Hey, Forbes: Your Content Isn't That Good

You greet me with this...


...and I'm just bailing.

You're fools, Forbes.

Just a Damn Dumb Campaign

Quaker State, you disappoint me. This lazy, stupid, not funny campaign is not edgy, like you thought it was when you approved it. It's not turning heads and making people go, "Hell yeah!" I suspect that even guys who still change their own oil are not walking the aisles of Walmart or Autozone and going, "Heh. Just damn good oil. Yeah, that's the one for me." Most of those guys became loyal to their oil decades ago, and your in-your-face boast is not changing their minds.

Other iterations of this crap campaign say, "Nothing Sexy. Just Damn Good Oil." 

Nothing Creative. Just Damn Lazy Advertising.

I'm Going to Blog Again...Again

I kinda don't care if anyone notices. I don't need the attention.

But I need to write.

I write for a living, but what I write is often watered down by the time it makes it out into the world, diluted by people who think they know what the market will respond to. So I spend a lot of time copying and pasting things that have already been watered down.

That's fine. Sometimes, it's not art.

I may migrate this blog over to Random Scratch, once the Google Blogger team fixes whatever is ailing my new template.

In the past, this place was advertising-industry-focused. There will probably be a lot of that again, as I both work in advertising and am a student of the....I can't say "craft," can I? In the sense that it is a dark art, maybe I can say "craft." After all, we're all about tricking, deception, sleight of hand, misdirection, and often lying with the help of an asterisk. Fine...craft.

I'm off to practice my craft.

 

Mad Men - Unbuttoned

Mad Men Unbuttoned is, according to the publisher,  "a reader's companion to the show, a discursive look at American history during the mid century, and tasty eye candy." But that description doesn't really cut it. I'll try to do you one better.

The book is by journalist and advertising fan Natasha Vargas-Cooper, formerly the main voice behind Public School Intelligentsia, one of my favorite blogs before it was put out to pasture. She has written for Gawker and Huffington Post, among other publications, and is now a frequent contributor to The Awl. She is also, and this is putting it mildly, a serious student of Mad Men. Better yet, she is the professor of Mad Men. This book should be a textbook in advertising schools, but even for a casual fan of the show, it's a thoughtful journey into the transformative era in which the show takes place, covering everything from decor to literature, politics to sex. As an example of the depth of NVC's research (and an example of her out-of-control obsession with the show), she has an entry in here on what drives Sally Draper's grade school teacher to be such an idealist and why she bothers to attempt to get to the bottom of Sally's "acting out," citing books of the era that influenced young teachers. She even explains why Bert Cooper's office is decorated in an Asian theme. I just thought he was an eccentric old coot. After reading just a few entries, you get a better sense of how carefully crafted Mad Men is, revealing layers of the show that might otherwise appear superficial.

But what book about Mad Men would be complete without full-page color ads from the era, and bunches of them? It is also a history of the theories of advertising, and of the ad giants behind those theories, from Burnett to Ogilvy. I was honored to have been asked to write a short essay about a Bernie Fuchs illustration for the book. I got my galley in the mail yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading what @natashavc has put together. I just started it and have already come across a quote from the man behind Copyranter and an essay by Tim Siedell, better known as Bad Banana.

If you like the show, pre-order the book. If you know a fan of the show, buy it for them. If you teach advertising, make all of your students read it. In the author's words, it is for Mad Men fans, design junkies, history buffs and pop-culture enthusiasts. I'm sure you fall into at least one of those categories.

Larry King's Forthcoming Sex Tape (and Everything Tastes Like Chicken)

It was my pleasure to hang out for an hour or so yesterday with Bill Green of Make The Logo Bigger, the most prolific, insightful and WTF-inist blogger in our industry, and Her Excellency, the excellent expatriate Angela Natividad, of Live and Uncensored, on the 28th edition of AdVerve.

