"A Concept Is Stronger Than A Fact." Over the past few months I have been struggling with the vocation I have chosen for my life's work and it's place in the natural order of things. As a result of that inner turmoil, I began this column as a personal challenge to see if I could, in fact, determine some value in what it is that I do every day. And more importantly, what my profession does every day. Why does the work product of the advertising industry matter? Why can't all of the advertisers make a deal with all of the media, to simply run a picture of their product, and a cut of their logo from now on and be done with it?

Every brand could take all those cost savings right to their bottom line. Why wouldn't it work? Isn't that what they do at NASCAR and a dozen other sports Marketing Venues?

VOLUME
TWENTYSEVEN
WEDNESDAY
MARCH 9,
2005

Didn't Nike prove that a Swoosh on the collar is worth a thousand words? Questions, questions, questions. No conclusive answers. At least not until last Thursday night around 11:30pm, when I got around to digging through the spam to ferret out my e-mail. Spammers gave me the answer I seek and I'm proud of it. Spammers, those scum of the Earth that clog your mailbox and mine, provided me with that single point of light that made all else fall into place. Yes, it was right their in the gobbledygook text that spammers toss into their odious messages ( this one had to do with Penile Dysfunction or some other dreck) to throw off the Spam Blockers. It was in fact a hodgepodge of disparate quotations that someone from Romania or wherev had scored for the job, that contained my epiphany. And I quote. " A Concept Is Stronger then A Fact."

Blah, blah, Blah. Sniff. Blah,Blah, blah, Blah.Snif, sob. Blah, blah, Blah. Is this an ad industry column or the Oprah Show?-Robyn G. Los Angeles

It's Oprah! and you just won a new Pontiac G5. don't you feel tingly?-HW

I loved the Eclipse Print stuff, but I didn't get the TV at all. It was like night and day?-Danny F. Copenhagen, Dk.

There it is. As pure and pristine as it was when first uttered by US economist, lecturer, author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman back in 1924. Ms. Gilman was the leading theorist of the women's movement in the U.S. during her day (1860-1935) and she had a lot to say about a lot of things. But in that single statement she answered my one burning question both perfectly and completely. " A Concept Is Stronger then A Fact."

Therefore, the single most important function of the modern day advertising agency is to spin the client's facts into compelling concepts that engage and pursued the consumer to trial. Now there is something I could get my head around.

With all of this talk about agencies like J.Walter Thompson, "reinventing" themselves and General Motors and Chemistri "reinventing the client agency relationship and branded entertainment "reinventing the playing field," I was getting pretty jaded there.

Just do your damn jobs and leave the "reinventing" to the folks up in Silicon Valley who figured out if you can release "2.0" you can get all those suckers who bought "1.0" to shell out even more money for "enhancements" nobody asked for.

But no. This spam-delivered quote was an important breakthrough for me. Facts are just that. Facts. That the duel-chip Ultra SPARCIV Processor performs 4 million calculations per second is a fact. That Throughput Computing allows more powerful applications to run faster at a significantly lower cost, is a concept.

That nobody knows what Dr. Pepper tastes like outside of a few million "Good Ol' Boys" down South was a fact. That Dr Pepper was "America's Most Misunderstood Soft Drink" was the concept that changed the fact of being a regional oddity into a national then international Soft Drink Brand.

Suddenly, everything became clearer to me. Suddenly, the clouds parted and I could once again see the light. Women are not allowed to vote. That was the fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman was faced with at the dawn of the last century. "Women deserve the right To Vote" was the concept that she and her allies turned into a reality. I was almost giddy with enlightenment at the thought of it.

The Advertising Agency does have a reason for being, I reasoned. Conceptual Development. I exhaulted. Then I came back to my senses, suddenly remembering why this column exists in the first place. Conceptually speaking, most advertising sucks the big wennie. Now that's a fact Jack.

