If you google “DHL Sucks” this is what you get.

If you google “FedEx Sucks” this is what you get.

If you google “UPS Sucks” this is what you get.

Each of the comments and horror stories deals with different aspects of the companies suckage. In my experience, and in reading the comments, the breadth of ineptitude by DHL is astounding. Meanwhile, the FedEx site doesn’t paint the best picture of their employees. I mean come on, you come on a forum and (assumably) flog people who have a dim view of your company? Seriously?

The UPS Sucks page details one particular case and how vehement UPS was about not helping the customer, until they had to file a lawsuit.

It’s utterly mind-blowing how little it takes for a company to generate good will with their customers. Even more mind-blowing is how often they fail to do it.

Where the shipping companies are concerned, it’s clear from my own experiences that DHL and Fed-Ex really have no interest in helping their customers. And it stands to reason they wouldn’t; in a sea of millions of customers a day, how do you begin to decide to whom you throw a life preserver? I can’t answer that, and I don’t expect them to. Which is why I only use UPS. Both have demonstrated to me that they do whatever they can to satisfy their customer. I can go on and on about experiences with UPS where they went further than any other shipping company has, but you know they drill. “They walked through a rain storm, chartered an Airbus and cleared a landing strip in my hateful neighbors front yard to make sure my daughter got her wedding dress on time” blah blah blah.

But what about taking care of the customer? Where is the balance. As anyone knows, I’ve had to break the news to clients in the past that I just can’t do that for them. And honestly, while it stresses me every time, and I lose sleep over it, I have to do it. Why? Because of the other clients.

I have developed a philosophy; I call it my Two Angels philosophy.

When a client presents me with a service issue, I imagine there are two angels on my shoulders. One angel, is my highest-billing client the other, is my least. When I make my decision, I imagine they are both asking me to justify that decision in terms of how I’ve treated them in the past. I have to explain to them how the decision I’ve made is justifiable in terms of their business. For the smaller client, I say “Well, Small Client, this client represents three times the amount of business you bring us, so for that amount of work they earn a special dispensation in this case. If you’d like to bring that amount of work, we can treat you likewise. To large client I say, “See, Large Client, while we may not have given you that discount you wanted you can see that we do other things for you in recognition of the amount of business you bring us which indicate that we appreciate your business.”

It’s a delicate balancing act for sure. And I think that’s the key. We try to balance all the clients along with the needs of our business and ourselves.

The good news? I can categorically say that we do a MUCH better job than these multi-billion dollar companies with thousands of employees.

Oh, and please don’t ship us anything via DHL or Fed-Ex. Because, well . . . you know, they suck.

American Copywriter: When you get wrapped up in your own industry jargon

This is a pretty interesting blog posted on American Copywriter’s blog. I think the most important point to bear in mind from Jennifer’s post is that you have to remember the customer. It’s not about you, it’s not about your client, it’s not about their product. It’s about the customers.

Think of it like this:

“If you’re going to take up space in my living room without being invited in – even for just thirty seconds – you better be talking to me about me.”

If the heat doesn’t kill you the humidity will.

I’m testing a new Widget that allows me to post to this blog using a widget on my desktop.

It’s amazing how this all gets easier and easier to do. I wonder when my computer will crash from too many widgets?

Learn art direction with paper and pencil, not a computer.

That’s basically one of the “rules” of advertising I heard from American Copywriter the other day.

Nothing could be more true.

I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t go to music school. I graduated with a Bachelor of Art in Labor and Industrial Relations and Psychology. So a lot of people without much experience would say I don’t have the academic qualification for what I do. Neither did Hitchcock. Johnny Cash doesn’t have a degree in songwriting. Blah Blah Blah.

I learned all of these things – photography/cinematography, design, orchestration and instrumentation – through doing them. Now, there are some who would say that I have no business doing these things sense I’ve never been formally trained in them. Well, even a pretentious audio production professor once told me that the sum total of what he teaches is physics and how to get a job as a studio lackey. “If you can shoot pool you can record music; it’s all angles and impact.”

