Mad, Mad, Madison Avenue
AD BIZ: THE ANCIENT WISDOM
Free Advice from Dean Christopher
Hey, interested in a glamorous career in advertising? Here, in a nutshell, are some important basics; the distilled wisdom of my twenty years among the Ad Biggies. This briefing accurately reflects the most widely accepted views on the principal job categories in Ad Biz. Once you understand these few simple facts you’ll be on your way!
· Creative people are interchangable, dispensable hacks. Copywriters and Art Directors are loony irresponsible showoffs who want to embarrass the agency and make the client a laughing stock. Their clothes are no damn good. They like to wear beards or handlebar moustaches, especially the men. Their offices are cluttered with cutesy props like barber chairs, old banjos, and gas masks. Ha ha ha. They put clever graphics on their walls to show how “creative” they are; but don’t be fooled—they are all burnt-out grinds. Creatives are seditious, drunken punsters who will surely lose the account for us and end up as murderers, suicides or worse.
· Account people are bootlicking politicos in empty suits with inflated salaries and understaffed imaginations, who exist mainly to play golf and eat costly meals with the client. They write long memos choked with statistics and nonspecific exhortations to do better. They are like used car salesmen who dress well and know when to use the subjunctive mood. Account People surely coined indispensable Ad Biz phrases like “Could work if properly handled,” “Is this okay with Legal?” and “What do you think, Dick?” Because of this intellectual clout, Account People end up with all the top-level jobs, except for one token Executive Creative Director whom they allow on the Executive Committee so they can tell prospective clients that the agency is “really creative.”
· Media people are number-crunching sluts who read everything out of Meeting Books prepared by researchers. They never smile during conferences. They breakfast, lunch, and sup with clients and with hucksters from broadcast and print media who pretend that their medium is the best deal in history for the agency’s client. The Media sluts keep right on chewing and pretend to believe this claptrap. It doesn’t matter, as long as the meal is paid for by the huckster, which it always is. Unlike Account People, Media folks never buy anything for anyone, not even on their expense account. They also enjoy freebie trips to adorable warm places and try in vain to get laid under the palm fronds. Nobody knows exactly what it is they do for a living, but they are ashamed to admit it.
· Research geeks sit around all day processing mounds of high-brained psycho-babble. They claim to know the exact location of consumers’ “hot buttons.” When no one is looking they lick their computers. Their bookshelves bulge with volumes with titles like “Grapho-Graphic Sub-Strata Analysis” and “Evaluating Consumer Paratrends.” At night they slip into black hoods, sift through goat entrails, and inhale strange fumes. This methodology results in reports that convince the client that the agency’s strategy is brilliant and 100% certain to triple his profits by sundown. Research proves that the Creative is wrong, wrong, all wrong. Research people always have pasty flesh and teeny privates and wear undershirts. They grind their teeth in their sleep.
· Agency Producers are to commercials what Scotch Tape is to the Space Shuttle. Their job is to remind the client that making commercials is a superhumanly difficult task, never to be entrusted to unshepherded film companies. Producers therefore endure travel, posh hotels, and long long hours casting for gorgeous actresses who must be, um, validated over dinner. You know, to make sure that the chemistry is, uh, just right. Producers always have their picture taken with the client on the set, often seated together smiling astride a Mitchell crane. They eventually leave the agency to become movie directors because advertising just isn’t challenging enough any more.
· Clients are arrogant fools without a brain in their heads or the faintest idea of what makes good advertising—or why. They want their company logo larger, ever larger in the ads, much larger. They say things like “Could we lose that humor? There’s nothing funny about selling this product, you know.” Clients exist mainly to cause huge running sores in the stomach linings of ad people, and to make sure that the agency wins no Clio Awards. Clients have ugly wives or weasely little husbands, sometimes both. They are much richer than ad people. Clients always beat agency people at golf and everything else, but never ever suspect why.
Sometimes the abovementioned Wisdom isn’t properly absorbed and the odd—usually the very odd—advertising person therefore blunders into self-destruction. Newcomers often fail to appreciate that everyone outside their department (and most within their department) is either an actual or a potential enemy, and therefore naively associate with people in disciplines other than their own. Some misguided neophytes stray from the path and actually cooperate with colleagues rather than competing with them! Can you imagine? Others are foolish enough to offer assistance—real, not feigned assistance—to their fellows in their agencies’ sister offices. Still others commit egregious no-no’s like expressing their true opinions, or working overtime without first making sure that the Executive Committee is aware of it.
Fortunately for advertising, these goofballs are few and far between—and getting even fewer and farther as the business shrivels. They are the first to be weeded out and returned to the street, to “the beach,” or to the sad grey world of penny journalism.
