There has been a lot of talk about the New England Patriots this season, to say the least. I think they're providing a great metaphor. Let's start with just the football aspect:
Right now, there seem to be two camps on the Patriots running up the score: those that think they are and see it as a very bad thing, and those that either don't think they are (ahem) or that because it's pro football, there need be no mercy. No surprise, Group 2 is comprised almost entirely of Patriots fans.
We all want an excuse as to why our team or our own actions are justified. But when you do things like going for it on 4th down with a 5-touchdown lead and leaving your starters in when the other team has no chance is difficult to defend. The reason? They are on a mission to prove they're the best team despite the "Spygate" incident earlier in the season and they seem to think this is the way to remove all doubt. Hmmm...
All the Pats are doing is ensuring that the rest of the nation loathes them, and that other teams will stick it to them when they can. That probably won't be this season, but coaches, fans and players have very long memories when it comes to this sort of behavior. And so do GMs, owners, and front office personnel. Don't be surprised if next year or the year after that some team injures Tom Brady with a purposeful late hit. Or, GMs consistently refuse to make trades with the NE brass...or every road game in a down year (which will happen) turns into “how much can we embarrass the Patriots,” Essentially, Bellichick is threatening to create 20 years of paybacks with one season of a raised middle finger.
Now the non-football portion: how much does this translate to our lives, our politics, our interactions with others? Are we ever truly in a place where "it doesn't matter so long as you win"? Yet from our foreign policy to CEO compensation to presidential campaigns, sportsmanship seems to have taken a back seat. Unfortunately, it does come with consequences.
Also, it is very difficult to build up a great reputation, but extremely easy to destroy it. Witness political figures, celebrities, and others who fall from grace. But once a reputation is destroyed, it is an even longer process to remake it, if it can ever be done.
I'm not saying that everything needs to be done in the utmost manner of politeness, but there does deserve to be some simple respect, even when the stakes are high. Maybe especially when the stakes are high. But somewhere we seem to have forgotten that if you're going to tread on someone in any arena that they will make it their mission to take you down. And they, too, have long memories. Even armies who are bent on killing each other understand that once you've defeated your opponent, you have to give them some grace in defeat, or it will come back to haunt the victors.
So root for your team, Patriots fans. You may even go undefeated and win a championship. Just remember that when your team is being taken apart unmercifully in a few years. Unless your team's ownership starts thinking about their long-term future.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
IF AL GORE IS SERIOUS
Let’s start with a reality check: Al Gore is not going to win the presidency in 2008. He will not be able to get organized, raise enough money, or campaign fast enough to make a dent in the front-loaded primaries, and he’s certainly not going to enter the fray as a 3rd party candidate. The question should be: does Gore ever run for public office again? His eventual answer to that will tell you whether he’s really in it for public service or for ego.
Forget personal prejudices about Gore’s ability (or lack thereof) to often walk the walk he talks, or what his real purpose was about agreeing to make “An Inconvenient Truth.” He has still been an important part of raising the consciousness in this country about climate change, and has caused the debate to intensify. If he is truly interested in serving the public and effecting a change, then he needs to continue to make his case as Al Gore, Private Concerned Citizen. But if this is just a ploy to re-make himself politically, then he’s not interested in public service at all, but power.
I don’t know the answer here. Gore has always championed environmental protection as his #1 cause, and that makes you want to believe that he’s really in it to educate the country and make a difference. But if you watch his movie with a critical eye, you don’t just gloss over all the references to the 2000 election. Instead, you wonder why it’s included. After all, if this is about raising consciousness on what we’re doing to the planet, who cares about how you lost the election?
That is the dichotomy with Al Gore, and why a lot of people struggle with or discount what he stands for, or what he purports to stand for. If you’re really in this for environmental change, why do you try to show how “unfair” the 2000 election was to you? And if the environment is that fragile, why do you live your extremely environmentally abusive lifestyle and think that by buying “carbon credits” you can excuse your behavior?
See, this is the problem with career politicians. They think they’re above the fray, and they think they’re entitled to positions of privilege. Hey…I’m an agoraphobic person who has partially been rewarded by a lifetime of being on stage instead of down with “the rabble.” So on some level I understand. The difference is that I’m not in a position to make policy. I’m just saying that whatever you see Al Gore do in the future with respect to seeking public office should tell you a great deal about his true motivations.
Forget personal prejudices about Gore’s ability (or lack thereof) to often walk the walk he talks, or what his real purpose was about agreeing to make “An Inconvenient Truth.” He has still been an important part of raising the consciousness in this country about climate change, and has caused the debate to intensify. If he is truly interested in serving the public and effecting a change, then he needs to continue to make his case as Al Gore, Private Concerned Citizen. But if this is just a ploy to re-make himself politically, then he’s not interested in public service at all, but power.
I don’t know the answer here. Gore has always championed environmental protection as his #1 cause, and that makes you want to believe that he’s really in it to educate the country and make a difference. But if you watch his movie with a critical eye, you don’t just gloss over all the references to the 2000 election. Instead, you wonder why it’s included. After all, if this is about raising consciousness on what we’re doing to the planet, who cares about how you lost the election?
That is the dichotomy with Al Gore, and why a lot of people struggle with or discount what he stands for, or what he purports to stand for. If you’re really in this for environmental change, why do you try to show how “unfair” the 2000 election was to you? And if the environment is that fragile, why do you live your extremely environmentally abusive lifestyle and think that by buying “carbon credits” you can excuse your behavior?
