Monthly Archives: July 2005

Not “popular culture,” just culture

Law_and_order

At a cocktail party, the topic would come up. Inevitably. And when it did, all the academics would make condemnatory, exasperated noises. TV was bad, soulless, empty, moronic. Everyone knew that. One by one, they would take the pledge, one of the pledges, anyhow:

“We have no television.”

“We have a television but it’s black and white.”

“We have a color TV but it only gets a couple of channels.”

“We have a TV with cable but we never watch it.”

“We watch cable TV but only PBS and ‘serious’ programming.”

“We watch several channels on TV but we make fun of everything we see.”

You only had to wait, oh, about 17 minutes before these same academics would be demonstrating an astonishingly thorough knowledge of Law and Order and the specific accomplishments of Michael Moriarty and Sam Waterston as the Executive Assistant District Attorney.

This was not just the sherry talking. The academics had to give one another permission to take the topic seriously, to settle into it by degrees. Because of course they did. It was only for official purposes that TV was “not done.”

Some of the more desperate neo-Cons continue to insist on this position. But the rest of the world managed to come to its senses.  Most academics no longer regard TV watching as a “shameful secret” and a “guilty pleasure.”

This is a very big cultural difference, one of those differences that makes a difference. I am not sure who gets the credit. Some of it must go to people born in the late 60s and 70s.  It’s also true that TV got better (HBO and all that). But this weekend I came across something that might some day be seen as a watershed: in 1993, there was a changing of the guard at the Times crossword puzzle.

No, really. Before 1993, the author of the crossword was Eugene T. Maleska, former Latin teacher and, according to the Times, a curmudgeon of some standing. “If you were of a certain age or a cultural snob or raised in or around New York City (or, ideally, all three), he was your hero.” On Maleska’s death, the job fell to Will Shortz whereupon, “the puzzle began to demand much more extensive knowledge of contemporary culture.” It was now necessary to read something other than the Times to dispatch its crossword.

But this is just the surface thing, really, the obvious one. For Shortz’s puzzles also demand “the ability on the would-be solver’s part to come to terms with a number of other puzzle dimensions: themes that bear on how one interprets clues correctly, rebuses, squares containing more than one letter or figure, graded levels of difficulty, and so on.” In sum, the puzzle began to demand a dynamic engagement. You have to listen to the game as you play it. The game instructs you as you go.

Ah, cultures, by their puzzles we may know them.  Ah, puzzles…

References

All quotes from: Romano, Marc. 2005. First chapter: Crossworld. As excerpted in the New York Times. July 10, 2005. here. 

Acknowledgments

Hargurchet Bhabra (for the title of this post)

Story time: Frank Gehry and the reluctant muse of advertising

Gehry_iiSeveral years ago, I visited the Venice Beach offices of Chiat Day.  I was there with a client from Coke.  We had come with the crazy idea that Chiat Day could help us work on a new product concept.  (For the outcome, see the post for last Friday: New agencies, new clients.)

The building had been designed by Frank Gehry and while we were there it appeared to be under reconstruction.  I can’t tell you whether what I am about to describe was deliberate or an artifact of the construction process.

When the client and I entered the building, we found ourselves in a perfect cipher of a lobby.  There were no signs, no welcome, no instructions.  Just a very large plant and a bank of elevators. 

As I pushed for the elevator, I said to the client “Hmm, so what floor, do you think?” 

A disembodied voice replied, “Main reception is on 2.” 

Behind the very large plant was a women sitting at a desk.  She didn’t smile.  She didn’t want to establish eye contact.  She seemed to want us to leave her alone.  So we did.

The day was frustrating (see post for last Friday), but we got to know Gehry’s building a little.  Our meeting with the Chiat Day “team” was conducted in a large board room.  There were the famous Gehry chairs, the ones made of compressed cardboard.  The tables were made of thick sheets of plate glass, driven through by metal bolts. 

We were there most of the day, and I had occasion to come and go several times.  This meant swinging open a large, impressive set of plate glass doors, and passing through.  The third or fourth time I did so, I was stunned to discover that beside these doors was a simple passage way.  It was taped and spackled for painting, so I guess it had just been installed.  It was narrow, low, and it had no door at either end. 

