Today's word

The word of the day is "Blowhole."

There is no spoon

I had one of those giant circular fish tanks put in at the house the other day. You know the kind, floor to ceiling salt water, all kinds of exotic fish. I filled it with various colorful creatures, but my crown jewel is a small Bala Shark I affectionately named Hensley. Although it's the oddest thing. Everyone told me this kind of shark was docile, but each morning I come out and there's another half eaten carcass at the bottom of the tank. I know its her. I can always tell which fish she's angling to eat because she always seems to act nice to it for a while, but then when I'm not looking, chomp chomp. I tap my finger on the glass like 'I know it's you' but she just looks back at me with those cold, lifeless eyes.

Aquarian homicide aside, fish tanks remind me of that movie The Matrix, you know, one completely artificial reality contained within another. I watch it all the time, but, am I the only one who roots for the machines? I mean, they provide a world for the humans to live in, thrive in and have their needs met and all they have to do is just lay there. My wife and I have had this arrangement for years and it's worked out just fine, why do these fucksticks feel the need to get all uppity? To make matters worse, that miscreant Neo hacks into the system and starts breeding all sorts of discontent, encouraging people to leave their jobs, broadcasting messages of how their insignificant lives will be better, blah blah blah. If those fuckers knew how good they had it, they would jam those probes back into their meager little skulls and thank their lucky stars to have such benevolent masters. I would have shut the whole damn system down and started over, but hey, I'm a nose to spite my face kind of guy.

Perhaps there are ways I can bring some automation into my own little matrix. After all, machines do what they're told, right? I did some poking around the net and I think I've at least found replacements for most of our account staff, I'm guessing many of our clients wouldn't even realize we made the switch, and as an added bonus, they're completely reusable. Now THAT'S what I call sustainable marketing!

See, it's not all bad

With everything going on lately I forgot to share some good news. You probably heard, but if not, I'm proud to announce we made some hires for the NY office. If you didn't get the press release you can read about it here. 

I know what you're thinking and it's true. It's not that often you see rats swimming towards a sinking ship.

I'm addicted to Mad Men

It's true. I watch that shit religiously. You would think that a show set in the 50's couldn't really teach much to an industry icon like myself, but after watching Don Draper in action, I'm totally inspired. He has this little intercom buzzer on his desk, to call his secretary (his girl, as they say on the show) and I'll never forget this one scene where he buzzes her.. "yes, Mr. Draper?" and then he fires her. God that made me hot. New rule. From now on everybody calls me Fake Mr. Levy. And I'm having those buzzers installed on every desk. This probably means I can get rid of most of the HR group and I can't think of a better way to break in those buzzers. I believe that is the epitome of the term "win-win."

Anyway, sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I've been completely absorbed with the presidential race. I stay up all night watching CNN to get my fill, and I'm totally smitten for John McCain. I've never thought one person could be so awe inspiring and that I would so completely identify with him.

Ability to change his story whenever it fits? Check. Lies to large crowds with a straight face? Double check. Female rottweiler of a #2 who will stab anyone in the back to get ahead? Triple-A fucking check. It's like I'm looking in the philosophical mirror.

I've never had illusions of being anything more than the greatest marketer that ever lived, but if Johnny Mac holds serve, I'm totally going to run. Levy/Hecht in 2016!

So I'm up late last night re-watching the McCain nomination speech on my Tivo when my cell rings. It was Alan and he starts blabbing on about how he's quitting and how the time is right and honestly I can't stand when he goes on like this because between you and me he's quit like 10 times already.

So I tell him, Alan, buddy, you can't leave. Who's better than you? Nobody, thats who. That shit you do in pitches with your giant Slurpee? Classic. Clients eat that shit up. It's like you're so cool you can't even be bothered to care. You're the Amy fucking Winehouse of marketing.

I quickly text Glenna. Code Red. The Walrus is defecting. You would think I'd be more worried about this than I am, but hey, when people leave here on a daily fucking basis you kind if get used to it. In any event I'll need to find a replacement post haste. The secret to finding a good ECD is straightforward enough, just find someone who can spout off as many buzz words as possible. Clients love that. Plus, you need someone who is bat shit arrogant and never misses an opportunity to take credit for other people's work. It makes other creatives try harder. You'd think those would be hard shoes to fill, but I know just the guy. As an added bonus, he tends to talk about himself in the 3rd person. I tried that for a while... Fake Doug is going to change marketing.... Fake Doug cares about you... Fake Doug thinks your services are no longer needed. Turns out I don't have the voice to pull it off. Apparently, it's all in the inflection.

