jason landry
a work in progress
Born in a bad dream | My age is really just getting off the train | I like to think about that one thing

How to Ruin and Idea

Or, how the inability to say “no” is evil

Gather round, children, and hear an old tale. A tale of my early days in design, a tale of woe.

A tale of having to work with dun-dun-duuuun…other people.

It was in the far off legendary age of the First Internet, sometimes referred to as the “late 90s”. I was new to the business, having left my studies at the Art Institute of Dallas about 6 months prior. I was working at Ribit Productions, a firm making a, shall we say, difficult transition from the forgotten age of Multimedia Design into Web Design. We were prepping some updated marketing materials for the firm, and in addition to a new website (for which we won and award, back when it is really hilariously easy) the owner wanted a new CD-ROM to give prospective clients.

Now, some younger folks that might accidentally read this may not know what that is. For a very brief period in the 90s, before websites really existed but computers very much did, folks were using the still-relatively-new (and just as quickly abandoned) medium of CD-ROM to blanket their prospective clients with their messaging. I could get snarky here and try and explain the last few sentences, but seriously, just use Wikipedia.

So anyway, boss wants a new CD to send out. As was the custom at the time, we wanted to create an animated/video intro that users would theoretically waste a few minutes of their day watching. Why did we do this? Nobody knows. Maybe because we could? We had all kinds of neat new tools for making cool-looking stuff, so we did. The fact that none of it ever added to anyone’s bottom line, or even entertained anyone, is something which we tried then and now to ignore.

At the time, I was engrossed in one of my periodic obsessions (hooray for ADHD). I was deep into the Myst game franchise. Not just the games (at the time just numbering the original title plus its follow-up, Riven), but the tie-in novels and all the lore and what-not. Accordingly, I devised an animated intro and overall “experience” for our new CD-ROM that paid homage to these games. Side note: it involved using the Fine Frog Art seen in my portfolio.

So I pitch the idea, and it is met with excitement and enthusiasm. The someone else pitches a different, more abstract idea, and it is also met with enthusiasm. Then another person pitches some stuff that is sort of tacked on to both of the other ideas.

So at this point, the right thing is to take a look at everything on the table and decide which is best for the image the firm is trying to convey, right?

Yeah, no. Wrong.

At this point, the owner dictated that we combine all of these ideas in order that no one would feel “left out”.

Now, if I am going to be honest, which I hate, some of this was my fault. I was prickly about my ideas back then, having the all-too-common attitude among young and inexperienced – especially male – designers that my concepts were liquid digital gold directly flowing from the mouth of the universe. So, you know, maybe the idea to combine designs was made to appease me. A little. Or entirely. Who knows?

The result, of course, was a steaming pile of contradictions and confusion. No message, no company image, nothing useful and certainly nothing that drove sales or even mild interest. Now, I am not saying my original idea was brilliant (hint: it absolutely was) but no matter how cheesy it may have been (brilliant), it would have been far better than the abomination that followed.

If you watch this thing, you are probably left with a lot of questions. It goes from a fairly abstract (and oh-so-very-90s) beginning to a forest, into a tree, into a cave, and then another…forest? What?

This is what happens when no one says “no”. This is what happens when company leadership tried to let every idea be precious.

The lesson, of course, is that if I pitch an idea, follow it to the letter you have to pick your ideas and concepts, just like you have to pick your battles. This is a battle that the owner should have fought. They should have chosen a concept, moved forward, and at best issued a mild apology to author of whichever concept did not get picked. Trying to hybridize and make everyone happy accomplished nothing. If I want to be fair, it is likely that even if a better concept (meaning mine) was followed, it would not have generated more sales, as CD-ROM was already on its way out at that point as a content delivery medium, but who knows? Following my brilliant-albeit-derivative concept might have elevated the company to new heights.

Ok, maybe not.

But at least the finished work would not be a cautionary tale some 20 years later.

Death of the Agency

The above title is hyperbolic. Or is it?

