Don Trump the pussy grabber is President-Elect of the United States. How did this happen, and what do we do now?
My friend Charlie Quirk—an Aussie who works as a brand strategist in San Francisco—made a good post this morning dealing with the “How” question. Here’s an except:
Trump made concrete claims that are easy to understand. Politicians of both sides equivocate and use weasel words way too often. They obscure what needs to be clarified and confuse us needlessly. We can’t besmirch people who support Trump as knuckle draggers. He communicated clearly, dogmatically and very often untruthfully. But his clarity was the secret sauce here. Like Bill Clinton’s ‘it’s the economy stupid’ did so effectively in ’92. He used clarity to cut through and mobilize. He did it in an offensive, appalling, misogynistic way, but he did it. And that’s scary stuff.
Can we admit that Don had a better strategy to win? It was based on utter filth and lies, but he knew that truth didn’t matter to American voters. Being a TV star matters, and to be the star, you play your part. Don played it, and us, perfectly.
On the other side, Hillary’s people were out-of-touch and overconfident. They figured they could “go high when Don went low.” But that only works for the magical Obamas. This election was a knife fight. Sadly, the politically correct, hapless Dems decided to fold their weapons and rise above, instead of cutting him and the GOP on the hour with charges of fraud, rape, and total insanity. They played it safe and they lost.
During the debates, especially the first debate, I lost it because it was obvious to me that Hillary didn’t understand the rules of the new TV game. She thought she was in a debate because that’s the tradition. But it was never a debate in the classic sense.
The Dems didn’t want to admit that few in the viewing audience gave a crap about the right answer. We the people desire a character that makes bold claims and loud advances. Hillary couldn’t see herself as a character. Don lives inside a comic strip. Hillary also has too much intelligence and grace to get down in the slime pit with a mad dog, but there are times when the battle calls for this kind of decisive action. When you’re facing a fascist dictator wannabe for President, it is one of those times.
Moving forward, the Dems will need to rethink everything, including how they “walk their talk.” In today’s media-soaked faux reality, the messaging needs to cut through. When Joe Biden said he’d take Don out back, that’s the folky stuff that connects with people, in this case, men.
In the advertising agency business, it’s best to get out before you get old. Or so goes the common wisdom. Naturally, there are many notable exceptions. David Ogilvy was 39 when he wrote his first ad, and he spent the next 25 years of his life actively involved in the making of advertising.
One could argue that it’s a job for young people, due to the late nights, immense workload and high pressure situations that come with landing and keeping multi-million dollar clients.
Joanthan Cude of McKinney believes one must become and then remain “resilient” to survive in advertising.
As I began ruminating on life and advertising, I couldn’t help but think about how, as one ages from 25 to 50, advertising becomes a steep pyramid, and people fall off in droves. It’s not necessarily because their talent dims or because they lose their ability to think critically or because they can no longer connect with young consumers. It’s because, for all the psychic highs an agency career can bestow, it comes with a tremendous amount of wear and frustration. Much of your best thinking and a lot of blood, sweat and tears end up on the proverbial cutting-room floor.
Cude doesn’t mention ageism in his article, or the fact that if you’re over 40 and working in an ad agency, you better be working from a corner office or your days are numbered. Instead, he puts the blame squarely on the people who fail to be resilient. Of course, that POV is a failure in itself. Let me rephrase resilience. Let’s call it shit-sandwich eating, because that’s a lot closer to reality. Some totally sane, resilient people simply opt out, not because they’re beaten down by the ad game. Some people find or create a better game for themselves, which is the ultimate act of resilience.
Also, let’s examine a few cogent facts here. Agency attrition has nothing to do with older people not knowing how to relate, or sell, to younger people. Younger people are clearly not the demo. According to Media Post, Americans older than 50 have double the discretionary spending power of any other age group. The average head of household is 52. The average new car buyer is 56. The average Mac user is 54.
In short, the market for goods and services is dominated by people who are over 50, but the people charged with serving up the marketing strategies, the creative ideas and all the rest that helps drive the economy forward are much younger, sometimes decades younger.
What if young people work in advertising because they don’t know any better? Seriously. It’s easy to be swayed by a decent salary and beautiful workspace, plus the chance to see your work on TV or in print. Put another way, what if young people are the only people agency owners and managers can convince to work there?
