Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

ENTITLEMENT.

It's a word on my mind a lot lately. Mainly because I keep running into people with an overinflated sense of it that frankly boggles my mind.

Let's get a few things straight:

• You ought to expect good service at a restaurant. You're NOT entitled to treat wait staff like your slaves.
• You ought to expect to wait in line to get into a club, then pay the set cover. You are NOT entitled to be ushered in by a promoter or let in free by the owner unless he decides he likes you.
• Similarly, you get to wait in line for a streetcar or bus like everybody else. Unless you're infirm, handicapped or pregnant, you're NOT entitled to push ahead of everyone else without asking. That means you, spry 80 year-old.
• You deserve a fair price for a product or service you buy. You are NOT entitled to gouge a retailer because you don't agree with the price.
• You ought to split the cost of an evening out with your date or offer to pay all of it. If he chooses to treat you, lucky you, but you're NOT entitled to it.
• If your parents support you, you ought to appreciate whatever they decide to give you. It's their money, not yours and you're NOT entitled to a new car or phone or trip or designer anything.
• And finally, if you're a radical Tea Party Republican, you have the right to negotiate a fair agreement with Democrats -- and by 'negotiate' I mean you give a little and get a little in return. You're NOT entitled to get everything you want for your small radical fringe base of voters.

The bottom line is we are all entitled to be treated with respect and fairness. And when we don't return the favor, we are entitled to nothing.

 

 

IZZELDIN ABUELAISH: I SHALL NOT HATE.

On January 16, 2009, Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who lived in Gaza but worked in Israeli hospitals, suffered the most unimaginable of tragedies: three of his daughters and a niece were literally blown to bits by Israeli army shells that mistakenly hit his home. This only a few months after his wife succumbed to cancer. Unbelievably, the tragedy was captured live on TV after Abuelaish phoned an Israeli journalist and friend who happened to be on air.

In a region where vengeance is the currency most commonly paid out after such events Abuelaish, who had been promoting coexistence between Arabs and Jews for years, had other ideas:

"I realized that I had two options to choose from: I could take the path of darkness or the path of light. If I chose the path of darkness, of poisonous hate and revenge, it would be like choosing to fall into the complications and depression that come with disease. To choose the path of light, I had to focus on the future and my children."

As I finished Abuelaish's book I Shall Not Hate, two people came to mind, the biblical Job and Martin Luther King. Job because it's hard to imagine someone going through what this man has gone through without breaking and without losing hope; he has done neither. And King because if ever there was a man who could begin to undo -- simply with the power of his words -- the 80 years of mistrust, retribution and hatred on both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is this Gaza doctor.

But even Abuelaish, who is currently working at the University of Toronto, knows that words are not enough.

"Tragedy cannot be the end of our lives. We cannot allow it to control and defeat us. My vision for the Middle East is of a peaceful, secure, cooperative and united place. That's not going to happen with words alone. Each of us has to contribute to creating the harmony and take an active role in promoting the dream of coexistence."

How can you contribute? Well first, buy his book. Second, you can donate to the Abuelaish/Daughters for Life Foundation, an organization the doctor set up to improve the lives of girls and women in Palestine and Israel. The foundation provides scholarships for health and education programs for young women to garner "experience so that they can feel they are a part of creating a better world and, most importantly, hope again."

ROB FORD: MENACE TO SOCIETY

When about half the American population -- the stupid half -- voted for George W. Bush in 2000, I was beside myself. Could they not see what a disaster he would be? They didn't and he was. To refresh our memories, he turned a budget surplus into a deficit with useless tax cuts, he ignored the warning signs that led to 9/11 and he cooked the intelligence and outright lied to launch a needless war in Iraq. By the time he left eight years later, the US was -- and to a large degree still is -- an economic basket case.

When about half Toronto's population voted for Rob Ford last November, I was beside myself again. This was clearly not a man of depth or subtlety. Just dump gravy on some fries, gimme a beer and Bob's your uncle. Ford would have made a great mayor of Sudbury or Lethbridge but Toronto is the country's largest city with its most diverse population. It's the heart of business and culture. It's Canada's showpiece and it deserves someone with vision.

But the only vision we've seen is myopic. Ford became the first mayor in two decades to shun Toronto Pride, essentially telling the city's gay population to go fuck itself, which we decided we'd rather do than fuck anything that looked like his worship. Last week he decided to start ripping out bike lanes on Jarvis in favor of cars that no one could prove were being inconvenienced by cyclists. And this morning news that Ford wants to dismantle the city's prized streetcar system and use the savings to build an extension to the Sheppard subway line.

Contrast Ford to the mayor of another so-called world-class city, New York's Mike Bloomberg. In nearly a decade as mayor, the self-made billionaire has revitalized the city, built more parks, made it more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly and given away nearly $200 million to arts organizations. All while keeping the city's budget on a solid footing.

So the next time anyone tells you with a straight face that Toronto is a world-class city, take a good hard look at city hall and try not to laugh. Toronto could be world class but not as long as that Frankenstein monster occupies the mayor's office and continues on his rampage for the next three and a half years.

Pitchforks anyone?

FALSE PROPHETS AND FALSE ADVERTISING.

Yonge Street is not just Toronto's commercial heart, it turns out it's the city's religious one too.

Venture up the world's longest road near Charles Street (I always get a kick that the address is 696 -- as in three 6s) and a Scientology true believer will invariably be standing on the sidewalk in front, smiling and waving a pamphlet or inviting you in to take a "stress test." It's doubtful they'll talk much about Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy or Tom Cruise's or John Travolta's unsuccessful attempts at degayification.

