Problem Child with a High Salary

You had lofty titles: Executive Creative Director, Chief Creative Officer, even Executive Chairman. You were on the board of directors at the most famous advertising agency in Chicago, supposedly the youngest member ever. During this period you commanded a huge salary, more than the President of the United States. Frankly, a lot more, especially when you factored in bonuses and stock options. You earned it; well maybe not all of it and toward the end probably less. Then you got asked to leave, to seek opportunities elsewhere, fired. The last time was probably the mortal blow. You didn’t know it but the job you had now was not going to last.

When it came to work, you were only great at two things: copywriting and presentations. You wrote your way into the boardrooms of the world, turning words over and over until they shone like gemstones. Once there, you would sell. Oh, could you ever! You loved selling and did not demure from it like so many other creative people. Those fools, you thought. Didn’t they know advertising and selling went hand in hand? Processing stage fright into stage-might, you had utter command. At times, it was breathtaking. You were excited to perform and it showed. Your confidence seldom came off as a con. During presentations you were like a kid unwrapping gifts at Christmas.

Alas, while showmanship mattered on the way up, once there, not so much. As a director, they wanted you to hire and fire; delegate and operate; things you came to realize you weren’t very good at. You liked to write and sell work. Truth be told, you weren’t interested in the other stuff. It all seemed beside the point, what you had to do as opposed what you wanted to do. Now it was you who was playing the fool.

At best, you’d possessed what the CEO called, “emotional intelligence,” a backhanded compliment, a quality your peers pretended to admire then grew to despise. In management meetings you lectured that creativity was messy and impossible to regimen. But alas, your left-brain partners valued process over intuition. They lacked patience for the soft skills inherent in the creation of ideas. They couldn’t scope it. So they loathed it. For a so-called creative agency this was, in your view, anathema. And so you had refused to whip your troops into creating. You put good ideas on the wall, and quickly. But it was never enough. Eventually, you became a problem child with a very high salary.

to be continued…

The whine of sour grapes or telling my truth and not giving a damn!

Been a long time since I wrote about advertising. Why then is my blog called Gods of Advertising if I’m not writing about it? Well, for starters, what is there to write about? From a creative perspective, advertising became irrelevant around the time I did. You can quibble over the year and other details, perhaps cite a few exceptions, but you cannot deny the fact that few consumers (aka people with money to spend) pay advertising any heed. Save for the bottomless pit of transactional messaging permeating our screens, there isn’t much to write home about. Hasn’t been for years. I would say that 75% of every marketing dollar is spent on cliché’ ridden, data driven crap. Creativity in advertising was sick way before Corona virus. Now, it’s on life support.

Not long ago, the so-called Gods of Advertising (always meant to be an ironic term) wishfully opined that the key to remaining relevant in the digital age (let’s say turn of the century) was in mastering social currency. Fearing obsolescence, big shot creative directors like myself and planners and other alleged ad-ninjas went to places like Hyper Island to learn the magic of these new tinier screens and the people who used them. Unfortunately, the bean counters beat us to the punch. Big data replaced the big idea and, well, here we are. There’s more to it than that but I don’t want to write about it any more than you want to read it.

When I unceremoniously exited the business, the writing was on the walls. It sure as hell wasn’t on the page. Copy had turned to content. Strategy became a numbers game. Art directors made shit fast… or else. The result: the aforementioned cliché ridden, data driven transactional crap – also known as content.

For years, I avoided talking this talk because I wanted to believe otherwise. And I was afraid of becoming unemployable. Happened anyway. Now I don’t care and neither does anyone else. I still enjoy writing for clients but for them a big idea is merely converting a strategy line into something they can use until the next quarter rolls around. I’m good at it. And I work fast and cheap. What we all appreciate is the lack of illusion about what we are doing.

