The songwriter Randy Newman once composed a song called "Naked Man." The song was inspired by a true criminal case.
A woman was walking down a street in New Orleans. Suddenly, a completely naked man came charging at her, grabbed her purse, and ran away with it. A few minutes later, and a few blocks away, the police nabbed the naked man with the purse.
At his trial, he put up an astonishingly creative defense. He claimed it was a case of mistaken identity.
How then did he happen to be running down a street naked with the woman's stolen purse in his hands?
Well, you see, he was going down the street naked when out of nowhere another naked man came dashing around the corner, handed him the purse, and ran off.
I was reminded of this while reading a recent crime story.
In Bradenton, Florida last week, Raymond Roberts was pulled over for speeding. The Manatee County Sheriff's Deputies who pulled him over noticed a strong scent of marijuana coming from his vehicle.
They searched Roberts and found two plastic bags in his anus. That's right, his anus.
One bag contained marijuana, the second contained crack cocaine.
Roberts claimed that the marijuana was his, but the crack wasn't. It belonged to a "friend." How did his friend's crack happen to wind up in his crack?
Well, you see, his friend had borrowed Roberts' car and absent-mindedly left the plastic bag full of crack cocaine on the driver's seat. When Roberts saw the police, he got all nervous and grabbed the crack, stuck it down his pants and up his ass where, coincidentally, he happened to be storing his marijuana.
Not guilty!
October 06, 2010
October 05, 2010
The Clients Have Won
Since I started in the agency business back in 1776, I've been aware of a subtle but undeniable tension between clients and agencies over who would control the culture of advertising.
Because the agencies make the advertising, they feel they should control the ethos. Because the clients pay for the advertising, they feel they should control it. Nobody ever comes out and actually says these things, but the strain below the surface has always been pretty obvious to anyone who wanted to see it.
I've always felt it was a healthy tension. The industry needs both the imagination of the agencies and the real-world pragmatism of the clients. The pendulum is never at rest and it is always swinging back and forth giving a little more or a little less influence to each party. For the most part, however, it has remained within a range in which each party has had a reasonable share of power in determining what the ad industry is, and what it isn't.
I am now starting to feel that the competition is coming to an end and that the clients have won. There are three factors that make me feel this way.
The first is size. Size affects culture. Large entities tend to behave differently from small ones. As agencies have grown to global proportions to match the needs of global clients, agency cultures have undeniably changed to resemble the cultures of the clients. I don't think this has been done consciously. I think it's just a by-product of size.
The tangible manifestations of this are the development of internal hierarchies, the compartmentalization of functions, and the inflation of titles (is there anyone left who isn't a C-Something-O?) Because the intangible manifestations are less, um, tangible, they are harder to describe. But anyone who's spent some time in the agency world will, I believe, agree that internal agency behaviors and attitudes have a different feel in recent years.
The second factor is people. With the exception of the creative department, it would be hard these days to pick agency people out of an agency-client line-up. They look, talk and act the same. This is not a criticism of either side, it's just an observation.
As for the creative people, they still have bad haircuts and unnecessarily expensive eye wear, but I've been reading lately that we are losing some of our best and brightest to, among other things, the lure of new media. This is alarming. A while ago, in a past post entitled Crisis of Advertising, I wrote something like this...
The third factor is focus. Agencies seem not as singularly focused on the advertising part of the advertising business as they once were. Each day there seem to be new priorities and different disciplines that closely mirror client-side functions. This has not been helped by the obsession with technology and data.
Agency leaders may be crazy, but they're not stupid. In a time of enormous change and uncertainty, they can see what the winners look like and what the losers look like. The winners look more and more like their clients. The losers look more and more like ad agencies.
In logic, there is something called the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition occurs when it is mistakenly assumed that what is good for the individual is good for the group. For example, it is good for the individual to save his paycheck. But if everyone saved their paychecks, our economy would collapse.
It is probably good for the survival of each individual agency if it yields to the pressure to mirror the values and behaviors of its clients.
However, it is terrible for the industry.
Because the agencies make the advertising, they feel they should control the ethos. Because the clients pay for the advertising, they feel they should control it. Nobody ever comes out and actually says these things, but the strain below the surface has always been pretty obvious to anyone who wanted to see it.
I've always felt it was a healthy tension. The industry needs both the imagination of the agencies and the real-world pragmatism of the clients. The pendulum is never at rest and it is always swinging back and forth giving a little more or a little less influence to each party. For the most part, however, it has remained within a range in which each party has had a reasonable share of power in determining what the ad industry is, and what it isn't.
I am now starting to feel that the competition is coming to an end and that the clients have won. There are three factors that make me feel this way.
The first is size. Size affects culture. Large entities tend to behave differently from small ones. As agencies have grown to global proportions to match the needs of global clients, agency cultures have undeniably changed to resemble the cultures of the clients. I don't think this has been done consciously. I think it's just a by-product of size.
