I'm a half-full kind of guy. As a proud alum of "Up With People," I believe that world peace is within reach and gas at $20 a gallon is not. I think there is more right with the world than wrong and have the same perspective about my professional life. I believe the best way to fix a brand is to find what’s inherently right about it.
I (heart) New York. It is my favorite city in the world and, every morning I wake up there, I feel like I am waking up in the place I was meant to. It is my urban love. It is my hobby. It is the setting for most everything I read about. This post is about sharing my urban obsessions.
While they say everything is better in NYC (other than price per square foot), most all New Yorkers love to argue about how their local picks are the absolute best and how everyone else’s is pure crap.
I just came back from the holy land. It was my first time there and, quite frankly, I never really had a drive to go. It was a meaningful trip, and I had a great time with friends. But I did not see God, feel the heat of the burning bush or walk down the path Christ walked or anything like that. In fact, the only thing that was “holy” were my pockets from a bad euro exchange and my stomach from a bad hummus exchange.
I love advertising. I love making it, I love talking about it. I love dissecting it. I love inspiring others to love it and I love that I get the opportunity to call it my career everyday.
At the same time, as much as I love advertising, I often hate the way the business of advertising is conducted. Namely, the people so lost in the art of creation that they have lost sight of what and who we create it for. The purpose of creation (to me anyway) is to inspire life. The purpose of advertising (to me anyway) is to inspire commerce. Yet, to really inspire me, there has to be a balance without mad compromise. Brands can be built, people need to become fans, sales must be driven and, all the while, CFO’s should have the right to cheer.
I think the ad industry has lead the way in confusing the business world about what corporate culture really means. Just one look through a few agency websites and you can see that it is too often defined by things like chai tea carts, basketball courts, beer pong tournaments, summer hours and talent shows. Don’t get me wrong, I do a mean “Piano Man”, but when did the offering of soft perks become an excuse for a real culture?
Every year about this time, the ad world goes crazy at Cannes. At the same time, like clockwork, the Founder of our agency goes crazy on the ad world, saying that Cannes is an egocentric, self-gratifying, Côte d’Azur waste of time. The agency world mutters back a lot of “you don’t know because you’re not here” BS, and he suggests they all “kiss his wildly successful ass.” And the typical summer brouhaha continues to turn.
I hate to admit that he is right…