We hardly touched on industry news, which was fine with me, but strayed into just about everything else. Though I've never personally met either of these fine people, it was like having lunch with old friends. At a very large table that stretches from Paris to Bridgeport to Orlando. If Bill could add some restaurant sound effects to the podcast, you'd never know we weren't all in the same room, such is the clarity of Skype. Sometimes. When it decides to work. But such are the inconveniences of free stuff. As Bill's Skype profile reads, "Everything is amazing and no one is happy. Take Skype for example." (Angela's reads, "I have some wonderful hams for you.")

While I'm pretty sure no one even listens to podcasts anymore (JOKE, guys, though I gave up on my own in 2006 and predicted the death of the corporate podcast in 2007) you can download or stream Angela and Bill's "AdVerve" over at their site. And even though I likely come across as a cynical bastard with a grim outlook, I would happily do it again.

About That Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion SuperBowl Ad

 

(click)

Hey, Don Draper: Who Mows Your Yard?

Those Who Can't, Critique. "Mad Men" - a Newbie's Take.

So I jumped on the "Mad Men" bandwagon only this year, curious to see if it was, as so many say, "The greatest show ever created in the history of creating shows on Earth, or for that matter, the Universe! To include all the shows that will ever be created in the future."

I enjoy the attention to detail in every episode, but my expectations for this show were set falsely high by the unending praise it has received. What I have seen in the last 13 slow-paced episodes of this trying-not-to-be-a-soap-opera Soap Opera is summed up below.


He's eccentric, he loves the Far East, he's a fat old man of unknown orientation who doesn't do any work. His appearance in any scene signals that we're going to hear melancholic yearnings for the old days, when an agency founder could go to Singapore and buy a young boy for an entire week for mere pennies on the dollar. Always in the same suit, he is slightly cantankerous but is also an open-minded type, not quick to judge a man for stealing a dead man's identity. In today's world, he'd be the guy who spouts the phrase, "It's all good!" so often that you'd want to punch him in the Adam's apple.

Speaking of not doing any work, this silver-haired, silver-tongued devil is king of fucking off. He is a cheating, lying, back-stabbing bastard who thinks the world is a set designed for him to stroll onto. When he's not around, he imagines that those parts of the world he just visited cease to exist until he steps back into them. He drinks from dawn 'til dawn, and then gets on the phone and talks smooth to all of his women. He's an old-fashioned bastard, and he knows he's a bastard, and he's easily the most compelling character on the show.

Never has the term "mousy" been better applied than to this young lady. Trying to find her way in a big mean industry in a big mean city, the secretary turned copywriter summons more lip-biting, shoulders-back resolve per episode than Mary Tyler Moore fit into an entire career of playing similar "dames." Expect her to be at the forefront of the Womens' Movement in future seasons, only in an I'm-not-sure-about-this way.

Sniveling, blue-blood, baby-faced punkass bitch of an account man, the actor portraying this guy is playing it as if it were meant for the stage. Everything is over-acted. I think he's channeling Dave Foley from "News Radio" and "Kids in the Hall." His pathetic existence is enabled by his wife, who dotes on him like the Mommy he needs. He wore a black turtleneck in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and will likely be listening to the Beatles or trying to join the Black Panthers in future seasons. Personally, I would like to see him try marijuana, and then go all Reefer Madness and jump in front of a train.

The 1960s ideal of sexy, she's the voluptuous, big-hipped lady not afraid to shake it in that Ginger from "Gilligan's Island" way. Married to a dick who is about to die in Vietnam, (foreshadowing on this show is about as clumsy as a Will Ferrell movie) she has a smooth way with men and a cat-like instinct with the women, none of whom have the hips to challenge her dominance. She will have multiple men in her life, none of whom will satisfy her the way the extra-large, chrome "electric toy" she got in "the Village" does.

"Mad Men" wants to be on the edge of societal issues, so they threw in this dude so they could address bigotry or tolerance or whatever. (Nevermind the Black people in the elevator.) Played like some sort of sashaying stereotype, sympathy for this guy is not easy to find. He's the closeted gay, and the world of 1963 is full of aggressive guys who recognize his leanings and they're all ready to take his pants off and have their way with him. By next season, he will be considering a "pioneering surgery" that will "free him to be who he was born to be." All of the other characters will understand this decision and encourage him.

