Mad Scam

Catching up on all the news from across the pond, I was not surprised to read that British TV viewers under the age of 35 are “chatterboxing” whilst watching Coronation Street and eating packets of tripe flavored crisps (last time I was over there and bought a packet, there was no more than four crisps in it, and it cost about ten quid) Apparently, most of the shows are so bad, the young whippersnappers can fire up their dole paid for iToys, then go on Twitter and Facebook to moan about it to all their brain dead friends, who are watching the same shows. Why not just pin a picture of Simon Cowell on the wall and throw darts at it?

Talking of bad TV, I’ve just read somewhere that Engelbert Humperdinck will be representing Britain at the Eurovision Song Fiasco. Is that thing still going on? Is Engelbert Humperdinck still alive. Although, he’s probably done a Cliff and has a picture in the attic with snakes and sh*t growing out of his head. Anyway, my money’s on the Lapland, throat warbling ensemble, with their heart pounding rendition of “A Reindeer Love Song.”

Speaking of animals and sh*t, I see that The Wizened of Oz’s BFF, Rebekah Brooks has taken a break from killing off retired police horses and got herself arrested AGAIN! I wonder if the picture she’s got in the attic has short straight hair. I’ll lay money that if she gets done, Rupert will be like… “Rebekah who?” As for Cameron’s old school chum Charlie, word from my spies at number 10 is that the PM is now claiming he went to a council school in Clapham. Cor blimey.

Finally, now that my home town team, Manchester United is out of Europe, I read somewhere that all those bloody foreigners on the continent can take the plastic covers off their furniture, while restaurateurs are trying to figure out what to do with the chip mountains and gravy lakes had stockpiled. No word on tripe.

Speaking of tripe, did you see that Facebook is now claiming that EIGHT MILLION brands now advertise on the site. I don’t think there are EIGHT MILLION brands in existence, are there? I would call that hyperbole, if I knew what hyperbole means.

The old nag was ready for the knacker yard anyway!

Oooops!!!

Some of us have given up the piano and moved on to loftier pursuits!

Yeah, I will readily admit that the headline is an “homage” to French ad agency legend, Jacques Seguela’s 1979 book… “Please don’t tell my mother I work in advertising, tell her I play the piano in a brothel.” Amongst his other notable quotes are “Everyone has a Rolex. If you don’t have a Rolex by the time you reach 50, then you have clearly failed in your life.” And, “The consumer is a child who must be reawakened every day to buy his toys.” Ha, you can’t escape the fact that these consummation de fromage, boire de Chablis, singes de surrender, certainly have a way with le mots! (Apologies to French language purists!) Read More »

So, I was going to do a post about how WPP has increased its rancid profits up to twenty eight gazillion pounds, so enabling Sir Martin to more than pay for the monthly flower bill at the Gramercy Park love nest. Particularly as, the last time I looked into it, WPP’s corporate headquarters were still in Dublin. Ergo, more of that loverrrllly dosh remains in the Knighted One’s pocket. I wanted to read more about it in BrandRepublic’s excellent coverage. Unfortunately, I am barred from doing this unless I cough up some of my hard earned cash for a subscription. Hello, perhaps as a geriatric, semi cognitive, contributor, I might qualify for a freebie? Or is Haymarket now part of the WPP empire… Just taking the p*ss, Gordon. You know I love you guys.

As you are no doubt aware, the never ceasing political season here in the US is in full swing. Actually, it’s been in full swing since the last presidential elections nearly four years ago. Unlike the UK, where at least the politicos try not to appear as if they are in perpetual state of flogging themselves to the highest bidder. Over here, they shamelessly spend most of their time after being elected to office, running for office. This requires them to spend at least eighty percent of their time fund raising, rather than doing what their brain dead constituents elected them to do… Governing.

