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The Death Of Advertising. And the little boy looked up at his father and said, in a voice so truthful and clear that nobody in the vast multitude could help but hear, "But father, the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Yes boys and girls, the end is near, I fear. The greed, the self deception, the lack of forethought...all of this and more are creeping up on us. Like crabgrass in the Garden of Eden, the business of advertising is about to succumb to the monkey business of advertising. |
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| "Yeah, yeah, yeah," you say, sighting those who said the same thing at the onslaught of radio networks; the dawn of television; the birth of the Internet and most recently, the |
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How do you come up with the stuff you write about each week?-Terry S. Atlanta I steal if from people who actually know what they're talking about. -HW |
| evolution of branded content. "Take your ticket and stand in line," says you. "We're a 300 billion dollar industry," says you. I submit, that the same response came from the record industry at the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing ( Napster, to you.) Their smugness cost them a 10% decline in sales in the past four years and what little goodwill they had with the artist community. |
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People like you have been saying Advertising is dead for the past 20 years. AdWeek says ad spending is up 10.3% over last year. What do you have to say about that? -Steve F. Dallas, Ad spending was up and network ratings were down. What is there to say about that? Things are great?-HW |
| How does an entire industry cease to exist, exactly? Do we simply wake up one morning and find that that Marlboro billboard outside our walkup flat has suddenly vanished, leaving us a magnificent view of the Chrysler Building? Do we wonder why it is that this week's episode of "West Wing" just seems to go on and on without affording us a potty break until the credits roll? |  |
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No annoying pop-ups on Monster.com? No unsettling e-mail blasts for penile enlargements in our mailbox? No obscure double page spreads in Wired? How does Madison Avenue become just another Sandhill Road? IMHO. Advertising is already dead. It just hasn't fallen down yet. Do you know how the real Mob ( not the Sopranos) takes out their trash? An offense is committed. An agreement is made. A date is set. Three years, five years, ten years hence. The day eventually rolls around. The offender is located, where ever in the world they happen to be. The contract is executed. Done. The satisfaction to the offended party? They know as sure as day will follow night that the offender will cease to exist at a specific point in time. In other words, for three years, five years, ten years; the offender is dead. They just haven't fallen down yet. Like a prisoner with a death sentence, we in Advertising are Dead Folk, Walking. But where is the certainty of this, you say? I am not "the Mob." I am not the Criminal Justice System. Well strap this on for size, Sparky. Then judge for your self. Print, Radio, Television, Out-of-Home, and Interactive have all been delivering less impressions for higher CPMs year after year after year for the past 12 years. The advertiser's solution to this problem has been to crank up the volume. Cranking up the volume has lead to an ever growing clutter factor. Campaigns that used to last for years are now pulled in for retreads in a matter of months. Creative is no longer the delineator. Media Planning has center stage. That is because media can no longer deliver the audience's attention. It has to be juggled through an ever increasing myriad of options. And now that everybody is screaming, the hope is that some new next thing will deliver the ever elusive impressions. But alas, the new next thing works once, everybody bandwagons, brand new clutter. Everybody kicks it up a notch. And have you noticed? These days, every member of the audience has ADD. Leventy-thousand people screaming. No interest in what they have to say. And hey guys, it just got worse. Now, not only do most consumers hate advertising...They're not too fond of their media outlets either. News is no longer unbiased. Entertainment is seldom entertaining. The Internet is now a swamp of ruthless predators. Television no longer reflects the values of anyone but itself. Radio no longer plays our favorite tunes. Nobody has the attention span for print. The TiVo box has migrated from the top of the set to the top of peoples minds. And advertising? Dead. Forgotten But not yet gone. "The Brand" used to be forever. Now it tries to reinvent itself with every next trend. What do you think of when I say Exxon? The tiger in your tank? No. The Valdez in an oil slick. What do you think of when I say Ford Explorer? Better Ideas or Killer tires? Hertz? No.1 or OJ? Even after all these years. Tylenol? Tampering or safe pain relief? And those are just the DOA brands. Tide? Nothing. Pepsi? Nothing. AT&T. Nothing. These are the MIA brands. Remember that band in college that always played way to loud. Remember how week after week there were fewer and fewer folks in the bar? Remember their name? Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
The Greatest Man Who Never Lived. Yesterday was my birthday. How many there have been since the first one is a State Secret. As we grow older we begin to realize that one by one, the people who make our life worth living are slowly fading away from us. This year I lost two of my closest friends to the peculiarities of their own respective life styles. One was Dan Cracchiolo, the Producer of "The Matrix," "Lethal Weapon 4," "Exit Wounds," and a half dozen more Joel Silver bloodfests. He was my Partner in BrandedFilm and the reason this column exists. It was at Danny's funeral two months ago that Jeffrey Wells and I decided to build the Hollywood-Elsewhere.com Megasite. One day I may tell you of my adventures on the dark side of Hollywired with "Crack Danials," but this ain't that day. This is the day I share with you, the saga of the one they call "the Shadow."
