Dispatches From Tomorrowland

Thanks for stopping by. I'd like to say this site is currently under construction, but that would imply some kind of activity

I'm trying to figure out how to simplify the JPO site so I can blog, post, swap out books and info etc. without having to learn flash technology.

Until then, I'm writing about ADLAND: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet (Doubleday, Sept. '09) and my next novel, HOLY WATER (Doubleday, May 2010) as well as a lot of other nonsense over here:

http://brandedbyjamespothmer.blogspot.com/

Sorry for the inconvenience. The contact here james@jamespothmer.com still works, but you can also reach me at jpothmer@yahoo.com, on facebook and on twitter at jamespothmer.

Cheers,
JPO

TIME-RELEASED BLISS is when a company, government or individual tells you that great things are coming in the future in order to distract you from the mess they've created today.

Take the much maligned 2008-9 NY Knicks. No one talks about the earnest yet hapless team presently on the court at MSG. Instead, it’s all about the year 2010, when they will finally have some salary cap room and which is also the year that LeBron James and Dewayne Wade will be free agents and might possibly accept their gazillions.

Why dwell on present tense mediocrity when we can envision a dream hypothetical two years out?

That's TIME-RELEASED BLISS.

Exhibit B: Chevy. What's the best way to diffuse talk of bankruptcy and bailouts and gas-guzzlers? Spend tens of millions running Super Bowl and other ads for the Volt, an electric car that may or may not be available in limited numbers until late 2010.

TIME-RELEASED BLISS.

By the way, maybe the Volt should be the Official Car of the Knicks in 2010.

When will combat troops be out of Iraq? Mid to late 2010.

TIME-RELEASED BLISS.

Have you noticed the promos NBC has been running during its increasingly weak prime time broadcasts telling us to get ready for the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010?

It’s not about 2010. It’s about distracting us from the mess they’re in, and the mediocrity they’re selling us today.

What happens to a nation being encouraged to live in the future because living in the moment is apparently such a bummer?

Beats me. But my second novel is coming out in late 2010 and I expect nothing less that a Nobel.

"Othmer captures the authentic, raw and visceral feel of the advertising world, and actually makes it wildly entertaining. He never forgets it's not science, it's all about the people. Bravo." --Mark Dowley, Partner, Endeavor

Two Things I Learned About the Economy Last Week
1. People are really pissed. Angry in a public stoning kind of way. Of course I sensed it but it really hit home when I did this Room for Debate piece about executive bonuses for the Times:

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/bonuses-for-bad-performance/#othmer

The so-called expert debate was interesting, but it's the comments section that really blew me away. So far, 806 angry people have weighed in, most posting responses significantly longer than the 300 word limit my editor imposed upon us. For context, 806 is about four times the response they got for previous topics, including the stimulus package, Iraq, etc. Most of the responders wanted blood, and quite a few wondered what the Times was doing asking a novelist, talking about semantics of all things (note to self: don't use irony when writing about the financial sector), what he thought. I did, too.

2. People are dying for some good news. The most recent evidence of this is Media is Thriving, the blog-like thing Rick Webb at The Barbarian Group has been posting on Twitter.

http://twitter.com/mediaisthriving

The premise: only positive news about the media. The result: only positive, if not world-changing news about the media, but most interesting is that more than 2500 Twitterers already following.

The New York Times asked me to write about corporate bonuses for an online discussion with others who knew what they were talking about.

Rewarding Bad Behavior
by James P. Othmer

The problem isn’t with corporate bonuses; it’s with corporate semantics.

By definition, a bonus is “something in addition to what is expected or strictly due.” Perhaps, pre-Enron, pre-Madoff, pre-collapse of the financial, real estate and automotive industries, executives got away with receiving their annual seven figure bonuses because we were willing to believe that they truly were surprised by them. Or we were so comfortable with our own financial situation that we didn’t care.

After all, it was a bonus! Super-sized versions of the token gestures we were occasionally given even in our own jobs. The holiday turkey. The extra week’s paycheck. Or, if you happened to work in my field of advertising during the 1990s, the window pane envelope filled with soon to be worthless stock options.

The primary reason we could call them bonuses is because some years we got one, but for so many others we got an explanation. A key account was lost. The global network had an off year. Something to do with the price of something.

Any true bonus has the thrill of uncertainty about it. And the knowledge that when you finally get a good one all of your vocational stars are in alignment.

However, when a bonus is not only expected but mandated under any circumstance, it ceases to be a bonus. It becomes an outrage. Same goes for perks.

All of which is why I’m convinced if the Wall Street executives who this year raked in the sixth-highest haul in the history of bonuses, despite being responsible for the worst performing market of our lifetime, simply had the foresight to call their windfall anything but a bonus, we’d be cool with them.

We don’t need to reform corporate bonuses. We just need to rephrase them. Too bad bailout is taken.

This just in from insights guru Pip Coburn, founder of Coburn Ventures and author of THE CHANGE FUNCTION: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn. Pip is also a former Managing Director and Global Technology Strategist at UBS.