It was the most imaginative thing we were to see all day.  It seemed to say, “Listen, if you must, you can make your way by means of these magnificent doors, heavy with the majesty of Chiat Day.  Or, if you’d prefer, you can just come and go by means of this little passage.  You decide.” 

Oh perfect.  The world is filled with books about creativity, systems for idea generation, elaborate theories of brand building, the 7, 12, 15 secrets of marketing.  (I know this because I have written one or two of them.)  But we all know the real secret of great marketing.  Smart, articulate people who share a mission and a room. 

It is astounding how many people in marketing thing that it’s more complicated than this.  (And for story time next Friday, I’ll tell you about the time I was doing idea generation at a big Madison Avenue agency and there was this guy, see, who…) 

We dress idea generation up in various kinds of mumbo jumbo.  We insist on filling out those pads of paper and covering the walls with “insights,” “mission statements,” “values,” and “objectives.”  But all of these are really just large plate glass doors that claim transparency but do not, finally, aid in it, that give free passage but actually exact an effort and distraction tax in the process, that frame and mediate access when the point of good marketing is deframing, demediating and stripping away the method and the chatter till we have one, or two, really good ideas.  (I think there’s a Van Morrison song that applies here.) 

As to the woman in the lobby.  I think of her now as a reluctant muse, the one who is prepared to supply knowledge if (and only if) we ask for it, and who then wishes to be left alone.  Because, well, really, it’s up to us.  As Van Morrison would say, no method, no teacher, no guru.  The muse, c’est nous.

(As posted from the Starbucks’ parking lot, July 8, 2005)

new celebrities, new cultures

Gibson

Light blogging today thanks to those scoundrels at Optimum Online. This morning, in the new house, I had internet service. Then it stopped. So Optonline could come out “and turn it on.” When are they going to cease and desist this little scam?

To the business at hand. In New brands, new consumers, a couple of days ago, I reflected on the success of a perfume that had deliberately embraced an unexpected rubbery scent. I noted that a move away from the agreeable and bland opens up a vast terrain of new meanings for products and for brands.

Today, as I was shifting boxes, I began thinking about Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. Here are two celebrities who do not appear to be following the traditional playbook.

In the old model, really big stars were scrupulously careful to remain noncontroversial. They sought flattering roles on screen, and an agreeable persona off screen. (Indeed this distinguished them from actors, people prepared to play even odious characters.)

The old model changed a little when big stars began to embrace unattractive roles on screen. Mel Gibson was all about being charismatic on his way up. But in the last couple of years he has played roles that were not especially flattering. I believe Payback and Conspiracy Theory serve as cases in point. In the same way, Tom Cruise played an assassin recently. (Sorry, I can’t think of the picture. It’s the one with Jamie Foxx. Thank you Optonline for blocking my access to IMDB.)

And now both Gibson and Cruise have gone a step further still and devoted their private lives to projects that are controversial for many and loathsome to a few. (I am thinking of Gibson’s The Passion and Cruise’s recent “exuberance” on Oprah. There isn’t enough data here, and clearly it will be a cold day in hell before we see anything like this from Julia Roberts or Michael Caine.  But if this is early indication of a new trend, perhaps we will see celebrities express themselves more frankly. 

This difference would make a difference. As it is, celebrities remain great guarantors of the uncontroversial, unmarked, unexceptional. They have suppressed their real individuality to broaden the base of their fandom. Their roles on screen may help encourage (and in a cultural sense fund) our heterogeneity as a society, but their private lies do the opposite. They suggest (and perhaps help fund) a private blandness.

Let us see whether celebrities become more forthcoming, and what difference this difference makes to the rest of us.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my sister-in-law Michelle Goodman for helping me to identify several movie titles. Thanks to Starbucks for a remedy for Optonline’s thuggish behavior.  Thanks for the several great comments on recent posts. I promise to respond the moment I am not having to do so from the Starbuck’s parking lot. 

