An advertising planner takes a road trip to find out if the American Dream is dead or alive

Planner Heidi Hackemer and her pickup truck. Soon to be far from New York City.

I suppose one could argue that given the current economy, the diminished value of most homes, miserably low interest rates and an unreliable stock market, the American Dream is on life support at best.

Add to that the high price of college education, the lack of jobs awaiting recent graduates, and the nagging sense that health care will probably eat up all of our retirement savings forcing those same grads to nix any expectation that an inheritance might help them dig out of their debt, and the old version of the dream — home ownership, two cars in the garage, a better economic situation than the previous generation, lives on only in TV shows and movies from the 1950s. And, perhaps, in Silicon Valley.

Then again, that could be too pessimistic a perspective. After all, hope dies last.

Maybe there’s no longer a collective American Dream. But perhaps there are thousands of individual ones to replace it. Maybe they’re simpler. Less materialistic. Perhaps they’re about downsizing, having more control, working for oneself, consuming less, giving more. It would certainly be useful to know.

A planner goes on the road

Which is why I am so excited for (and jealous of ) my friend Heidi Hackemer, planner extraordinaire (until today at Droga5  and previously at BBH NY) who is about to embark on a mostly solo cross country trip in her pick-up truck to find out. She plans on meeting and interviewing folks she’d never run into in a Manhattan restaurant or art gallery in quest of an answer.

She has a route — west from Florida to California then north to Alaska;  a plan — she’ll stop in diners at lunch, sit at the counter and open a road atlas, “works every time” she informs me; and a slew of social media connections willing to help from afar with tips and suggestions for where to go and who to seek out.

After that it’s just Heidi, a digital video camera, her iPhone, her charm and her curiosity.

As Heidi says, “I hope to understand this country in ways that living in my NYC bubble makes difficult.”

We should probably all do a little bit of what Heidi’s doing:  get out of our bubble; seek reactions from people different from us; observe someone else’s world from her perspective.

Heeding advice from Jerry Della Femina

It was probably 20 plus years ago when Jerry Della Femina, quoted in a WSJ legends ad, warned us about becoming isolated.

“Young creative people start out hungry. They’re off the street; they know how to think, And their work is great. Then they get successful. They make more money, spend time in restaurants they never dreamed of, fly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles.  Pretty soon, the real world isn’t people. It’s just a bunch of lights off the right side of the plane. You have to stay in touch if you’re going to write advertising that works.”

He concludes with this suggestion:

“Ride a subway. Stand up on a bus. Buy a hot dog on the corner. Stay in touch.”

Twitter and Facebook and Instagram may all work pretty well, but Heidi’s approach, following in the footsteps of Alexis De Toqueville or Studs Terkel, past chroniclers who made similar journeys, seems a far better way to heed Jerry’s advice.

I’ll be following Heidi’s journey closely. Sadly, it will be via her blog and Twitter feed, rather than from the road. Perhaps you should do the same.

And now, an added bonus for reading this far:

Excerpt from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, written in 1840

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest condition that exists in the world; it seemed to me that a sort of cloud habitually covered their features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad even in their pleasures.

The principal reason for this is that the first do not think of the evils they endure, whereas the others dream constantly of the goods they do not have.

It is a strange thing to see with what sort of feverish ardor Americans pursue well-being and how they show themselves constantly tormented by a vague fear of not having chosen the shortest route that can lead to it.

The inhabitant of the United States attaches himself to the goods of this world as if he were assured of not dying, and he rushes so precipitately to grasp those that pass within his reach that one would say he fears at each instant he will cease to live before he has enjoyed them. He grasps them all but without clutching them, and he soon allows them to escape from his hands so as to run after new enjoyments.

Don Draper exhibits a creative director’s worst qualities

Don leaves his copywriter's boards in the back of the cab and presents his own idea instead

Anyone who’s been watching MadMen Season 5 can’t help but notice the deterioration of Don Draper’s creative skills. He hasn’t had a good idea in a year. The brilliance once demonstrated in the Kodak Carousel pitch have blurred into distant memory. And as he sits in his office noting that the agency’s latest reprints (remember reprints, with varnished borders?) all prominently feature the name of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s newest star, writer Michael Ginsberg, not even a stiff drink can ease his anxiety.

This week Don resorted to the all too common practice of expressing his fear, insecurity and jealousy by trying to compete with his very own staff.  Sadly, most all of us who grew up in the ad business have seen this movie. Creative director can’t stand having the spotlight shine on someone else, even when it’s someone he hired and mentored.  So he becomes not just the boss, but the rival as well.

First Don pathetically tries to beat the idea with one of his own, a practice that might be among the most demoralizing management tactics ever conceived, not to mention absurdly unfair. How can you be the contestant and the judge and ever expect a fair outcome? And who in his right mind would openly criticize the boss’s idea unless it came with a resignation letter?  In this episode, the subordinates agree that the agency will present two ideas and the client will get to pick a winner.  Of course when Don conveniently leaves Ginsberg’s work in the cab and presents only his own, there isn’t much of a choice. You can guess the outcome and the effect on morale.

