Exactly *not* the movie I wanted. Exactly the movie I needed.

I finally saw ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. I know. Back off. I’ve had a rough last couple of months, what with friends passing away and an increasingly vitriolic divorce from a woman whose moral compass points to an entirely different north from my own. 

So you can understand my reluctance to see a movie about a guy whose wife betrays him meeting up with a woman dealing with the death of her husband. 

It was exactly not the movie I wanted to see. But it was exactly the movie I needed. 

Why? Because it's a  good story. And at this moment in my life I've had so much bad that I need all the good I can get.

I have a theory about good stories. That good stories require a protagonist overcoming obstacles in order to achieve something.

That’s nothing new. All of us story geeks will tell you pretty much the same thing. Where I go a little different is that I look for one more wrinkle. I like to see the protagonist’s Want in opposition to his or her Need.

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a textbook example. 

The main character wants to save an unsavable marriage (hmmm –– that sounds familiar). What he needs is to accept the truth that his marriage can’t be saved. 

I’m going to tell you how it ends. He gets what he needs. But you know this already, even if you haven’t seen the film, because I said I liked it. For a story to be satisfying, the protagonist must fail to achieve what he or she wants in order to achieve what he or she needs. 

Yeah, there needs to be more. Otherwise, my going to see the movie would make a good movie. The Need has to be life-altering. The protagonist has to be single-mindedly dedicated to achieving his or her goal. The forces conspiring to thwart the protagonist must be formidable. 

This film had all that. Plus extraordinarily good acting, nice writing, and fresh, likable characters. 

In short, it does what any good film does: Provide an escape from our own miserable lives. 

I know, speak for yourself, Brian.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Advertising I Learned From A First Century Babylonian Rabbi

Rabbi Hillel making fun of crappy advertising. 

My nephew just called with a “quick question”. His high school Spanish teacher gave his class an assignment to create a TV commercial that communicates the value of speaking a foreign language. He wanted to know how to make a TV commercial. 

Oh, and the assignment is due tomorrow. 

When I was a kid, I remember a hearing a story in Sunday school about one Rabbi Hillel, who was challenged to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The Torah, in case you didn’t happen to have the good fortune to be raised Jewish, is, to quote Wikipedia, "the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God, which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious obligations and civil laws." It's five books long, plus, oh, 58 centuries of commentaries and interpretations by a people who, to put it mildly, have a thing for commenting and interpreting.

Okay, so what my nephew was asking me wasn’t quite as daunting. If you count the entire history of TV commercials, you can’t really go back before 1939, when RCA began broadcasting TV signals. 

Still, Dude? Seriously? You want me to tell you how to make a TV commercial while standing on one foot?

In the Torah story, the rabbi thinks for a moment, raises one foot, and says, “Do not do anything to others that you would not want done to yourself. The rest is all commentary.”

So I raised my own foot and told my nephew exactly that. Except that I substituted “inflict anything upon” for "do anything to". 

And then I hung up. I have to come up with a commercial for a client that communicates the value of buying something much less worthwhile than learning a foreign language. And the assignment is due tomorrow. 

'Jack Reacher' breaks the law.

I don't like Tom Cruise. Personally. Which is ridiculous because I've never met him. There's just something about him that doesn't sit right with me.

So whenever I go to see a movie he's in, it's with the expectation that I'll dislike it.

More often than not, I'm disappointed. Meaning I end up enjoying his movies and even liking him in them.

And yet I refuse to budge from my position on him.

I feel like a Republican congressman on an anti-gay crusade who can't help but hook up with strangers in the airport men's room.

Okay, not quite, but you know what I mean.

So I went to see 'Jack Reacher', fully expecting that it would suck. I should have figured that it wouldn't.

Sure, it's a thin premise. The main character has lapses in the very characteristics that are supposed to define him. The story veers from action to farce, sometimes in the same scene. The whole conspiracy (action films are always about conspiracy) is a house of cards built on a huge flaw. And the woman who plays opposite Cruise? Who let her onto the set? Were all the trained actresses in Hollywood out getting their lips Botoxed the day they cast that role?