A fixture in every agency, he's the guy struggling to be the hippest dude who ever lived. He's into Black Jazz, weed, cool clothes, facial hair and progressive politics. He will be jamming at Open Mic nights soon, probably playing the bongos. Trouble is he has no talent, sucks as a writer and is always getting shown up by better people in lower positions. He's annoying, has no apparent love life and thinks he's better than everyone. I predict a major nervous breakdown followed by electro-shock therapy, returning to the agency as a janitor.

Every ensemble cast, from the war movie to the campus comedy, needs a chubby kid with glasses. Enter this guy, a character so undeveloped and nondescript that you wonder why he is even around. I'm not even sure what he does, other than make sure commercials get played on the TeeVee. He will be the guy that the neighbors talk about to the news reporters in phrases like, "He was a quiet man," and "I never expected he could do something this awful."

She never smiles, despises her own children, drinks, smokes and pops pills, and hates that her marriage to the flim-flam man robbed her of her rightful place as the debutante with a scepter and a crown. She's about to carry on an affair with a weasel politico that can only end in disaster; i.e. she gets pregnant as they break up and becomes that lady with lots of children with varying last names. Age will not be kind to her and a botched face-lift will doom her to a life in the country, where the local boys won't honor her with the title MILF, but instead refer to her as "the former Cougar with the stretched eyes."

His father, who appears to him in night visions to berate him, said, "Look at your hands! They're soft as a woman's! What do you make? You grow bullshit." That sums up the business quite nicely. Now that his sins are catching up to him, perhaps our lead character can finally grow a set, maybe go to the Keys and start Cap'n Dick's Fishing Charter, maybe settle down to a life of drinking and smoking that doesn't involve ruining every life he comes in contact with. I think we're supposed to be sympathetic toward this guy, the insecure man behind a mask of security, but his wandering and pondering are starting to grate.

Where's the Glass and Stainless Steel?

Huge image (click for the large) of a graphic design business in Rosslyn, Virginia in 1926, from Shorpy.

Witness your roots, Creatives. Note that there are no fire poles, no canoes, no Eames chairs, no Macs, so Starbucks, no cupcakes, no social media strategists, no glass desks, no cubicles full of ironic juxtapositions, no emo glasses, no tattoos and no fauxhawks. All of the trappings of the modern design/advertising/marketing agency are missing. Probably because the concept of the "EVP of Global Creative" was still decades away.

It's just a bunch of people in smocks getting dirty doing manual labor. They had no delusions that they were making art, and they weren't making fake ads to submit to awards shows. If "Mad Men" was based in this era, it'd be a blue-collar dark comedy.

Who Wants to Start a Brewery?

Or at least get an existing brewery to pick up a new brand. New World Beer. (Not to be confused with a home brew strain by the same name.)

Taste? What does taste have to do with anything? You gonna tell me Dos Equis is a great beer? 'Course it ain't. But it's got a great campaign behind it. I think I have a good name for a brew here, in honor of the guy who planted a flag in the Dominican Republic a few centuries ago. We can mess with the label art and all that, of course. And once we've got all the REAL work done, THEN we make a beer that isn't half bad and we tell everyone it's awesome, will make them cool, get them laid and define their lives.

mas grande

Futureman Reveals The Secret to Success

Enhance the length and girth

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I've been the recipient of some nice cards and gifts from people I've never met this season. Among them, I got a card from the man with three "M's" in his name, M. M. McDermott of The Renegade Agency Confessional. Thanks, MMM. Kind of you.

From Atlanta came a package yesterday from "Aunt Mary," the deceased and eccentric relative of Fred Leo, better known as Every Sandwich, a guy I have much in common with and with whom I have collaborated on some fun stuff. Fred continues his aunt's tradition of sending weird and somewhat depressing gifts to friends and relatives. (Click "Aunt Mary" above for the full story.)