When we moved to Oregon, I was 43. I half-heartedly looked for an agency job here. Given the tattered economy and my own disgruntlement with the agency business model, I needed a new answer. For a time, I thought I’d need to leave advertising and start over. Then I saw what I needed to do. I needed to separate what I love about the work, from what I detest about the toxic agencies where it is created. From this initial spark, Bonehook was born.
Bonehook is now the anti-agency. I’m a critic and a practitioner of advertising, and my company is a reflection of me. The agency business is bloated, antiquated and a great waster of the client’s time and money. We start from this premise and ask prospective clients if they’d like the traditional treatment, or if they’d prefer a better way.
“What do you do?” It’s the age-old question that is always lurking, waiting to be asked at the next industry conference, cocktail party, and/or random encounter on an airplane.
In one way, the question is innocent and a genuine attempt to understand more about you. On the other hand, it’s a moment of truth where judgements will be levied, no matter how conscious the parties involved. Personally, I prefer the question, “What are you working on?” It’s not nearly as loaded. Yet, I can only control what I can control, which is to say I will continue face the question, “What do you do?”
Author and mentalist Tim David, writing in Harvard Business Review, outlines a four-point approach that is both disarming and effective.
When asked, “What do you do?” Mr. David suggests that you reply with:
A verbal slap
Ask a problem question
Go for the head nod
End with a curiosity statement
Let’s examine his approach more carefully:
From studying his example, I’ve managed to work out my own version of an effective reply.
What do you do?
Verbal Slap: I was an archery coach, but I couldn’t take all the traveling by van.
Ask a problem question: You know how company’s tend to annoy you with all their commercials?
Go for the head nod: You’re annoyed because the company doesn’t understand you, and they “talk down” to you.
Curiosity statement: I help companies annoy you less by getting them to hone in on genuine stories, and by using narrative techniques perfected around the campfire for millennia.
I met Faris Yakob of Genius Steals at a conference hosted by Henry Jenkins at MIT a number of years ago. I recall being pleased that he was familiar with AdPulp. And it was fun to rap with someone I’d only known from afar at the time.
This morning, I learned that Faris wrote an opinion piece on content marketing for Campaign’s new U.S. site.
He notes that people are getting lost in semantics whilst searching for the definitive definition of the marketing practice. Here, let’s have a brief look:
One of the most often voiced is that content is not appropriately labelled — that its intent to commercially persuade the audience is veiled, which disrupts the church-and-state boundaries of editorial and advertising, and erodes the trust of the consumer in the publication, and indeed, in content overall.
One of the first things you would learn, if not the first thing, in a media literacy class is that no piece of content is objective. Everything comes with a point of view and looks to persuade you of that point of view, explicitly or otherwise.
No piece of content is objective, or neutral. I love that Faris is beating this particular drum. Journalists are not saints doing the work of a higher power. They tell news stories to make their publishers money. Just like copywriters in service to brands.
The promise of content marketing is simple. Brands who mine a substantive topical vein can connect in a real way with people by becoming the ultimate source, or the source with the best reporting, photography, videography and so on. Brand marketers have deep pockets for such coverage. Media companies do not, which means there is a vacuum that brands can fill for their benefit and the benefit of all.
“I got so I simply gagged every time I sat before my desk to write an ad.” -Hart Crane
I smile when “real writers” criticize their time making advertising. There’s a nostalgic quality to the criticism that lessens its impact and renders it charming. What makes me gag is the media garbage train, which includes everything from “The Housewives of Your Stupid City” to the masquerade of cable news and the onslaught of verbal nonsense clogging up our social streams and RSS feeds. So, Crane and I agree that we have a major problem and that we don’t want to contribute to it.
But unlike Hart Crane, when I sit down to write an ad, I am invigorated, not nauseated. The making of an ad is my chance to make things known and make them right, by a small degree for sure, but right nonetheless. What do I mean by “making things right” in an ad? I mean telling the truth about the company, in new and surprising ways. The fact is there are tens of thousands American companies making great products and providing terrific services. These companies have lots of authentic stories to tell, because happy customers like to share their favorite brand experiences. These companies also have the opportunity to contribute to the culture, and many of them do.
