February 5, 2005
who the hell cares
One of the more unfortunate things about entering the advertising profession at a young age, is that it invariably turns you into a compulsive “Trend Watcher” within nanoseconds.
So when you hear that Hollywood is now turning out a disproportionately high number of movies based on comic book superheroes, instead of a reasonable, normal reaction (i.e. Who the hell cares), you find yourself going, “Gosh! That’s so interesting!”
Or when you hear that unmarried New Yorkers are staying in more, opting for home-cooked dinners in lieu of trendy bistros and restaurants, instead of a reasonable, normal reaction (i.e. Who the hell cares), you find yourself going, “Gosh! That’s so interesting!”
Or when you hear that the major American TV networks are spending more money on Reality TV, less money of sitcoms, instead of a reasonable, normal reaction (i.e. Who the hell cares), you find yourself going, “Gosh! That’s so interesting!”
Or when you hear that the more European car advertising is using more and more arty, black & white photography, instead of a reasonable, normal reaction (i.e. Who the hell cares), you find yourself going, “Gosh! That’s so interesting!”
Or when you hear that Celebrity Divorce is on the upswing, instead of a reasonable, normal reaction (i.e. Who the hell cares), you find yourself going, “Gosh! That’s so interesting!”
And you find that everybody else is doing it too, including the folk with the high salaries and big corner offices that you, yourself covet.
So you start emulating them. Don’t have a clue what to say in the meeting? Mention the unmarried New Yorkers.
Don’t have an idea for the ad? Pitch some parody thing where the movie superhero arrives on the scene toting the client’s product.
Don’t know what to say to the client who thinks you dropped the ball on the new campaign? Suggest arty black & white photography.
Just so long as everybody in the office thinks your “finger is on the pulse”, it doesn’t matter how good your ideas are, how effective your thinking is, you find yourself being showered with money, favor and status. And high reward is addictive.
So to feed your addiction, you stop thinking. You start watching. Harder than ever.
You read all the magazines, you watch all the TV shows, it doesn’t matter how utterly bad they are. Your life becomes an orgy of mainstream popular culture. You begin feasting on it like a hungry animal. It doesn’t matter that the client’s business is going down the pan, what matters, dammit, is that Brad and Jennifer are still remaining the best of friends and in regular contact.
Of course, the minute you step off this treadmill, the minute you start thinking about real people with real needs, wants and problems, you’re dead. No more corner offices and 1965 Jaguar E-Types for you, Nosirree.
But like they say, who the hell cares.
We are most certainly not staying home more. At least I’m not, and we all know what I trendsetter I am …
Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. Sometimes, a specific message becomes a medium.
Comic book movie conversions are so common now that they become a medium. Celebrity divorces become a medium through which celebrities or journalists make a statement.
This can create a whole mess of cognitive dissonance; Kathy Lee Gifford’s attempts to avoid prosecution for owning sweatshops became the medium for a secondary message of how bad sweatshops were, for example.
According to the book “McLuhan for Managers — New Tools for New Thinking” by Mark Federaman and Derrick de Kerckhove, two of his acolytes:
“In McLuhan’s world a Medium is anything that extends our mind. It could be a technology or gadget. It could be a new process. Anything we create or build, anything we conceive, any expression of humankind is a McLuhanesque Medium. Media — more than one Medium — can be concrete and tangible or they may be abstract and intangible. .….. What we conventionally conceive of as the media — the press, rado, television, and so forth — are examples of McLuhan’s perception of Media, extennding our eyes and ears to the world, expanding the reach of voices and the influence of ideas” (pp. 23 – 24).
So .. for example, Hugh’s cards, the Hughtrain, HughMarks are becoming Mediums.
Let’s keep on keeping on … cognitively (and emotively) dissociating the corner offices and E-type owners from what’s really going on. they’ll get it sooner or later .. as H. has said, it’s gonna soon become a matter of survival.
it’s really how much of your soul that you wanna sell to the devil. then again, you’re either part of the problem or the solution
Belated bullets
Posting the past week has been embarassingly light, a problem compounded by a TypePad glitch over the weekend. Busy, but interesting times. Here’s what we’ve been reading over the past week: Journalism is not stenography.