I got a bootlegged copy of "Century of the Self," the documentary by Adam Curtis, the first five minutes of which will confirm your long suppressed fear that if you are employed in marketing or advertising, you work for Satan. It also explores the relationship between advertising and politics and confirms that we are a stupid people, easily swayed by meaningless messaging. I'm looking forward to the remaining three hours of this career-affirming festival of joy.

Aunt Mary also sent this fine can, which I will keep in a safe place, to be consumed for a future Christmas dinner in a post-apocalyptic, desolate landscape of starvation and chaos, where the roving bands of marauding, radioactive zombies seek people to rape and dismember; where the streets run red with the blood of the saints and any glimmer of hope is lost; where carols around Christmas trees are but bitter memories of our lives wasted in the pursuit of things we didn't need.

A View of Advertising - From The Other Side

My local 7-11’s cast of clerk characters is pretty consistent. Not a lot of turnover at this store. One of the best is Babu, a man probably in his late 50s who is as sarcastic a person as I have ever met, so naturally I think he's great. I sometimes think the character of Apu on The Simpsons was based on Babu.

If someone buys a lottery ticket, Babu berates them with a smile, telling them the lottery is all a scam and if you don’t live in Miami you simply can’t win. If a red-eyed landscaper is buying a single blunt, a Big Gulp and a stack of junk food, he will mutter “Don’t you think you’ve smoked enough pot today?”

And this conversation took place yesterday.

Babu: So, where do you work, Dave?
Me: Down at [international megacorp’s identity redacted].
Babu: What do you do for them?
Me: I’m a writer.
Babu: What do you write?
Me: Advertising, mainly.
Babu: So, like publicity. And everything is a wonderful story!
Me: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.
Babu: (laughing) So, I see. You are a hypocrite! And a liar!
Me: Thanks, Babu. I’m going to go kill myself now.

If Porky Pig and Satan Mated

This blog has been getting a little political of late. I apologize to those who don't care for politics. Consider my fascination a temporary problem that will go away when all this bullshit stops. Or who knows, maybe I'm going into politics the same way I went into advertising: disgusted and determined that I can do a better job.

But if you pay attention, political campaigning is nothing more than advertising stripped to its most evil core.

No, I Haven't Seen "Mad Men" Yet

I might get around to it eventually. Meantime, here's my take on it, based on what I've read.

Click for Large

Set Phrases on Stun

Charles Blow has a great piece in today's New York Times blasting Obama for forgetting that politics, like advertising (same thing) is about slogans and gimmicks. He cites McCain's "Drill Here Drill Now" mantra as an effective example of how to jump ahead in the polls, "Because it was concise, catchy and positive."

Regardless of the fact that McCain's "Drill Here Drill Now" was invented by Newt Gingrich and then championed by Sean Hannity until it became McCain's, Blow is right. Obama is going to sink like a rock if he keeps up his professorial put-em-to-sleep stuff. Sadly, he had to go that route because the opposition was accusing him of being nothing but lofty words. Now that he's proven he can think and reason like a bright, clean and articulate guy, it's time to go back to lofty words.

Americans are stupid. We need gimmicks and junk, catchphrases and bullshit before we buy. "Drill Here Drill Now" is proof of this. I even saw a bumper sticker with the phrase this week. It's a phony policy that won't do a thing to make us "energy independent." But America believes it will. If you say it often and if you say it loud it becomes truth. Top it off with the House of Representatives stunt with all the "rogue" lawmakers demanding a Drill Here Drill Now vote and you've got a movement. While it is stupid to neglect Alaska's oil in the interest of saving some frickin' caribou - who are migratory! They'll MOVE! - most experts agree that all the oil in Alaska will make a very minor dent in our national consumption.

I thought Axelrod was a marketing genius, but he's losing his touch. It's already time for Obama to rebrand.

Why So Serious?

The very prolific Joker, of Why Advertising Sucks, has included me in his "20 on 20 series," in which he asks 20 bloggers 20 questions.

Thanks, Joker.

It is notable that throughout my email exchange with Joker, not a single "That's what she said" joke was written by either party.