We learn these things by doing, and by being smart enough to see their connections to one another.

When I was 13 years old and using my dad’s Mamiya Sekor 35mm still camera to shoot pictures on our family vacation to Pagosa Springs, I had no idea I was training for professional cinematography. But 20+ years of taking pictures later it’s pretty clear that trying to understand light and composition was a huge part of what it takes to do this thing.

And banging on my Hofner acoustic into a SM58 for hours a day certainly didn’t give me that Berkeley school of music pedigree or that Full Sail certificate. But, again, 20 years later that was the foundation of what taught me how to write, perform, record and mix something that my teenage stepdaughter will hum along to by the thirteenth measure.

Over the intervening years I’ve learned the rules of musical composition, design, eye line, aperature and f-stop settings, color balance, etc. etc. etc. And it’s been important to learn the rules of whatever you do, but the rules aren’t important so you can feel superior to your client or co-workers (in those cases rules just make you look like a jackass). The rules are important because they enable you to help people and so you know when it’s appropriate to break them and when it’s best to not.

The point isn’t that you don’t need school or training. The point is that you need to learn creative processes by doing. Learning is not a binary process. Learning is the ultimate analog. Why else to do we learn best by metaphor, concepts, trial and error? I feel sorry for all these people who’ve learned how to make music using a computer (I’m NOT saying their not musicians) or how to make films without holding a heavy metal camera up to their eye and cutting negatives, burning photo paper or splicing tape.

Bloody fingers and broken strings are just how you get there. And if you can’t play a left-handed instrument backwards, how are you gonna learn that in school?

I’m not a historian, but I have studied some linguistics; specifically, history of language.

I know for instance that the Romans spoke Latin and carried that language to almost all of the surrounding areas they conquered. I guess it’s possible my linguistics professor left out the part where the romans adopted the accent of Old English speakers. But I doubt it.

I’m watching HBO’s Rome for the first time and I call out to anyone else in the house who’ll listen “Why are these Romans speaking with a british accent?”

Is this part of some suspension of disbelief? Is it supposed to give more credibility to the show? If so, then why didn’t the people on Six Feet Under have a surfer accent? If I remember correctly, the producers of that show made Rachel Griffith lose her Aussy accent to make her – and hence the show – more credible.

When Mel Gibson did The Passion of the Christ he made Jesus speak Aramaic. I guess maybe the guys from Rome decided that “British” was the accenta franca of ancient Rome. (Wait. Did I just use latin?)

So I guess it best the question; why can’t the producers of Rome trust that the show will be compelling without the all the limeyness?

I will say this, they got a couple things right about ancient Rome, copious sex and “copious puss.” Now THAT’S authentic.

This article from the Manchester Union Leader, a staunchly conservative newspaper from New Hampshire, says more clearly than I ever could the blunders of the current administration in the wake of the hurricane. So I’ll leave that part to them.

I took the picture above in New Orleans in Jackson Square in May of 2001. To me it embodies what the culture of New Orleans is about – the people who make it up.

The thing that overwhelms me about this tragedy — as if there wasn’t so much to overwhelm — is that the greatest loss from this whole thing is the loss of a culture. New Orleans is a culture unique unto itself. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. And in this world of free markets where ANYthing can be a commodity not much remains unexported.

But New Orleans culture, if you ignore the Popeye’s Chicken and “Girls Gone Wild” videos, has had but one distribution network – the home-bound citizens of New Orleans themselves. You have to go THERE to get it.

This hurricane and flood has wiped out all of the things that make the NOLA culture so beautiful. The people, especially those poor who couldn’t evacuate when ordered, ARE the culture of NOLA. They not only are the street dancers and musicians, the cooks and bartenders but they owned the city without ever paying out a dime.

The culture of NOLA is the voodoo shops, the bars, the junk shops, the folk art places. With these places gone, the culture goes with them.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who were left, the poor who couldn’t afford much, but owned the culture that is NOLA, were evacuated to the Super Dome. A stadium their tax dollars paid to build but into which their pennies couldn’t grant them entrance. In the end it was the impending destruction of their culture – their only asset – that guaranteed them a seat.