"I loved it. Of the hundreds of great books I have been fortunate to have read over the years this qualifies among the very few as required reading for my team. Not only is James Othmer a truly fresh engaging writer, he is digging at the truth in his own career with crisp intensity and coming to insight after insight in a way that helps all of us as we go forward as well.

"Othmer is one of the most interesting authors I have come across in the past ten years. While everyone and their brother aspires to be a refreshing change, Othmer is one. More important than his world class skill as a writer is his intention. In ADLAND he is neither playing an angry "blame game" or seeking the attention of a tell-all "Jose Conseco knows steroids" melodrama. It is far more interesting, notable and worthwhile than that. He seeks the truth of his own twenty year life in advertising to find his next steps in life and hopes to share anything he might know so the reader might also find their own truth. James Othmer is just getting started. I am glad I am here at the beginning.

"I found this incredibly entertaining lean-in' book a vehicle as well for my own personal growth as I wrestled with each abstract that Othmer unearthed. Though the content of my life and work are different, the lessons from his introspection assisted my own."

Disturbing trend watch: ads that use phrases such as "for these troubled times" or "because now more than ever we need to count every penny" or...well, you get the idea.

You know we're in a recession. I know we're in a recession. Every media outlet in the country covers its downward spiral by the nanosecond.

Which is exactly why we don't need a car ad or a fast food commercial to constantly remind us of this fact. Obviously, advertisers are making the crude mistake of giving a literal interpretation to aspects of briefs (ie, "our target market has less and less disposable income") which are meant to inform the creative, not become it.

Telling us that you're reducing prices or offering a better value is all we really need to know. We can connect the dots and somehow retain a shred of dignity and peace of mind. But telling us that you're giving us a free coke and an extra side of cole slaw with our bucket of fowl because you feel our economic pain is not only unnecessary. It's inexcusable, offensive and a bailout-sized bummer.

I've been a fan of David Fincher since he did AT&T's "You Will" campaign for my old agency NW Ayer back in the early 1990's. I never got to shoot with him, but I've closely followed his films, including the recent Brad Pitt reverse biopic "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".

I enjoyed the film. In fact, while I had my quibbles with the story (which is only remotely, conceptually related to F. Scott Fitzgerald's similarly titled and not exactly classic short story) and aspects of Pitt's performance, I thought it was a visual tour de force.

It's fairly well known that big brand, :30 second TV spots, especially those done during the Internet boom of the 1990s, have about twenty times more money and attention per second lavished upon them than any feature film. But somehow Fincher has been able to compose, light and film his big screen productions ("Seven", "Fight Club") with a similar sensibility.

In fact, at least three times during the film -- most notably during the character summary at the end and the story of how Daisy hurt her leg -- I could have sworn that a 1990's multi-million dollar branding spot had broken out. In a good way. Really.

I'm rarely dazzled by the visuals in a feature that's not an epic CGI extravaganza and it was refreshing to see someone have some fun with the conventional approach.

Other than Fincher, the only directors I can think of who have managed to bring his or her impressive and daring visual commercial approach to (successful) features are, perhaps, Michel Gondry and Spike Jones.

I wonder if this is because of budgets, conservative studios, or fear of failure on the director's part.

I finally finished my next book. ADLAND: SEARCHING FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE ON A BRANDED PLANET. It's a non-fiction title, coming from Doubleday late summer of 2009. Part quirky memoir, part consideration of modern work, it's about life then and now in the advertising industry.

Here's an advance blurb from one of my favorite creative people at one of my favorite agencies:

"I've been in advertising more than twenty years and spent countless hours trying to tell people how insane and hilarious and exciting and pointless and fascinating it all is. Now all I have to do is hand them this book."
-Jamie Barrett, Creative Director/Partner Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco



I'll post more on it in the weeks ahead.

Also, I've just about finished with my second novel, tentatively titled SNIPPED, and I'm hoping that it's available as soon as possible after ADLAND.

Finally, there's finally been some real progress on the film front for THE FUTURIST. An A-level writer/director is working on a screenplay as I write this and I'm hoping that the muse is treating him well.

The University of What’s Next
by James P. Othmer Feb 26 2008

Can advertising be taught? The intense and demanding Brandcenter is sure going to try.

“This is not brain surgery. You can learn brain surgery.”
—Mark Fenske, associate professor, Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter

The director of the program never graduated from college. There’s not one Ph.D. thesis to be seen, published, or in progress, by any its faculty. And before walking through the door to his afternoon class, one of its featured professors tells a guest, with Sweeney Todd-like glee, “It’s time for the disemboweling.”

Welcome to the Graduate Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. One part ad agency, one part rogue M.B.A. program, and one part laboratory for experiments in 21st-century branding, the Brandcenter is widely considered the nation’s most demanding, progressive, and acclaimed graduate program in advertising.

In years past, the Brandcenter was known as the creatively driven Adcenter. But the opening in mid-January of a new $9 million facility designed by Clive Wilkinson—the architect behind Google’s “Googleplex” headquarters in Silicon Valley and ad agency Chiat/Day’s revolutionary officeless workplace near Los Angeles—presented an opportunity to give the program a name that reflects its broader and ever-evolving curriculum.