Still, it's a fun ride. And up until the end, it's a Hollywood movie.

And then it does something remarkable. It breaks one of the biggest unspoken precepts of American filmmaking. Yes, I'm going to give away the ending. (If you don't already know that the bad guy dies in the end of a film like 'Jack Reacher', please stop reading. Not just this post. Stop reading this entire blog. You're singlehandedly bringing down the average IQ of my readership by a substantial number of points.)

What's interesting about 'Jack Reacher' isn't that the bad guy dies in the end. It's how. Tom Cruise kills him. Not in a protracted fight. Not in self-defense. He pulls out his gun and shoots him in the head.

This does not happen in a Hollywood movie.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw the good guy kill the bad guy? I'm not talking about the bad guy's minions. They're not really people, in movie terms, and if you want proof look at the way their characters are usually named in the credits: Henchman 3, Cop With Scar, Tall Guard.

But Hollywood has a rule about good guys killing bad guys and that rule comes down to one word: Don't. More specifically, the bad guy has to set in motion the very thing that causes his own demise. In essence, it's the bad guy's badness that kills him. In the idealized Hollywood scenario, in spite of it all, the good guy (usually) tries to save him.

Two examples:

'Spider-Man' (2002): The Green Gobblin remote controls his own glider, ultimately killing himself.

'The Incredibles' (2004): When Jack-Jack self-immolates, Syndrome drops him and his cape gets caught in the suction of his aircraft.

The reason for this is moral –– and yes, Hollywood films do adhere to a pretty strict moral standard. The good guy wouldn't be good if he were to actively cause the death of the bad guy. There are exceptions, of course. In 'Lethal Weapon', for example, it's self-defense, but even that's not enough. Both Murgaugh and Riggs fire their weapons simultaneously and we don't know who actually kills Joshua.

'Jack Reacher' is notable because the main character is not an anti-hero. He's a good guy. Unconventional, sure. Off the grid, yes. But unimpeachable. A former army cop who served with honor. For him to pull out a gun and shoot an unarmed man sitting in a chair? That's Hollywood heresy.

And that makes me think two things. First, it makes me not like the movie as much. I want my heroes to be heroic. Jack Reacher leaves the film different from the way he entered. He's tainted.

Second, though, it makes me like Tom Cruise better. This was a huge choice. Most of the people involved in the making of 'Jack Reacher' would have had every reason to fight against violating the convention, not least of which Tom Cruise. In fact, few people in Hollywood even have the power to challenge that unwritten law.

Tom Cruise owns that decision, and whether you like the decision or not, it was a brave one.

Maybe I'll go into his next film with a more open mind.

A 46-year-old advertising lesson and the boneheads who refuse to learn it.

In my capacity as a consultant to a certain automotive group, I was recently asked to review Buick's new TV spots. One features Squaquile O'Neal talking about how spacious his Buick LaCrosse is.

Take a look and see if anything strikes you as... uncomfortable.

See that? The part where he's wedged into the driver's seat? 

The seat is all the way to the back and the poor guy still can't get his legs under the steering wheel. That car isn't going anywhere –– not with Shaq in it.

Here's the deal. Saying that Shaq is a big guy is like saying Donald Trump has a healthy ego. He –– O'Neal, not Trump –– stands 7' 1" tall. (For the record, The Donald is 6' 3", which actually qualifies him as a big guy, particularly compared to an average someone like me who stands 5' 9".)

The LaCrosse may actually be roomy. It probably is. But cramming Shaq into the front seat in order to make that point is ridiculous. Even if you could make it look as if Shaq fits into the front seat of a LaCrosse, the best you can hope for is that 7-foot-tall guys will swing by the dealership, only to have them realize the extent to which you were lying. 

Good for Buick? I'm going to say no.

What makes this spot particularly interesting is how nicely it parallels the situation in 1966. Back then, Volkswagen wanted to convince people that the Beetle was roomy. 