the practice of law in 36 Federal District Courts in 21 States. Yet he only had 3 "clients." The Vatican Bank. The Central Intelligence Agency. And the Mob. Now you know why they call him the "Shadow." At the time of his death he allegedly had upwards of $8 million dollars in cash with him, which was never recovered. To say that Mark was larger than life would be to give to much credit to life itself. Mark perceived himself as a "Force of Nature." To even attempt to go into the scope of his activities in the limited space afforded here would be laughable. But I will share with you, this brief little tale. The first day I met Mark Anthony Cristini was right after I had finished the last "Chow, Chow, Chow" spot at Avrett, Free and Fisher. I wanted to hire the infamous Patrick Adams to produce the music for an Ambush radio campaign. Mark was Patrick's attorney, confidant, baby-sitter and shield against the outside world at the time. But as far as I was concerned, he was this preppy little wise ass standing between me and my music tracks. "I want to hire Patrick to do my music" I told him as he stood in the doorway of Patrick's apartment in his socks. "You and everybody else in New York", he quipped and promptly slammed the door in my face. I knocked again. He opened the door and shoved a card at me. On the card was scrawled the number 8,000,001. "Take a number and stand in line" he cracked, with that Colgate smile of his and once again slammed the door in my face. The next day I called the number on his card and to my surprise Mark answered his own phone. "I'm calling from New York Magazine", I lied. "We want to do a cover story on Patrick Adams." I continued. Mark turned on the charm and promised to deliver Patrick at the time and location of my choosing. Of course when the two of them showed up 45 minutes late, he realized he'd been had. "A lie told well enough becomes history" he chuckled and we sat down to lunch and made the deal. Little did I realize that Mark had made the same deal with 15 of the biggest record companies in the business. He and Patrick had sold the same three girls, Christine Wiltshire, Madilyne Rossmore and an unknow background singer named Whitney Houston to each of the labels under the names of 15 different artists. As a result, Mark had had Patrick and his crew bicycling between 5 recording studios 18 hours a day for the past 3 months. My project was just one more car on the line. Now all of this was beautiful for Mark because in addition to the signing bonuses for each of these 15 artists ( or "Shadows" as he liked to refer to them) there were hefty Production fees, Contractor fees, Session fees and Publishing advances forthcoming for each project. All paid up front. And since Patrick played 18 instruments to virtuoso performance and Mark owned a piece of all five recording studios and Patrick wrote, produced and arranged all of the songs...it was a beautiful thing. Until one of the songs, from one of the "shadows" became a runaway smash hit. "Push, Push In The Bush. " Funny thing about a hit. The spot light is a hard place to hide in the shadows. Suddenly every record label wanted their Patrick Adams project done, pressed and in the stores. And none were more adamant about that than the president of Arista Records, Mr. Clive Davis. Suddenly Patrick Adams became a hunted man. Mr. Davis insisted on being present for the final mixdown of his new artist's record. Which would be difficult since his artist didn't exist due to the fact that their was a fortune to be made touring the artist "Musique" as a result of every radio station in the top five metros pushing "Push, Push In The Bush" into high rotation. Mark Anthony Cristini of course had the management contract on "Musique" and, never one to leave money on the table, had booked lead singer Christine Wiltshire and ten singers and musicians on a twenty city tour. He accomplished this tour over night through the power of another one of his "clients," the legendary Norby Walters. In other words, Mr. Clive Davis was demanding to participate in a recording mix for a record that had not yet been written, arranged or recorded, because the artist he thought he had signed was somewhere west of the Pacos being the artist whose hit record was driving him to now become personally involved. Remember when I said that one of Mark's clients was "The Mob?" Well now ladies and gentlemen comes the time where we reveal how the world really works. There is no "Mob." What there is are "Mobs." At this point in time Mark Anthony Cristini worked for the "Music Mob" He had dozens and dozens of music industry clients. "Billy Ocean, Eddie Kendricks, the afore mentioned Patrick Adams to name but a few. But his real clients were Marv Schlacter ( who owned Madonna), Norby Walters and the man himself, Morris ( "Mo") Levy. Between them, these three men held absolute control over the business of popular music in New York City. So even though Mark had many artists as clients, the clients