People I call colleagues

I don't know how it worked out this way, it might have something to do with the long hours I've been putting in lately, but today's post, like this week's previous three, is also about Advertising.

In other words, I lost an opportunity to do an entire Theme Week, which always bumps up my pitiful web traffic ratings.

Enough of my so-called problems.

Our business is chock full of Bullshit.
Mountains of it.
If you clumped it all together it would be bigger than Pluto and earn the designation of a true planet.

As you are reading this, ambitious Assistant Account Executives are building gator boards about the automotive buying habits of 25-35 year old Active Persuasive Innovators earning $65,000-$83,000 and attending religious institutions 5-6 times a year.

150-page decks are being assembled detailing the contrasting social media habits of millennial fisherman in Portland, Maine and Portland, Oregon.

And Cambridge-schooled ex-pat planners are in heated battles with reluctant clients who just don't get the color orange. And its relevance in today's saturated media marketplace.

Oh, you think I'm guilty of hyperbole?

Not long ago, the good folks at PepsiCo spent a million dollars, that's right, a million dollars to have their logo redesigned by the professionals at the Arnell Group, a firm of craftsmen and craftswomen with the highest standards of integrity.

SFX: COUGH

You may be saying to yourself, that's a lot of money to change one red, white and blue beachball into another red, white and blue beachball. But chances are you haven't read the research, you haven't seen the findings, and you haven't seen all the complex emotions, decisions and quantum physics that go into choosing a can of brown, fizzy water.

Exhibit A:

Poor Archimedes, if only he had lived long enough to see how his rigorous work and tireless hours sketching vectors and constructing congruent angles had been successfully applied to Aisle 5 at the ShopRite Supermarket.

I'm sure this would have blown wind up his toga.

Symmetrical Energy Fields? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought those were only found in the nooks and craggy caverns outside Sedona, Arizona, the home of sage-burning, hippy dippy crystal worshippers.

You can view the entire and exhaustive document here. And I recommend you do.

It's easy to make the mistake of thinking you know what you need to know about the business of advertising. Until you spend some time with something this amazing in its scope and detail. It is only then that you discover for every answer there are a million more questions.

Like,  "I'm in the same business as these flim-flammers? What the hell have I done with my life?"