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I did a word count. Facebook’s terms and privacy policies are longer than the U.S. Constitution. I’m not the brightest star in the galaxy but I didn’t seem to have much trouble understanding the Constitution. But Facebook’s terms? I tried to keep track of everything I didn’t quite understand and by official count it came to somewhere around everything. But, you see, that’s not Facebook's fault. It’s mine. If I were a responsible consumer I would drop what I’m doing and study their terms and policies until I understood them completely before I used their platform. And not just Facebook’s, but every website I visit, every app I use, and every upgrade I download. And if there happens to be anything their legal departments concocted that I don’t understand I should have my team of attorneys review it and explain it to me. That shouldn’t take much time or money. This is all my responsibility. Or so it seems according to a disturbingly misguided opinion piece called “ What Facebook Data ...

Facebook's crack PR team met in secret over the weekend to discuss the scandal that has rocked the company. They drew up a 10-point plan to deal with the issues and re-establish public trust. So here it is. Facebook's 10-point PR plan to fix the company: 1. Start referring to COO as Sheryl "Stormy" Sandburg 2. Adopt new corporate slogan: Google Is Even Worse 3. Use data-driven analytics and artificial intelligence to test concept of "telling the truth" 4. Legally change Zuckerberg to Vaynerzuck 5. Launch Social Responsibility initiative: Hire someone over 30 or a black person or something 6.  Send out 50 million "save-the-date" evites to next Hackathon 7. Always refer to stolen personal private information as "fun files" 8.  Tweak logo design: Two thumbs up 9. Hire Kendall Jenner to give every member of Congress a Pepsi 10. Move a little more slowly and break things

MENLO PARK, CA - Acknowledging serious allegations, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today released a statement taking full responsibility for a multitude of issues concerning the company. "Today, I would like to address several matters that have arisen recently about Facebook that affect our worldwide community. Unbeknownst to me and our management team, it appears that millions of people have been putting cat pictures on our platform. I want to make it clear that the posting of pictures of cats is forbidden by our user agreement and that these pictures appeared without our knowledge or consent. Our user agreement makes our policy on this matter very clear... "...by accepting these terms, the user agrees not to post any fucking pictures of her fucking cat, or of any other fucking cats, including but not limited to, cats playing the fucking piano." While we acknowledge that this breach of our policy...wait a minute, it wasn't a breach , it was a screech or a bleach or ...

I posted this on LinkedIn yesterday and got some nice reaction to it. Being the lazy-ass bastard I am, I thought I'd re-post it here today and go out and have a beer. Thus far the ad industry has been lucky. We have escaped the outrage and scorn that have been heaped on Facebook. Lucky for us, the media and the public still don't get it. They don't understand at who's behest all the unconscionable collection, trading, and selling of personal, private information is being done. They haven't put two-and-two together yet and realized who is really at fault for the Cambridge Analytica and Russian election tampering scandals. Our industry "leadership" have been uniquely incompetent and shamefully irresponsible in dealing with the dangers that ad tech has created. Being the concerned, responsible, and annoying citizen that I am, in September of last year I wrote to a leader of one of our most influential trade organizations. "You are now in a uniqu...

They're U-thful, they're Unbelievable, and soon they'll be U-biquitous! Generation U -- also known as the Unborn Generation -- will soon comprise 100% of global consumers. This will happen as soon as all the assholes currently alive are dead. At the rate we're going, that could be next Thursday. That's why smart marketers are already studying the characteristics of this disruptive generation and learning how to engage with them to be engaging with their engagement. Gen U is different - Thus far, they are not limited by the artificial boundaries of "being alive" - Many of them don't know how to spell Vaynerchuk - They will demand corporate authenticity and responsibility, just as we demand it from our favorite corporations. You know, like Facebook. - They can't tell Skittles from M&M's - They are projected to be even more pathetic and useless than Baby Boomers - They will be the first generation since Millennials who can't wipe themselv...

The history of civilization is littered with horrifying social and cultural practices that, at the time, seemed perfectly normal. Today, we are mortified by the idea of slavery. We cringe at the way women have been treated. We are appalled by the past treatment of religious and ethnic minorities. Past child labor practices seem incomprehensible. And yet, in the context of those times, these abhorrent customs and practices were not just acceptable, they were established cultural norms. Sometimes, it is only in retrospect that we understand the harm of social traditions and policies. Today we may be in the middle of such an unacknowledged and unrecognized pathology. The three-headed monster of ad tech, tracking, and surveillance marketing seem perfectly normal to us. Most people don't give them a second thought as they live so much of their lives online. But these currently acceptable practices have the potential to lead us into very dangerous waters. We know the dangers of totalitar...

"Digital first" is the philosophy of imbeciles who know the answer before they know the question. They know the treatment before they know the condition. They know what tool to use before they know what's broken. Imagine a doctor whose philosophy is "appendectomy first." He knows the cure before he knows the disease. There is no other industry that would accept such manifest stupidity. But it is not just alive in our industry, it is commonplace. There are a few reasons why this idiocy exists. First, and most understandable, is that it's what some people were taught. They learned it in school and have sought to learn nothing new since. They have made a practice of interpreting the world through its myopic lens. Believing in the rapidly decomposing digital fantasy ( see this and this , ) they never bothered to acquire any other advertising or marketing knowledge. If the only tool you have is a hammer...well, you know the rest. These people are ignorant, but i...

I was sitting at my desk doing whatever the hell it is a creative director does, when my associate creative director walked in. "You gotta read this," he said. "What is it?" "A letter from a copywriter." "We don't need a copywriter," I said. "I know. But you gotta read this." So I read it. By the end of reading the letter we were both laughing out loud and had invited the writer in for an interview. In the fullness of time, she became the chief creative and president of our agency. Recently, a friend asked me to critique a cover letter he was writing for a job application. The letter was perfectly fine. It stated its case nicely, it was well-written, and it was articulate. But it was indistinguishable from a hundred other letters the prospective employer was likely to get. My advice to him was this: Someone's going to open this letter and do one of two things - put it in a file with all the other letters or bring it to one of he...

For several years I have been saying that I can't think of any famous consumer-facing brands that have been built primarily by online advertising. Whenever I write this I get one comment that is absolutely predictable. I usually get it from people who have an economic or ideological reason to defend digital advertising, but sometimes it's from people who just don't think too well. The response is, "oh yeah, how about Google and Facebook and Amazon?" So once and for all let me deal with this so the next hundred times I get this comment I can just reply with a link to this post. Google, Facebook and Amazon were not brands built by advertising. There are several ways brands become big and famous. Advertising is only one of them. The other ways include: word of mouth, PR, news media coverage, ubiquitous public visibility (wide distribution.) These "non-advertising" ways usually revolve around uniqueness. In other words, for many famous brands advertising pla...