To make the point, Volkswagen hired another very large basketball player: Wilt Chamberlain. 

Guess how tall Wilt Chamberlain was. You got it. 7' 1". 

I know, eerie.

What the folks at Volkswagen understood that the folks at Buick don't is that honesty is more compelling than lying. Rather than try to tell people that Wilt actually fit into a Beetle, they did the opposite. They told people that he didn't. 

Here's the ad:

In case you can't make out the body copy, here's how it starts:

We tried. Lord knows we tried. But no amount of pivoting or faking could squeeze the Philadelphia 76ers’ Wilt Chamberlain into the front seat of a Volkswagen.

So if you’re 7’ 1” tall like Wilt, our car is not for you. But maybe you’re a mere 6’ 7”. 

In that case, you’d be small enough to appreciate what a big thing we’ve made of the Volkswagen.

A lot has been made about how Volkswagen's ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, revolutionized advertising in the 1960s by creating powerfully motivating messages with honesty and empathy.

But the sad truth is that for all Doyle Dane Bernbach and its ilk did to show how mass communications could be created with respect for consumers, that revolution has clearly failed. Forty-six years down the road, companies like Buick continue to create unmotivating, unbelievable turds. And today, unlike those Mad Men days when integrity and conviction were the tools deployed to support decisions made based on common sense, ad agencies and clients alike defer to legions of "consumer advocates", analysts, and brand strategists who rely on "powerful tools" like focus groups, quantitative research, and consumer insight studies to develop messages that "resonate".

Call me old fashioned, but I think there's a really simple way to tell whether any of those experts deserves the six-figure salaries they make: See if any of them would spend their own money to buy a LaCrosse.

What I keep saying, only not in my words.

Isn't it funny how the better you develop your skills to master one form, the better you're able to master others? Or to put it another way, when you get to be a black belt in kung fu, you're a pretty even match for someone with a black belt in tae kwan do.

Or to put it yet another way, if Mothra and Spider man got into a fight, who would win?

Okay, enough.

I came across this article by a venture capitalist named Josh Linker, and look at that. Take away the stuff about funding and VCs and it could be a blog about making advertising. By me. 

Which makes sense, really. After all, a pitch is a pitch.

Here's what he wrote. Verbatim. 

Five Disaster Moves To Botch Your Pitch

Not me. Josh.

Most of us have something to pitch. You may be pitching your startup to a VC to secure funding. Or perhaps you’re pitching your product or service to potential customers. Whether you are pitching your case to a jury, your hypothesis for a research grant, yourself for a new job, or your best friend for a date with that cute guy, a simple rule applies: the better the pitch, the better the results.

As a venture capitalist, I hear pitches every day. In this highly competitive environment, a strong pitch can be the difference-maker between securing millions in funding and completely missing the mark.

There are many obvious cliché moves: give a firm handshake, communicate with passion, make strong eye-contact, and try to relate with your audience. Yet there are approaches I see constantly that sabotage an otherwise good pitch. To significantly improve your batting average, avoid these disaster moves when pitching just about anything:

1) THE RUN-ON SENTENCE: One of my pet peeves is listening to someone drone on for a 45-minute monologue. In your big moment, your instinct is to communicate everything you know, the entire history of your idea, and endless amusing anecdotes. Avoid this urge! Your pitch will be 100 times more powerful if you can make it concise. Make every word count.

2) THE FACT LEAP: Anyone who is being pitched has turned on their highly-developed BS-detector to full tilt. We are questioning everything you say and trying to poke holes in your story. So the minute you exaggerate a stat, make an outrageous claim, or state a fact that can be challenged, your credibility crumbles.

3) THE OVERSELL: If you make a strong point once, it resonates. If you feel the need to make the same point several times you end up diluting the power of the message. If you keep pushing a point, you transform before our eyes from a passionate world-changer to a used-car-salesperson or infomercial pitchman. If what you are pitching it that special, you don’t need to oversell it.

