First of all, I’ll admit: I’m a fan of Mad Men. However, just because I work in advertising doesn’t mean I have to like it, and have to watch it. I find it strange when advertising professionals look at each other as if they have a third head if they haven’t watched the show. Why? Because they work in advertising? Apparently.

I understand you should be proud of what you do and support the industry you work in. But it’s a little ridiculous how the advertising community has leeched on to Mad Men. Advertising Age overtly fuels this obsession – “Mad Men” is even a nav item on their “Media” dropdown. Here you’ll find a litany of previous articles, including their regular weekly article: “What you missed this week on Mad Men.” Are you serious? That’s like going to the American Medical Association website and seeing an article “What you missed this week on Grey’s Anatomy.”

Mad Men is in its fifth season. It’s not like this is a new phenomenon. So why are we so obsessed? Do we need an tv content outlet that we can relate to? Is it because there’s finally a show that explains what we do to our parents? Do we feel like the show remystifies the business? Do we all actually wish we were Don Draper?

What do you think? Have we pushed this obsession over the shark?

PS. It’s Monday, so if you missed last night’s episode, you know where to get your fix.

I never thought it would happen, but I’ve become the person in the office who openly corrects people. I’m not talking about sending a gently scolding email or leaving an anonymous passive aggressive note on someone’s desk. I’m talking about the very moment it rears its ugly erroneous head. It usually goes something like this:

YOU: All right guys. Let’s flush out this ide——

ME: Gah! It’s flesh, not flush!

Pardon my rant, but it’s time to set things straight. ‘Flesh out’ and ‘flush out’ do not mean the same thing, and they are not interchangeable.

You flesh out a creative idea. This is akin to adding flesh to a skeleton or clay to a metal armature. It’s about building upon an existing framework to create something more substantial or comprehensive.

You flush out something that is hiding, for example birds in a bush. A creative concept is not a terrified pheasant roaming quietly among tall grasses and you are not the snarling hound that’s trying to flush it out. A creative concept isn’t something that can simply be found; it needs to be built up over time, ‘fleshed out’ if you will.

So please, for the love of language, stop this perpetual trail of incorrectness and I will stop correcting you mid-conversation.

“Only Bell lets you watch TV on your smart phone.” While Bell’s version of mobile TV is subtly different from other forms of TV available to mobile users, I’ve been able to watch what I wanted on my smart phone well before “Ma Bell” gave me permission. Their high-handed proposition feels akin to giving a child a cookie. They could just as easily have said “mobile TV now available on your smart phone, exclusively from Bell.”

Ironically, their ad worked on me. Despite some resentment of the way it was phrased, it was still sufficient to prompt me to ask for more details when I updated my plan.

Examples like the latter got me thinking about whether it is effective to target consumer placidity. Are just as happy to be “granted access” as we are to stand up for ourselves and demand the products and services we expect should be available, and at a reasonable price?

I recall a number of years ago when gas prices jumped; there was a social movement not to drive on specific days. The impact was enough to bring down the price of gas for a while. Yet mobile prices in Canada are among the worlds highest. We do little but pass the odd complaint, and accept the outrageous rates. And with the “Big 3” telcos squaring off against emerging players in the mobile market in the hotly-debated Spectrum Auction, the topic is hotter than ever.

We are seeing a surge in ads that seem to suggest that Canadians are content to receive nominal services at inflated rates. Tone and manner hint at “the privilege of their service,” though it may be expensive, limited, and attached to a contract that’ll last far longer than the initial product. Since it worked on me, perhaps it works on others. A shiny new thing, that I didn’t use before, but suddenly have access to. Maybe we’re hard wired as a polite nation to thankfully take what is granted to us, instead of demanding it, while the rest of the world get’s the cool stuff first, and often for much less.

Or do we?

