Imagine a triangle. On one side is pushing tobacco. The other side is glamorizing gambling. And the last side is exploiting children. When I started my career this was the terrain I promised myself I would never work. And I never have. And, frankly, my moral compass hasn’t wavered much through the years.

But I’ve never run a half-billion-dollar agency and had to balance these concerns against billings and still stand up for my beliefs. Although, Alex Bogusky may get too much praise for being a genius when many of those awards came from  the 80 hour work weeks of his creative staff. But he deserves it for what he’s doing now. Speaking out now about what’s bankrupt in our industry.

Ironically, all the praise that was lavished on him for busting his ass and grinding his employees into doing Cannes-winning work has dried up now that he’s voicing his conscious.  Seems we don’t really like whistle blowers too much. Press coverages says he “turns back,” and “disengages.” Aren’t you engaging when you offer a critical  assesent?

I’ve heard very little praise from industry leaders. Much less agreement that maybe he’s on to something. Probably the most positive things that have been said is “the industry will miss him.”

Maybe they’re scared their corporate masters will object or the press will call them hypocrites. Possibly they disagree. But I don’t hear any agency heads, creative directors or holding company boards saying he’s wrong.

What the good guys should be doing now is applauding and joining in a chorus with Alex. I’m but I minor voice in this industry but I’ll say Alex is right, “it’s the duty of adults in society is to protect it’s children.” (And don’t get me started on the Disney princesses.)

It’s understandable that folks are doing what they can to survive in the economy. Not everyone has banked the kinda cash that Alex has (me included) but the industry could probably benefit from a little more self reflection and so could the work. As it is much easier to be creative when you believe in what you’re doing.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about what the future’s creative department should look like and who it should be headed by. Do traditional shops need to get rid of their old guard and make way for leaders and practitioners steeped in the traditions of the digital shops?

Surely they need to get rid of dated thinking. Kick out folks who can’t code, tag, and develop an app. And there’s no one who understands how to make use of the new tools available than someone with a digital background. Right?

But what about all that brand stuff? Is a techno creative really better equipped to communicate the client’s brand story than someone who’s been focused on it their entire career? Aren’t the truly great communicators capable of doing their job in more than old-school traditional media?

Digital creatives are getting dinged for lack of branding and planning experience. While traditional creatives apparently can’t grasp the internet. But are either of these characterizations fair?

I think people are getting too caught up on resumes and not focused enough on real skills. For example, I work at a traditional agency yet the majority of the work I do lives online. Some of the work I do is even social media marketing — imagine that. Does this make me a traditional creative or a digital creative. I suspect in the eyes of many recruiters who can’t get past a resume it makes me a traditionalist. But I just see myself as being current.

Marketers need professionals that can tell their story and engage their customers in all media. Be it on Twitter or on a billboard. And that is best done by a media neutral creative, working off a media neutral brief, for a media neutral media buy.

I don’t think the best creative comes from a digital or a traditional background. What is important is their grasp of  today’s tool, the future, and the client’s business.

Too many marketing departments spend countless hours navel gazing, trying to find a omniscient inner-voice. This oracle is supposed to communicate who they are as a company and what they need to tell their customers so that they will finally understand the value they offer the world. It never works.

Sorry, navel gazers, your belly button can’t help you. Finding yourself might have been the mantra of 70s-self-help gurus but you’ll need to listen to your customers first if you want to make your marketing relevant to them.

Even worse, this feel good approach most often leads to corporate chest pounding. “Your number one source for widgets.” “The market leader in top-quality widgets.” Messaging no one gives a damn about outside the company and most customers will even find off putting. After all, who wants to listen to someone who only talks about themselves.

This approach totally ignores what the customer cares about. If you’re spending all your time discovering yourself, you’re not discovering the hopes and desires of your customers. Just your own.

The saddest part is there’s never been an easier time to really get to know what your customer wants and what they care about. Just fire up your internet browser and get to know them better. They’re putting everything on record for you through social media. Heck, you don’t even have to actually talk to them to get to know what makes them tick.

To be clear, this isn’t to say who you are as a company isn’t important – as long as it’s focused with the perspective of the customer. An easy to understand example of this is — UPS. What can brown do for you?

Quick, how many copy points can you fit into a 60 second radio spot? The answer should be one.

But many ads that really suck the big one are about two or three things – maybe even more. This is real easy to observe in a print ad. Just open your local newspaper (if you still have one). You’re bound to find on the first couple pages an ad with something nebulous resembling a headline and, beneath that, five to fifteen bullet points describing everything the company does under the sun. These “ads” are more like a business plan than effective marketing communication.

News flash business plan publishers – your potential customers don’t care about your plans to make a mint from them. They don’t care how you make money. And frankly, they don’t even care if you do make money.

They’ll only care about you if you can make their life better. And confusing them with a bunch of pointless information won’t do that. It will just annoy them and make them want to buy something from your competitor instead.

Besides being strategically wrong, these ads are supremely flawed in execution. Now imagine you are at the hardware store and you need to buy something to cut steel. Would you buy something that also sawed wood, picked your teeth, had a magnifying glass on it and also promised to file your finger nails? A Swiss Army knife is good for a lot of things but it’s not a great knife (especially for cutting steel).

Now picture of single reinforced blade without any tricky gizoms. Just a long narrow piece of forged steel attached to an elegantly designed handle. It does just one thing and does it brilliantly: it cuts through the bullshit.

To keep from sucking, that’s what your advertising must do. Cut through all the clutter and bullshit while making a single minded case for purchasing your product.

