I. About management

     I seem to obsess about how to motivate people, not just consumers, but fellow employees. Maybe it's the old teacher in me. All I know is that, when it comes to the engine of the agency, I can't ignore the sputtering. 

     Recently, someone told me that half the kids coming out of VCU believe they will one day be on their own. In other words, 50% of the kids are not dreaming of working for JWT or Publicis or DDB. My guess is that the other 50% are dreaming of working for Weiden and Droga. 

     They may have a point and it may very well be a legitimate one, but their thinking is flawed – natural to youth but flawed.  They are dreaming of results – glory, wealth, hardware and one’s name on the door, when the real joy of being creative is the process, the journey, the moment. Who’s going to help them with that? To see not only that there is a joy in coming up with a clever idea, but to see the deeper joy in mastering that idea, working out every detail, every flourish, every word. Really owning it.

      I believe there is a cry for that joy – to make that job a craft, to have an earned pride that goes beyond wit, something that a superficial accumulation of skills on a resume won't give them. But they can’t hear their own cry – it's muffled under all the distractions of technology, holding companies, bad management, and so on. And this joy is not something they have much experience with, anyway; so whether it was once on a college art project or on a spec ad for the portfolio, they probably didn't know what it was, didn't have a name for it, only that it felt good. I believe, I have to believe, that this cry is fundamental to truly creative people. No, it’s not about having done big things; it’s about becoming big in the doing. I have to believe that. The quality of the execution, the thing we are ultimately responsible for, depends on it. We have to hear that cry and then help them answer it. If we don't, the most talented people won't stick around. More tragically, some of them won't even know why, wherever they go, unfulfillment keeps following them.

     Essentially, it’s a cry for creative directors who know how to manage. We need to hire and train people to be effective with them. We need the Phil Jacksons of advertising. We need people who know how to give form to that amorphous cry within. That said….

II. The Chicken and the Wolf

     A Chicken spotted a Wolf that was heading straight for his coop and cried, "WOLF!"

     The Farmer, coddled in his Laz-E-Boy, mumbled, "Stupid Chicken!" and ignored the cry, for he had an invisible fence to ward off such intruders. Little did he know, however, that a car accident down the road had hit a telephone pole and tripped his electrical supply. Of course, the Farmer's great-great-grandfather used to respond all the time to a boy that cried, "Wolf" but that was before there were invisible fences.
     Meanwhile, the Wolf leapt in and ate the Chicken.
     The next morning the Farmer saw the white feathers scattered about, put two and two together and thought, "Thank God. Now I won't have to listen to that annoying squawk box anymore!"

Moral: It's not as easy to get human beings to do stuff as it used to be.

My vision video script

I don't see a lot of people who can put an argument together.
Sometimes it depresses me;
Now it angers me.
It makes no sense.
Clients pay us to convince people to buy their product –
Right?
And in order to do that,
we have to change people's minds –
Uh,
I'd call that persuasion.
I'd say we're in the persuasion business.
Forget media.
Forget the work that you are dying to do;
Set aside your post-modern proclivities;
Stop
And do as Tim Delaney once said:
'Write yourself out of the problem.'
Address the fundamentals.
Address the things that people need in order to change;
Because those things haven't changed.
Executions may have changed.
But what people need to change
Has not changed.
Read The Art of Rhetoric –
Bill Bernbach did.
It was written 2,500 years ago and it will tell you
More about persuasion than Mashable will.
What's the argument?
Why should people believe you?
What are people feeling?
And what do they need to feel to change?
If you're not thinking about those things
Then you're floundering.
If you don't care about those things,
Get out of the business
Because you're fighting it:
We are in the persuasion business.
Know the timeless truths
And then,
THEN make cool shit in service of persuasion.
We are not in the business of making things;
We are not in the business of conversations;
We are not in the business of making cool shit;
We are in the business of persuasion.
Ask any client.
It doesn't mean ads have to sound like "We bring good things to life"
Or "Have a Coke and a smile."
Executions change.
They don't have to suck like "1800 Empire" or Brad Pitt for Chanel.
Executions should change.
Media changes, too.
But last I looked,
We are still talking to humans;
So we are in the persuasion business.
It pisses me off that it's so hard.
It used to be we had bosses who knew this shit.
Now we have bosses who answer to bosses who know nothing about the business of persuasion,
Bosses who can't tell an argument from a social media strategy,
Holding company CFO's,
Uber anxious account people
Who live for down-to-the-minute arrangements
And big decks.
They know shit about persuasion.
But that doesn't change what we do
And clients know what we're supposed to do.
If you're to do it,
You have to defy all the Babel tongues around you;
You have to write down the argument,
Find the further reality,
Imagine the hook set in deep
THEN persuade people.
Forget the trends;
Write the argument,
Write beyond time,
Get to truths the world can't deny.
If you don't believe it's possible,
Go to MOMA
And see all the timeless ideas that look new,
Just rise above the sounds found in alphabet soup.
Wax logical,
THEN wax poetic,
Write the lines of the proof,
THEN write between the lines.
As simple as that.
It'll work and nobody will be able to fuck with you.
That's all you can do.
We are in the persuasion business.
Lean into it.
WE ARE IN THE PERSUASION BUSINESS!