Okay, that’s it. Google is officially pissing me off. Don’t get me wrong now, I love the way their algorithms point the way to the lyrics of the entire Britney Spears oeuvre within seconds. But I don’t appreciate the way they seem to have recently dialed up their keyword and search history stalking. Yes, I said stalking.

Over six months ago, I was looking for some Crocs for my little guy. I used Google to find out what styles were available. I bought him a pair. Done? Not if Google has anything to do with it. Now, no matter what site I wind up on, I’m assaulted with Crocs banners. It’s relentless, and guess what? Now I’m so annoyed, it’s having a reverse halo effect on the brand. I’m starting to hate the sight of their logo.

This degree of micro-targeting leaves me cold. Ever send a message through Gmail, and notice how the surrounding ads immediately change to reflect the content of your email? I know, they’re just using an algorithm. No one is being hired to reading my email content and respond physically (I hope). But it’s hard not to feel like we’re hurtling faster and faster toward that Blade Runner dystopia where bombardment is the key to selling.

I work in this business, so I’m probably supposed to rejoice every time there is a new ad unit offered to “broaden the client offering.”  Ads on toilet paper? Or in between each individual slice of bread? Hey, I would not be surprised. It’s innovative, right? At any rate, my message to advertisers would be this: once you’ve sifted through mountains of data and tracked prime placement, practice some restraint. Over-compensation can have adverse effects. Good work, placed strategically will resound better than middle-of-the-road messaging placed everywhere.

Now if someone could give me an idea of the most annoying way I can deliver this message to the CEO of Crocs, I’d really appreciate it.

November is the month of award show festivication. With this in mind, we revisit our ongoing series of off-the-cuff Thoughts on Advertising, this week discovering that

Advertising is:

62) “a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…” (with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson).
63) going to be a useless skill set in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
64) at its best when it gleefully rejects trends.
65) at the mercy of a brand’s customer service experience.
66) more powerful when you can’t tell that it’s advertising.
67) about “charm and enthrall.”
68) winner take all.
69) storytelling with an agenda.
70) too often about chasing the market, where it should be about chasing invention.
71) in a place where it requires complex solutions to tap into the same, simple insights.

It has been a while since we dipped into our continuing saga of thoughts on advertising. So today we adjust our course, mine some gems from the eager minds at Grip Limited, and discover that

Advertising is:

52) evolving from being about deep pockets and short memory.
53) only as effective as the consumer experience it represents.
54) about using key words at key times.
55) slowly eating away at my liver.
56) a weapon of mass instruction.
57) “based on happiness.” (hat tip: Don Draper)
58) like playing poker. But our poker chips are peoples’ attention spans.
59) not going to cure cancer. But it can get people to care about doing it.
60) Frogger.
61) taking over my Google+ feed.

Spring’s damp air full of life makes us eager to share some new-growth thoughts on our industry. Today, there are some at Grip who believe that

Advertising is:

42) the art of attraction.
43) only as valuable at the story that drives it.
*44) “a tax you pay for being unremarkable”
45) a minotaur’s labyrinth, relying on “like”s as navigation.
46) expensive to make, and even more expensive to ignore.
47) a sticky pudding of listening, ignoring, believing and disbelieving.
48) zeitgeist.
49) about superceding the obvious.
50) one of those rare careers where eating sandwiches that were ordered for a meeting 5 hours ago is not only condoned – it’s encouraged.
51) what I do. But perhaps not who I am.
(*actually paraphrased from Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad.)

I don’t watch TV, I watch hockey. If there isn’t a game on I watch hockey highlights. And, if I’ve watched said highlights enough to call the play-by-play, I reach for my trusty Xbox360 where my virtual Maple Leafs are en route to winning the Stanley Cup. A guy can dream, right?

I love hockey.

But when I tuned in to watch the Pens duel it out with the Thrashers a few weeks ago I felt disappointed. Not by Crosby and his crew (a 6-2 cakewalk for the Pens with Crosby scoring 2 goals, contributing to an amazing 25 game scoring streak) – but by an ad.