Walk down Yonge Street to Dundas and you'll find men (it's always men for some reason, women apparently have more important things to do) holding up the Koran proclaiming that Allah is the one true god and that Muhammad is his messenger. There are also guys a few feet away dressed like Men in Black passing out brochures about "Black History." They're actually proselytizing for the Nation of Islam and noted anti-Semite, Qaddafi fan and smart dresser Louis Farrakhan.

But my favorite, just across the way is the older gentleman with the contorted face and thick Eastern European accent who, like an anthropomorphic Old Faithful, bellows out "BELIEVE in the Lord!" about every 15 seconds, usually scaring the bejesus out of anyone who happens to be walking by.

Each time I walk by these guys, I can't help thinking they're not really any different from the folks passing out Metro Play newspapers or Coke Zero samples. They're peddlers. The only difference may be that if the Coke Zero kid told passersby that their souls could be saved by a little caramel colored water and aspartame, the Competition Bureau would file a consent order against Coca Cola for deceptive advertising.

Funny how that doesn't work for Xenu, Allah and Jesus. Just sayin'.

 

WHO'S YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER? (HINT: IT'S NOT EVERYONE.)

One pet peeve I've had working in advertising is how often clients -- and agencies for that matter -- try to please everyone.

You know, for instance, there's a potential problem when direction in a brief is that creative should be "avant-garde but traditional." Or that the target is "Male/Female split, 18-65." First, from a creative perspective, it's really difficult to visualize and understand who you're trying to speak to when you say it's everyone. Second, from a marketing perspective, it's kind of lazy because it suggests you haven't really dug deep to understand who's really most likely to buy your product or service. Essentially you're saying, let's spray the water cannon and see who gets wet. Does anyone have that kind of money to waste anymore?

Seth Godin has some brilliant thoughts on articulating your preferred use case, in other words, deciding what and who your product or service is for. He writes:

"Many organizations will take any customer, any time, and bend and writhe to accommodate money in whatever form it arrives. Other, happier organizations understand the benefit of optimizing for a certain kind of interaction, and they have the guts to decline the part of the market that doesn't want to use their tool/organization the way it was intended."

A few months ago, a potential client contacted me to write copy for a magalog and wrap for a news magazine -- this sort of thing:

Well, I pride myself on being able to write anything. But I have an aversion to this type of advertising and had to ask myself "is this the kind of service I want to provide?" I'm not a prima donna who only works on products or services I entirely believe in, but I do have my limits -- cigarette advertising would be one, this kind of writing is another. Frankly, I'd rather smother myself with a Snuggie.

Seth would say that I had, at least in my head, articulated my preferred use case and decided this potential job was not the best use of my service. As usual, he would be right.

Whether you're a marketer trying to sell a product or service to customers, or someone on the job market looking for an employer, articulating your preferred use case can help you focus on finding who and what you're looking for.

 

ORWELL'S RULES ON WRITING EDITED BY SETH GODIN.

Here are Orwell's rules, edited:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. You don't need cliches.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Avoid long words.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Write in the now.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. When in doubt, say it clearly.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Better to be interesting than to follow these rules.

The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid.

Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it.

Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.

Orwell was on the right track. Just say it. Say it clearly. Say it now. Say it without fear of being criticized and say it without being boring.

If the goal is no feedback, then say nothing. Don't write the memo.

If the goal is to communicate, then say what you mean.

My best tip is this: buy a cheap digital recorder. Say what you want to say, as if the person you seek to persuade is standing there, listening. Then type that up. Simplify. Send.

Reposted from here.

SINCERE IGNORANCE AND CONSCIENTIOUS STUPIDITY.

"Nothing is all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance."

I read that quote on someone's t-shirt in my elevator the other day. It's from Martin Luther King and it's become one of my favorites, maybe because it speaks so clearly to the kind of divisive politics going on in the US right now. Turn on the news these days and you're bombarded with stories about right-wing, self-styled Tea Partiers, nattering on about how balancing the budget creates jobs or how illegal immigrants are stealing jobs or how Muslims are trying to institute Sharia law in the new Mecca Oklahoma, or how global warming doesn't exist because it was cold today.

I used to believe these people were purposely being wrong-headed, that they knew better but said these things because they were mean-spirited or bigoted. I'm starting to believe, as MLK alludes, that they're sincerely ignorant. They really believe these things to be true. This doesn't excuse them of course because those beliefs are mostly based on an anti-elite intellectual laziness that's dangerously taken hold in the most powerful country on earth.

This morning, when I googled King's quote I discovered it was actually even more relevant than I thought because the end of it had been lopped off to fit that t-shirt I first saw it on. The full quote reads:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Wow. Conscientious stupidity. Could two words better describe the debt ceiling discussion now going on in the US? Republicans who seven times during the Bush administration raised the government's legal limit on borrowing have suddenly found Jesus during the Obama administration and have decided that deficits and too much borrowing are bad -- and that, despite all evidence to the contrary, debt rather than lack of consumer confidence is the reason unemployment is so high. And now they're willing to put the full faith and credit of the US economy on the line to blackmail Obama and Democrats to slash government spending right this minute, otherwise they won't vote to extend the debt limit -- a move that would send the global economy into a tailspin.

Sincere ignorance. Conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King was more of a prophet than we ever realized.