the president, there was a thaw and the two gradually developed a bond.

Heileman writes, “Over time, a sense of personal chemistry has flowered alongside professional esteem.” Biden is quoted as saying, “I think the bottom line is, what they like about Barack is Barack doesn’t pretend to be what he’s not, and I don’t pretend to be what I’m not.” “We’re an unmatched matched pair,” he concludes. The president gave him a chance; I suppose they gave each other a chance.

Likewise, take Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. They gave each other a chance, too. Michael guest-hosted until he could get past the blond bubbliness.

Look at the Ramones. Despite Johnny being the punk version of Ted Nugent and Joey being an OCD Jewish liberal, they found a rhythm, gave themselves the same last name and made beautiful music together. (Compare that to the Osmonds, where Donny and Marie share chromo somatic vanilla for DNA, yet we want to beat them with a baseball bat as soon as they smile.)

A few years ago, I had this creative department with a Thai girl, a Korean, a Mexican, two African Americans, an Indian from India, an inked up creative manager, 3 Jews, a bald German that looked like Mussolini, 2 Italians (moi included), 3 maybe 4 gay people and then, get this, I went and hired a white guy who was born in Connecticut, of all places. It turns out that he was, as one of the copywriters described, the “darkest white guy” we had ever met. Sure, he occasionally turned up the collar of his polo shirt, but he had enough good taste in his sick sense of humor to compensate.

         You see, to make diversity pay off, people need a chance. HR charges us with making our agencies more diverse yet rarely are we told what it will take to work, rarely told how to evaluate a young person’s site for potential, rarely told how diversity could do more than make a holding company look good. We need mentorship programs, we need managers who are fascinated by people who think differently than themselves, heck, we need managers. We need to do something other than find different looking kids and plop them into agencies as if from an alien ship. Fine, there is no amount of tutelage that will sway me into hiring a fan of Josh Groban for the creative department (my tolerance has limits) but I do believe a little guidance will go a long way.

         It usually takes time to learn that we share a quality with someone who is quite different, takes time to assimilate that strange quality with the qualities we’ve been comfortable with. Yeah, maybe the tension is all within our selves. Remember Jekyll and Hyde? People need a little help to get over themselves.

Yeats said it first and I'm okay with that.

    Since writing my last post, "Two Nudes", I came across this quote that sums up how I feel about most of the work coming out of ad agencies, work that rarely gets below the surface.

            The woods of Arcady are dead,
            And over is their antique joy;
            Of old the world on dreaming fed;
            Great truth is now her painted toy. 
   
    Damn, that's good.
    I thought of that nice Levi's film that quoted Walt Whitman's "O Pioneers" and that Volvo ad several years ago that quoted Kerouac's "On The Road." Sometimes it's better to let someone else do the writing. Let the best set of words win.

Two nudes.

      The other day this headline caught my attention: “Topless Woman Found. Details Sketchy.” It was in the New York Times (7/20) and, no, it wasn’t about a stripper – it was about a painting, “Odalisque in Red Pants” by Henri Matisse. Evidently, FBI agents in Miami arrested two people and accused them of trying to sell the portrait said to be worth $3 million. As the story goes, the theft was first discovered in 2002, when the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas was contacted by a Miami gallery owner saying that someone had offered to sell it to him. They inspected the painting on the wall and discovered that it was indeed a fake, and a lousy one, to boot. Someone had removed the original from its frame and put the fake in its place, leaving it to be exhibited as if it were the genuine article. And no one noticed. For at least two years, no one noticed!

         Sadly, I found it analogous to our industry, where the quality of our work has been slipping, where we’ve put forth less original work, and yet hardly anyone seems to have noticed.

         In an interview with Contagious, John Hegarty said he, too, believed that quality has fallen off in the past three or four years, but his claim didn’t make much of a stir. It should have made a stink. We go about our business, tolerating way too many distractions, accepting the fact that we have less time and too few creatives, maintain more excuses for mediocrity than ever before, and we seem to forget what really great looks like.

         Yes, I see more technology, more integration, clever new media but I see less art. I wonder if I’m just being nostalgic, but I don’t think so. When I was grinding through the ranks, I was inspired more by clarity than by wit, more by something true than something weird. As a copywriter, I admired people like Riney and French and Delaney, people whose artfulness transcended their sell. Likewise, I’m more moved these days by imagination than innovation. And there’s way too much emphasis on the later.

         In a wonderful little essay in the New York Times Book review (7/29), Roger Rosenblatt wrote, “The difference between invention and imagination is the difference between Mr. Ed and Swift’s Houyhnhnms. One is a talking horse (of course): the other bears the burdens of civilization.” We’re spending too much time thinking about how we can make use of Pinterest, and less time making something that approaches importance.

While advertising can’t possibly achieve as much as art, there can be enough art to have a modestly similar effect. Trying is everything. Honda’s “Hate Something” and “Cog” did that. Janet Champ’s Nike copy moved me almost as much as an orphan in a Dickens novel. “Think different” did no less than ennoble creativity.