Somewhere along the way marketers thought it would be a good idea to place logos on the glass above the boards at either end of the rink. Logos, mind you, large enough to park a school bus on. I was so fixated on the ridiculous eye sore these ads posed that I missed both of Crosby’s goals.

I can hear it now: “That’s brand impressions, Jamie.” Impressions? Sure. Connections? Hardly.

Recently it seems that practically every inch of NHL hockey board is covered with logos. Blue lines have knocked-out corporate type on them. The outside faces of boards aim logos at broadcast cameras. Players’ benches have backdrops of logos that are updated each period. Digital boards near the corners of the rink reflect logo images off the ice surface. All that, and now giant, super-imposed logos at each end of the ice? When is too much really too much?

The FOX TRAX PUCK was introduced on January 20^th 1996 at the NHL All-Star Game in an effort to win Americans over to the game. Fox claimed the game moved too fast to follow the puck, and so engineered their telecasts to include a red or blue streak that followed the puck after a shot. The idea was to make the game easier to watch. Epic fail. I can follow the puck after 15 beers and a hotdog. Perhaps FOX should think less about speed and more about the ad clutter around the puck that fights for my attention. In the end, the streak was boo-ed back to the minors.

Marketers and media planners should take a step back and think about the fans of the game – after all, without the fans the game wouldn’t exist. We’re not tuning in for logos or advertisers. We’re there to win and lose with our favorite teams. While advertising and sponsorships are a big reason I can watch just about every game the NHL season has to offer, I still feel like the line has been crossed. The one thing fans are trying to focus on is at war with mountains of logos.

And it’s losing.

A new years brings new inspired thoughts from our series of musings on the industry we work, drink and play in. As of right now, the Grip collective considers that

Advertising is:

32) standing between me and my Pulitzer Prize winning stage play.

33) fraught with too many synergies and/or touchpoints.

34) the ticklepoint between art, anthropology and economics.

35) about action – which speaks louder than words.

36) about telling complicated stories in simple terms.

37) distilled from a fermentation of the consumer and the subtle aroma of product.

38) a cake made entirely of icing.

39) what Mad Men would be like if all they ever did on Mad Men was talk about Mad Men.

40) about conjuring fun from nowhere.

41) an emotional process of seeing how great ideas may still be wrong.

Some people think that advertising is a thankless industry. I will concede that it’s an industry in which thanks can be brief, that measures your value according to your most recent work, and that has a theatrical way of praising its stars and neglecting its support players. But those that know the game understand that without the efforts of the supporting cast, the stars can’t shine.

Nowhere is this more true than with the client services team.  After several years in the business, I’ve concocted a theory that recognition of a client services team is inversely proportionate to the amount of work required on a project. Granted, having been on both the creative and production side, I can only make these claims as a colleague, not a peer. I will also admit to having questioned what client services even do. Looking back, I recognize that these thoughts and comments came at a more naive and inexperienced stage in my career, and am out to make ammends.

Herewith, my impression of what client services offers.

Somewhere between forging client relationships, forecasting, planning, research, revenue tracking, and project management, a brief is crafted. This is no mean task. I think those on the creative side can agree that a brief can make or break a campaign. Good briefs set the creative team’s mind ablaze with ideas.  They ignite the solution to a business problem. On the other side of the coin, a bad brief makes the creative process painful and slow, restate problems and muddy the solution. To assess mounds of research on the client, competition and customer, and distill it down to a single powerful insight and thought – and to do it well – is a commendable ability.

Client services are also expected to have all necessary information front of mind. On any given day, clients and creatives alike will grill an account person on demographic behaviors, current market perception and competitor activity. And once the pieces have been assembled, it’s their job to forcibly connect all creative concepts to the original business objective established by the client.

I tip my hat to the client services personnel we may take for granted everyday. Creativity is eye-catching, but in advertising it must act with purpose. Client services represents, supports, shepherds and focuses that creativity. For that I thank them.