I will say this to anyone in America who’s reading; we, the people, (not the government) have made a beautiful outpouring of aid to the people of New Orleans. And THIS is a tribute to the culture that this tragedy has cost us all.

To live in New York must be what it’s like to live inside an audio compressor. Everything moves a such a pace, and all these diverse sources come through that one spot before they are processed and spit back out to dissipate into the world.

It doesn’t surprise me that those people can be so creative. The diverse types of people who live there, the amount of cultural influences all impinging on them from different angles.

I had a chance to listen to Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra speak. That guy has his head screwed on askew; which is a HUGE compliment.

Ben talked about possibility. The fact that everything around us is invented, made up, bullshit. The good, the bad, the ugly; it’s all an invention of someone. Whether we invent it for ourselves, or someone else invents it and forces it on us in some attempt at throwing us into the downward spiral of worrying about whether we’re good enough, measuring up, doing okay.

Things like “good enough,” “measuring up (or down),” and “doing okay” are ALL invented. It’s ALL invented. They’re simply standards someone (often someone else) puts out there for us to trip over. To feed an ego or to establish a hierarchy of existence among people. Doing the right thing, being the “right” person, being “cool” is all made up bullshit. It’s all INVENTED bullshit.

The standards that REALLY exist in the world are the standards of possibility.

How are you falling into the trap of wondering if/how you measure up, rather than inventing a possibility for yourself and others to live in?

You’ll spend your whole goddamned life trying to live up to the “measurement” world, and COMPLETELY miss the process of possibility.

Ask yourself, which is worse? Not meeting some invented standard, or not finding the possible?

And remember rule number six . . .

DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO GODDAMNED SERIOUSLY.

Rockridge Institute – “War on Terror,” Rest In Peace

George Lakoff looks at the armistice of the phrase “War on Terror.” Very interesting read.

“I scream at you for sharing
‘n I curse you just for caring
I hate the clothes you’re wearing, they’re so pretty
‘n I tell to not to see me
‘n I tell you not to feel me
‘n I make your life a drag, it’s such a pity
‘n I watch your warm glow palin’
‘n I watch your sparkle fadin’
As you realize you’re failin’, cos you’re so good”

– Ian Hunter/Mott the Hoople

I still don’t completely understand what Ian was talking about in that song. But I guess, knowing Ian the way I don’t, that he would say it’s about what it means to you and I, not him.

So I’m putting them out there for who ever reads this.

Tell me what they mean.

I spent some time with an old and very important friend last night, Tug McTighe. Tug’s an ace copywriter at Sullivan Higdon and Sink. You should note that Tug is responsible for some of the most entertaining and elevating work right now in the advertising business.

Remember when the Lucky Town campaign was running and funny? Although he wouldn’t take all the credit, Tug was the guy behind that. Also, he wrote some GREAT scripts for Gold Bond Medicated Powder ads which never saw the light of day. Which is too bad because damnit, rashes, itch and chaffing ARE funny.

Tug and his buddy John January have a great podcast called American Copywriter. They make some very astute observations of popular culture, advertising, marketing, etc.. It’s not the typical, stodgy “corporate” schtick. These guys knew about Seth Godin’s purple cow before it became a management-by-best-seller stratagem (note my corporate speak; “stratagem”).

Anyway, Tug and I talked about how much better reality is than anything we could concoct. Not the humiliation packaged as “reality” on TV. But people being their selves, read that again, people being their selves. It’s why a day on the streets of new york watching people go on about their lives is infinitely more compelling than going to a play or any of the typical tourist attractions. It’s why talking to friends about their families and lives means more than sitting around watching TV.

And it’s why, in spite of having more beer in one night than I’ve had in the last year, I don’t feel the least bit horrible for having spent time in a bar with my old friend. In fact, I feel better for it.