Conceptually speaking, most advertising is created by advertising agencies. Also a fact. What is the concept that is stronger than these two facts? Most advertising Agencies suck at conceptual development? Ad Agencies suck at making adverting? Could that be the big idea? Could that be the reason an entire TWO generations are being referred to as advertising-adverse? What is the relationship?

Could the "fact" that most clients don't think a concept is more powerful that a fact, have anything to do with all of this? More questions? Fewer answers.

Am I the only person who believes that "A Concept Is Stronger Than A Fact?" Am I alone in this belief? No, that can't be it. Clients are paying millions and millions of dollars to advertising agencies to handle the "Creative" portions of their advertising accounts.

Mitsubishi, our favorite whipping car just spent three weeks negotiating with BBDO to figure out how much to pay them for a "concept" that would change the "fact" that they are the worst selling Japanese Car in America. I can't be alone. At least Mitsubishi believes that "A Concept Is Stronger Than A Fact." Right? The question is, does BBDO believe it? That is what it boils down to. Exactly who is coming up with the "concepts"?

Before I question BBDO or any other advertising agency along those lines, I had to bring myself under that particular microscope.

The process for doing this is quite simple, actually. I trotted myself out to Barnes & Noble and plunked down $24.US for Communications Arts 45th Advertising Annual, to see the best work product our industry had to offer this year."Best" from a conceptual stand point that is. Efficacy in the marketplace is not among their judging criteria.

I brought it home, like so many of us creatives do each year, and I compared my own body of work to the work offered on those glossy, elegantly designed pages. Of course the Apple iPod silhouette campaign was there and the Citi "Identity theft" campaign was there, along with billboard campaigns from Target and dozens of Austin Mini ads and brochures. That was to be expected. But those are just obligatory entries.

The ads that make us creatives cringe are the ones nobody ever sees, except in such annuals. The double page ad shot at gutter level of the poofy little Schitzu Terrier keeping perfectly dry in the torrential downpour. Yep, sheets of rain everywhere except the spot where he is standing. Then your eyes travel up to the logo at the top of the page to discover your looking at an ad for "WonderBra."

How come I never saw this great ad, you say to yourself. A look on the next page tells you why. The agency is Saatchi&Saatchi, in Singapore.

Or the double page spread of a guy's belly on the right hand page, pants on the left hand page. When you turn the magazine up Playboy centerfold style the page on top with the belly bulges out from the binding and you read "Time for Coca-Cola Light. Lowe in Bangkok did that one for Darren Marshall of Coca-Cola, Thailand. Way to go Darren. Clients getting credits along with Art Directors, Writers and Photographers. Gotta love it. You can bet Darren Marshall knows "A Concept Is Stronger Than A Fact." If not he would have just ran a picture of the can and a calorie count.

Then, there's my fav. The double page spread filled with the copper and black image of a Duracell Battery with the warning "Dispose Of Flashlight Properly After Use." That one hailed from Ogilvy & Mather in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. Do we see a trend here?

Apparently, "A Concept Is Stronger Than A Fact." In just about every place but right here in the epicenter of Global Marketing.

But regardless of national origin, leafing through the CA Annual made me extremely self conscious about my own work. Extremely.

I mean, you readers out there come to visit from all over the world. You've actually seen some of this great advertising in your everyday lives. And those of you from Chiat Day and Modernista along with the other agencies listed over there have probably also contributed to some pretty great stuff on this side of the pond. "Cool American" certainly wouldn't deserve to be in a book with the Coke Belly Ad from Bangkok.

Right then and there I realized that I had to clean up my own act at the same time I'm ranting and raving for Madison Avenue to clean up theirs. If not, I have no right to bitch.

TRIPPIN'

O.K. so BBDO has been cruising our Mitsubishi Campaign. That's cool, right?
I mean, it's a free Internet, correct? Maybe it's just somebody from the mailroom. Hey!
Can you guys give a fool a job? No. I'm just kidding. I'm the last guy BBDO would want working on Mitsubishi, right? I'm just trippin'. Psst. Call me.

Stay tuned