• by Jack Feuer , January 21, 2009

I finished this column on Tuesday morning, watching eastward from my office window as a warming Southern California sun climbed the heavens. Three thousand miles away was our frozen federal district, in which a new president had just taken the oath of office.

Naturally, my colleagues and I grabbed coffee and muffins and watched the ceremony in the conference room, where we streamed NBC.com onto a wall screen from a laptop.

Naturally, the Webcast was buffered into oblivion, stopping and starting so many times that we finally gave up and used a transistor radio to listen to the inauguration address on NPR.

So much for the triumph of digital technology.

But that was just the end of a remarkable holiday weekend in which I was glued to the news. From Friday on, I watched, entranced by the pageantry surrounding the incoming administration. With rapt attention, I followed the train crawl from Philly to D.C. on MSNBC, "Tell them about the dream, Martin" on CNN, the distaste occasionally evident in the Fox News Network commentary, and Jill Biden's big reveal on Oprah.

The story lines were so compelling, the media so deftly played, the emotional manipulation so well-executed. Only playoff football on Sunday pulled me away from inauguration coverage.

And as golden-orange rays of light skittered west across Brentwood yesterday morning, racing over the Santa Monica cliffs and diving like so many glowing lemmings into the blue Pacific, I realized that after four full days of practically nonstop viewing, I couldn't recall a single commercial.

Not one.

I didn't even remember any of the spots before my eyes during the football games. (A mercy, really, considering how desperately I want to kill the creative team that came up with "Drinkability.")

In fact, the only advertising that broke through wasn't even advertising. In response to indignant demands from industry friends, I watched the first three episodes of "Mad Men" on DVD over the weekend.

As I expected, the show is slower than an Asian automaker's ad review. The plots are contrived. Every character is an asshole. And the smoking--even as a metaphor--is ridiculously over the top.

I couldn't get back to the inauguration fast enough.

This is not a good sign. When Hollywood's take on advertising is less compelling than reality, I fear for the near future of corporate communications.

When the most convincing copywriter in the country is the president, who needs ad agencies? When the most adroit communications plans come from the people who brought us change.gov, who needs media shops?

If God forbid, Americans really try to live up to President Obama's oratory, advertising will have to capture that zeitgeist. Messaging will be forced to hit ethical high notes of hope, responsibility and integrity.

In the long history of the industry, millions of words have been used to describe what advertisers and their agencies produce. "Hope," "responsibility" and "integrity" aren't the first three that spring to mind.

"Drinkability" might be.<> So gird your marketing loins for a tough few years. Barack Obama may be good for America. But he also might be very, very bad for the ad business.