In a business where the best idea – not the person who had it – is supposed to win, competition is essential. It keeps everyone sharp, pushes teams to put in the extra effort, and eventually weeds out the weaker players.  But that’s when competition remains among peers and the creative director stays objective.

If you want to learn anything from MadMen this season, focus on Mathew Weiner’s story arcs, character development and attention to detail. All three features can make for great advertising. As for Don, the only lesson he’s sharing with us is how not to be a very good creative director.

Related Links:  MadMen through the Boomer Lens

My chapter in Advertisers at Work

Professor Tracy Tuten's new book, "Advertisers at Work"

Any day now, Professor Tracy Tuten’s new book, Advertisers at Work  should be released. Tracy conducted interviews with a host of professionals in the business, among them Mike Hughes, president of the Martin Agency; Luke Sullivan, chair of the advertising department at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD); Susan Credle, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett; and, surprise, me.

Thought I would post some of my long interview (in which I shared way too much, fortunately none of it damning) here.

To Tracy’s credit, she did ask some good questions and got me to tell some old stories ranging from how I got into the business, the journey from reporter to creative director to innovation chief to teacher, and even what I see in the future for agencies like Mullen.

A few soundbites.

On how Mullen built an agency in the middle of nowhere with a handful of people who had little agency experience.

We successfully created a culture that was inherently entrepreneurial, that embraced change on an ongoing basis, and that was rooted first and foremost in creativity. Those qualities served us well as the world changed around us.

We were big believers in rights and responsibilities, so we actually give people more rights and decision-making authority than they might get at the same age or with the same title in a lot of companies, as long as they were willing to embrace the responsibility that went with it. 

As a result we attracted a certain kind of person. We never, ever attracted people who wanted to be tenders or simply maintain the status quo. We tended to do a really good job of attracting people who wanted to take over, who wanted to build things, who wanted to make stuff, who wanted to assume that level of responsibility. That kind of person perpetuates our culture today. I think you could make an argument that the most valuable asset our agency has is this culture.

On the future and change

Many people believe that traditional media will become less important in the future than it’s been in the past. But when you look at the actual numbers in terms of where dollars are spent, there’s a tremendous amount still spent on traditional media, tv especially, and no real sign of it diminishing.

Another question is whether clients in the future be more inclined to want integrated agencies that do everything well? Or will they want best of breed, specialist agencies that do social or digital or something else?

Mullen may be at odds with the majority of people who think the specialists are still the way to go. But we believe that you can’t be best of breed if you’re not completely, totally integrated; you need hyper-bundled services because everything is interdependent. How can you have traditional advertising and not provide social media, digital, platforms, apps, and mobile. They all have to work together seamlessly.

When you ask where Mullen will be in the next four or five years, we’ll still be in advertising. We’ll still be an advertising agency. We will still be rooted in creative ideas. But we will apply those ideas to more new places and platforms — to mobile and social and community. The way in which we [create] will be informed by technologists and developers and programmers, not just writers and art directors.

I am also a big believer that the future creative person will come from areas other than the world of writers, art directors, and the traditional craftspeople who’ve defined our product in the past. Just look at the biggest creative forces of the last three or four years. Who are they? They’re Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and Steve Jobs. Programmers and nerds have changed media and content more so than communicators.

On rituals that inspire creativity

The only ritual I  have is to seek collisions. I recently read — it might have even been a Steve Jobs’s quote –that when you ask creative people how they do what they do, many times they can’t actually explain or give a reason or rationale. He argues that what creative people inherently do is combine things in different ways in order to create small explosions or yield something that is an unexpected result of two things. The create collisions.

Also, if you read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, you get the same lesson. Johnson demonstrates that cities are more creative than suburbs. [And he explains] why New York is more creative than Paris. It’s because Paris pushes the congestion of the new city out to the ring and they try to preserve the history of the old city, and as a result they have fewer people, less diversity and lack the collision of ideas and thinking that is evident in a city like  Shanghai.

You see the same thing in a way in companies like Pixar and IDEO and other creative companies that now work in purposely congested environments. My ritual is to mash up things that don’t belong together, that come from different places. It might be literature and advertising, or physical space and theater, or sources of content from different disciplines, or even just the people that you try to interact with and engage. I prefer to hang out with developers, journalists, even venture capitalists than with traditional advertising people.

On what’s next for me

There are three things that I’m interested in. I would love to do more work with start-ups, something I am getting a taste of with Springpad.  I’m still interested in changing this industry or helping it stay caught up and relevant. And I have become really excited about teaching, which has been a result of doing an executive-in-residence at University of Oregon, co-running the BDW workshops, lecturing in a bunch of classes, and teaching a full semester at Boston University. Teaching is something I am really drawn to.

I am flattered that Tracy included me in her new book. You can find the rest of my rambling interview in this PDF. Enjoy.

Why ad agencies should embrace A/B testing, too

With Otimizely, I could even A/B test this blog post.

A few years ago, when Facebook engagement ads were just taking off, Kevin Colleran, at the time still working for the social media behemoth (he was employee number 10 and its first sales executive; now a venture capitalist, what else?) told me that the way to make your Facebook ads really effective was to give the network three or four versions and let Facebook test them in a real environment.  That way Facebook could virtually guarantee the efficacy of your brand message.

