While New York Times advertising coverage has fallen more than a few pegs from the glory days when Stuart Elliott surveyed his fiefdom from his usual table at the Four Seasons, the Gray Lady does manage to pay attention every now and again.

The walking undead: according to Gallop, trust in the media has dropped to 32% with Edelman’s Trust Barometer showing 64% of people believe the media will “deliberately mislead us.” Well, according to YouGov, 54% still get their news from TV, almost 70% of people 45+. So there.

Who says the soothsayers, savants, talking heads, and pundits trolling La Croisette for contacts and contracts get to hog the predictive fun? In dishonor of all that, I’ve been sweaty-palming my way to a list of some of the pathetic, cringe-worthy, and obviously obvious realities likely to slam into our noses-—as long as we close our eyes and walk into them.

David Ogilvy put it like so: “Don’t hire a dog and then bark for yourself.” Leo Burnett said it thusly: “Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” Both were nailing a singular failing that’s plagued adland since we first slithered from the primordial economy on to dry land: how we arbitrate our creative creations.

Just about every advertising creative worth any damned thing at all believes three things down to the nubs of their former fingernails:

Agency life is unfair. This is one of those “res ipsa” things. Unarguable.

Work long and hard enough and that career-making idea will come. Dubious, but maybe marginally defensible per Woody Allen’s zing that 90% of life is a cliché.

Last, there’s our shared article of faith that better creative makes for more effective advertising; a point that been surprisingly controversial ever since Whipple started screeching about TP on TV.

Once upon a time, generally after I’d done something particularly boneheaded—filling the garage with toxic fumes from a “slightly” modified Gilbert chemistry set comes to mind—my mother would recite, “Sorry doesn’t feed the dinosaurs.”

For the first time in forever—or at least the year and change since ChatGPT-3 hit the buzzworks, there’s actually something in AI-land that doesn’t come with a wisp of vapor, a hint of future-forward bait, and the distinct odor of fish. It’s called Perplexity A.I., although I think it could be more properly tagged as CliffsNotes on digital steroids.

For all the waxing and pontificating about AI—and we’re well past gigapixels by now—there’s one item nobody seems much dialed into.

Born at the intersection of necessity and opportunity, “source agnostic” is a different way to think about creative video production—one that frees your creative concepts from traps, brick walls, and dead ends.  So, what does that really mean?  We thought you’d never ask.

Not for nothing, but seeing this graphic puts me in mind of a grim reprise of the beyond ancient “horse walks into a bar” trope. Only now when the bartender asks, “why the long face?” the reply is: “I’m a CMO.”

In “Little Gidding” T.S. Elliott delivers one of poetry’s most evocative stanzas when he writes, “And the end of our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

Every two years, give or take, America rubs its irritated and bloodshot eyeballs, bracing for another flood of political advertising. Overwhelmingly brownish in taste and texture. Formulaic, repetitive. Uninspiring.

This week, the case for keeping the humanity in advertising got a powerful boost, and/or shot in the arm, and/or kick in the ass.

Based on his consultancy’s 2023 survey, the very credible Jack Meyers reports that of the 10,000 professionals working in agency media departments and similar, only 20% have more than 15 years’ experience. With 65% having less than 8.

When you get right down to it, those squishy bastards “ends” and “means” are tricky taskmasters.

Especially when it comes to the intersecting worlds of creativity, advertising, and production.

And yes, it’s the silliest of advertising seasons. So, sue me. But somehow, it’s managed to get me thinking about the biggest of the big Sunday decisions and what it could mean for advertisers plonking down a reported $6.5 to $7 million on a gone-in-30-seconds grab for brand glory.

And, of course, we should now all be thanking LinkedIn, from the deepest and sincerest cockles of our nary-a-drop-of-irony hearts, for giving us a brand new option when posting thoughts on the site.

And just like that, there I was last Sunday, standing in an Alaska Airlines boarding line. LAX to NYC. Delayed a mere 2 hours because of a “toilet” issue. Sure. The day after their Portland-to-Ontario flight had what Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, now calls a mid-air “mistake.”

On this we should agree: AI is so last year. And so this year. And so on and so forth as we march, Tiktok dance, or leave fingernail scratches on the rocky cliffsides of a progressively less predictable future.

If you’re among the cynical souls harboring doubts that New York is back in full holiday snap, crackle, and pop, consider yourself invited to join the throngs thronging what locals call “CPS” (59th to the unwashed). So many people, so little interest in using the sidewalk to, say, get from point here to point there.