Making advertising the right way takes belief in, and loyalty to, a different path, and a steep, lonely path it can be. There is a ton of advertising that continues to mask unhealthy corporate agendas. And there’s a ton of relatively innocent advertising that is poorly constructed, from strategy through to execution. Here’s the rub though, low standards industry-wide and decades of bad practices can be overcome, one ad at a time. It may sound like a quixotic pursuit, and perhaps it is. So be it—take me to your windmills.
Personally, I find ethics in media and in business a fascinating topic. Media is incredibly powerful, and the potential for misuse extraordinarily high. Media can contribute to the demise, or to the coming together, of people. That’s why, for better or worse, I’m in it to win it.
Nearly two months ago, I made the decision to stop adding new content to AdPulp.com. I wanted to starve the blog and my blogging habit in the process. In theory it ought to be easy to do, the starving of a blog. Just close the window on it. Shut down the machine. Look away.
I wish it were that simple, but it’s not, at least it’s not for me. AdPulp exists as a media brand now. Digital media is alive in a way printed media is not, and you don’t put something that’s alive in a drawer and call it good, The End. AdPulp is also alive in our readers’ minds, at least for now. Which begs the question: why step off in the first place? A writer courts an audience like a bee courts flowers, so there’s something unnatural here. Right?
Actually, the reasons for quitting the blog are pretty simple. From a return on investment perspective, ad blogging was a losing proposition. I also confused the marketplace that supports me, by presenting as both ad creator and ad critic. People prefer to hold one idea in their mind about you, not two. Given that making ads pays better than ad criticism, it was easy enough to decide where to focus my efforts.
Having said that, I continue to be an advertising critic and a journalist. Quitting a blog doesn’t change that. In fact, I am working on a new feature right now for The Content Strategist about the challenges of managing “brand voice” in multiple digital channels. In days of old, this article would have gone up on AdPulp.com. It would have been unedited and typically I would have spoken to no sources.
Timeframes for “real journalism” are also much different. A blog post is something you throw together in an hour, maybe two if it’s highly involved. A feature for a proper media entity takes many hours of work spread over several days, even weeks. Now my process looks like this: come up with an idea, pitch it to the editor, create a list of interview questions, find people to interview and schedule a time to talk, take copious notes during the interviews, transcribe the notes, prepare a draft, edit, submit, receive changes from the editor, make changes, re-submit, wait for approval and publication. A blogger would likely laugh at the archaic nature of this process. But I cherish the slow, deliberate, thoughtful approach.
Whatever happens with AdPulp—a sale, an inspired reinvention, or nothing at all—I now have valuable knowledge I didn’t have before. One of the loudest-and-clearest messages from this nine-year journey is build a business first, then add a blog. AdPulp was a blog before the business, a write-it-and-they-will-come dart into steady headwinds.
Contently, the publisher of The Content Strategist, is a good example of the business-first approach to making media today. Contently, the business, is a platform for connecting journalists with publishers and brands. The Content Strategist, on the other hand, is Contently’s media brand–its skin in the game. At the same time, the site is an “ad” for the platform. That’s how it’s done!
Digital disrupts all in its wake. Even our language is not safe.
Consider the word “content.” It’s a word I have adopted to clarify my professional specialty.
In April 2006, I was promoted from senior copywriter to content director at BFG Communications in Hilton Head. I was head of my own department, the content department, which set about filling vast digital spaces, a.k.a. our client’s websites, with content.
Given my history with and attachment to the word content, Tim Kreider’s opinion piece, “Slaves of the Internet, Unite!” got my attention when he turned his argument to what words mean and how they build or destroy real market value.
The first time I ever heard the word “content” used in its current context, I understood that all my artist friends and I — henceforth, “content providers” — were essentially extinct. This contemptuous coinage is predicated on the assumption that it’s the delivery system that matters, relegating what used to be called “art” — writing, music, film, photography, illustration — to the status of filler, stuff to stick between banner ads.
Most content, especially content made to sell, is in fact filler. Therefore, in the context of an advertising industry discussion, I am not grappling in the same way Kreider is with this problem. But he and I both agree that real writing must be called writing, not content. Same for real writers—they are writers not content producers or managers.