Compounding the problem in the US is the system of primaries, which means they have to spend months running against members of their own party for the privilege of running against members of opposing parties. This requires money… Lots of money… More money than Croesus had wet dreams about. And what do they need most of this money for? Buying TV time. To the point were one of the networks in a recent primary state cancelled two thirds of its regular programming to accommodate all the air time it had sold for political messages. Cretinous viewers missed out on the various embarrassing would-be stars Simon Cowell had assembled for American Idol in order to hear the religious ranting’s of Rick Santorum, or the newly acquired family values of thrice married Newt Gingrich. Strangely enough, this tsunami of money is spent trying to convince a few thousand primary voters to select someone who will probably be completely un-electable in the eyes of the majority of the population.

Now with the advent of PACS and SUPER PACS. It will only get worse, for the viewing public, that is. Meantime, the TV stations are minting it. Isn’t democracy great?

Over here in the US, today, Monday, February 20th, is Presidents’ Day, one of ten Federal holidays, including a couple that are only celebrated in certain parts of the country (I’ll let you work out which two, that way I don’t have to be accused of saying there might still be just the smallest hint of racial bias in the Land of the Free!) Anyway, most US holidays are an excuse for a three-day weekend and a chance to buy useless stuff in yet another useless sale. Commercialized beyond even Christmas, like most holidays, President’s Day has lost its meaning.

It wasn’t always that way. Not when it was known as George Washington’s Birthday. The honor previously accorded his birth has been lost since 1968 when Congress, under the provisions of the so-called “Long Weekend Act,” moved his birthday from February 22 to the nearest convenient Monday. In doing so they held that a three-day weekend was more important than any formal recognition of Washington’s accomplishments. Plus, you could sell even more useless stuff to people who had nothing better to do on a long weekend than high-tail it down to the mall and camp out waiting for the release of the next iToy.

Anyway, when you consider that the U.S. gets fewer public holidays and vacation days than Botswana, you have to wonder why they would spend most of that time shopping for stuff they probably don’t need. I’ll never forget when President Bush was asked in the aftermath of 9/11 what the American public could do to help the “War on Terror,” he advised everyone to go out shopping.

Isn’t capitalism great?

I only get one... Your Queen gets two!

Isn’t it funny that with all the talk these days about how thanks to our ability to mine data, particularly from social media, for insights that will help us target audiences with more meaningful message, we still seem to go out of our way to turn those messages into “corporate speak.” You know, lots of synergizing innovative technologies, incentivizing customer engagement and integrating frameworks of excellence. Right now, the Bon mot, d’jour award goes to “Curate.” I remember when we used to cobble stuff together, preferably after a visit to the pub.

One of my favorite Churchill stories is about the time an American general asked him to look over the draft of an address he had written. It was returned with the comment ‘Too many passives and too many zeds.’ The general asked him what he meant and was told: ‘Too many Latinate polysyllabics like “systematize”, “prioritize”, and “finalize”. And then the passives. What if I had said, instead of “we shall fight on the beaches”, “Hostilities will be engaged with our adversary on the coastal perimeter”?

Yes indeed, there’s far too much of this kind of thing going on these days.

I write more on this subject in my new book, “Confessions of a Mad Man.” There’s also a liberal helping of sex, drugs, rock & roll. Unfortunately, there’s less and less of that going on these days. Confessions of a Mad Man

Ooops, slight cock-up. Forgot to post a picture of Kate from my mind boggling collection housed on my basement iCray. Don’t worry, there’s lots more where this came from. No Hitler pics though… Unless you insist.
Cheers/George

Kate making my dinner!

I have to confess, I’ve been a tad tardy of late. No doubt Gordon is peeved. But, I promise to start catching up. Honest Gordo! I will post in the next day or so. Right now it’s naked Kate Moss day on AdScam, adscam so I have to post some tasty pictures. Don’t forget… Wednesday is Hitler day. I’ll be back!!!