         If we hire the right talent, art directors and designers who need to imbue their work with art and copywriters who need to raise their work with poetry, people who want to make a difference while making commerce, those people will go beyond the deliverables. If creative directors give them permission to create big and think well of the world and push the virtues that they’ve always believed in, they will surprise us. While pursuing business objectives, they will surprise us. They will surprise themselves. Time and time again, advertising has surprised us by squeaking in higher motives and values. “We Try Harder,” “Live Richly,” the red and white Economist ads, that’s what they did for us. 

         I never expected that all work could become great, or even that all our day-to-day blocking and tackling shouldn’t be necessary, but I always had hope to create something more than advertising. I never gave up hope for that. I would study every award book, looking to burn with amazement and desire and envy. Do people still do that? Every week?

         Look, the ceiling is moveable and it only remains high if we keep pushing against it, otherwise it slowly settles. We have to keep an eye on our standards. Don’t compare your work to other work in that medium; compare it to something that once blew you away. Do that, and keep on doing that, and it becomes increasingly harder to live without the masterpiece.

If you expect less from people, you may not be less disappointed.

That book by Sherry Turkle still has me thinking.

So, when technology goes unchecked, what are the long-term effects? After never seeming to find time to reflect and turn off the devices that keep us constantly distracted, while we’re always afraid that we might miss something, how does that change us? How is it effecting my strengths and my shortcomings? How does it affect relationships?

For one thing, according to Turkle, we lessen our expectations of each other. We expect less from our managers, less from our friends, less from each other. Okay, we won’t expect less from our politicians – we can’t expect less from our politicians – but what about the rest of us?

If I regularly write things on other people’s walls, it will no doubt look like I have lots of friends, and it’s not inconceivable that I might conclude I am popular and well-liked. But how demanding are those friendships? When I apologize, is it okay to apologize to Facebook? Will I get used to someone checking his or her phone while I’m talking? Will I get used to people always being somewhere else? When will the sound of someone laughing become a rare and precious moment relative to someone writing that they’re laughing? When will the appearance of authenticity be enough authenticity? When will superficiality trump our warts-and-all complexity? Since we can always write, edit and sculpt our messages, even manipulate our Instagram photos, when will “performance” (Turkle’s word) feel like life?

 “The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy,” writes Turkle.

I think about this as it pertains to brands: Will brands that don’t strike the right balance of medium and message, who put too much emphasis on social and the "conversation," who never produce that piece of artful film (or whatever) that speaks to people’s dreams and therefore establishes the context for an important conversation, who never meet their consumer on the street or never put a real voice on the other end of the customer service line, will we expect less of those brands?

Forget about brands – will our humanity be compromised? She writes, “Are we ready to see ourselves in the mirror of the machine and to see love as our performances of love?”

How should I reach you?

Lately, I have been trying to be more conscious of what to use when – when to use the phone, when to text, when to email – and this has made me more aware of how others use their technologies with me. I’ve been thinking about the effect that our choices have on the other end. The effectiveness of our communication depends on choosing the right medium, right?

I mean, when is something not something to discuss over a device? When is it better to let someone know by text that you’re thinking of him or her instead of by phone? At work, when is a question not straightforward enough for email? When’s it time to video conference? When is a headline more compelling on a billboard than a banner ad?

I recently read Alone Together by Sherry Turkle, which talks about how we continually strive with our machines to be never alone, but, at the same time, always in control. See, if we are always with people, we are never alone, but if we are face-to-face with people we are not always in control – that’s where our devices come in. The question is: When does real intimacy outweigh our need to be in control?

Certain conversations will no doubt create a tension with our desire for control. We may want to share something important or need to be really heard or need to believe that we are worth paying attention to, and someone’s desire to control and limit the conversation will make meaningful reciprocity difficult.

A friend of mine used to work for a guy who only ever texted. Once, she got herself so worked up, she showed me his latest barrage. The guy used only incomplete sentences. He barked. His texts were indeed annoying, like nips at her leg from a dog she’d like to punt into the next yard. Clearly, he didn’t want to give any thought to how someone could get jazzed about something; he just wanted people to obey. From the looks of it, he was less of a manager and more of a jerk.

At some point, we need to sense the risk in seeing others as objects that can always be accessed, understand the risk in assuming we can always find usefulness and comfort and amusement when it’s convenient.

Not too long ago, our agency was approached to pitch an account, where we would be briefed over the phone and then scheduled to present three weeks later. At first, it sounded like a piece of cake. Then, it sounded wrong. There would be no meet and greet, no chemistry check, no opportunity to see if agency and client were compatible. It was an invitation to a first date with a possible marriage proposal by dessert. So we passed. And then something almost miraculous happened. Three weeks later, the prospective client rang, admitted that the pitch process was being swayed by procurement, realized it would not give them what they really needed (a partner), and they asked if we would participate with a chemistry meeting and some ice-breaking conference calls. Naturally, we pitched the account. And we won the pitch, largely, I believe, because we wanted to work for and spend time – over email, text messages and in person ­– with considerate people. We had reason to believe we’d have the necessary back and forth that leads to good work.