For me, this presents an important choose-your-words-wisely moment. Because content departments and content directors are not all that common, even today, so it’s not simple for me to easily convey my value to prospective buyers of David Burn-made content.
I was speaking to an old friend the other day. I thought how can my friend, or any friend help, me land new business when he or she doesn’t clearly understand what I do for a living?
“Hi, my name is David. I convey brand value.”
Sadly, especially for a writer, the above explanation and titles like copywriter or brand storyteller don’t do enough to communicate our market value. I am not sure there is much in the way of a workaround here.
I don’t want to over think this, but when you tell someone you are a writer, there’s an immediate suspicion (in gentler souls, a curiosity) about how you earn your way in the world. That’s likely why we come up with fancy words for what we do, or worse, long-winded explanations. It’s also why we work in fields like advertising and media.
I think every American can agree that wasteful spending by the federal government needs to be corrected. The problem is we can’t seem to agree on the “wasteful” part.
As we have seen, people with radical views on the right want to slash and burn any shred of a safety net for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Are they doing this because the most vulnerable among us have little or no voice, and thus can’t fight back? Or are Tea Party anti-populists actually heartless and delusional?
If it is the former, at least I understand the strategy. If it’s the latter, we have a sickness in our land that needs a strong remedy.
Let’s take a closer look at the human side of this problem. According to Fortune, the median wage for fast-food workers nationally is $8.69 per hour, and only 13% of these jobs offer health benefits, compared to 59% of jobs overall in the U.S. Thus, it comes as no surprise that 52% of cooks, servers and other fast-food workers receive public aid — nearly twice the percentage of the overall workforce.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), said that “anyone concerned about the federal deficit only needs to look at the numbers to understand a major source of the problem: multi-billion dollar companies that pay poverty wages and then rely on taxpayers to pick up the slack, to the tune of a quarter of a trillion dollars every year in the form of public assistance to working families.”
McDonald’s alone accounts for $1.2 billion of the cost to taxpayers. The massive burger chain and others use a low-wage, no benefits model that forces workers to turn to the public safety net.
Any student of American history knows that labor-management disputes are commonplace, particularly since industrialization. And fast food workers have been busy protesting and asking for fair wages. I hope they keep the pressure on their employers, and I hope consumers will refrain from supporting companies with questionable labor practices. But resisting a cheap burger isn’t easy, especially when you consider the advertising budgets fast feeders have at their disposal. Hell, Carl’s Jr. even makes salad look good.
Jonathan Heller, president of KEJ Financial Advisors, believes it is the wrong time for fast food workers to ask for $15/hour, as protestors have done recently. “If the economy was booming, and labor markets were tighter, wages would rise naturally as there would be greater competition for labor. But not in this tepid economy.”
Wages would rise naturally? Get the hell out of here. Wages do not rise naturally, no matter how strong the overall economy. Owners and operators want to keep costs down, so they can earn more. It’s the name of the game, and we all play it to some degree. But at what cost?
By paying shit wages a company engenders no loyalty from its staff, and this lack of concern then gets passed on to the consumer in the form of poor customer service and a host of other problems. Therefore, paying low wages is un-American — it hurts American consumers directly, and it hurts American taxpayers directly.
Asking American corporations and employers to help fuel the economy via investment in its people is not asking too much. We have all the money in the world in this nation, we simply do a very poor job of distributing it. Partly due to greed, but it’s not greed alone that holds us in this trap of our own making. It’s also the idea that the owner and investor class is a better class of people.
Class, race, income, education, location and political leanings can all be used to stratify and separate us. It happens all the time, and no group is free of this pack-making tendency. We feel more secure when we belong to a pack. In Portland, for instance, one might belong to the rich white liberal Prius-driving pack. Once upon a time, we saw ourselves as Americans. That was the pack we all belonged to, but no more. Now we belong to a subset. Now we’re Christian conservatives or secular humanists or a hundred other labeled things.
The crisis in Washington, DC is merely a mirror onto the larger national identity crisis. We don’t know who we are as Americans any more, and it shows in ugly ways: tragic gun deaths every day, pointless foreign wars, media illiteracy and so on. It can be terribly depressing to look at and consider, but we need to look at it and consider it, if we intend to fix it.