He mentioned that you’d be surprised what performed best. For example, you may have thought that videos would drive deeper engagement and you’d be wrong. You could hypothesize anything, in fact, but why bother when it was so easy to get proof of what worked simply by trying a few options.

I asked Kevin how many agencies took Facebook up on the offer and he answered hardly any. Unless they were a direct response firm, it just wasn’t in their DNA. So Facebook would themselves initiative comparisons for brands in order to prove the value.

This week Wired had a great piece on A/B testing and how it has become the “open secret of high-stakes web development.” It’s the formula by which almost all of Silicon Valley (maybe not Apple) improves its online products.  Real time focus group testing in real life environments.

It’s really just a technique that derives from classic direct marketing. Beat the control. In the days of envelopes and stamps, however it took multiple tries and that could take many months a you had to conceive, write, print, mail, analyze data and try again.

On the web, of course, the process takes but a few hours. Change a color, an image or a headline and the impact on action taken could be significant. You may never know why, but that’s not the point.

Yet many ad agencies now getting into the digital business – creating websites, apps, online experiences and more – remain averse to A/B testing, or at least unaware of its potential. Why? For no other reason than the old linear process by which we made advertising – strategy, concept, approval, production, distribution – remains embedded in muscle memory. Or even more likely, because most ad agencies, along with plenty of companies in other industries, still practice HiPPO decision making; the highest paid person’s opinion determines what to do.

But read the Wired piece. Consider not only the dramatic improvements that A/B testing can yield – as well as the frequency with which the HiPPO’s are wrong – and you certainly conclude the strategy has a place in anything we ever do online. Ads, websites, apps, social engagement.

Maybe I should have done two versions of this post to see which one gets the most traffic.

Your thoughts?  Are you using A/B testing for any of your online initiatives? Why not give it a try?

Why it was smart of Havas to buy Victors and Spoils

Victors & Spoils has had no problem attracting clients

When Victors & Spoils was first launched two-and-a-half years ago, the company had more detractors than fans. (Note, I was among the latter.) Much of the industry dismissed the idea that the model could ever replace the traditional agency/client relationships. The more vocal members of the creative community found all kinds of reasons to condemn the new company. The talent wouldn’t be as good. The whole idea of crowd sourcing would undermine the value of the creative person. The best people wouldn’t submit to this kind of process and platform.

Co-founder/CEO John Winsor and I had numerous conversations about why the critics were wrong. Great ideas can come from anywhere. Plenty of people would welcome the chance to have their ideas considered. (After all, how many of us encounter a daily dose of rejection already?) Clients had tired of paying for overhead and some of the excesses of the advertising industry.  And since agencies could only sell the talent they had on staff, by definition they were limited in the number of ideas they could generate to solve a problem.

Clearly, John and his partners were a step ahead of the critics. From day one the agency met with success.  Thousands of creatives from all over the world joined the community.  And the agency’s pitch resonated with lots of clients. Dish, Discovery Channel, GAP, General Mills, Harley Davidson, Virgin America, Levi’s and a host of other brand name advertisers signed on.

And why not?  They could get a slew of ideas — curated, filtered and on strategy — for a lot less money than they would pay in a typical retainer relationship.

From the very beginning I thought this was the perfect acquisition for a holding company. Think about it. Holding companies serve large global clients. They make the claim — sometimes actually true — that they can harness the collective the resources of multiple sister agencies to serve a client’s total needs. Yet they really don’t have a model, infrastructure or software platform for doing so. Ask anyone who has participated in a cross agency (there’s a more disparaging word for it) shoot out and they’ll tell you it’s among the more miserable experiences in which you could ever participate. In many cases it wastes time and resources. And for the individuals encouraged (if not forced) to participate it often results in nothing more than demoralization.

But with Victors & Spoils platform — the community, the software, the process — it could be so much more efficient. A holding company can tap into an existing community, create a new one, invite more people to participate with less time and effort, and effectively manage and evaluate more submissions. Add some incentives or gaming dynamics, make it easier for people to throw in ideas, and it’s likely that participants might even welcome the opportunity to help the company cause. Perhaps more importantly, clients might have a genuine reason to believe that multiple agencies could work together on their behalf.

Until now, most ad agencies have been threatened by Victors & Spoils. They’re perceived to undermine the value of individual creatives, diminish the role and impact of the creative director who hires and guides them, and convey to clients that there might be a better idea outside the walls of the agency.

But if, in the end, our job is to solve big problems, deliver the best and most effective idea, and leave no stone unturned in determining it, maybe we should all acknowledge that community, software, and yes, crowdsourcing techniques, are the way to go. Maybe not always, but certainly sometimes. Add to that the fact that we really only have two choices — resist progress or embrace it — and we have even more reason to welcome the innovation that V&S has pioneered over the last two years.

John Winsor, Claudia Batten and Evan Fry had the vision and the courage to try and change how ad agencies work. Looks like the big holding companies — at least one of them – is starting to believe they’re onto something.