Hi there! I am the Creative Director at a small internet marketing firm lost in a mid size city in Texas. My title is completely and utterly meaningless. Why? Because we don’t do any creative. No one does that any more.

We are what is sometimes known as an “SEO Company”. At this point I will pedantically explain that this means we attempt to game the Google algorithm to make client web sites appear near the top of organic search results. One issue with this is that our entire effort is based on the assumption that being high in SERPS will automatically result in more call/sales volume. While there is merit to this assumption, it should be pointed out that no one has really bothered to prove it conclusively. It is “common knowledge”. The other issue with our approach is that the Google algorithm is straight-up smarter than us. And you. And everyone you’ve ever heard of. All of that is really neither here nor there.

The advertising agency was once a storied and glorious institution. Just watch Mad Men, you’ll get it. Horrific sexism, alcoholism and probably a lot of other isms aside, the folks at the fictional Sterling Cooper were badasses (especially, it should be noted, the women, despite the aforementioned sexism they had to face). They created things. The Creative Director, despite the hor…

OK, you know what? Let’s just assume we all know that the men in this show were horrifically sexist so I don’t have to add the disclaimer every time.

Anyway, the Creative Director, identity thief and stolen valor pioneer Don Draper, was a god damn creative genius. The men running the agency were hardcore business guys and salesmen extraordinaire (even that one Ayn Rand worshipping asshole). The point is, they made things. They used instinct, experience and talent to make great things. And yes, I know it is fiction, but I know people who lived through that era, and that fiction has a lot of reality in it.

But no one does that any more. At least, most agencies don’t. See, these days we have metrics. We have data coming out our collective wazoo. And if I am being honest, a lot of this data is great. A lot of it also noise. It takes very talented people to find the signal. And that’s where the problem comes in.

Once upon a time, marketing and advertising were almost arcane disciplines. They required expertise. They were required connections. The web changed all that. I know, I know what you are thinking. But no, this is not a “the web destroyed x business” rant. Really (everyone knows Millennials did it anyway). However, the advent of the web had a horrible effect on the traditional agency. See, there were no web experts. Or at the very least no real ones. Anyone could claim to be a web expert. And wow, did a lot of people do just that. Who could gainsay them? No one knew how the hell any of this crap was going to work. No one had the foggiest notion how to use the web to drive marketing. I worked at old time agencies when I first started, which coincidentally was when the web got started (yeah, I’m old). And let me tell you, some of the ideas that got floated around were just laughable. And I don’t just mean laughable in hindsight, I mean at the time, we knew it was crap, but we didn’t know what else to do. This led to the rise of the web design firm. Which then led to the rise of the web consulting firm. This, in turn, led us to where we are today.

At some point, after the advent of the almighty G*, we sort of figured it out. And we jumped in with both feet. A lot of the old storied agencies did not, and were slow to adapt. I remember seeing one or two giants close their doors. Others simply bought up the smaller web-based firms and played a furious game of catch-up. We could read the future. We understood the “new economy”.

We destroyed The Agency.

“Oh, come on, Jason”, you say, “there’s agencies everywhere.” To that, I say, bullshit.

What we call an agency now would be unrecognizable to our forebears.

Agencies used to be creative. Now we just run two-line “ads” with a link to click. Web design? Don’t make me laugh. 90% of all websites are virtually identical if you break them down into their abstract elements, and that’s igonoring the fact that they are overstuffed, slow, and riddled with tracking scripts that make a mockery of high bandwidth.**

Yeah, yeah, I know, there’s still some people doing cool stuff. The new Nike campaign comes to mind (and fuck you, Wieden & Kennedy, for making me side with Nike, those bastards ruined the Chuck Taylor All-Star). But honestly, how many are left doing that sort of work. It seems like the numbers shrink on the daily. Where once we had magazine ads and billboards print pieces galore, now we have one inch on SERPs.

What can we do about it? Nothing, really. I am just an aging Gen-Xer lamenting the business I thought I was getting into.

At least we still have television.

Looks at Youtube.

Oh, god damnit.

*Google, of course
**And yes, I am as guilty of this as anyone.