Advertising’s War On Brilliant Jerks.
Why agencies and clients decided they didn’t need golden eggs.
“Not to be different is virtually suicidal.” Bill Bernbach
Jerry Della Femina called Super Bowls our version of the Oscars. He’s not wrong, it’s just that nobody believes either anymore. The last Super Bowl was a snore, especially the advertising. We’ve become what David Ogilvy once called, “helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.”
Ogilvy was talking about how men and women in advertising can’t write anymore. They can’t write copy, they can’t write a plan. We could have corrected this with the right people. Only we didn’t. We fired the ones who could have corrected it. We fired the brilliant jerks.
This goes back to the 80s, when governments, corporations and agencies decided recessions were caused by troublemakers. By troublemakers, I mean people who thought wrong. They were misfits and possible renegades, solving problems in unorthodox ways.
“We need all we can find,” Ogilvy said. “Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.”
Steve Jobs was fired for being a misfit. Apple nearly tanked as a result. They brought him back and he introduced products like the iPad and the iPhone. He saved Apple and put out the “Think Different” campaign.
Agencies didn’t get the drift. They kept firing the unorthodox thinkers, people Ogilvy said we should keep around. “We need all we can find,” Ogilvy said. “Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.”
Well, agencies didn’t care about misfits and golden eggs. As Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix explained, “The cost to teamwork is too high.”
According to him, brilliant people do a great job, they invent, they deliver results. Trouble is, they upset other people. They lower the morale of the team, weaken the leader and reduce productivity.
“A jerk is allowed to contaminate the spirit of the team,” he said. “Good leaders don’t tolerate brilliant jerks. They remove them. That’s how a team leader earns respect.”
Only they don’t. Without brilliant jerks, nobody does anything exceptional. Teams support each other, placing agreeability over actual thought. Leaders direct, but can’t inspire beyond saying, “Let’s really give this our all.”
It’s important to remember that leaders aren’t creators by nature. Even Bill Bernbach, brilliant as he was, was more of a gatherer of talent. That’s why the greatest names in advertising went through his agency. He kept George Lois around when nobody else would have. George was amazing, but a pain in the ass. Nobody would hire George today.
Like Hastings, many agencies decided consensus was more important than golden eggs.
As Hastings said, “We need talented people whose character matches our own.” In other words, mutual thinkers, what Lois called in one of his books “the dragons of mediocrity.”
Like Hastings, many agencies decided consensus was more important than golden eggs. Take out the jerks and you have conformity. With conformity you have an environment where everyone feels equal and respected.
Except you lose unorthodox thinking. The concept of “Think Different” is replaced with “Think the Same.”
This is exactly what happened in the 80s and 90s. During three recessions, without the brilliant jerks and misfits, agencies lost their mentors. Young interns were surrounded by non-thinkers. Universities hired non-thinking professors. Today, nobody can write, because they were never trained by writers. They were trained by academics.
I taught at a college once where the teachers hadn’t been in an agency in years. Their courses were out of date. So was their thinking. I told students to think for themselves, go out on a limb, take chances. They responded like most agencies. They formed into groups. The work was mediocre.
“Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”
Advertisers spent a lot of money on the last Super Bowl. Did any of them get their money’s worth? I sincerely doubt it. Despite having high-flying production and stars, the advertising was messy. Amazon made no sense whatsoever. Coke couldn’t decide whether their tagline was “Difference is beautiful” or “Together is beautiful.”
“Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees,” Ogilvy wrote. “Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.”
That’s good advice, but corporations aren’t buying it. Guys like Reed Hastings will continue the war on brilliant jerks. Same with companies like Coke. They don’t need misfits.
They might wonder why the millions they spent on the Super Bowl didn’t result in increased sales. Maybe they should look at their own history.
Back in the early 70s, Bill Backer, a creative director at McCann-Erickson, was grounded in an airport in Shannon, Scotland. By the time the weather cleared, it was morning, and the passengers were sitting around, surprisingly in good spirits, enjoying each other’s company. Backer was working on a Coke commercial at the time. He had the music but no lyrics. The lyrics suddenly came to him: “I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.”
So why can’t Coke come up with anything as good now? Because Coke doesn’t have brilliant jerks anymore. Bill Backer is dead. And the idea of creating cultural unity just doesn’t come up in team meetings.
It’s still considered “the world’s most famous ad,” even concluding the last episode of “Man Men.” So why can’t Coke come up with anything as good now? Because Coke doesn’t have brilliant jerks anymore. Bill Backer is dead. And the idea of creating cultural unity just doesn’t come up in team meetings.
Sure, they’ll say, “Hey, let’s have tons of people doing stuff and enjoying a Coke,” but then they’ll decide they need a personality. Remember Kendall Jenner in that Pepsi commercial? It was messy and phony. Any brilliant jerk would have seen that. Kendall Jenner lives a privileged existence. Her only experience with cultural unity is when one of her sisters brings home a black guy.
They’re what Ogilvy once described as, “drunkards using a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”
The Super Bowl may very well be the Oscars of advertising, but who cares? Neither are very good anymore. Nobody believes them. Nobody believes anybody except those committees in the boardrooms. They may not be jerks but, in a way, they’re worse. They’re what Ogilvy once described as, “drunkards using a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”
How many more Super Bowls will it take before we realize this? How many millions will be spent without getting one golden egg?
And when will we bring back brilliant jerks? Haven’t we learned our lesson?
Robert Cormack is a novelist, journalist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores (now in paperback). Check out Yucca Publishing or Skyhorse Press for more details.
