Weather Vane Glow | spud murphy

Tying up loose ends, I came across an unfinished post from December 2008 when Advertising Age gave us a case study in business schizophrenia.

My piece was unfinished, I suppose, because things were happening so fast at the end of the year and I was afraid of overreaching. Five months later, things don’t seem to have slowed down—but I’m marginally less afraid.

Here’s a clipping from the AdAge piece that got me started:

Car Czar Would Control $7.3 Billion Ad Budget
December 09, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com)

…Based on Advertising Age’s estimates of spending by General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co., that would give the as-yet-unnamed car czar control over some $7.3 billion in marketing spending in the U.S. alone.

The marketing money controlled by the car czar would handily top that of Procter & Gamble, the country’s leading advertiser, which spends some $5.2 billion, and shove P&G’s global marketing officer Marc Pritchard off his perch as the most influential man in marketing.

Clout with media and agencies
The car czar would wield a budget more than double those of AT&T, Verizon, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, which round out the nation’s top five marketing spenders, and give the car czar more clout with media and agencies than such famed names in marketing as Walmart Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn and Anheuser-Busch VP-Marketing Dave Peacock.

Of course there is no Car Czar—AutoCrat?—to oversee the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry, though it’s still possible a bankruptcy judge will fill that role. But had there been, AdAge reckoned he or she would suddenly have become the most influential person in global marketing…seriously. These intelligent, generally sensible people thought the advertising industry—their industry—would get one third of the then 25 billion dollars proposed to bail out the U.S. auto industry. They still believed the reason people weren’t buying cars in 2008 was insufficient advertising. Not shrinking credit…not ballooning debt…not rising unemployment and mortgage defaults…not plummeting consumer confidence…but a simple and easily remedied scarcity of print, radio and television ads.

Here’s where the schizophrenia kicks in. Advertising Age already knew this was not in the cards.

24 hours before running the Car Czar Would Control $7.3 Billion Ad Budget item, AdAge published a piece by Jonah Bloom titled, Recession Provides a Chance to Build a Better Capitalism. Bloom’s more measured post called for long term thinking and a new business sense, offering eight resolutions for marketers in 2009—including this one:

In this post-advertising age, product is everything—because consumers can find out instantly whether something is worth buying. Your job is to collect the insights that’ll make products better, but you can also get involved in product design. If you do, you can help build better, longer-lasting products.

From where I sit, the net on Mr. Bloom’s observation is that we may be able to design our way out of a bad spot but the notion that we can advertise our way out is fairy dust. As the poet Mark Heard framed it, “You and me, we know too much.”

They’re onto us. In 2009 we have to show up and deliver the goods. No longer can we chuckle knowingly at that bumper sticker that read, He who dies with the most toys wins. We used to (and by used to, I mean, what, 2007?) but not anymore. We have found a flaw in the fabric of our economy. And what a flaw…the veil in the temple of greed is torn from top to bottom.

We’re in the mess we’re in partly because we came to believe no one was paying attention to the man behind the curtain—that our words, propelled by the persuasive arts, would substitute for hard work, honest dealing and true innovation.

Could that be any farther from the best practices of sustainable commerce? Let alone the sort of trade driven by a biblical worldview where “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Jesus, in Luke 12:15), and the question, “LORD, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy mountain?” is answered in the declaration:

Those whose walk is blameless,
who do what is righteous,
who speak the truth from their hearts;
who have no slander on their tongues,
who do their neighbors no wrong,
who cast no slur on others;
who despise those whose ways are vile
but honor whoever fears the LORD;
who keep their oaths even when it hurts;
who lend money to the poor without interest
and do not accept bribes against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
will never be shaken.
— Psalm 15 TNIV

Reading that I can’t help stealing a riff from The Book of Common Prayer , “Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” Yes indeed we have.

Picking up the thread with Jonah Bloom:

Above all else, we’d do well to acknowledge that conspicuous consumption—which has fueled economic growth since World War II—is simply not a sustainable answer in a world in which we already have so many possessions. The storage industry is growing faster than almost any other sector and has been quantified as a $20 billion business in the U.S. alone.

Long-term thinking
If we continue to emphasize quarter-by-quarter growth above all else, we’re bound to repeat the mistakes that created the current mess, because we’re running out of space to expand into and genuine human needs to fulfill. Even the markets we talk about as “developing” are saturating scarily rapidly.

Here, of course, Mr. Bloom demonstrates his own business schizophrenia; speaking what’s now obvious to everyone but somebody had to say out loud in the first paragraph and then, halfway through the second, proving that he doesn’t get out much. We’re running out of place to expand into and genuine human needs to fulfill? Really? Has he visited these “developing” markets he speaks of? Has he seen with his own eyes what I have seen with mine in Russia, South America, Africa, Asia, India? Don’t get me wrong: No one is saying these are easy places to do business spiritually engaged. The question is why anyone had the impression business should be easy anywhere?

Not the least of our problems is that we have come to believe, lots of us, that many things should be easier than they are in fact. I was struck recently by the simplicity of a woman quoted in the Wall Street Journal. She is the wife of a physician in a family making more than $250K. That puts them in something like the 98th percentile of earnings in the US. “I’m not complaining,” she said, “but I thought we were just good old middle class.” How are we to harmonize our perceptions when there are wealthy Americans who think they must be middle class because they do not enjoy frictionless lives. And what do middle class Americans think? And the working poor?

The inventive and intensely practical Marty Neumeier writes, “The problem with consumerism isn’t that it creates desire, but that it fails to fully satisfy it.” Brilliant! Sure, as Mr. Neumeier notes, “Part of what we desire is to feel good about the things we buy,” but who among us believes the fruit of capitalism—whether consumables or greater capital—can possibly be that for we which we hunger most?

There is a shift in the wind. Jonah Bloom ended 2008 on a note of reality and hope for his industry:

While the business media has typically celebrated the titans of industry because they were, well, the titans, consumers, particularly the younger generations of consumers, are moving toward a  different way of judging business. They celebrate  companies and brands that share their values, rather than those that have the most muscle.
…

In 2009, we’ll have a chance to frame that approach, a chance to remake our businesses and the businesses on whose behalf we work, to wean ourselves off the crack of consumption at any cost to our brands and our planet, and instead focus on profitability, sustainability and social responsibility. Maybe next year can be the start of something good, a different take on commerce, because I’m not sure we can honestly believe any longer that, in its present form, capitalism will save us.

“I’m not sure we can honestly believe any longer that, in its present form, capitalism will save us.” How could it? We have ourselves repeated a recurring human mistake: As the apostle Paul put it to the Romans of his time, we have “worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” By all means we may practice a vigorous capitalism, but we must never again believe in it.