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 :-)