Whether with friends, fellow employees or consumers, we should think about what we want the desired effect to be, choose the right connection, and maintain a faith that people can surprise you. Because people do sometimes surprise you. Even clients :-)

The Spider and the Dragonfly and the Praying Mantis

  A Spider was obsessed with trapping a particularly large Dragonfly. His prey was impossible to snag and not just because a dragonfly is one of the fastest insects in the world. It is also so pointy it could pierce the Spider’s aerial web like a sewing needle through chunky yarn.

       To make matters worse, the Dragonfly would sometimes steal small insect fare while on its way through the web, which infuriated the Spider.

       The Spider tried everything to stop him. He tried spinning different silks. It spun sticky silk and fluffy silk and every kind of variation that its glands could muster. It built them horizontally and vertically. It tried funnel designs, dome designs and tubular designs. Nothing worked.

       One day, out of energy and out of gumption, the Spider sat on the edge of its web, his spirit as depleted as his stickiness. On a nearby tree, a green leaf caught his attention. The leaf appeared to undulate. Straining his eyes, the Spider could see there was a green Praying Mantis camouflaged on the green leaf. “Maybe I should ask her for some advice,” he thought, “after all, who better than a Praying Mantis to ask for spiritual guidance.”

       “Why don’t you try to meditate,” suggested the Praying Mantis.

       “Easy for you to say,” replied the Spider. “You look cool in your prayer-like stance, but what’ll I look like with my big head and short legs crossed into a Yoga position.”

        “Hey Spider,” said the Praying Mantis, “You need to get away a bit, get some distance and spend some time reflecting and analyzing and dreaming.”

       The idea of getting away seemed potentially refreshing, so the Spider walked to another tree, climbed high enough for a grand view, a view that would be conducive to a fresh perspective, and he relaxed. He let his mind wander and think about nothing in particular.

       Then the Spider spotted a dragonfly – not the dragonfly that he had obsessed over, just an ordinary dragonfly. Then it spotted another dragonfly. Then it spotted them posing for each other, and the pose they struck was some sort of ritual, a mating posture. The Spider saw the male and female dragonfly contort themselves into a wheel position, and it thought it kind of kinky when the dragonflies flew together, docked in tandem, the male towing the female in blissful flight. The Spider had an idea.

       The Spider trucked back to his web and wove a weave that looked exactly like a dragonfly in a mating position. And no sooner had this silky decoy been woven, when a dragonfly came into view. The Dragonfly aligned itself perfectly with the decoy and landed right on top of it in hopes of consummation, which is to say it had alighted on the sticky web and could not move to save its life. The Spider had caught the Dragonfly.

Moral: When it comes to reflecting and analyzing and dreaming, it is good to get away from the web.

You're gonna love this post!

I’ve never been crazy about The Shins and now…I don’t know, there’s something about Mercer’s songwriting that seems forced, like he’s trying too hard. Dylan would never settle for a line like, “And away they did run.” “Did run?” Seriously? It’s like bad poetry from a junior high schooler who was just happy he found a rhythm and rhyme to go with “done,” a difficult word to find a rhyme for. But what really bugs me is the first line of “Simple Song:” “This is just a simple song.” I hate that. I first heard it while watching the band on SNL. I was in bed. And after that, I squirmed and grumbled and couldn’t fall asleep.

Look, if it’s just to tell me what’s coming up in a self-confessing way, then it’s laziness. For god sakes, get on with it and tell me something new.

If it’s meant to be post-modern, I’m tired of that. Of course I’m really not sure what is meant by “post-modern” anymore but if it’s that self-conscious cynical view that makes fun of the medium it’s in while trying to make a point, then, yes, I’m tired of that, too. Cynicism can turn into cliché just like everything else.

I hear this sort of thing all the time in presentations. Before I see the work, I hear, “We wanted to do something funny, sooo…..” and, “This is just a simple spot…” and my personal favorite, "I showed this next spot to my girlfriend and she thought it was hysterical..." Let me be the judge of that, thank you. 

To sell good work, we are constantly professing the power of impact, wanting the consumer to discover a surprising conclusion. We’re right about that. So we should apply that principle and have the confidence to allow clients to feel the work. Before we tell them what to think.

 Enough said. 

Experience this!

There have always been people who get easily distracted, brief-brained people who'd chomp away on popcorn during a Bergman film, people who'd talk during a revelatory homily, but with social media, we now have to contend with the arms of those people entering our view of the stage or screen every two seconds to snap a photo with stupid little smart phones. I suppose those are the same people who go to Europe and see a different city each day. It's enough to say you were there; it's a Foursquare world after all.

But what the hell. I should lighten up, right. So, with my new iPhone 4S, I snapped this little gem the other night of Patti Smith at the Bowery Ballroom. As you can see, she is really into it, offering up her heart and soul during the poetic rant of Rock ‘N Roll Nigger. I think in that one song she says what Lady Gaga could only dream of communicating about everyone’s potential to express themselves. It was sooo amazing!