Endangered poets on the internet.

There's a great scene in "The Dead Poets Society" where Robin Williams reads from the introduction of a book of poetry. The publisher is attempting to quantify poetry. To give the reader guidelines on how to tell when they have read a truly great poem. Williams instructs his class to tear the intro out of the book and dispose of it.

There are a lot of people and companies attempting to quantify effective advertising these days. They are building systems and platforms that weigh an ads perfection on several seemingly obvious axes. "Don't worry about where the ad runs - all that matters is that it reaches the right eye-balls." "If the ad is large enough it will deliver effective branding." "Ads that engage users in actions without making them click to another page are most effective." "An ad's message and presentation can be automatically optimized by automatic testing."

Reach and frequency are dead and true, thoughtful creative is right behind them.

I'm not sitting here like Andy Rooney playing the curmudgeon that thinks everything was better in black & white. I think the new technology is amazing. I think optimization on any testable criteria is exactly what marketers should do and doing more faster - is better.

Unfortunately, I think these rapped-fire, black box methods foster a lack of human creativity and innovation. "If the system is going to find the best places and the best bodies then figure out which is the best message what does it need me for??"

This tech-forward environment seems to be devaluing original creative work. Even worse than becoming a commodity, it is the latest free-bee; thrown in gratis for clients willing to pay for the new technical tricks.

Marketing is as it has always been - a science and an art. The science is knowable, countable measurable results. The art is what makes humans change their behavior. A joke. A pretty girl. A perfectly turned phrase.

Test ten dull tag lines and one will emerge as the best. When we place the value on the technology we relegate the creative to a lesser place at the table - most often a lesser (cheaper) creative process.

Play with your toys. Debunk the myths of high-priced placements and exclusive demographics. Test everything. But don't forget to start with the one thing no machine will ever replicate. Human creative that connects one person to another in just the right way for your brand and your purpose. In the end it will mean more than any technical trick.

It's beginning to feel a lot like ....panic.

I know everyone in retail makes most of their money in Q4. I understand how important a good holiday season is to these companies - especially after what has surely been the worst year in recent memory. My only question is does the deeply distressed 2009 consumer think their hard earned, saved or borrowed holiday dollars are best spent on bundles of mass produced hard goods?

Best Buy is already singing a TV spot telling me I NEED three computers - three - not just one good one given I might not get anything else of that magnitude this season. Wal-mart is squeezing all profit out of a 40" flat screen so I'll spend $500 at a time when I really don't want to. I'm certain these offers are really based on a simple calculation - every consumer has some fixed quantity to spend this year - not the usual flexible pot. If the big guys can get those dollars first they win and everyone else in retail loses. The dollars will be spent.

The funny thing is if there were ever a season for home made cards and gifts this is it. I can't tell who I'm rooting for here. It's good for the market if the big guys win. It's good for the country. But I hate the thought process and the lack of imagination.

Note to my loved ones. Simple things you really care about need only apply.

The death of consumption

Have you ever heard the phrase "died of consumption?" It meant TB in the 1800's.

I think consumption is dying.

The phrase came to mind as I walked the aisles of a few of my favorite haunts the other day - Home Depot, Best Buy, even the grocer.

Consuming as an activity was baked into our generation. My father worked late during the week in New York City and had an hour commute home so I didn't see him much those days when I was very small. But Saturday morning he would put my sister and me in the cubby hole between the engine and the back seat of his VW bug to take us grocery shopping. We called it the “back back” - today it would be called child abuse. Of course we laughed the whole way listening to New York country music on AM.

We got to look at all the colors and shapes we had seen on TV, all the characters made especially for us at General Foods and Kellogg's. It was like seeing celebrities - "look its the rabbit - silly rabbit..."

We did not spend frivolously, ever, but we did get to actually buy stuff and bring it home with Dad. It was a treat. Something to look forward to. If we were good we got our favorite cereal or toaster treat. There was emotion in the experience. We were with our Dad, we were buying what the TV said made us cool, we were being rewarded for being good. All positive. All in the bright florescent light of the local grocer.

Walking the joyless aisle of the wounded retail giants is nothing like that today. I know all the brands and all of their "tricks." I'm there to buy the best solution - not because I want to be there. They in turn resent the “lookie loos” more than ever. Browsers are not really welcome. They NEED sales and you can feel it. Worse still their pressure is now starting to choke the system. It looks to me like over-all price points are on the rise. Maybe partly because of inflation but I think it is desperation. Buy 10 yogerts for $10! Holy shit who need 10 yogerts!

