me write. you read.

5 out of 100 is pretty sad

In the most recent issue of Fast Company, they released their list of the 100 most creative people in business. Of the esteemed 100, only 5 of them work for a company that does “marketing” of any variety:
32: Lee Clow, TBWA
39: Greg Hahn, BBDO
59: Noah Brier, Barbarian Group
81 & 82: Karin Hibma & Michael Cronan, Cronan

So, um, wow. I thought we were supposed to be the most creative people in business? What happened here? I thought marketing was the marriage of creativity and business; that we were tasked with creatively solving business problems; that the greater ad industry was the helm of creativity. Not so, according to FC.

For this, I believe there are 2 reasons. The first is far more jaded and less plausible, but requires thought, nonetheless.
1. Is it possible that the marketing industry is far more isolated from the rest of the business world that the people we consider “rock stars” of the industry are really little more than peons in the greater business world? I think it’s highly likely. Look more closely at the names chosen. Clow is an obvious pick, since he is the Michael Corleone to Ogilvy’s Vito Corleone status. Throw somebody in from BBDO, since that’s about the only agency that most people have ever heard of (courtesy of foppish depictions of ad agencies in film. I loved Alan Alda saying “BBD and O” in What Women Want). Do ten minutes of digging past Crispin, and you’ll find Barbarian Group. And, throw in an under the radar name like Cronan, and you’ve covered your bases. And make sure you leave out Bogusky. FC has had an absurd man crush (much like most of us in the biz) on AB for quite a while now. After the big splashy feature last year and the full page blurb 18 months ago, people will begin to think they pump him up because Microsoft (CP+B’s big ole client) has a pretty hefty media buy with the magazine.
Plausible? Eh, maybe. Probable? Sure. If you’re a tad jaded.
Or, there’s the other option.
2. It’s more obvious than ever that the ad industry as a whole has grown embarrassingly stale. Most of our business models are as stale as the rehashed rehashed ideas we continue to sell clients and expect them to throw money at us because we’re creative. At least we tell the we are.
For me, this theory holds a lot more water. Think about it, the basic agency model has barely evolved since the 1960s. Watch Mad Men, and you get a sense of what most agencies are still like that. (Creative team + Account team) x Media team = Agency Model. Outside of a few noteworthy shops (Mother, Creative Orchestra), we still hire people who do one thing well and throw them together with other people that do one thing well and expect a certain outcome. And we as a group are still held creatively hostage by the invoice that our clients may or may not sign based on how the last client meeting went. Until we break these two basic molds, marketers will never live up to their potential.
We should hire multi-talented, smart people who are both creative and business savvy. We should work with clients that respect the value of a good strategic partner, but first we must re-earn that title. We still have a lot of work to overcome the Charlatan stereotype that we will do or say anything for money, because the reality is that stereotype is still resoundingly true.
So, why is it that if we are so creative that we don’t focus that energy on our own business model? I have 2 explanations. 1. It’s scary. 2. Most advertising/marketing folks are bad businessmen. They mostly don’t understand it, outside of the context of a brand. If they did, things would be way different.

Hopefully, it’s just the first reason. But I have my doubts.

Club & Rubber

A few weeks ago, somebody left hard evidence of a good time in our parking lot. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ad people. However, based on our proximity to the local high school, university and retirement community, I think it was somebody looking to do something outside other watchful eyes.

Basically, we found an expended prophylactic right next to a shattered bottle of Canadian Club. And while the scene looked like evidence of some recent debauchery, I couldn’t help but notice how awesome the shattered bottle looked. The patina of the glass. The perfectly preserved type. The contrast against the newly blackened asphalt. It seemed like so much more than a broken bottle, but a statement of the man behind the bottle. And since I’m on it, I do love the long history of Canadian Club’s advertising. Especially the new stuff. And the old stuff.
So, I snapped a picture to preserve this iconic moment in time. Ok, actually I snapped about 4 pics, this being the best one:

So, Matt Lane Harris, being the lover of all things aesthetic that he is, took it upon himself to turn this simple photo of a broken bottle into a pretty awesome gig poster for Blue Mountain.