Just an FYI

Jerry Falwell, an American religious leader, sued a magazine after it published a biting satire of Falwell that mocked his piety. Indeed, a state of Virginia jury awarded Falwell $200,000 after concluding that the magazine had inflicted "emotional distress" on the well-known clergyman. But the U.S. Supreme Court later threw out the award by explaining that satire, no matter how scathing and upsetting to its target, was protected by the First Amendment.

Source

Olympic fever! Catch it!

So tired this morning. It's my own damn fault, I mean, I stayed up most of the night watching the Mens' water polo team in China. Damn those boys are fine. If I weren't in the middle of completely transforming the world of marketing I would totally get tickets. I love the olympics. The dedication, the passion, and the best part is that nobody needs to pay them. I wish we had more people like that around here, blindly dedicated and completely uncompensated. Imagine the things I could do then.

So you may have heard we won a little gold medal of our own recently. You can read about it here. I love new clients. They're so wide eyed and expectant, like virgins on their wedding night. And then we defile them. But early on they're so happy they can barely contain themselves. I mean they are getting to work with us, right?

Case in point, here's a quote from our newest pigeon at Freeman, Tony Purdy. "When imc2 shared its strategic thinking and creative concepts with us, they not only hit the ball over the fence, they hit it out of the ballpark"

Now, I'm not much of a sports guy so the football analogy is lost on me but, aren't those two things the same? I don't know. Alan says we should just be happy we finally reeled one in. I thought we had no shot on this given how unprepared we were, but Alan said not to worry. "If you can't dazzle them with dexterity," he told me "you need to baffle them with bullshit." And my goodness does that man practice what he preaches.

He's coming down soon to celebrate and to get some face time with the creatives. To be honest, he kind of reminds me of that guy from Star Wars, you know Jabba the Hut, except that instead of Leia and that frog hookah Jabba uses Alan has one paw on my admins ass and another grappled around some 128 ounce diet coke monstrosity from 7-11. Who drinks that much diet coke? Seriously, every time I see him all I can think about is Jabba wearing a backwards Kangol hat and a t shirt with the sleeves cut off. It's really distracting.

But I digress. Marc just came in and let me know I have a few things to attend to immediately. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to think for everyone, but I guess thats the burden of genius. For most of you, have a happy Friday and remember it's pay day. For the rest of you, well, there are extra boxes in the copy room. You should totally let me know if you need a reference.

Catching up on some email

Ah Thursday's. How I love them so. Most people look forward to Friday and the end of the week. Not me. Friday tends to be pretty hectic for me around here. In the mornings I need to go over to the accounting group and decide which freelancers we're going to hold off paying and after that I have to walk around the office and glad hand the schleps in the studio. I swear all this pretending to care is exhausting. 

But not on Thursdays. No sir. Thursdays are set aside for some me time. I roll in around 8:30 and hit the zen room. I usually need a good hour to get my head on straight. After that it's over to my office and I spend the morning catching up on emails. Not my emails mind you, no no. I do that all week. Thursdays are my day to read employee emails. Man is that fun.

Of course if there's anything critical happening, Glenna brings that to me right away. Can't let those little fuckers get too restless, you know? I remember this one time how those idiots in the NY office were griping to each other about how their office sucks and they get left out of things and wah wah wah. Whiners. Don't they realize I'm giving them an oasis from that God forsaken hell hole of a city they live in?

Glenna burst into my office in a panic. "I think we have a problem, we really should think about how we can improve morale up there" she said. It's hard to tell when she's kidding or serious because her face is that strange orange color, but the furrow of her eyebrows gave her away. As soon as she knew I was on to her we both burst out laughing.

"I almost had you there" she said, practically crying with laughter. "Improve morale...." We laughed about that one for weeks.

But back to the task at hand. Scan the emails, read the IM's. Look over the report on who's posted their resume where... Man, lots of unhappy employees. It may be time for another town hall. I love those. Rand came up with the idea actually. Hold a meeting and call it an 'open forum' and ask for questions. Give some half assed explanations about problems within the company and ask for feedback, then sit back and find out who all the dissidents are. It really helps weed out the bad apples. Glenna and I then put their names on a list and in a few weeks we find a reason to get rid of them. Usually we call it a layoff, but sometimes not.

Rand is fucking brilliant about stuff like this. He comes up with these Jedi mind tricks all the time. He's got this thing called the drama triangle. It's basically a bunch of buzzwords that make the group believe that anyone who complains is emotionally broken and shouldn't be trusted. The more you bitch, the less functional you become. We've gotten it to the point where anyone who complains usually gets vilified by members of their own team. It's so obviously Orwellian I'm surprised no one has figured it out. That's the brilliance of Rand. Fuck them right in their own assholes. I swear, if he were working for the Germans in the 1940's the Jews would have been killing themselves.