We have just witnessed a World Series for the ages: The Cleveland Indians playing The Chicago Cubs. Two perennial losers going toe-to-toe for their long-suffering fans.

And both teams won.

Congratulations to The Cubs for earning the trophy and doing it in true underdog fashion, coming back from being down 3-1 games (just like the Cavs did earlier this year–– oh, irony, you’re something else!).

And Congratulations to The Indians for having an incredible post-season after being riddled with injuries.

Both teams played with heart, were scrappy, and exhibited true sportsmanship throughout. Both are managed by masterminds. And both epitomized the absolute best of America–– optimism, work ethic, determination, and willingness to succeed.

It’s sad that the purity of beautiful games had commercial breaks showing negative political ads foretelling doom and gloom and slinging mud. Since 9-11, we have become a fearful people.

I won’t get political, but I will say that we need to cheer up and celebrate what’s great about America: the character we saw exhibited on the field by two great baseball teams, and the purity and timelessness of our beautiful sport.

Thanks, Tribe and Cubbies, for restoring my faith in humanity. Now, can we get this damn election over with and get on with life?

I want to go to Mars.

I want to be on the spaceship with the original, the one and only Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man in The World.”

He’s the guy I love. He’s the bearded cat behind my favorite campaign of the last decade. The brand decided to put the old spokesman (he’s 77) out to pasture last year.

Mars in one hell of a far pasture to be cast to, but, I guess they decided he was too old to get the job done.

Rather than do the right thing and just kill the campaign, the brand is trying to maintain its momentum by re-booting it with a new younger “TMIMITW.” So far, he’s appeared in two commercials. The first was a teaser. Well, the bartender was interesting, but the new guy? Hmm. I reserved judgment to see where it was going.

The second commercial re-launching the campaign just broke, and it epitomizes everything that’s wrong with our business today.

TMIMITW’s originality and fun have been sanitized, and heavy doses of marketingese have been clumsily injected.

The new younger man is shown racing a beautiful woman in airboats across desert sands! Active lifestyle, got it!

Then, get a load of this–– he and she spar with Samurai armor!!! Whereas the old TMIMITW was admired by beautiful women, the new one competes with one.

But you’re not going to see who wins these battles of the sexes. Wouldn’t be right, might be perceived as sexist, and hey–– women drink beer, too. Can’t alienate a market.

Check the box for political correctness AND expanding brand appeal.

BUT WAIT! The couple competes again throwing knives. This time, he splits a knife in two with one of his throws–– and she is impressed. Ah, but they were not competing. The camera reveals the couple was working together making knife art depicting a whale!!!

See that, men and women CAN work together!!! Uplifting visual message, got it.

Then, this year’s model takes a helicopter to tailgate on the Serengeti where he carves a coconut into a football and kicks a field goal between two giraffe necks!!! The marketing people tell us Dos Equis has some big football sponsorships. Brand association with the events sponsored, roger wilco!

Cut to quick shot of a Dos Equis draft pull handle as the amber nectar glides into a frosty glass, (does this Serengeti rock, or what?). Then a suitcase is kicked open and what’s this? A television set is inside, and a football game is being broadcast. Kooky!!! People are excited by the game and cheer. Time for the wrap-up, folks.

The new Interesting dude proudly holds a can of Dos Equis and delivers the old “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis” line.

Cut to product shot of Dos Equis in all its available containers: a can, a bottle, and a draft glass with logo. Brand I.D. with all forms the beverage is available in–– check, check, and CHECK!!!

Here’s the big idea finish. The old fart who was interesting used to say, “Stay thirsty, my friends!” But our new hip guy says, “Stay thirsty, mis amigos!”

He’s bilingual!!!!! Brand appeal across cultures– got it!

Spike the coconut, let’s dance!!!

The agency spin on this new campaign evolution is that the new Most Interesting Man is a man of action, with fast pace situations and more energy. And because this YOLO cat does not look back, there are no flashbacks as in the old TMIMITW.

Apparently, the past is for old losers, man.

Heineken USA Chief Marketing Officer Nuno Teles, said this about the new direction: “The temptation of a marketing director is to kill good ideas. Since the beginning of this project, I said, listen, the idea is good, it just needs to be executed in a better way.”