There’s been a lot of hand wringing lately about what an advertising is and what it should be in the digital age. That conversation should not muddy this water. Because when you strip away all the discussion about technology, advertising needs to engage a customer and inform them about a product or a service. Simple, uncomplicated, well-executed messages in whatever medium will do that. Ugly, complicated, poorly-executed messages won’t. Period.

What’s worse than a yes man?

Easy. A no man. (Or even a no woman.)

Corporate culture breeds them just as incessantly as yes men. And, unfortunately, so do many large advertising agencies.

OK. So who is the “no person?” And how do they make your advertising suck?

Imagine a smart, no nonsense woman who has the power to make decisions but needs to delegate because she’s busy and important. Then she gets people to help her.

But either these people are scared to actually say yes and move projects forward. Or the boss treats them more as gate keepers than an actual project manager. So they say no.

So the boss’ delegate, the no man, feels he has no power to approve anything. They feel their choice is to do nothing or to disapprove. For anyone who deals with them, they become a barrier to get by. And the only way the no man can feel any power is by saying no. So sometimes they say no a lot. Even if it’s for no other reason than to feel like they’re contributing. Because they can’t contribute by saying yes.

This is a pretty common phenomena in corporate culture and sometimes there are several layers of no men before you get to the yes lady. I’ve even personally presented to no men for months before ever getting a chance to present to anyone who had the power to rubber stamp something.

This is frustrating for agency creatives. But some agency presidents and bean counters love these no men because each round of presentations means more changes and more billable hours. Kah ching $$$$$$.

The no men get to feel important because they “improved” the work, the account executives have billed more hours, and the creatives have more work to do and will get to keep their jobs. Everyone wins but the advertising.

As illogical as this may sound, a lot of big ad agencies have some similar dynamics going on. Lots of layers that the work must get through and lots of people who need to contribute to making it “better” – associate creative directors, creative directors, group creative directors, executive creative directors and chief creative officers.

What can you do about no men? If you’re the boss you can empower your people to say yes. If you’re caught the middle you can try and stay as objective as possible and contribute positively to the work. If you’re a creative director you can resist the urge to “plus” the work when it’s already great.

Sometimes a contribution to a project is not a contribution to the work. But rather championing it instead.

You probably agree that most advertising isn’t creatively great or even good. From the outside, one might think it’s a business filled with dumb, untalented people serving marketing departments filled with bean counters who couldn’t care less if their dollars are producing a fetid mess.

Truth is, too many advertising agencies are filled with brilliant people producing well-designed, absolute crap day in and day out. And marketing departments are run by smart and talented MBAs wondering why they’re always disappointed with what gets made. Why is it this way?

Unfortunately, there are a multitude of reasons. When in business for myself, I wrote a white paper describing to potential clients why their marketing wasn’t any good. Besides being kind of insulting, the paper got to be so long that it got shelved. So I’m going to rehash the content in a series of blog posts. The first topic is trust.

It’s a cliche but like many other cliches, it’s true. Good agency/client relationships are like marriages. And a marriage without trust is just a series of arguments.

There are a lot of reasons people (I say people because it’s a people business) enter into agency/client relationships but I’m going to highlight what I think are the top ones.

1. Attraction — The client thinks agency is a hip and sexy shop that will imbue her business with this hipness and make them more popular.
2. Financial — Client selects shop for monetary reasons.
3. Friendship — Client chooses agency based on relationships. So and so knows so and so. People often select lawyers this way too rather than reviewing credentials, experience, and track record.
4. Agency search — A bunch of stakeholders get in a room and decide what criteria are most important to them in an ad agency (ROI measurement, LEED certification, diversity, what school the president went to and what experience the account executive has with chartering fishing boats). They then hire a firm to help them find the perfect agency to meet their diverse criteria.  Then the only agency that all parties agree doesn’t suck at their metric, which may or may not have anything to do with actual advertising, is hired.
5. Bureaucratic vendor selection — An agency wanting to work with a really big corporation or government agency fills out a bunch of forms to get on an approved vendor list. Client randomly selects agency from this list. This is actually more common than you might think for lower profile assignments.

Notice not a single one of these criteria have anything to do with respect. And without respect there’s never trust, especially on decisions that matter.

Clients usually choose the agency partner but agencies are equally to blame for lack of trust in relationships. After all, it does take two to tango. Here are a few ways agencies blow it.

1. No more charm — The principals or senior management are on the charm offensive with the client for the first six months and then hire a junior to service the account. They then wonder why the relationship sucks a year later.
2. Give up — After a few setbacks, the agency gives up on producing quality work and treats an account like ATM.
3. Cash cow — The agency pursues certain clients purely for the monetary reasons. Sooner or later, even the dumbest sugar daddy catches on.
4. No investment — Some agencies aren’t willing to invest the time required for building trust.

For many industries, advertising and marketing are the key driver for their business. So you’d think the most important factor for a business relationship would be trust. But I guess that’s easier said then done.

The best work I created in my career has always been with clients who I trust and they trust me back. They trust me with information and respect my opinion and creativity. And when they critique my work, I listen and take their criticisms seriously because I trust and respect them. For most agency and clients, this kind of relationship is possible if you’re willing to work at it. And yes, it’s worth the effort for both parties.

But for all this high-minded talk, some people are just not trust worthy. That’s why we have this thing called divorce – I mean that’s why people fire their ad agency and ad agencies fire clients.

This was 7:30 AM. Just dropped off the girls and went for a short hike. Had nowhere to be for the rest of the day really. Taking a deep breath today. Hope you have a chance for one too. Have a great weekend.