The tangible manifestations of this are the development of internal hierarchies, the compartmentalization of functions, and the inflation of titles (is there anyone left who isn't a C-Something-O?) Because the intangible manifestations are less, um, tangible, they are harder to describe. But anyone who's spent some time in the agency world will, I believe, agree that internal agency behaviors and attitudes have a different feel in recent years.
The second factor is people. With the exception of the creative department, it would be hard these days to pick agency people out of an agency-client line-up. They look, talk and act the same. This is not a criticism of either side, it's just an observation.
As for the creative people, they still have bad haircuts and unnecessarily expensive eye wear, but I've been reading lately that we are losing some of our best and brightest to, among other things, the lure of new media. This is alarming. A while ago, in a past post entitled Crisis of Advertising, I wrote something like this...
Put yourself in the place of a young, talented person. You can work for a big, clumsy ad agency that is toiling for huge corporations. You'll have dozens of meddlers sticking their sweaty fingers into everything you do. Or you can work for yourself, or a smaller entity, where you don't just use your imagination to sell things, you use it to actually create things.Our clients may think they need us for our dashboards and our analytics, but the only thing they really need us for is creativity. If we can't deliver that, we may as well close up shop.
The third factor is focus. Agencies seem not as singularly focused on the advertising part of the advertising business as they once were. Each day there seem to be new priorities and different disciplines that closely mirror client-side functions. This has not been helped by the obsession with technology and data.
Agency leaders may be crazy, but they're not stupid. In a time of enormous change and uncertainty, they can see what the winners look like and what the losers look like. The winners look more and more like their clients. The losers look more and more like ad agencies.
In logic, there is something called the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition occurs when it is mistakenly assumed that what is good for the individual is good for the group. For example, it is good for the individual to save his paycheck. But if everyone saved their paychecks, our economy would collapse.
It is probably good for the survival of each individual agency if it yields to the pressure to mirror the values and behaviors of its clients.
However, it is terrible for the industry.
October 01, 2010
Ridiculous Old Idiot Jackass
On Monday I wrote that there are very few activities more futile than trying to talk sense to a zealot.
True believers don't need facts. They've already made up their minds. They know.
They don't practice critical thinking, they're already convinced. They don't have skeptical minds, they're committed.
So if all their friends, and all the authorities, and all the people they come into contact with agree on something, the case is closed.
In the past few weeks I published two pieces that questioned the orthodoxy of current marketing thinking. One appeared in Adweek and one was on this blog.
In one of the pieces, all I did was list some facts that had been developed by others -- like the U.S. Department of Commerce, Duke University, Nielsen, DoubleClick, and similar reputable sources.
Here are some of the comments I got for my effort:
Floyd Thursby
A free drink goes to i2Partners LLC for a proper identification of Floyd Thursby, and another free drink goes to Mike M for a good explanation of who Thursby was.
If my recollection is correct, Thursby never actually appeared in the film (The Maltese Falcon.) The cops suspected Sam Spade of Thursby's murder, but he was actually killed by Wilmer, the baby-faced gunslinger. One of the great lines of all time was Spade to Wilmer, "the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."
I think you could say the same about social media experts and bloggers.
I'm Ready For Oktoberfest
Septemberfest totally sucked.
True believers don't need facts. They've already made up their minds. They know.
They don't practice critical thinking, they're already convinced. They don't have skeptical minds, they're committed.
So if all their friends, and all the authorities, and all the people they come into contact with agree on something, the case is closed.
In the past few weeks I published two pieces that questioned the orthodoxy of current marketing thinking. One appeared in Adweek and one was on this blog.
In one of the pieces, all I did was list some facts that had been developed by others -- like the U.S. Department of Commerce, Duke University, Nielsen, DoubleClick, and similar reputable sources.
Here are some of the comments I got for my effort:
"...I think it's pretty clear how ridiculous your "facts" are."
"...you should shut down your WEBsite and start your own talk show. Maybe you can fill Oprah's spot. Jackass."
"...you're an old idiot."
"... I (don't) give a shit about what you have to say."Some days it's just no fun being a ridiculous old idiot jackass.
Floyd Thursby
A free drink goes to i2Partners LLC for a proper identification of Floyd Thursby, and another free drink goes to Mike M for a good explanation of who Thursby was.
If my recollection is correct, Thursby never actually appeared in the film (The Maltese Falcon.) The cops suspected Sam Spade of Thursby's murder, but he was actually killed by Wilmer, the baby-faced gunslinger. One of the great lines of all time was Spade to Wilmer, "the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."
I think you could say the same about social media experts and bloggers.
I'm Ready For Oktoberfest
Septemberfest totally sucked.
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