When I make time for broadcast news, I am appalled. The product is increasingly unwatchable at a time when the need for insightful and brave analysis is at a premium.
I feel like a lot of people are shrugging their shoulders these days, and asking what the hell is wrong, and what can we do to fix it?
I had an interesting exchange about one thing that is wrong on Twitter today with writer, speaker and social media strategist Tara Hunt. She rightly noted how narcissism is a problem in brand communications.
.@davidburn Many brands are afflicted with a level of narcissism that any human would be committed for.
Clearly, one big brand with a toxic level of narcissism running through its icy veins is the Republican Party. David Frum, writing for The Daily Beast neatly identifies “self-reinforcing media” as one reason why.
Politicians sooner or later arrive at the point where they believe what they say. They have become prisoners of their own artificial reality, with no easy access to the larger truths outside.
Swap the word “politicians” for “brands” and you get the same results. That’s why it’s key to have people with an outside perspective in positions of power both inside and outside your organization. Of course, culturally we don’t want to reward the truth-to-power speaker, do we? We want to banish him and belittle him. But that is wrong. Instead, we need to celebrate and elevate the truth carriers in our midst.
My hero of all artisan heroes, Frank Lloyd Wright, faced banishment and several personal and professional hardships in his day. But do you know what Wright’s personal motto was? Truth against the world. His contentiousness is right there on the surface. Along with his righteousness.
Wright was a difficult man, a complex man. He was also a genius who remade architecture, and he did some of his best work in his 80s. In fact, Wright was 76 when he landed the Guggenheim Museum commission, a project which occupied his next 16 years. Wright died a short time before the museum’s opening in 1959.
Wright was a man of faith and conviction, and you have to be to fight the rising tide of shit. There’s no question we are drowning in bullshit today. The noise is deafening. And our ability to concentrate is weakened. But it’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Let’s turn to Yeats and his astute poetic observations in 1919, as Europe emerged from WWI.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The worst are full of passionate intensity. Interesting how a century does nothing to dent the fundamental nature of things — fundamentalists are terribly offensive blowhards who lack the substance their own ideas. It’s enough to make “the best lack all conviction.”
The thing is, the best don’t give up easily. Wright did not give up. Ever. He had an abiding faith, in nature, truth and beauty. I think President Obama has this same abiding faith. I have been disappointed by some of his more conciliatory and conservative moves, yet I am continually amazed at his resolve. Obama is more than a good man, he is a good leader. U.S. Citizens may not realize, and may never realize, just how fortunate we are to have a man of his intelligence, grace and patience in the White House today.
I’m interested in media literacy and brand authenticity and corporate accountability; therefore, I enjoy seeing media critics take a running stab at Advertising and PR’s heart.
To read the trade literature of the PR and online advertising industries is to be hit by a tidal wave of guff about authenticity, engagement and two-way conversations. In the “era of participatory public relations”, the story goes, “the people have defeated the corporation”. The objective now is to “make your customers a partner in the selling process”. This is pseudo-egalitarian code for the voluntary circulation of Facebook ads. The notion that propaganda is always a state-run, top-down affair provides a cloak for our complicity. Social media’s veneer of openness and people-power exemplifies western propaganda’s habit of masquerading as its opposite.
I think Glaser is right to question the veracity of marketers’ claims, but wrong to call what marketers are producing on behalf of brands is propaganda.
“Propaganda is obvious, crude and naive, but it’s also subliminal, underhand and insidious,” she writes. I agree, which is why I know the work I do for clients, and have done in the past, is not propaganda. Not one of her six descriptors fit what I or my colleagues do for a living. Regardless, I do want to listen to this group of well educated Brits discuss the topic at length.
Honestly, Glaser’s thinking encourages me. She’s concerned about big companies with deep pockets getting away with lies. She’s also concerned about economic injustice. We share these concerns.
I know many people and media critics think Advertising and PR is a crock. I don’t. I think companies, big and small, need help connecting with their propects and customers. Thus, the real opportunity in marketing communications is not in telling brand fictions. The real opportunity is to find and then intelligently amplify brand truths.