whose interests he was sworn to protect where those of their ultimate employers. Now back to our story. Even given the foregoing, the wrath of Clive Davis then as now is not to be incurred lightly. By this time Mark and I had become buddies because I knew that the only way not to have my Ambush project lost in the shuffle was to become a part of the shuffle. When Mark and Patrick asked my opinion on how to solve their dilemma with Mr. Davis, I responded "Who says their has to be just one Musique?" that was all it took to get Mark and Patrick on the phone building six different groups who would all be Musique, who would lipsync to the tracks, who would collapse the three month tour into three weeks and who would have Christine back in town within the next six hours to record Mr. Davis' tracks and keep the wolf at bay. My reward for solving their crisis? My Ambush project would go to the head of the line. But I wanted much more than that. "Thanks guys," I said after they finished building their bogus bands. "But what I really want is for the Ambush commercial to be released as a record first. I want it to run up the charts to at least Top 20. Then we will release the commercial so that it looks like we bought the rights to a hit song." In the midst of all the hyper activity their dropped a profound silence. Mark, as always was the first to speak. "Genius, fucking genius. Consider it done...for a price" and so I made a deal that the agency would kick in another $2500 bucks for Mark to do the recording contracts and set the deal up at a record label. Then we went down to Bob Blank Recording and Patrick went into Studio B and cut all 24 tracks. There was only one glitch. There were no bongos in the studio and Patrick felt that for a song called "There Can Be No Escape" ( chorus: There's gonna be an Ambush. Your headed for an Ambush) Jungle Drums (congas or bongos) were essential. He looked around the studio, came up with an empty tape box, and laid down a killer percussion track. That's what made Patrick Adams, Patrick Adams. The next day I took the finished tracks into the agency. First I played the 60 second radio spot. It had a flat radio mix and a hot announcer track and everybody was as pleased as they could be, since the project was two weeks late and in danger of missing its air date. Next I played the full mix, balls out 8 minute record track. I cranked up the conference room sound system and within seconds everybody in the agency was in the room. Within the next two minutes everybody on the floor from six other offices were in the conference room dancing their asses off. Frank Ginzberg the Creative Director said, once order had been restored "We sent you out to do a radio spot, you come back with a hit record." That's when I told them that it was in fact a hit record and that we were more or less guaranteed it would go to at least Top 20 once they gave the green light. Somebody ran out to get the client's O.K. and came back within minutes with the O.K. sign as they were playing the song again to listen to the lyrics, which were selling their hearts out to our target 13 year old micro sluts. These were the kids who were now packing the discos of urban America with their fake ID's and tissue stuffed bras and dowsing themselves with cheap perfume to mask their sweaty funk. After the meeting broke up I followed Keith Fisher, the money guy at the agency, back to his office to inform him, that although the tracks had been thrown in for free, we would still have to pay Mark Cristini $2500 to make the record deal. Keith went ballistic. "Our lawyers are Davis, Gilbert. Why should we pay this guy one red cent?" says Keith. I tried to explain to him the facts of life in the music business. He wasn't hearing any of it. No fees for Mark and that was that as far as he was concerned. Of course the record deal never happened. I went to Mark's office to apologize in person and to tell him I would be turning in my resignation that afternoon. He patted me on the back and said. "Don't quit your day job. We'll take care of it. What's this guys name?" I gave him a fake name and went back to the office and cleaned out my desk. That night a limo driver knocked at my door and invited me downstairs. In the stretch were two of the most beautiful women I had ever seen and a box of chocolates. The driver suggested I take the candy upstairs and slip into something more fashionable then my sweats. When I got upstairs I opened the box and found a hand written note. "God loves a standup guy." It was signed, "Mo Levy." Under the note was $10,000 in cash. I had a great night and when I got home the next morning there were three calls from agencies inviting me for lunch sometime that week and a call from Mark who left this singing telegram. "When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way. From your first cigarette to your last dying day." God Bless you Mark Anthony, where ever you are.
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