Don’t let that happen to you! If you hanker for a long, happy, safe safe SAFE SAFE S A F E career in advertising, re-read these pages and take their content to heart. Remember, your fate is in your own hands—and those of the client. And your bosses. And everybody else. So take no chances. Cover your ass. Volunteer for nothing. Point out the mistakes of your equals and inferiors, but ignore the mistakes of your superiors. Better yet, praise them. And when they finally get around to firing you, which they will, don’t forget to take the Rolodex. You’ll need it.
Hullo again Cheeba.
It would astonish me to learn that there are actually internet surfers out there would would actually donate! I keep hearing about PayPal, just as I keep hearing about eBay and all the rest of the modern ways to do business. But I confess I am ignorant of how to use any of them. Luckily I have friends who are in the know (that’s how I hope to keep the blog — if that’s what it is — going).
A good weekend to you and yours,
D.
PS: Is Cheeba an Indian or Persian name? It has a nice Southern Asian resonance.
Comment by admin — July 17, 2009 at 13:28
Hey Queen of Xiba (any historical connection with Biblical weed, I wonder?),
I’m impressed that you spelled “Brasil” the way the natives do. (I love the country, the music, the people; have been there only twice but would cheerfully spend more time there.)
Xibaba. Hmmm. Even in the wild 60s (although immersed in the music world) I somehow never got deeply into the vegetal life, but have no argument with those who did. I hope you’re having an amusing and productive week. Regards, D.
Comment by admin — July 21, 2009 at 17:14
Hey Cheeba,
I saw the “Ark” blog comment on the “Images” album from 1967. Tried to reply, but I don’t know if my comment got posted (remember, I’m a techno-dunce). Funny thing is, and maybe you could pass it along, is that I completely agree with his assessment. The album WAS soft — that was the assignment Bobby Shad gave me. He wanted “easy,” so that’s what he got. My personal taste is for jazz and classical, but you have to deliver what they’re paying you for. The reviewer’s choice of “Eli’s Coming” was one I would have selected as one of the better ones. (The others are “Sound Of Silence” and “Scarborough Fair.”) I haven’t heard the album in 25 years or more, and wonder if I even have one! Anyway, if you get this message, please send my compliments to (is his name Arkady?) on his well researched and intelligent blog. In recent years I’ve returned to playing and writing jazz — but NOT for a living! For that I’ll stick to journalism, books and advertising. Have a fine weekend! Regards from Dean
Comment by admin — August 1, 2009 at 23:43
Hi Cheeba,
Hi Cheeba,
I’m so happy you’re having fun with “Twenty Things” and will soon dip into “Loser’s”! Judging from the way you write, you’re precisely the kind of audience I’m hoping to reach. To your question about the recording session dates: your guess of 1969 is pretty good. As I recall, there were four sessions stretched over two weeks. Might even have been 1968 — I guess one way to know for sure is to research which year those songs were still fresh in the minds of the audience. By the way, I also did several albums for the Columbia Record Club the years I lived in Paris (1971-1973), released under the name “Terry Baxter and His Orchestra.” I was one of several “Terry Baxters,” the others being Peter Dino; the wonderful Italo-British arranged/composer Johnny Gregory (born Primino Grigori!); Ed Shanaphy and I think Ron Lockhart, one of the producers of the series, wrote some charts also. These masterworks by the totally fictional Maestro Baxter are REALLY easy listening chestnuts! Yow! If you think “Images” was musical silly-putty, get hold of some of those. But they went a long way toward financing my first two years in Paris, so I have no complaints.
About the book, yes, the entire “Twenty Things” book is my writing. Despite the “By the editors of Discover and Dean …” (that original collaborative plan fell through) it’s all my stuff. The contribution of the other editors — actually one editor’s assistant, Jason Stahl — was limited to sending me weekly Fed Ex packs of hundreds of pages of printouts from the internet on the topics they chose in conjunction with the publisher, HarperCollins. After a while I realized that most of what they sent was useless, since much of it was contradictory or outdated, and I had to re-check the facts. And since I also know how to use Google and Wikipedia for starting points, I stopped even opening the Fed Ex material — it was just cluttering up my already chaotic office. (It is amusing in a pathetic sort of way to note that Jason Stahl has been presenting himself as “co-author” of the book! If that is true, then it’s high time I revealed myself as Queen Marie of Romania.)
Soon I’ll be making daily additions; commentary, correspondence, whatever to this site. That will probably make it a blog instead of a website. One of my friends will help whip that into shape, since I’m a dolt when it comes to fiddling with zeroes and ones. Please give my regards to Arkadin. Let’s all stay in touch. Have a delightful weekend!
Dean
Comment by admin — August 8, 2009 at 15:43
Come to think of it, I wonder if the “Images” dates might have been as late as 1970. I should contact my ex wife, who has a photographic memory for stuff like that. If the dates were before she and I got married, it would have been before June 1970.
D.
Comment by admin — August 8, 2009 at 15:45