The change includes a planning track called communications strategy and a new track in building a better client, called brand management. Next year, it will include a track encompassing all things interactive: creative technology.

“In M.B.A. programs, students don’t have the opportunity to work with writers, planners, art directors, and account service people,” says Don Just, the former C.E.O. of the Martin Agency in Richmond and the current head of the brand-management track.

“They’re not exposed to the full breadth of the advertising process,” Just adds. “Here they work in groups that mirror the current agency environment. They are constantly exposed to dozens and dozens of projects with teams outside their discipline in environments they can’t control.”

Perhaps this is why last year Creativity magazine named the 12-year-old program the country’s best ad school, BusinessWeek ranked it among the world’s top design schools, and Michael Roth, C.E.O. of the Interpublic Group, pledged $1 million to the program to establish “a pipeline of talented people in our industry.”

A tour of the Brandcenter’s new home with its director, Professor Rick Boyko, a former art director and the former chief creative officer of Oglivy & Mather, reveals the fusion of two eras in architecture and a literal link between advertising’s history and future.

The reimagined 1870s brick building that houses faculty offices is the former carriage house for the Jefferson Hotel. Attached to it is an ultracontemporary geometric structure that contains most of the student-friendly space.

“I thought this would be semiretirement,” Boyko says, as he walks through a new focus-group room that will be used by the future agency planners. “But the last four years I’ve worked as hard as ever.”

Not only was Boyko involved in every aspect of the planning, design, and construction of the new buildings, he personally donated $1 million toward it.

As we walk through the student lounge (partially financed by Yahoo, with foosball and ping-pong tables on order) students skate past on Heelys sneakers while others spread out on plush couches in the lounge area.

Next door is a huge brainstorming room in which two students are playing chess on an enormous poured-concrete community table, and several others are discussing plans for the night.

It seems almost idyllic but the laid-back vibe is deceptive. The semester has only just begun and projects will soon come fast and furious. At Brandcenter, like at many real-world ad agencies, all-nighters and weekend work comes with the territory. For that reason, the building, which is always open, is equipped with showers, changing rooms, and dining areas.

While waiting for Boyko’s class “Building Brands in International Cultures,” a second-year student in the art direction track says Brandcenter is “much, much harder” than his undergraduate years at Yale. “It is intense and the workload is relentless,” he says.

One of the first slides in Boyko’s presentation is the Dan Wieden tenet: “Come to work stupid every day.”

Projects for students in the communications-strategy track under Caley Cantrell, formerly of the Martin Agency, include creating presentations of original perspectives on how to shape a brand’s future. On a recent day, two teams shared provocative multimedia presentations on the perception of feminine beauty and the segmentation of the green movement.

Brandcenter students have also been involved in a number of real-world projects for companies like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Yahoo, The Learning Channel, and, currently, The Tap Project, a water conservation marketing initiative championed by the ad agency Droga5.

One thing visitors notice while making the rounds is that they don’t see many “traditional” ads. Instead of storyboards and headline-driven print ads, there are Web stories, essays, viral video concepts, brand-communications platforms, and cartoons. In the digital age, anything that makes someone take a second look is an ad, and no one understands this more than the students.

“They’re not that interested in TV at all,” Boyko says. “Sometimes I have to tell them that, you know, you’re still gonna need some ads in your books.”

So can advertising be taught at places like V.C.U.’s Brandcenter, or other well-regarded programs like The Creative Circus in Atlanta, The Art Center in Pasadena, or Miami Ad School?

“Talent and instinct are a big part of it,” says Linda Harless, creative manager at Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, Adweek’s 2007 Agency of the Year. “But the V.C.U. model, having account services and planners and creatives working as a team, is a slam dunk for a student jumping into this business. When you give them a brief on their first week on the job you’re not worried because they’ve been through so much already.”

Which brings us to the disemboweling. And Fenske. His first name is Mark, but everyone (including students and this reporter, who witnessed the disemboweling firsthand while working for him in 1998) calls him Fenske.

In his advanced portfolio class, Fenske, the former Wieden & Kennedy creative star and founder of the The Bomb Factory agency in Santa Monica, California, takes no prisoners. Work is shredded, literally. Egos are bruised. Lessons in what sometimes seem to be oxymorons in advertising—ethics and morals—are dispensed with Taoist gravity.

“Can you keep yourself from doing something that intrudes on people’s privacy?” he asks. And, “Do you mind if I do this?” as he tears a student’s meticulously-composed yet unsuccessful ad in half. And, “Do you want a job knowing that someone who works there thinks that your best stuff isn’t good?”

For Brandcenter students, perhaps because of classes like this, such a scenario is a long shot. Assistant director of student affairs Ashley Sommardahl explains, “There’s less of a chance of a letdown in the real world after leaving such a progressive environment, because they’re recruited by the best.”

Indeed, there is a growing V.C.U. alumni network in place at the country’s top agencies. And at a recruiting fair at the school after graduation last year, there were 125 recruiters for 75 students.

Which leads one to the conclusion that yes, advertising absolutely can be taught. And sometimes its best teachers are its students.

James P. Othmer is the author of the novel The Futurist, and is writing an advertising memoir.