Over here in the US, today is “Black Friday,” the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is the biggest shopping day of the year. Every store has a sale on and most of them open at midnight on Thanksgiving day. But, as usual, more and more stores are opening even earlier. This means that Neanderthal super-shoppers start queuing the day before the holiday. One woman got in line outside “Toys-R’-Us” nine hours before the midnight opening, because an $80 train set her screaming child wants will be on sale for $40. She claims she has to do this as it’s the only way she can afford it. However, she pointed out that while she stands in line for nine hours, she will be using her brand new iPhone 4S to check out other sales… Hello, lady… You have a $650 phone and can’t afford the extra $40 for your kids train set?

Still, if you think that’s bad, customers at a California Wal-Mart were caught in a pepper-spray attack by a woman who authorities said was “competitive shopping.” Apparently the attraction was really, really cheap video games. Customers were already in the store when a whistle signaled the start of the Black Friday sale at 10 p.m., sending shoppers hurtling in search of deeply discounted items. One customer said that by the time he arrived at the video games, the display had been torn down. Employees attempted to hold back the scrum of shoppers and pick up merchandise even as customers trampled the video games and DVDs strewn on the floor.

“People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” a customer said. “I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. People were pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes.”

The weird thing is that there are sales all the time, so what’s the big deal? It’s probably the same over there now, but I can remember when a sale was once a year, and really was a sale, not an excuse to unload all the crap the store couldn’t sell the rest of the year. Can anyone out there remember the great ads, I think Steve Dunn at Leagas Delaney (correct me if I’m wrong) did for Harrods? “There is only one Harrods. There is only one Harrods Sale.” Loverrrrllly stuff. Now all the sales are crap, and so is most of the advertising pimping them. Anyway, no one has any money. They’ve blown it all on iPhones.

I have to confess that I always chuckle when I hear people arguing about what has contributed most to business productivity in the last one hundred years. Obviously, many people claim it was the introduction of the personal computer – Yeah, OK, Apple Freaks, we know you were in the game early, but most would argue that IBM gave it legitimacy with corporate America – Either way, it was a pivotal moment, but my money is on something that happened twenty odd years earlier. The 1960 introduction of the Xerox 914 photocopier, an invention that improved office productivity in an amazing way. In fact, many years later Fortune called the 914 “the most successful product ever marketed in America measured by return on investment.”

Never forget, before the dry copier, Mad Men like secretaries had to make carbon copies and cut stencils, then spend hours cleaning all the shit off their hands. It was a messy, time consuming and unpleasant procedure. The Xerox 914 changed all that, as well as becoming an unbelievable cash generating machine for the company… Yet its very success almost destroyed Xerox and has been extensively written about, particularly in a great book published in 1988 and re-issued in 1999, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox invented, then ignored the first personal computer.

In the sixties and seventies Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Company (PARC) invented just about every fucking thing you can imagine. That includes what was recognized as the first true PC – The Xerox Alto… This sucker had everything, Ethernet networking, graphical user interface, icons, bit mapping, scalable type, the mouse, the world’s first laser printer, hot and cold running water. It was years ahead of its time. So what did Xerox management do with it? Not a god damn thing. They were too busy counting the money rolling in every time someone used a 914, ‘cos you couldn’t buy one, you had to lease it and pay for every single copy you made. The thing was a gold mine for years until the patents finally ran out.

As everyone knows, the main beneficiary of all the incredible shit coming out of PARC was Steve Jobs, ‘cos in its infinite wisdom, Xerox gave the King of Apple a conducted tour of PARC, showing him everything they were up to, even watching him as he made notes of everything he was shown. Within months he had hired away some of PARCS top talent and instituted a program that resulted in the Lisa, the forerunner of the Mac., which I worked on before most of you were born!

The moral of the story is that the management at most Big Dumb Companies (BDA’s) and their Big Dumb Agencies (BDA’s), are douchenozzles. But then, you already knew that.

Strangest of all, even in its roughest years, Xerox continued to fund PARC, and they still do. The place continues to come up with amazing shit. Most of which, Xerox continues to ignore.

Oh, and their advertising continues to suck.

Did you buy “Confessions of a Mad Man” yet? Don’t be a douchenozzle!