Well, the writing of the campaign is still pretty good, but the rest of it looks and sounds like a team of MBAs created it in a ham-fisted effort to yank at the wallet strings of the beer consuming public.

The new man has no soul, no heart. He’s not interesting. He’s a marketing wolf in sheep’s clothing, and I suspect he’s not long for this world.

Or Mars.

Unless this campaign shows some backbone, some originality not designed to resonate with legal age beer drinkers, he will die.

And should die.

Was anyone smart enough to put a camera in that spacecraft carrying the original TMIMITW?

There’s a valid reason most people hate politicians–– they’re full of crap.

Politicians are know-it-alls. They claim to have the answer and sell it as gospel. “This is the absolute best way–– the ONLY way–– forward. Trust me!”

Until they shift positions and announce a new tact guaranteed to be the perfect solution. For sure!

Solving complex problems is easy! Amazing.

Imagine how refreshing it would be if a politician acted human and occasionally said, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure. Let’s try it and see.” Or, “Beats the hell out of me.”

Marketers sometimes behave like politicians. They develop a marketing attack plan and stick to it, no matter what. They dance with the one that brung ‘em… until their feet fall off.

Ad agency people usually do the opposite. When invited to pitch an account, we ignore the past. We’re convinced there’s a better way (why else would the account be in review?).

Long ago, I worked at a huge agency when the Federal Express account came up for review. Our agency was one of a few invited to pitch the business. Over a long holiday weekend, the agency’s entire creative department (400 people) began conceiving brilliant FedEx ad campaigns.

And after three days, every team working on the creative exploratory felt it had the answer for how to make FedEx’s business skyrocket. We were confident we had mined the secret formula for turbo-charging the overnight shipping business.

Imagine that! Bada bing–– easy peasy.

Our agency didn’t win the Fed-Ex business, and the winning agency created a campaign that lived about as long as it takes a cup of hot coffee to cool down. 

This marketing business is apparently much harder than it looks.

But it’s like that in every new business pitch. Agencies swagger as they try and divine quicksilver solutions for golden success.

Hey, it’s what we’re paid to do–– swagger, strut, and dispense brilliance while you wait. 

Of course, it’s preposterous. But it’s equally asinine for clients to expect agencies to create brilliant answers in new business pitches when they share little accurate business information (out of fear) and give cryptic feedback on work (keeping their cards close to the chest). 

Trust and collaboration are crucial. And usually absent.

The artificially contrived nature of most new business pitches is like trying to guess a number between one and ten–– and later discovering the answer is a fraction.

I had a feeling it was 4 and 7/16ths!

The truth is that thinking we have the answer almost never leads to the answer. The best approach is to attack the situation with genuine curiosity, questioning things, maintaining our empathy and humanity in search of truth and illumination. 

Don’t leap to answers. Be curious, discover, learn, and envelope yourself in knowledge. 

Get lost. Good and lost. Hansel and Gretel without any bread lost!

Then–– maybe then–– we’ll have a chance of finding our way.

In honor of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, I cribbed from the master for this post’s headline because in five words he perfectly captured the results of a recent marketer poll. The results were published in AD AGE.

The poll was conducted with leading advertisers and registers their discontent with their marketing service firms.

Get a load of this:
– 66% plan creative agency reviews
– 65% plan to review search agencies
– 64% will review media agencies
– 61% are ready to review digital agencies

Can you say, “Ouch?”

Right now, many marketing services people are headed to the bar to drown their sorrows, or the bathroom to slash their wrists. How did we get to this pitiful state?

Like a marriage gone bad, it all comes down to trust. 48% of advertisers said their agencies were not open and transparent on costs. 34% confess they don’t trust their agencies.

Of course, 48% of these marketers admitted they do not give their agencies KPIs, and 40% don’t share their sales data.

So, the client-agency relationship is guarded at best, cantankerous and combative at worst. And now, the folks with the checkbook have wandering eyes and dreams of better partners.

This is bad news for everyone. Agencies scrambling to defend accounts will divert attention from their other accounts, and probably create more dissatisfied clients.

And clients searching for relief will have to divert their attention to conducting time-consuming agency reviews and persistent leg-humping from every company with any marketing chops. “I know our firm says Four Aces Promotional Products, but we’re actually a fully integrated shop that can put your logo on pens and coasters! Need any digital or koozies?”