The thing is - my dad didn't love shopping or wasting money. He got what we needed each week and jammed it into the trunk in front. He brought us because it was an inclusive, freeing, happy, safe experience. Because for the price of a can of SpaghettiO's™, he was our hero. I had to buy a six-pack of noodle soup the day my daughter had a cold because they don't sell one at a time any more. Good for them I guess - but I sure didn't like it. If they are going to be about volume, I might as well go to Costco, buy 10 at a time and get an even better price. They do not have the space, the margins or the membership fees to compete with the big boys so I think it is a bad game for them to play.

I can't say I blame the merchants for freaking out and trying to jam as much into my cart as they can. But it sure does suck the fun out of shopping.

Once they break that pattern I think it may stay broken. They might just become a market - like the stock market - not a place I want to be. Not a place I’d take my kids to see Lucky, and the gang so why bother to run the TV spots or color the boxes? I won’t tell the kids about the plastic toy they didn’t get because I went shopping alone. I may even start calling it buying - not shopping.

So what's your big plan?? Just cut the price, use better ingredients and hope I notice.

You just lost the back of the bug.

DSP '09

I was lying on the floor tickling my kids one morning this weekend and it got me thinking about the economy. Times are legitimately hard and probably going to get harder. More than anything I want to be sure my family gets to that supremely happy place as often as we can - regardless of our "situation." The distance between suburban materialism and lovingly raising happy children with your partner is sometimes far greater than it should be IMHO. If we do it right we'll be able to muster the self discipline and confidence necessary to remember this fact even with a tighter belt around our middle. In retrospect I know my parents must have lived by a similar credo and I am grateful. Time on the floor playing really was the currency my sisters and I valued most.

No batteries, no big brands, no must-see events - just time on the floor with the kids. Call it the David Stimulus Plan and yes, it does tickle.

Eat to win

I have an exceptionally shallow hope for President Obama's speech tomorrow. After he charms and elates us, after he tells us how we are going to all contribute to a new and better America, after he gives us the briefest glimpse of his master plan for leading us through change and names the smart and inspirational people who will be on his team, I'm hoping he'll talk about comfort food.

I can hear it now,"These are difficult times. We must raise our standards..our expectations for each other and ourselves. We know it is the only thing we can do now and the only way to make a difference in the long run. It is challenging. It is stressful. We should all expect to work hard but we are only human. Perhaps this isn't the time for a diet. Let's give ourselves the first 100 days to work hard, sleep less, focus on what needs to be done. If we need to eat a donut along the way..SO BE IT! A well timed chocolate chip cookie can be as powerful as a well written education plan! I need everyone of you at your mental best. This is not a time to cut calories."

The crowd goes wild.

I suspect he is up at 4, works out at 5, politely declines all sweets and never calls in sick.

Time for another salad. On to greater and grander things.

Self-editing memory

My dad and I were talking about the way humans are able to alter their memories to suite their emotional needs. People will swear, even pass lie detector tests completely convinced they saw something they didn't or didn't do something they did.

http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1975a.html

It makes me wonder about the memories my kids are creating. 

My daughter is two. After begging to go on the "big kid ride" with our twelve-year-old, we sat her in a kiddie bumper car. He was too big to go with her. She had to go alone but could see me standing on the side. There was a lot of sitting still and a little spinning in place. I am of course yelling and gesturing, "push the button on the floor cookie! Turn the wheel! Turn it!" A couple of very happy parade style waves then it was over. The moment the other kids got up to go she clearly thought she was alone, panicked and bawled.

Does this one wash away like eating the toothpaste and dog food or is it riveted in like a first kiss? Will she edit in an evil carny named Chuck who almost kidnapped her? Or in the end did her dad teach her how to drive stick when she was two?

Note to self - save for therapy.

Thermal memories

I always feel a fool when I get off the plane in LA with my winter coat. It sits untouched in my hotel while I'm there. We natives nod to each other as we stuff them in the overhead, against flight crew instructions, on the way back East. But we know. 

I pre-heated my coat to about 5,000 degrees while we wait for the ground crew to figure out (is this their first time?) how to get us off the plane and into the terminal.

It's all so refined. Just a tiny gap between the fuselage and the air-bridge...but its enough. That one breath of sixteen degree air stings and delivers on all threats. You really might freeze.. you know..to death.. when you leave the building.

I did grow up with winter, with the cold, its smell, the way it tightens your skin and makes you move. As a kid the snow alters your ordinary world and makes just falling down more fun.

It is soothing to me now. It has a sameness and a quiet. A kind of pleasant isolation. Warm is after all just inside.

I actually like when these winter pictures come up on my  CEIVA at some un-wintery part of the year. They put me there. In that stillness for just a moment.