• by Jack Feuer , June 24, 2009

I was going to write about the jaw-dropping double dose of wow that is Microsoft and Mediabrands taking an actual leadership position in the industry with the announcement at the International Advertising Festival of their new media planning and buying management system, thereby delivering the unprecedented spectacle of actual media news at the creative fellate-fest that is Cannes.

But I was distracted by a waste dump's worth of guest columns on the ad sites and in the trades. And I make each and every one of you deep thinkers a special promise: The next time you write inane garbage like "kids are hard to reach" or "we need to make money," I will rip your stylish glasses off your face and stab you in the eyes with them.

Are you even dimly aware that, stripped of the self-indulgent wordplay and reduced to their essence, every one of these columns says the same things?

Do good work.

Be honest.

Be different.

Change is hard.

What is this, Sunday school?

Look, I spent a couple of decades pitching or being pitched these things, and they're never genuine. They're drivel pushed by corporate communications clones checking off a tactics to-do list or offered up by ambitious agency managers with designer teeth looking for a bylined buzz bounce.

In the past week, I've read a guest column breathlessly informing me that social media doesn't work, except when it does. And one that says stories sell. Another noticed that data is important. And that baby boomers spend a lot. One even suggested that online media could use standardized measurement.

Comrades, please, STFU.

Like, immediately.

Actually, it's not just advertising executives who think guest columns exist only to advance their self-interest. Last week, a public relations executive at a shop that is making online media buys for its clients boldly revealed that -- wait for it -- a great new approach for public relations agencies is to make online media buys for their clients! Even more entertaining, the writer followed that declaration by explaining that "buying" means "literally paying for" something.

Thanks for clearing that up, homeboy.

And naturally, communication-industry news sites need to feed the Internet's insatiable hunger for content. So in addition to commentary about nothing, we get coverage of anything. Like the recent video from a guy who appears to be the Swedish version of Bruno reporting from the luxury furniture fair in Milan. Another is celebrating Barry Manilow's honorary Clio.

Neither has much relevance to your business, but at least nobody in either video used the words "eco-system," "content is king" or "It's all about the work."

Tell you what, let's make a deal: You continue to write these wank jobs that shamelessly plug yourselves and your agencies. In return, every now and then, you have to come up with one, honest-to-God, original idea. In other words, act like leaders. If Microsoft and Mediabrands can do it, you can do it. (Yes, there is a Santa Claus. But that's another column.)

If you do, you all get to keep your eyes. And your stylish glasses. Which, by the way, are really ugly.