Commentary

A Midsummer Night's Metaphor

It's midsummer in New York; if you're reading this anywhere outside our overheated city, be glad. Walking the midtown canyons makes you feel like the Pillsbury Doughboy -- just before he turns golden brown and crusty. And coming out of an air-conditioned building you go from dry to damp in seconds; a crinkly pressed shirt quickly turns into a heavily used Kleenex. It's like being covered in thick, warm soup.

So August is a great reason to escape the city, to seek breezes and coolness and comfort far away from any street or avenue that carries a stoplight and a number. Thankfully, this can actually be achieved not far from the blazing inferno that is Manhattan. Last week I was fortunate to be invited aboard one of those wonderful floating media boondoggles, a glorious ocean-going vessel whose early evening itinerary, though never further than a few hundred yards from the city's shores, might as well have sent us steaming to distant and refreshing seas.

Standing by the rail as the vessel smoothly sliced through the early evening Hudson River swells, I was struck by how clean and beautiful New York looks when viewed from a distance. Painted a glistening copper by the setting sun, the crowd of skyscrapers demanded to be stared at.

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Just as our ship was about to make the turn around the very southern tip of the island our course was briefly followed by a small group of outrigger canoes, evidently part of a club out for an evening's paddle. Painted on the side of the boats were logos from their sponsoring angels; most were dot-coms. Each sleek canoe held six paddlers, all synchronously reaching forward, digging their paddles into the water, pulling back hard so you could see the strain in their shoulders and backs, then smoothly repeating the cycle over and over and over. In a few seconds they were gone, but they left a lasting impression. Those of us watching by the rail were spellbound by what we'd seen; not a word was spoken until the outriggers were well out of sight.

One insightful fellow who works in the Web advertising business broke the silence by pointing out that here we all were, safely and cozily wrapped in luxury aboard a ship owned by a large offline media company, while the little boats with the dot-com logos were bucking the waves well below us. Their success was tied to flawless teamwork, daunting energy, and courage. Their every stroke was hard work and total exertion, while we let ourselves be ferried along in total comfort.

Got the metaphor? Sleek, nimble, and committed versus well financed and deeply entrenched.

Heroic, those canoes.

- Michael Kubin is co-CEO of Evaliant, formerly Leading Web Advertisers, one of the web's leading sources for online ad data. He may be reached at mkubin@evaliant.net.

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