Today's big advertising problem

I guess it was last week a bunch of top advertising executives all got together in California for a leadership conference of the American Association of the Advertising Agencies.

According to the New York Times (so it must be true) speakers urged the audience to stop wallowing in self-pity (oh, but creative folks are so good at that) and get on with the challenges of the industry. (It's not a problem; it's a challenge! It's an opportunity!)

Anyway, Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative at TBWA, looking for all the world like some Deadhead, was quoted:

“Stop whining,” Mr. Clow told the estimated 380 attendees. The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.

“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”

I guess Mr. Clow never heard of age discrimination, and if he doesn't know what to do (how much is TBWA paying him??) then maybe he should hand his job over to a 21-year-old communications grad from Syracuse so he can get back up to speed.

CramerSweeney Smart Marketing IQ Test

It's sick how much marketing and advertising is a part of our lives and American culture. But when you're inundated with as much messaging as we are, it's bound to stick.

CramerSweeney, a New Jersey-based marketing firm, as a cute little game on its Website to test your marketing IQ.

I was actually kind of glad to only get 80%. Only. The first time I got one wrong (it was one of the audio brands) there was this little jolt in me, kind of this negative thing that I thought I wasn't quite measuring up. That maybe I wasn't qualified to do my job here at digital central. (Funny, how I took on the blame for not knowing, and not the corporate organization and it's marketing efforts for not reaching me.)

Our culture has such an impact on us, on our self-esteem, that we have to be so careful.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that it doesn't matter at all if we don't know the theme song to some corporate entity. It's the slippery slope.

The little guy getting the shaft

You know, it’s always the little guy that gets the shaft, isn’t it?

Turner Broadcasting hires some company in NYC called Interference (gee, I wonder what business they’re in? Why didn’t they just name their firm, Annoyance and get it over with?) who pays a couple of artist types 300 bucks to make some battery-operated signs promoting a cartoon show and plant them around Boston. It seems these signs were hanging around for three weeks—there were reports in the paper that joggers and the like saw them and just ignored the stupid things—until a T worker spotted these gizmos with lights and wires and batteries hanging out of them and called the bomb squad.

Pandemonium ensued.

The city spent a million dollars (double the $500,000 reported yesterday) calling out SWAT teams and water cannons and helicopters and a bunch of common folk just minding their own business had one more irritation thrown into their day making them late for work or maybe something even more serious.

So, who’s on the front page of the Globe today? Not any of the marketing types in Atlanta or NYC who came up with and approved this boneheaded idea. Not anyone from the NYC agency who pulled a Watergate and told the artists to be quiet even when their conscience kicked in and started freaking out when they realized the results of their actions. Nope, it’s the artists who are in court today.

Lawyers and liberals have ruined this country, throwing common sense clean out the window and defending the people who we know should just be slapped. I want to see the suits in court. Sure these two techno-savvy (as they’re described in the press) hippies should have thought a bit more about what they’re doing. But the real people responsible are the high-powered marketers who should have known better.

Thinking like a terrorist

Yesterday the city of Boston went into a panic because of some viral advertising that was placed around the city. They were little LCD signs with batteries plugged in the back that advertised a cartoon show on TBS. Someone found one and thought it was a bomb. More were found and helicopters and bomb squads were flying all over the city. The mayor is incensed, mostly it seems because he was ignored by TBS until 7:00 p.m. and then he was called by a low level PR minion. Responsible people decried the stunt, and younger, hipper people thought it was funny because they recognized the image and knew and understood viral marketing. If the stunt did anything, it underscored a generation gap, that’s for sure.

Hmmm….

Did the city overreact? Yes. Was it a stupid stunt by irresponsible, greedy marketing hucksters? Again, yes. They should have known better.

A few years ago I was floating around in Boston Harbor in a sailboat when a natural gas tanker came into port. NG tankers are basically floating bombs, and in the aftermath of 9/11 their security takes on the highest priority. They are ushered into the harbor by armed boats, and all traffic must stop and stay clear, which is why I was floating and not sailing.

One of the guys I was floating around with told the story about someone who had been arrested in New Jersey for buying an ambulance. I’ll pause now so you can scratch your head in bewilderment. Or maybe you know the upshot of this story. The person was arrested for being a terrorist because you can pack an ambulance with explosives, turn on the siren, and get pretty much wherever you want to go. People will even pull over to let you get where you’re going.

“Wow, I said, I just don’t think like that.” To which my crewmate said, “You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

But you know, it is a bad thing. We do have to think like terrorists. We can’t leave our luggage unattended or risk the bomb squad blowing it up with water cannons, which is what they did to the little signs in Boston. We do have to be alert for suspicious behavior when we’re on the subway or on a train, or when we’re in crowded public places.

9/11 shocked me, but it didn’t surprise me. I had been waiting for something like that to happen for years, because it had been happening all over the world for years. We Americans are so insular. So protected. So unaware of what is going on in the world. We think we’re different, and it’s only a matter of time before something to the extent of 9/11 happens again.