Self Interrogation, or How to sound like an expert

NorthernpkwySomething strange happened when I took Molly, our cat, to the vet.  I exchanged pleasantries with Dr. Whatsit and then, all of a sudden, Dr. Whatsit assumed control of both sides of the conversation.

Dr. W.: Do I think your cat should stay here another night?

Dr. W. (without pause): Yes, I do

Dr. W. (without pause): Do I think it would be a terrible idea  to take her home tonight?

Dr. W.: (without pause):  No, I do not.

In effect, I stood there and the vet interviewed himself. 

I couldn’t help feeling that the vet was sending me a message over and above his "message" about Molly.  He seemed to be to be saying, "Listen, clearly, you’re hopeless.  You are not soliciting the information you need.  So, here’s the deal.  I am going to ask the questions you should have asked.  And then I’ll answer them."  More exactly, there now seemed to a silent "you idiot" in front of everything he said.  (Maybe, I’m just being too sensitive.) 

Did people interview themselves like this, say, five years ago?  I don’t think so. 

popular culture: owning vs. renting

Negroponte_1I expect you remember the "Negroponte switch:" the wired shall become wireless (telephones) and the wireless shall become wired (TV). 

I have another: the things we own, we will rent, and things we rent, we will own. No, of course it isn’t as good.  But it’s moving day here at the McCracken-DeCesare and we have spend the last couple of days committing our earthly  possessions to cardboard bound by sticky tape which tape comes off the roll with a sound that resembles the torture of a raptor infant. Under the circumstances, it’s a wonder I can blog at all. I am quite certain the sky is going to darken at the next pull of the tape. 

Anyhow, when we subscribe to satellite radio and we allow this radio to supplant our standing collections of music, something interesting happens.  We have given up ownership for something closer to rental.  It is clear why we might be tempted by this shift.  Most of us have a new diversity of taste, in any one category there is often a lot of music that interests us, and the turn-over of this music is pretty rapid. 

Assuming the cost of survey and capture is for some of us prohibitive.  It’s just so much easier to let some else do it.  Yes, there is a trade off: rootedness (of the kind that comes from listening to "our favorites" many times over) vs. staying current (the demands of which now precludes even a little repetition, let alone a lot.)  Ownership is comforting but it is also expensive.

Or, put this another way.  Google has become a way of remembering and ordering the world.  It is a kind of intellectual prothesis or superstructure.  So might the rental model deliver this higher order value.  The DJ becomes our musical intelligence, now resident outside the head and our "CD collection." 

The move from ownership to rental is driven then by a simple motive: rental may be more expensive and less emotionally satisfying, but it is so much more efficient as a means of staying in touch with a dynamic culture.

But what about owning what we used to rent?  My case in point here is the sale of DVDs.  This is one of the great mysteries of contemporary culture.  Americans are buying DVDs by the millions, and by this time most of them know they are never going to watch these DVDs a second time.  But there it is: we are buying what the world makes it really easy to rent. 

It might be that we buy DVDs for the same reason we build "great rooms."  Both allow us to play out the fantasy that one day the family will all get together for a lovely evening of film watching.  Nah.  It is perhaps some measure of the extent to which movies matter to us, that we want to own a copy of some films even if we never expect to play them a second time.  In fact, does anyone watch everything in a boxed set?  Kubrick maybe.  But otherwise.  There is something about ownership here that we find deeply________.  Any and all suggestions gratefully received.  Me, I have to go back to boxing…and ducking. 

new agencies, new clients

Chiat_day

Thanks to Irene Done (via Tom Asacker), this quote from Dan Wieden of the agency Wieden + Kennedy. 

"What is critical is not what P&G and Wieden have in common, but what we absolutely do not have in common.  "It is our differences that will push both sides to develop a better model suited for the times ahead."

Yikes. I was some years ago visiting the Chiat Day agency in Venice Beach, California, the one, as above, designed by Frank Gehry, that had the binoculars outside.  I was there with my client, a very talented guy who worked for the Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), and we had come bearing what we thought was a good idea for TCCC and the hope that Chiat Day would help us develop it. 