4) THE S.A.T.: When responding to a question, just answer it directly. If you tell a four-minute story that includes 73 data points, the listener feels like they are taking an S.A.T. exam in which they need to sift through all the irrelevant stuff in order to get the answer. This does not help you shine or get your message heard.

5) THE GREAT GATSBY: Grandiose braggers may entertain at cocktail parties, but they rarely win the battle of the pitch. Keep it authentic and real. Your startup with 11 beta customers isn’t a billion-dollar company just yet. Think big, but stay humble. After hearing a pitch where the daring hero outperforms Groupon and Apple in their second year with trillions of revenue and six billion customers, I’m ready for a shower instead of a closing dinner.

Hone your pitch to stand out from the hapless masses that continue to fall into the same traps. In turn, you’ll land the job, get the girl, win the capital, and seize your full potential.

I had my cake and ate it, too, or something.

Mine's better

When I was a kid –– around seven –– I decided to learn how to cook. And what does a seven-year-old learn how to cook? Right. Devil's food cake.

My mom gave me her recipe and impetuous youth that I was, I immediately set out to improve it.

Which I did.

I'm not going to lie to you. I didn't spend my entire childhood perfecting cakes, but I did make enough of them to get pretty good.

I like devil's food cake. A lot. And that created a problem. I had the limited patience of a seven-year-old. So as soon as a cake had barely cooled, I'd flip it over and pick a little piece out of the bottom. Just to make sure it came out alright.

And nobody would notice.

Before long, I was taking bigger and bigger samples. Until one day, I ate the entire inside. I couldn't help myself.

That night, at dessert, my mom cut into... a shell. Seriously. There was nothing to it but about a half inch of the outside, left perfectly intact, just barely enough to support itself without collapsing. Christopher Wren would have been proud.

There's a point. And the point is about over promise.

Everybody sitting around the table that night expeceted a cake. Not just a cake, but one of my pretty amazing devil's food cakes. 

What they got was not-cake. They weren't happy about the crust they did get, even though the tiny bit that was left was super good. They were disappointed because they didn't get as much as they thought they were going to.

And this is what happens over and over, every day, in our lives. Movie advertising that tells us to see "The movie of the decade." Book jackets that exclaim "The best novel you'll ever read." Packages that scream "New and Improved." Both. Like something can be both new and improved.

Hollywood is continually stunned when a little independent film makes a ton of money at the box office. But if you think about it, what's happening is that that little independent film might actually be no better than just okay, but simply can't afford to buy favorable reviews and a huge marketing campaign. Without any hype, there's no expectation. When there's no expectation, there's no disappointment. People who see the film tell their friends. And suddenly, word of mouth is accomplishing what a $200 million ad budget can't.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Brian, you have to get people into the theater in the first place. How do you do that without making an over promise of some kind?"

There is a way. Back when I was learning how to be a copywriter, we called it creativity.

Or, to come full circle, don't just follow the recipe. Figure out how to improve it.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Already.

I just made a phone call and heard a Christmas carol while I was on hold. 

On November 1st. 

Remember when we used to complain because the Christmas music would start on Thanksgiving?

Back when I was your age, it was different. Sure, people got into the holiday spirit a month before Christmas. And it was annoying as all hell. But where it came from was giddy anticipatoin. 

But it’s not holiday spirit. Not anymore. Now it’s about sales. Our consumption-obsessed society is addicted to a certain level of commerce, and like a junkie who needs a fix, we’ll lie to ourselves if we think it’ll help us get it. 

That means for the next 55 days, expect to be bombarded by Christmas carols, Christmas sales, Christmas promotions, Christmas decorations, Christmas everything –– coming at us relentlessly from every direction in a desperate attempt to turn another shitty year around.

It's not going to work. I know, the recession officially ended in June of 2009, but I’m willing to go out on a limb here and predict that the holiday shopping season isn’t going to break any records. 

And you know what that means.

Starting December 26th, the Valentine’s Day frenzy begins.