Fact. Most clients think Cannes is a sexy place to go on vacation. Period. Where James Bond movies are filmed. Some may remember a celebration of creativity. Like holiday parties. Or bonuses. The mythical Gold Lion is now extinct. Mine are in a storage unit in San Rafael.

You know what? I don’t care anymore. Deep down I wonder if I ever did. I always knew I was getting paid a shit ton of money for doing something intuitive and fun. Once those two criteria were removed –as they have been- all that remained is all that’s left.

Once upon a time, poets were considered special. They had currency. Were celebrated, studied, emulated and revered. Then they faded into the middle pages of the New Yorker. Once upon a time, from 1965 until 2005, (a mere 40 years!), creativity actually mattered. It was like the poetry of yore. And then no one gave a shit about it either.

Not so gentle reader – Would you like me to squeeze the sour grapes further? Relish the whine of discontent? Let me know… I’m in a mood.

Two careers beat as one: Trying to get people on and now off controlled substances!

Outdueling alcohol and tobacco with advertising is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.     

For over 25 years, I worked in the creative department at a number of big name advertising agencies. I was (and am) a copywriter by trade and began my career in that capacity, at the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago. During my lengthy tenure at that storied agency I wrote and produced copy for numerous alcohol and tobacco clients, including (in no particular order): the Phillip Morris company (now named Altria Group), Diageo (Wine & Spirits), Anheuser Busch, and the Miller Brewing company. These were and are Fortune 50 multinational companies spending many, many millions of dollars a year on marketing alcohol and tobacco products to any number of audiences, none more coveted than the youngest populations.

      Though federal and state laws were in place regulating the drinking and smoking ages of consumers, by definition mass media easily allowed advertisers to circumvent them. After all, a beer commercial televised on a football game could be seen by adults and children alike. Print media (remember that?) had more discernable target audiences i.e. Playboy and Esquire (adult males) Martha Stewart (adult females), etc. Outdoor adverting (billboards, bus shelters, and the like) had the unique benefit of being able to infiltrate very specific markets via targeted media plans. Putting malt liquor billboards in impoverished urban neighborhoods is a classic and controversial example of how easy it was for advertisers with money to influence the people who could least afford to drink and smoke – economically, sociologically, psychologically, physiologically and even spiritually. But hard times beget hard drinkers and heavy smokers.

      And we all knew it.

      Really, every department in the traditional ad agency (creative, strategy, accounts, media) was built to optimize getting the right messages to the right people. I spent my days crafting copy specifically designed for specific drinkers and smokers, existing and potential. I knew who they were: their age, sex, ethnicity, proclivities and so on. We all did. Our clients paid us to know everything possible about targeted populations. And they had their own people doing the same. Elaborate strategies were developed and implemented to move product. As data became more accurate and actionable, the ability to optimize reach and efficiency grew exponentially. Unsurprisingly, substance abuse disorders among these targeted groups routinely were in excess of national norms. The ramifications were not lost on public servants and various anti-drug/alcohol/tobacco groups.

      Consequently, in order to combat this growing problem, many governmental and societal watchdogs invariably found themselves playing catch up and keep away. Banning outdoor ads near schools and eliminating cigarette ads from many publications were two of the more significant regulatory measures put into place. On another front, groups like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and the Truth Initiative began calling for more stringent policies while underwriting marketing efforts of their own. Many of their efforts have been successful. For example, most teenagers no longer consider smoking cigarettes a right of passage. But many huge efforts were also huge failures. Recall the “Just Say No!” campaign?  It had the opposite effect on young people, perversely making illegal drugs the definition of cool. Getting folks to try something is a lot easier than getting them to stop. It’s not so much a matter of putting the genie back in the bottle; it’s getting the genie to stop drinking from it!

      Therefore, during our class discussion on prevention strategies for reaching and influencing people with either existing substance use disorders or the potential to develop an SUD, it became painfully apparent that these same strategies were (and still are) employed by advertisers to reach the very same audiences!