Talk about naïve! No, Chiat Day was not interested in our idea.  What they were interested in was having us bow before the genius that was Chiat Day.  We were ushered into a small room where very attractive people made a point of telling us how lucky we were to be there. 

The chief rhetorical device was a sense of rapt anticipation…as in, “I’m so excited that you’re so lucky.  This is going to be great! You are going to meet Mr. Morrison*! Wow, what a extraordinary day this is for you!”

When we did not warm to this, they got all explicit on our ass.

“You know who you’re going to meet, don’t you?”

 “Um, no, who?”

 “Robert Morrison!!!”

 “Oh, that’s great,” we said, with manifestly feigned enthusiasm.

Generally, I do what I’m told.  But my client from TCCC is a certified talent, I mean a real “don’t mess with him” talent. I once saw him beard an entire room of his colleagues at TCCC.  As we were taking our seats, he said, “this is what we should do.”  And we said, “well, why not let the adults think this one through?”  And about an hour later, after we had exerted ourselves heroically, there was a little sign hanging over the proceedings.  “The kid’s right.  We’re done here.” We gathered what remained of our self love, and left.

But my client was on his best behavior and we suffered this patronizing treatment without protest. We did our best to look on admiring as Mr. Morrison treated us to the full measure of his genius.  Ever so modestly, we wondered if Morrison and his brilliant team might consider the idea we had brought with us. Hah! We clearly did not understand. 

We were the milk fed client, the great shaggy, four legged beast.  We didn’t have ideas. And this is why we were so fabulously fortunate to find ourselves in the presence of Robert Morrison, idea incarnate, routine producer of the BFI (big fucking idea), captain of consumer preference, the very fount of brand value, the man without whom capitalism would indeed merely and always the captive of the dismal science.  If there was color in the world, if there was joy in any heart, if there was thought in any head, it was because Mr. Robert Morrison had put it there. Surely, we could see this.  I mean, it was the single most shameless act of patronizing I have ever seen.  Count your blessings. Come to Jesus.  And shut up with the ideas, already.

Sorry, got carried away there a little. (I think I still always think of Friday as “story day.”  As a kid, my local library would read stories on Fridays, and I haven’t got over it, apparently.)   The point I wish to make is that the remark from Wieden marks how much things have changed.  Agencies are, some of them, the best ones, at least, no longer God’s gift.  They are now there to listen and, actually, there to learn.  Wieden takes this a step further. The agency is there to change as the client does.  Indeed, client and agency will transform as they interact with one another.  (They are becoming in the language of complexity theory, complex adapative systems!)

I am fast running out of time here, but let me propose that we think of this in terms of a four part table.  (When I have the time, I will try to produce this graphically.) 

In the upper left cell, we have client and agency both as gods.  The game here is for the agency to persuade the client that they, the agency, have just had a BFI (as invented by the likes of Mr. Morrison) and that they (the client) must now pay the agency a huge amount of money.  Mark this cell: Agency god, Client god.

In the lower left cell, we have the agency as god and the client has supplicant.  This was the model operating with the Chiat Day case described above.  In this case, the agency doesn’t even pretend to solicit ideas from the client.

In the upper right cell, we have client as god, agency as supplicant. In a competitive marketplace, this is what you would think all relationships look like, and perhaps today many of them do.  Frankly, I think it’s the account manager who does the supplication, and often the creative team remains committed to the “do you have any idea how lucky you are to be working with us” model. 

In the lower right cell, we are looking at “client not a god, agency not a god,” and this appears to be where Wieden has located his agency’s relationship with P&G.  And this is really interesting. Now we are looking at a relationship in which both organization are moving at the speed of light, both are undergoing a continual transformation, and the relationship between them will amount to a daring in space docking which may or may not both organizations forever transformed.

New_agencies_new_clients_2
Or, thanks to Dilys, this vastly better image.

Cultureby_clientagency_relation_chart_by_1

So do we learn to live with dynamism. (Thanks for coming to “story time on Fridays.”) 

* not his real name.

References

The full story from Adweek.

Acknowledgments

With thanks to Dilys for the image.