Here’s the full gallery:

How the Mighty Fall

It’s called How the Mighty Fall, and it looks incredible. In the context of the current economy, I think it’s perfectly timed and a good shot of inspiration for lots of companies. And for those of us in the marketing arena, I think it’s particularly good to hear the words of encouragement, change and determination for the turmoil we find ourselves in. BusinessWeek did a preview of the book, which you can read here. Here’s an excerpt that explains some of his conclusions:

Never give in. Be willing to kill failed business ideas, even to shutter big operations you’ve been in for a long time, but never give up on the idea of building a great company. Be willing to evolve into an entirely different portfolio of activities, even to the point of zero overlap with what you do today, but never give up on the principles that define your culture. Be willing to embrace loss, to endure pain, to temporarily lose freedoms, but never give up faith in your ability to prevail. Be willing to form alliances with former adversaries, to accept necessary compromise, but never—ever—give up on your core values.

The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation. It’s one thing to suffer a staggering defeat—as will likely happen to every enduring business and social enterprise at some point in its history—and entirely another to give up on the values and aspirations that make the protracted struggle worthwhile. Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down—and getting up one more time—without end.

Is Twitter the next MySpace?

Does anybody else remember how awesome 2005 was? The economy was rolling, jobs were plentiful and MySpace was all the rage. It was everything. Marketers all over the fruited plains were making sure their brands had a MySpace page. People were blogging on how MySpace was changing the industry. It was almost as awesome as the Adkins Diet.

Now, raise your hand if you still even use your MySpace account any more. Thought so. This is precisely why I feel like Twitter will inevitably fade out of relevance in the next 5 years. Granted, I feel like marketers and agencies alike need to engage in social media and know how to properly wield it as a tactic in their overall brand strategies, but what’s the breaking point? Seeing the numbers for Twitter’s growth (something like 1400%) are troublesome for those who think it’s gonna be bigger than advertising on the television set. It’s a great tool and it should be used wisely, but make no mistake: Twitter has a shelf-life. And when it gets so saturated with your mom, your pastor and your high school English teacher that consumers start to leave, then something else will inevitably take its place.

However, I feel certain that Twitter hasn’t even come close to reaching its zenith. It’s got a long way to go down the monetization path before it gets oversaturated. People are just now figuring out how to make money off of it, so until Apple or some other worthy, cash-laden suitor makes an offer, it’s safe to work into a basic strategy. But I am afraid too many people are leaving agencies only to start social media companies who’s business model is based on the idea of twitter being relevant indefinitely. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it will fade from relevance.

Many of these agencies are also predicated on the idea that social media is right for every brand out there. Also, a farce. Many solid brands have no need of social media because their target audience is almost wholly not online. But no worries. Somebody is inevitably pitching social media to them.

I am a huge fan of the practice as a supplement to good marketing strategy, but as I’ve often stated, don’t make it the focal point of your strategies or of your agency. And especially not on one social media outlet.

Creative quote of the day

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recogniztion of the fact
that you choose to live–
that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, or remaking the earth in the image of one’s values–
that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others–
that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human…

-John Galt (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)

Meet BuddyPress

Now that WordPress has been out for something like 10 years, people of all different web abilities and knowledge are jumping aboard like it’s the second coming of the iPhone. And don’t get me wrong, I myself am a 5-year fan of WP; I just find it staggering that it’s all of a sudden the favorite program of agencies and blowhards everywhere.

And now, a breakthrough that will surely be having every self-proclaimed “web 2.0 and new media expert” blogging like madness and selling “social media networking services” to every small business on the planet. Introducing BuddyPress, a sister project to WordPress transforms your favorite open source, free content management system into a social network platform.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this is an awesome bit of software and a great development in the social networking space. However, I know it’s going to be repackaged and resold to every pest control business, restaurant and church out there as a customer retention system. I hope that all who come across it will use it wisely.

I can’t get enough of these guys

Who doesn’t love a little auto-tuning of Katy Couric? And, I gotta admit, Joe Biden does sound way better when he’s auto-tuned, too. That guy is smart.

Lots of good content. No conclusions.

Has anybody else noticed that most social media, web 2.0 and “the future of advertising” presentations have absolutely no conclusions?

Those of you who work with me know that I am a presentation junkie. I scour the web for really good ones, constantly try to up my game on style and do things that break the rules whenever possible. Because of that, I have become a pretty harsh critic of most presentations and a huge fans of the ones that are solid on communicating their intended purpose. But what’s the point of presenting information to someone without making some sort of recommendation for how they use it?

I base this on a point of view on a deck that I viewed yesterday by David Armano, who just left Critical Mass to join the unaptly titled Dachis Corporation. Here’s the deck:

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You can’t argue with graphic design

These are all things this dude likes. He is spot on with all of them.
How awesome is ‘Lincoln?’