Commentary

Media X: A Sober Suggestion

Apparently, the proper response to monumental challenges is not imagination, innovation, boldness or daring, but sobriety. "Sober," is what all the good conferences are doing this year, temperament and speech-wise.

I've now heard it described or declared in several of them, and also about some that won't be held at all. Even Ad Age reports that the mood in Cannes this year will be "sober." In France, by the way, "sober" means not drinking until after breakfast and nailing the hot art director from Romania in her hotel room in one of those little hotels off Croisette, instead of in the alley behind the Gutter Bar.

Not that I would know about that.

Anyway, I suppose it's nice that agencies and advertisers are pledging the marketing equivalent of giving up golf to honor the troops. Not me. This economy has me batshit spooked.

I'm going to heed the wisdom of that famous philosopher Jack Palance, who said, "Find a bar. Sauce up." Because the media industry's "let's all hide in the basement until the wind stops howling or somebody holds a social-media seminar" approach is driving me to drink.

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Ask agency people how to respond to America's second Great Depression and you get pithy, well-reasoned arguments like, "buy more cinema." The expression on their faces when you ask that question is the same one you see on the faces of our insufferably self-righteous Administration, its brain-dead opponents and the boot-licking mainstream media.

The game plan for survival from these leaders is unanimous: Stick your head as far up your ass as it will go and whisper: "it's quiet in here...too quiet. Let's buy more cinema."

So I welcomed what I figured would be a much-needed diversion when I got a call from GSD&M Idea City asking would I have time to take a breakfast meeting with Roy Spence at the Four Seasons? Seems Reverend Roy's got a new book out.

Having had more experience with ad legends than I ever wanted, I knew I'd get maybe 10 good minutes, once you subtracted the talking points and the Blackberry fiddling and, until the switch to autopilot kicked in and the Great Man or Woman has had enough of you, peasant.

Of course, there was also the chance he wouldn't show for various reasons, but all somehow due to L.A. traffic.

Which he didn't, and it was.

Instead, I met with Haley Rushing, who co-founder of the Purpose Institute with Spence and worked with him on "It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For," subtitled "Why Every Extraordinary Business Is Driven By Purpose." Apparently, I missed all those extraordinary businesses in 30 years of covering the industry, because I never saw any client or agency do anything that way. On purpose, plenty of stuff, most of it plain nuts. With purpose, not so you'd notice.

And that, my myopic little media mavens, is what the industry needs. A purpose.

What do you do besides make money (sometimes) that no one else can do? How do you communicate that? And how do you find purpose in your clients -- and use it?

I think you all need to shuffle down to Austin (not me, I'm allergic to Texas) and join up with the Reverend's Purpose Institute, run by Rushing.

Do that, and I promise to stay sober.

For an entire weekend.

On purpose.

2 comments about "Media X: A Sober Suggestion".
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  1. Mandy Vavrinak from Crossroads Communications, LLC, March 11, 2009 at 8:11 a.m.

    After I finished laughing, I was struck by the simplicity of the argument. Stop whining, hiding or pontificating... it's not sobriety, it's basic marketing. Look for the different, the better, the "one thing" (and it's not more cinema) and then go for it, with purpose, with malice aforethought, if you will. I hope we (myopic media mavens) listen.

  2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, March 11, 2009 at 10:42 a.m.

    You sexy beast, you!

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