The AAF Thought Leadership Forum: Doing the After-Math

I enjoyed this AAF forum (see Press page). Everyone who participated enlightened me about something – exactly what Thought Leaders might be expected to do.

We all got together for a drink afterward, with the exception of one panelist who had to catch a plane and both representatives from the AARP. At the time, I didn’t take it as a sign – there was no applicable math that could sum up a show/no-show factor.

But something has emerged since.

Ten emails and phone calls to my fellow panelists from AARP later: zero response. I thought I had some interesting things to say (the Forum is linked here so I’m open to criticism). Maybe there are other factors:

1. I actually added nothing of value to the discussions, so there’s no point in further communication.

2. My Senior Creative People partners (all of whom were Event participants) were equally unimpressive.

3. We’re too Senior (old) to merit notice. The AARP representatives who participated in the Forum with us were barely in their 50s.

I tried to contact these folks to get their reaction to some thoughts I had about the new “Senior” minority and its issues with ageism. OK, I also wanted to offer our services, thinking that since AARP’s mission was to advocate for seniors, they could use some help from our kind. They do need help. Their messaging is bland and unimpressive and not likely to motivate the 60s generation who are already trashing AARP invitations – mostly because they’re “too young” to join.

Whatever the case, a return mail or call from AARP would have been appropriate.

During the Forum I offered one word that could sum it all up: “Respect”. But, by AARP’s calculations, it seems to have come out “Disrespect”.

Maybe I should run the numbers again.

The Last of The Gray

I watch a fair bit television. Somehow it helps me think about things that have nothing to do with what’s on the screen.  It can also be a great nonprescription sedative. Unless I see something that grabs my attention.

“Senior-product” commercials obviously written by 30-somethings bring out attitude and the remote.

Some are just awful.

I don’t know who can tolerate the threadbare “golden years” crap – the trite little slices of life that some 35-year-old Copywriter thinks a 55-year-old should be living. Some are just lame, like a suburban white kid trying to vocalize (a.k.a. “represent”) The Hood and tripping up on his “YOs”.

Hair coloring product messages can punch all of my buttons at once. “Nice ‘n Easy is running a spot featuring a guy who ‘s telling us that he’s going gray as opposed to his wife who’s "still herself", still cool, hot, relevant -- or something else fabulous.

But Just For Men’s “The last Gray-Haired Man on Earth” is in a class by itself. It comes on the screen and I’m scrambling for the clicker and pointing it at the TV set, wielding it like a taser. The manufacturer wants us to believe that our society frowns on all gray-haired men and sees them as drifters into senility, incompetence and impotence. The concept is stale, the execution is weak and the Big Finish – dropping the product from a helicopter to a guy on a tiny desert island – is just dumb.

Hair dye. Just what a guy who's marooned -- alone -- on a desert island would have at the top (or anywhere) on his wish list.

What, no condoms?

I have no issue with the fact that some men want to get the gray out, feeling that it makes them look better, younger and more...whatever. That's cool. But these kinds of messages do promote some radical follicular adjustments. Some guys overdye their “doos” and get a kind of Darth Vader black helmet-effect which fools nobody but the fool under it.  Then there’s the screaming hairpiece, a “toop” that looks like a chunk of scorched Astroturf. Maybe the Astroturf folks will see a niche market here and line-extend.

I want these “Last Man” mutts to know that I’m a guy with gray hair on my head, face and ...elsewhere. If they’re on a mission to rid the world of my kind I invite them to come and get me.

A word of caution: I’m an old hockey player. Wear a mouth guard. And bring lumber.

A Port You May Be Missing

Some minds grow old before their time. But it always was the way that we tended to form most of our core beliefs when we're young and hung onto them. The 60s generation ushered in a massive change. There are a bunch of ex-hippies out there who threw the doors and windows of their minds open and let new ideas in. 

Once open, those windows are damn hard to shut.

So, ambling along in the direction of that analogy, let’s say the mind is like a laptop’s CPU  (Central Processing Unit or "brain") and it has a huge number of USB and Firewire ports. None of us can use all of the ports. There are just too many. But some of us allow access from more ports than others leaving us open to more input. Ideas that come from unanticipated directions gain access to the processor, while other brain/CPUs shut the data out.

In any profession, that’s one definition of a creative mind. It can process data that the isolated CPU cannot. I’ll call it “Asynchronous Port Syndrome” (“APS”).

Most political discourse is driven by APS. Liberals are more inclined to accept and promulgate ideas they hear from Liberal sources. Conservatives process and retain information exactly the same way. So, Rush Limbaugh’s pronouncements can be absolutely true – or totally false, depending on APS. Same applies to anybody named Kennedy. It’s APS that qualifies their credibility, even though the eyes and ears that receive the input look pretty much the same and have all come from the same Creator.