Here's Joker on blogging:
"You're only as good as your last post."

So true. "Ephemera," as they say at PSI.

Now That's One Powerful Lawyer

A few posts back, I was laughing at my local Personal Injury Attorney Pages Yellow Pages, one of the endless editions landing on my driveway throughout the year. So I was sort of surprised to find another Yellow Pages on my drive this evening upon returning from work. Even more surprised was I to find that this was also from Verizon, as was the one last week. It even included the exact same magnet ad for an Orlando personal injury attorney affixed to the front. Was this some error? Did I accidentally get a duplicate Yellow Pages? Did the delivery people simply screw up?
No. It is identical in every way....except for one tiny detail.

I'm guessing Attorney Peircy J. Stakelum didn't like his goofy stare-at-the-ceiling look on the first magnet. Did he threaten a lawsuit if the error wasn't corrected? We now have a new Piercy J. Stakelum magnet, only now he looks like the kind of lawyer who would not hesitate to sue Verizon for screwing up his image.

You can not imagine the personal pain and suffering my client has endured. It is the least Verizon can do to begin to restore Mr. Stakelum's besmirched character, as he is at risk of becoming the butt of every lawyer joke not just in this fine city, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but of the blogosphere as well!

Compare the two magnets below, with corrected Piercy on the right. I say, "Nice job, dude." Stick it to Verizon . Maybe they'll stop delivering these instant recyclables to my home if they keep losing money like this.

Se Habla Español - Or We'll Find Someone Who Does

Another Yellow Pages arrived yesterday. I don't know if this is a REAL Yellow Pages, a Best Read Yellow Pages, or what. It says "Verizon Yellow Pages" on the cover. What I do know is it is full of personal injury attorney ads, like all Yellow Pages. Front cover. Insider front cover. Inside back cover. Back cover. Even a couple of those bookmark style super-glossy full pagers. But the winner of the Personal Injury Yellow Pages Ads Awards goes to this man, who paid for a magnet affixed to the front of the front cover, covering the front cover ad of another personal injury attorney firm. You have to love that accidental look on his face. And he's got all the personal injury bases covered, including the now popular "Aggressive" lawyer adjective. You can even meet with him personally.


The Yellow Pages people are a stubborn bunch. Encyclopedia salesmen got the message early on. Travel agencies realized their day was done. Video production houses are feeling the heat. Even the guy making horse whips for buggy drivers had to find another job eventually. But as long as personal injury attorneys are paying for full-cover, full-color ads, I guess they'll keep making these giant volumes of useless information available in other places. I have not used a Yellow Pages in years. To the recycle bin with this trash.

Orlando Weekly Loves You Long Time

Local law enforcement recently came down on the Orlando Weekly for knowingly selling ad space to prostitutes. Seems a few AEs were fully aware of what sorts of businesses they were placing ads for, and even coached the ladies on what could and could not be said in the form of ad copy. ("I don't know if the phrase 'Happy Ending' is how we wanna go with this one, uh...you said your name was Candy?")

The Orlando Weekly is just like any other metropolitan free paper that has the word "weekly" after the city name. It's full of underground music reviews, bar reviews, left-wing politics and ads for concerts, bars, gay chat lines and massage parlors. I grabbed a copy this morning at 7-11.

Looks like the AEs are still soliciting the same clients, perhaps with revised copy now.

Click for a better view of the ads

Cynical Graffiti

Stereo surround and DVR, a six-foot screen
Send a geek on call for the custom install
And while you’re at it – keep it green

Two sunroofs are better than one in a leased SUV
300 horse (professional driver, closed course)
and the headrests play DVDs

You’re leaving the casino with you’re-not-sure-who
Blame your restless leg meds for those thoughts in your head
Side effects make you gamble and screw

Trade some stocks on the road from your musical phone
Down a vitamin water and text your daughter
She’s on MySpace so she’s never alone

What’s in your wallet? Can you hear me now?
Shift it, rearrange it, you're the agent who can change it
Making sure it’s got plenty of “wow”