It’ll be a feeding frenzy with agencies bending over backward and diving through rings of fire to prove their worthiness, and then lowering their worth by doing the how-low-can-you-go limbo dance for compensation. Whatever it takes to get the business– got to have that sweet, sweet revenue stream.

Then, guess what? After the honeymoon period, chances are the client will be unhappy again because the agency can’t deliver what it promised as a result of the narrow margins it offered to win the account, and its need to divert the best brains to winning more profitable accounts.

Can you say, “Vicious cycle?”

It seems in marketing, the times they are not a-changin’.

Sorry, Bob.

In 1968, Andy Warhol famously said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Ever since, we’ve all been working on trying to prove Andy right. But it’s hard.

Even with computers, laptops, notebooks, smartphones, social media, seven degrees of separation and our constant relative proximity to Kevin Bacon, getting famous is a royal bitch.

And “world famous”–– well, that’s a very tall order.

But some people do it. They win the fame lottery. They have their moment and bask in their fifteen-minute spotlight. And others, like those named Kardashian, we know every little thing they do or say for ages and ages–– as if they are fonts of eternal wisdom.

God help us.

Years after Andy said his famous quote about fame; he said this: “I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is ‘In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.’”

And that’s where we are today, everyone striving to be famous. We write our posts, tweets, blogs, comments, rants, raves, bitches, reviews and churn out selfies, pictures and videos like Hollywood and Bollywood combined. We curate our lives of eternal happiness and perfection on social media and wait for the world to follow us as we stockpile ‘likes’ like they are currency, and we are broke.

In a world full of people starved for attention, you, dear marketer, must somehow pierce the veils of self-obsession on screens and make your brand famous.

Good luck with that.

If you need some help, call. We’ll use empathy and creativity to create some work that will do Andy proud.

Over the weekend, I saw Dirty Harry’s movie “Sully” starring Forrest Gump.

You know who I’m talking about.

I highly recommend this film, even though I know you already know the story. This movie details what happened on January 15, 2009, after Capt. Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger made a forced landing of an Airbus A320 on the Hudson River, saving all 155 lives on board.

It’s the story of a mortal using judgment to override airline protocol because he believes his decision to be the best and only hope for a good outcome.

And then, that person’s judgment is called into question by bureaucrats using technology as a measurement tool, a proving ground, a whip, and a smoking gun.

In other words, it’s a humanity versus technology tale. The same battles that marketers face daily.

Do you go with your gut? Or, do you go with the numbers?

Ad god Bill Bernbach once said: “Safe advertising is the riskiest advertising you can do.”

Yet, every day marketers seek CYA numbers to make their decisions.

Maybe they shouldn’t.

See “Sully” and enjoy the ride.

As we come down the final stretch of the political season, I’m avoiding the news. I can’t take the endless stream of sensational stories designed to stir emotions.

The country feels angry, divided, in turmoil. And the internet makes it easy to justify whatever point-of-view you choose. We live in an age where we are all always 100% right.

It’s not good.

Enter artists.

Art has always been the salvation of humanity, providing us a relief valve for the pressures of life.

I was recently contacted by a couple of artistic friends in Baltimore, Wall Matthews, a music composer, and David Simpson, a commercial director and photographer. I’ve worked with these guys professionally over the years on a variety of commercial projects, and they’re terrific. They wanted to know if I’d be interested in working with them on a music video.

Wall is part of a band named Twisted Vines who have just released a CD. David was asked to direct a video for the band’s excellent rendition of the classic song “Keep On The Sunny Side.” David had an idea for a story, and he asked if I would help write it.

I jumped at the opportunity. We wanted to show the world through the eyes of a Vietnam veteran with a simple overriding message, one that hopefully will resonate for the times we live in.

The video is posted below. If you like it, please share the video and treat yourself to the entire Twisted Vines CD. Thanks.

AD AGE published an opinion piece article this week proclaiming the creative director’s role of today will be obsolete in a decade. In the author’s brave new world, artificial intelligence will be critical to marketing success.

The creative director will be a shepherd corralling all those 1s and 0s to build the voice of the brand and serve the right message to the right person at the right time.

The author of the article gives the example of Starbucks serving a digital message to potential customers in Dallas with the headline, “Hey, Dallas!”

