15 February 2017

The Age of Portmanteau

If I may coin a phrase, we’re living in the Age of Portmanteau, what with Bromance, Sexting, Frankenfood, and dozens of other blends bandied about – even by reputable news sources (if there are any anymore).

A new one: Boomaissance.

I swear I didn’t make it up.  Some marketing firm did. A humongous marketing firm.

Boomaissance: While the media remains smitten with Millennials, it's the Boomers who control 70% of the disposable income in this country. The tide is turning—older is becoming cooler as Boomers take on a "Middle Aged Millennial" mindset…

Tell me some youngsters didn’t write this. Of course, all us old folks do is just sit around all day wanting to be Millennials…

Such Hubrilescence!  (I made that up. A blend of hubris and adolescence.)

We weren’t that different when we were their age:

11 February 2008
Me vs. We
[mevsyou.jpg]… Talk to some folks in their twenties, thirties. They are now in that ‘me’ stage. It’s healthy, smart for them to be so. I was just like them thirty years ago, get a big bang out of them, admire their boundless creativity, energy – and self-obsession. These ‘me generation’ twentysomethings today will become a ‘we generation’ in thirty years…

But we do not have or want millennial mindsets.  Two quotes from my book (2005):

CVRComp… Contrary to popular myth, Baby Boomers do not believe that they are still teenagers or young adults. (Some probably do, but they need therapy.) Boomers are slyly redefining what it means to be the ages they are. Included in this new definition are some youthful attitudes - but the real change is that instead of winding down, many are winding up. We're not 'looking forward to retirement,' we're looking forward to new lives, new challenges…

There is a big difference between thinking you are younger than you are, and not thinking that you are old. This “night and day” distinction may confuse many pundits, but it does not confuse most Boomers…

Of course, any Boomaissance advertising created by Millennials that assume all Boomers want to be Millennials have failed and will fail. 

And maybe that’s been my problem all along! While I’ve been writing about hiring older creatives for over a decade…

The Human Resources/Brain Power Posts

… I never came up with a proper portmanteau to promote the concept of age diversity in advertising agencies. Let me give it a whirl:

Boomlennial (Boomer and Millennial)

Juveluvian (Juvenile and Antediluvian)

Youngacious (Young and Sagacious)

I’ll keep trying.


Just for fun.  Absolutely nothing to do with advertising:

imageNo Goblins
by Chuck Nyren
…I don’t watch TV shows with goblins. Or draculas or monsters of any kind. Which means I don’t watch much TV anymore...

01 February 2017

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein

I blogged this book already – without reading it.  Now I’ve read it.

Good one, recommended if you don’t mind getting sick to your stomach. Stay away if you’re prone to paranoia. As for me, it just got me all itchy and queasy.

So far, this might not seem to be a positive review. It is one. But like most of what’s on the web nowadays, how do you know if it’s fact, advertising, fiction, advertising, drivel, advertising, truth, advertising? Professor Einstein does what she can to sort it all out.

Image resultI’ve been following this cesspool for over a decade and writing about it here for just as long. The power of Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell is the cumulative effect of all the advertising/marketing/public relations slop roiling in digital ether – contained in one book.

Two visceral takeaways:

Rolling on the floor laughing  What a wacky virtual world we live in!  Streams of prose, pictures, videos, all not what they seem.  Alice in Wonderland, by comparison, is rather prosaic.

Nyah-Nyah  And speaking of Looking Glasses and such, it never occurred to me that my computer screen and smartphone are really one-way mirrors. (Or are they called two-way mirrors? See? It’s all so confusing!) While I stare at my screen, literally hundreds, probably thousands of people are staring back at me, following me everywhere I go, watching and recording my every move. And here I thought I was merely reading Google News and checking my email.  It makes me want to scream at each of them with that tired retort, “GET A LIFE!”

imageReviewed in
The Guardian:

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein review – stealth marketing is everywhere
by Steven Poole
…Profiling may be scandalous when the police do it, but it is all the rage online…