Fashion is a good example. If a  fashion statement is addressed to a non-working port, will it not compute? If an old person wears something that’s fashion-forward is it "brilliant"? Or an early signal of dementia?

All depends on APS.

IMHO, I see two people seem to be processing an obscure data stream. Ari Seth Cohen decided one day while walking on the street that elderly women had major fashion statements to make. His Advanced Style blog features ladies of advanced age. Few others could recognize this. So a 20-something fashion blogger has locked his trendsetting eye on ladies in their 80s and 90s and made them stars of an amazing film. All because he has that open port.

Then there’s Tavi Gevinson, crowned The Oracle of Girl World by The New York Times (a port, like The Wall Street Journal, that should always be open). She’s 16, been blogging as The Style Rookie since preteens and once dyed her hair gray to start the “faux-old movement" that she wanted her readers to take further, drawing lines on their faces to replicate wrinkles. Wrinkles got cool.  

Wrinkles? As a fashion statement? What planet did that come from?

Ours, actually. Did something happen to it on the way to your CPU? Test you ports. You've got one you can open there somewhere.

"Faded" Beauty

I was going to write a review on a film: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary “About Face: The Supermodels, Then and Now.”

One problem. I haven't seen it.

I do try (pretty much) to avoid writing on subjects about which I know nothing as opposed to pontificating at length on them verbally.

So I'll write a review on a review: When Beauty Fades by the New York Times' Ruth La Ferla. Ms. La Ferla is an expert on beauty. At least one kind of beauty – the physical sort that anyone with a working eyeball can recognize. But what does she know about the way beauty ages and how wide are her sympathies on the subject? Especially in her business where wrinkles are not seen as beauty marks?

In her review of Mr. Greenfield-Sanders’s film Ms. La Ferla reports that Isabella Rossellini complains that she “is not invited to the ‘A’ parties any more” and comments that she then “erupted into peals of laughter touched with rue”. Is the “rue” Ms. La Ferla hears an editorial opinion based on misinterpretation? Maybe not, but I didn’t hear any empathy for Ms. Rossellini’s regret.

The truth is that even if you’ve had a beauty-based career, if you trust your identity and self-worth to the kind of people that invite you to those kinds of parties you have put your fine self in the wrong hands.

Fashion is big business and its modeling icons can become “super” in their mid-teens (sometimes running a gauntlet through low-life types who abuse children) but it’s a business that lives in the moment and if those moments are all the Supers will ever have there’s likely to be a hard fall into supernova at the end of the runway.

The business needs -- we all need -- an updated perspective.

There’s a whole new generation coming on the scene and they’re going to force their own definition of beauty and fashion. We’re going to be yanked up to speed with the rest of the world. Wrinkles, in many societies, are seen as lines that mark the division between those who’ve gained the wisdom that comes with experience and those who haven't. And wisdom -- along with a lot of other remarkable things -- shines with its own kind of beauty and it comes from beyond the depth of skin.

Any woman who gathers that wisdom and cultivates those other alluring traits can age gracefully. And beautifully. And that beauty, Ms. La Ferla, doesn’t fade.

It evolves.

We need to get past the surface, look deeper and find the things there that are worth admiring. It’s not an impossible mission. In fact it’s become obvious to some of us. Even a few in the fashion business.

Both Sides Now

Always loved Joni. Her voice was ours, young and bright and knowing and her song made a lot of us who came of age in the turbulent 60s feel like we knew a lot because we'd seen it (even experienced it) first hand. We bought the concept.

"Ya, I've been there myself".

But that wasn't the truth at all. Maybe we weren’t listening to her closely enough and hearing the caveat: “I really don’t know life at all”.

There was a lot more to see of the sides of  a lot of things that "both" just didn't cover even with the peyote perspective factored in.  Joni wasn’t old enough to guess. I know I wasn’t. When you're 20-something you think you know a lot. Maybe you do. At least about a little. But "both sides"? I think not.

But eventually the sides are revealed and you find that “both” and “up and down” are only part of the perspective and even when your knowledge base grows it suffers shrikage with the growing awareness of the tip of the iceberg – no, the massive glacier of things you know little or nothing about. So your world grows smaller while the universe expands and you do the best you can to master that little world. Which would have satisfied most people from a different generation.

Less so the children of the 60s.

There's always the Other Side and the only way you can see and know it is to go where it is. Adjust your perspective. Or attitude. Or latitude. So said the Prophet Buffett.

Joni found the truth. A few years ago I heard her rerelease of Both Sides and heard in her voice what she'd learned and it was a whole different scene of clouds and love and life.