A pretty profound marketing insight there. I think that digital ad would probably pull better than one that read, “Hey, St. Louis!” running in Dallas, but a simple A-B test would hopefully give the definitive answer.

This article is another canary in the coal mine proclamation for our industry. It’s the point of view that continually marginalizes creativity for the importance of technology.

At the root of this is the belief that advertising communications are more science than art.

I don’t buy it. Most of what the author wrote about was basic modern marketing. We get it–– customize, geo-message, opportunistic analysis of search data, blah blah blah.

That stuff can and should be done by computers. There is little nuance, psychology, human understanding involved. It’s number crunching.

Get to it computers, crunch away, and no breaks!!!

But the real value that a marketing firm brings a marketer has always been ideas. Human ideas that will pique interest and engage an audience, then create preferences for products and yes, ideally trigger an action resulting in sales.

That’s a tall order, especially when there are 32,498 different media channels available in reaching a consumer. You need more than messages tailored to the geography. Somewhere along the line, there has to be a human connection.

Great campaigns are ones that do that; they are based on insights, empathy and understanding the human condition and how a particular product can benefit it.

Because people are involved, it’s unpredictable. Great creative is playing 3-dimensional chess; there are countless variables and many roads that lead nowhere.

That’s why there are so few great campaigns. As a friend once said, “If it were easy, it’d be easy.”

Or, as the philosopher Ringo Starr said, “It don’t come easy.”

I’m sorry to all those who want technology to solve the dilemma of marketing in the 21st century. I don’t see that happening, not as long as our audience is people.

But maybe if we could implant chips in their head, then the technocrats might have a chance to win.

“Hey, Dallas, buy this–– NOW!!!!”

I recently attended an interesting panel discussion with industry experts on the subject of social media.

Here was the overriding takeaway: people don’t like ads, so make messages that are entertaining, engaging, educational and uplifting.

Millennials especially hate being assaulted with boring advertising, so give them some sugar, baby!

Who knew?

Look, no one likes bad ads, no matter what the media. You know who zaps commercials most often? The people who make them. We have very low tolerances for inane, insipid, boring, stupid, borrowed interest concepts. (We’re picky that way.)

But all human beings are attracted to entertaining, educational, enriching messages.

Some of the messages I’ve seen in social media are so soft, I wonder how they got approved and produced. The product has minimal relevance to what’s going on. It’s there only to foot the production bill and slip a product or logo in there somewhere.

These films are like a granddad who gives neighbor kids crisp dollar bills to get them to like him. Sure, he may smell like stale tobacco and sour breath, but he’s a pretty popular guy.

Another thing I heard at the conference was the need for brands to keep their content fresh. Apparently, the more units you produce, the more your engaged audience will appreciate them.

This insight came from someone representing a major brand. This same brand runs the same thirty-second spot ten times during the same sporting event.

Game after game after game. For weeks on end.

What’s the logic of that?

Online, fresh is best–– but on air, it’s one and done! Keep hammering that sucker into their thick skulls, eventually, they’ll surrender!

They have to.

We live in strange times, people, but never forget that people are people and they require some empathy in communications in all media.

Please feel free to share this on social media, this is my crisp dollar bill.

I just read a fascinating article about the importance of touching.

The upshot of the post is this–– humans need human interaction, human touch. We crave it.

Hugs, kisses, hands held, touch, massage, cuddles–– it’s all good. All natural. All perfectly human.

It’s how we’re wired, baby.

Yet, sadly, most of us get precious little human interaction. We exist and interact on digital leashes. The article mentions that the average person touches his phone 85 times a day.

It appears our relationship with inanimate objects is far stronger than our relationships with each other. And given the way we incessantly grope our smartphones, we should clean their screens much more often than we currently do.

But we need more than smartphone play. I think deep down we are hungry, starved for physical interaction because it feeds our mental well-being and happiness. It nourishes our souls.

I firmly believe in the not too distant future, people will pay for human interactions, not sex–– people will always pay for that, but just human encounters that will get our serotonin levels juiced.

As we become further plugged into technology, further submerged and dependent on the grid for interaction, let’s not forget we are physical animals who like to herd.

Let’s run again with the pack. And we can blog and post about it later.