      For example: The Diffusion of Innovations Framework i.e. utilizing an influencer to create momentum behind a new idea is among the oldest saws in the advertising tool kit.  E.M. Rogers may have coined the phrase in 1962 but using celebrities to sell goods and services dates back hundreds of years, not long after the printing press was developed.

      The Health Belief Model we talked about (that messages will achieve optimal behavior change if they successfully target perceived barriers, benefits, self-efficacy, and threat) perversely mirrors the most common messaging strategies employed by marketers of beer, wine and spirits: Drink this and you’ll be in with the in crowd. Different agendas. Same conceit. “Good for you” can be spun.

      Advertisers are as interested in the Stages of Change Theory as any drug counselor, assessing someone for the likelihood that they might use as opposed to might not.

      And so on.

      Rules and regulations change. But human nature never varies. The theories driving many of the popular environmental strategies for the prevention of drug and alcohol problems are eerily (and necessarily) similar to the strategic marketing plans for alcohol and tobacco. When anti-groups have the most success effecting the environment via advertising it is when they employ the same levels of creativity, sophistication (and hopefully budgets) as their nemesis do. Like they say: fight fire with fire. Know your enemy.

Written for course at Berkeley Extension Certificate Program in the Treatment of Substance Use Disorders

Manifestos Matter! May I Write One For You?

My Laptop, a Monster Zero and Thou!

Nothing suits me more than writing a good manifesto! I know I am not alone. Most copywriters get off on writing manifestos. At least they’d better. Writing such documents is at the heart of what we do, and can do, for our clients.

Most of you know what I’m talking about. For those unawares, a manifesto (aka mantra or anthem) is the bringing to life in words the highest and most noble aspirations of its subject.

Yes, it is advertising copy but in the best sense of the word. Recall Apple’s great script to the modern world: Think Different. Consider the lines that first and forever defined Nike to a generation: Just Do It. We know these iconic tags because we fell in love with the manifestos. Frankly, neither line would have lasted this long, or even gotten out the door, if not for their beloved manifestos.

The power and glory of a brilliant manifesto cannot be overstated. They raise the hairs on the back of your neck. They make CMO’s smile. They win pitches. Most of all they change things: attitudes, behaviors, even lives.

At least the good ones do.

Into these haloed paragraphs we put everything we know or think we know about writing, about persuading, about life. Here you won’t find speeds and feeds, racks and stacks or friends and family. None of that.

May I write one for you?

https://www.steffanpostaer.com/

Copywriting / Creative Direction / Creative Strategy

Boundless passion for developing creative business ideas, winning new accounts, and elevating a company’s creative profile.

Author Unknown (Pt. 4)

Promoting yourself made you as many enemies as fans. Haters relentlessly trolled you online calling you untalented, vainglorious or worse. Colleagues wondered if you were paying more attention to your novels than your job. Your wife thought you were chasing windmills. To some extent they all were right. But the genie was out of the bottle; you simply had to keep trying. Something would click. You would have the last laugh.

One morning, you saw a complete stranger reading your novel on the “El” in Chicago. Small sample, but no less thrilling, it was all you could do to keep from introducing yourself to the reader. In terms of validation this rare sighting would have to do.

Much later, your daughter’s high school art teacher read two of your novels, one after the other. During that relatively long period of time, he had constantly told her how good they were. Your daughter respected her teacher and by him praising your work you knew she respected you. Any glimmer of awe she had towards you was significant. Especially given how you’d fallen from her pedestal. This would have to do.

The accolades you received for copywriting, the wealth it provided, ego trips. For many, that would have done quite nicely. For you it wasn’t enough. Like Icarus you’d reached sublime heights, until your wings got clipped and you fell to earth.

In the end as in the beginning, a writer writes. Writing for its own sake, without the obsession for income or outcome. A writer writes. This, too, will have to do.

(If you’re interested in any of my books please click on the links right side of this blog. Thank you!)