The changes of place and perspective and the awareness of life that living it a long time brings constant revelation. If you drive a certain set of roads for a long time and learn where the potholes and the shortcuts and the scenes of beauty are you can understand the ease of movement through life that some of the aged have mastered.

"I Get Around" The Beach Boys sang back then.They didn’t know the half of it.

They do now.

Mad Men: The Work

The Senior Creative People discuss Mad Men. I read and pass on some of blogger Nelle Engeron’s observations. The theme that recurs -- in the midst of the highest standards of creativity we see in the show (and Nelle’s synopses) -- is the lack of creativity in the agency’s product. “The Work” sucks.

In the May 13 episode it seems to be both nastily and nicely put into context.  Pete rails because the hour he spent with a Times reporter yields no mention in the published piece.  He jolts Don Draper out of bed who opens the magazine to the story. The most noticeable ad by far on the page is Volkswagen. 

I recall a line Don fires at Pete: “Don’t bother me with your failures”. In The Times’ context there’s a good chance that The Work is the reason why SCDP didn’t make it. Hacks are not “hip” and SCDP’s mediocrity is on the CD’s head.

Critiques of the ad product are frequent and usually sharp in the blog's Comments. The story invites us into The Work. One viewer saw Don as “a corny old geezer” with a corny campaign.  I’ll buy his “corny” campaign comment but he missed the mark with that “geezer” thing. The fact that Don is a hack has nothing to do with his age.

Also, the fact that I'm almost twice the Don character's age may be a trigger point here.

But here's the real point: This is not a show about a great agency or great creative work, it’s about wonderful characters beautifully detailed in a finely-etched setting. SCDP could be the Ted Bates of its time. In the 60s Ted's name alone horrified more good creative people than Norman of the same surname. Does anyone remember the little Bufferin “Bs”  threading their way through a crudely-animated digestive tract ahead of Aspirin “As”?

That commercial generated more headaches than it helped cure.

Mad Men is a well-told tale about an ad agency with a consistently poor-to-mediocre creative product. That means The Work is tailor-made to the firm.

Someday, when we have the time, the Senior Creative People will take a shot at a campaign for an SCDP pitch. I’ll post it here.

We’ll let this audience of consumers (of the show) be the judges.

Engoron's Mad Men Blog

The 60-Year-Old Candy Bar

A few days ago I went looking for an Oh Henry!. I’m not sure why. There are a few reasons why I should not have been looking for an Oh Henry! not the least of them having to do with type-2 diabetes. Nevertheless I found the bar, bought and ate it and reconnected with a lot of things that had disappeared into the nether regions of my braincase.

I remember buying the candy on my way home from school and taking care not to exhale in the direction of my mother who could detect peanut breath at preternatural distance. Failure to cloak it meant a short pithy speech titled “Spoiling Supper” that often included ominous references to dentistry. The peanuts were clearly the triggers that blew my cover and I considered short-circuiting the alarm by picking them out, but the Oh Henry! experience would not have survived. The bar became an Oh Henry without the punctuation.

So why, 60 years later, with total awareness of blood sugar issues and the danger of dental consequences was I suddenly out looking for that Oh Henry! experience? I guess I had other things lurking in the braincase.

Like Hank Aaron. Hank was a great ballplayer. I didn’t follow his teams but I had tremendous respect for his skills long before his run for The Record. Babe Ruth’s 714 homers stood for nearly four decades and seemed beyond human capacity in the doing and even harder to match. Impossible – until Hank stepped up to the plate on April 8, 1974 and hit number 715. That shot went much farther than over the wall. It penetrated deep into the heart of racism in baseball – an unsustainable hatred to which not even a hard-core bigot could cling. A great player topped The Babe’s record. So he was black and The Babe was white. It’s done. Get over it.

I already had a deep, personal appreciation of the value of black players in baseball. Without Jackie Robinson my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers would never have won the ’55 World Series. Any Brooklyn fan knows what that means.

Back to the candy.

Sometime during Hank’s run for the record the bar’s manufacturers tried to reposition the bar in his image. Babe Ruth had his Baby Ruth. Now Hank had Oh Henry!. I was already buying, but I bought more. Then I stopped. And then I came back a few days ago after a 30+-year hiatus.

I’ve read about the reasons why we buy. Some of it is dense and complex and dips into the Dispositional Theory of Moods, Mood-Congruent Cognition and stuff like that I refer to when I get too deep (over my head) into theory. I do know some of it is beyond research and reasoning. But more than one generation is recalling what they bought “back then” and driven by distant memories are buying again.

All I know is that an old brand reached out to me from half a lifetime ago and brought back the good and the bad of baseball, race relations and peanut breath.