See, this is the problem with career politicians. They think they’re above the fray, and they think they’re entitled to positions of privilege. Hey…I’m an agoraphobic person who has partially been rewarded by a lifetime of being on stage instead of down with “the rabble.” So on some level I understand. The difference is that I’m not in a position to make policy. I’m just saying that whatever you see Al Gore do in the future with respect to seeking public office should tell you a great deal about his true motivations.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
WHAT'S WRONG WITH ADVERTISING (or lessons from working in gaming)
Some of you know that my company works with ad agencies in addition to video game companies. I was just forwarded an article where an agency owner who thinks very highly of himself was pontificating on what's wrong with the industry.
Yeah, this is beyond the normal scope of this blog, but since I haven't been posting anything lately, I thought I'd offer my own take on what seems utterly apparent, and it's considerably different than what Johnny Loveshimselfalot has to say.
For ad agencies to be socially relevant again they must --
1) Have independence. This means freedom from shareholders. One of the single dumbest ideas was to collect agencies in these big holding companies and go public. A creative company needs an environment that allows that it to sink or swim based on taking some chances with ideas, otherwise there will never be "big ideas' or because no one will be willing to allow the potential risk. Nothing sucks the life out of creativity like Wall Street.
2) Hire actual creative types. Virtually every ad agency is now populated by account executives who dress funky to show how creative they are. In reality, most of them are simply immature bad salespeople, more Herb Tarlick than J. Walter Thompson. Scratch that: Herb could at least sell. Agencies don't need more AEs who pretend to be creative: they need CDs and Producers and Copywriters who actually know what they're doing. Which means you might need to hire some weirdos who want to crawl into a corner and draw. Take the gaming approach -- throw a twinkie over the cubicle wall and leave him to his craft. Don't worry...he'll come out eventually.
3) Have a SMALL number of people over the creatives (like one or two) who have proven that they a) know what good creative is and b) have some business acumen. This is where the David Ogilvys and Lester Wundermans of the world really made their mark. They weren't writing all the ads or going on all the shoots -- they were letting the weirdos do their thing and acting as the filter, THEN bringing the best ideas to light. Or, in a gaming scenario, they were the publishers, the creatives were the developers. Somehow, that very simple idea has been lost.
4) When something is working, DON'T SCREW WITH IT. In the gaming world, how much money has Blizzard made on World of Warcraft? How much money has EA made on Madden, Need for Speed and The Sims? How much money has Midway made on Mortal Kombat? How much money has Activision made on Spiderman, World Series of Poker, and Guitar Hero? And it doesn't matter if the producer changes -- you don't mess with the formula until it stops working. This is even MORE imperative with advertising, yet every new AE-who-thinks-he's-a-producer has to stamp out the life of what was happening before and do something new. And it never, ever, ever works. Why? See 3) above.
Also note that this does not mean that new ideas aren't encouraged or allowed to surface. It simply means that change for the sake of change is misguided.
Until then, advertising will continue to decline. If they get to the point where they're irrelevant (and that's not very far away) then nothing will resurrect the trade. It will become the equivalent of used car sales.
You know, I always thought the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" was so ridiculously obvious that anyone who read it should have been saying, "Well, duh." The advertising industry is making me reconsider that opinion....but I'm scratching my head the entire time.
Yeah, this is beyond the normal scope of this blog, but since I haven't been posting anything lately, I thought I'd offer my own take on what seems utterly apparent, and it's considerably different than what Johnny Loveshimselfalot has to say.
For ad agencies to be socially relevant again they must --
1) Have independence. This means freedom from shareholders. One of the single dumbest ideas was to collect agencies in these big holding companies and go public. A creative company needs an environment that allows that it to sink or swim based on taking some chances with ideas, otherwise there will never be "big ideas' or because no one will be willing to allow the potential risk. Nothing sucks the life out of creativity like Wall Street.
2) Hire actual creative types. Virtually every ad agency is now populated by account executives who dress funky to show how creative they are. In reality, most of them are simply immature bad salespeople, more Herb Tarlick than J. Walter Thompson. Scratch that: Herb could at least sell. Agencies don't need more AEs who pretend to be creative: they need CDs and Producers and Copywriters who actually know what they're doing. Which means you might need to hire some weirdos who want to crawl into a corner and draw. Take the gaming approach -- throw a twinkie over the cubicle wall and leave him to his craft. Don't worry...he'll come out eventually.
3) Have a SMALL number of people over the creatives (like one or two) who have proven that they a) know what good creative is and b) have some business acumen. This is where the David Ogilvys and Lester Wundermans of the world really made their mark. They weren't writing all the ads or going on all the shoots -- they were letting the weirdos do their thing and acting as the filter, THEN bringing the best ideas to light. Or, in a gaming scenario, they were the publishers, the creatives were the developers. Somehow, that very simple idea has been lost.
4) When something is working, DON'T SCREW WITH IT. In the gaming world, how much money has Blizzard made on World of Warcraft? How much money has EA made on Madden, Need for Speed and The Sims? How much money has Midway made on Mortal Kombat? How much money has Activision made on Spiderman, World Series of Poker, and Guitar Hero? And it doesn't matter if the producer changes -- you don't mess with the formula until it stops working. This is even MORE imperative with advertising, yet every new AE-who-thinks-he's-a-producer has to stamp out the life of what was happening before and do something new. And it never, ever, ever works. Why? See 3) above.
Also note that this does not mean that new ideas aren't encouraged or allowed to surface. It simply means that change for the sake of change is misguided.
Until then, advertising will continue to decline. If they get to the point where they're irrelevant (and that's not very far away) then nothing will resurrect the trade. It will become the equivalent of used car sales.
You know, I always thought the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" was so ridiculously obvious that anyone who read it should have been saying, "Well, duh." The advertising industry is making me reconsider that opinion....but I'm scratching my head the entire time.
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