Everybody's Smart

by David M. Howell ©2006
(From the collection shorts stories “Not In Your Life”)


A group of senior business executives, all touting MBA credentials, struggle to make the simplest of decisions. Should their national spokesman wear flannel or not. They asked themselves if the public would think less of their national spokesman if he were dressed like a common truck driver.

It was a wonder to me, listening to this inane diatribe that these people could ever have achieved a GED. For all the brain wattage in the room, the discussion was dim at best. And yet, when outside this temple of strategic thinking my clients are quick to refer to their customers as rubes. Sadly, it’s the same for my own agency. One of the largest and most prestigious advertising agencies in the world, renowned for it deft at understanding the consumer market, we often belittle our audience either when observing them through the one-way focus group mirror or with the crap we rush to primetime as if world peace were within our tendrils reach.

And yet, we don’t even know or would even recognize our customer. Not even if he or she walked up to us on the street and bitch slapped us pandering marketing strategies before them at an elementary school level. It’s unclear who blinked first the marketers or the public, but the dumbing down of America prevails in the narcissistic towers of modern advertising.

Having grown up in a rural village on the Michigan frontier where the Friday night high school football game was the emotional and social event of the week, I was every bit the closet rube of my colleagues contempt. My home town was a place where farmers, fresh from their autumnal harvest could park their machines in the appropriate “farm utility” restricted area just to see the game. These real people, who actually labored for a living, were our customers.

They shopped at Sears, used Kleenex and Bayer, believed in American made automobiles all because they were told to. Their ears that rang with advertising truths about which deodorant would elevate your status, or which dinner rolls derived the most appreciation. As if climbing from the open-air seat of his John Deere 2030 the leathery stubbled face of John Q. Public gave a rat’s ass about whether United Airlines was ready to fly.

The difference was we were talking to ourselves. And all America or the world for that matter, could do was suffer like Guantanamo Bay fugitives. Sure we noted sales increases when spots ran but that only substantiated that the comatose masses were driven like lemming to the cash register. We pounded our chests with the successes of giving humanity a reason to go to the bathroom during primetime.

“Mabel, you’re not going scrub those pots with that old dish rag again are you?”
“Why yes, Sylvia…you think I shouldn’t?”
“Well, I saw a commercial that said a soiled diaper cleans better.”
“Where can I get some of those?”
“Oh, Mabel, I’m wearing one right now. Here, let me help.”

And so it goes. Every 30 seconds another story is played out to the masses trying its best to sound authentic when in reality, it was only endorsing the benefits of another needless product. Come on, do we really need plug-in air fresheners, aerosol cheese or the Flo-Bee? Does lite beer really taste great, will the world end if I miss the white sale at JC Penney’s, can our children possibly have a future safe from halitosis?

What turned me off on the industry that has been very generous to me was the legalization of drug ads. Now the public could be diagnosed during a rerun of CSI Miami and sold a cure. Just ask your doctor. Right. And if the plumbing institute could shake off the shackles of its own ethics, they could wax longingly about the benefits of papier-mâché pipes. Ask your plumber if papier-mâché is right for you. We were legally extorting money from people by massaging claims or presenting disasters in the best light.

From the looks of things, people are pretty stupid—why would anyone buy this crap? And in numbers large enough to make the marketing of uselessness so profitable?

Well, the industry was about to give me an invaluable education. Following the merger-mania that was sweeping the ad industry, I found myself on the street a victim of corporate cut-backs. The industry was purging itself of seasoned professionals for the inexpensive rookie. It would save them millions but in the end cost them billions.

Finding myself ejected from the ivory tower was actually comforting. It gave me an opportunity to catch my breath and enjoy a little of what I’d stashed away. But I was restless. I needed to reconnect with my youth. To go home as it were to the people I once knew. After all, even though I was out of work, I was a success story. Small town kid made it big in the big city. I was preparing myself for a hero’s welcome. What I learned was while I was a way searching for a life, everyone I'd grown up with had long since found theirs. No one cared what I'd done in the fabled glass towers of business. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was who you were. That’s when I decided to drive a semi.

Truck driving gave me access to grassroots America. The least understood marketing segment. Grassroots folks were the real trendsetters. Bucking conventional wisdom for something more elusive—what just felt right. We referred to this segment often in boardrooms with polished tables and pneumatic chairs. We knew they controlled the larger mass audience. And we felt we controlled them. If we could start a grassroots movement for a specific product, we could win the marketing war.

Here I was fresh from the business that attracted the best and the brightest, where I’d spent 25 years aligning my messages to this elusive audience only to realize the audience was like an ocean wave. Constantly moving, never the same, building momentum without ever being noticed until it hit the beach. Who were these people and were they really as stupid as we continually convinced ourselves?

When I arrived in Green Bay for my training with Schneider/National I was filled with confusion about what I’d gotten myself into. Still harboring the illusion that anyone not in advertising had no idea what was going on in the real world, truckers were not high on the intellectual hierarchy. And here I was fresh from conversations about Nietzsche and Voltaire or reading Stephen Pinker and Brian Greene and I was now facing an audience that could work the word pussy into more conversations than Dennis Hof. But wait, isn’t that the prejudice of my colleagues speaking? Colleagues…friends really who were not very supportive of my quest to touch Indians.

“What,” one good friend said to me. “Why don’t you just go bum around Europe?”

Or an old girl friend who said: “I guess you have to get this out of your system.”

Like this was a virus that was running it’s course and nothing but pure Alpine air and time would cure it. No, it was about being sheltered from the great unwashed. I grew up with these souls. I knew them. I had lunch with them every day. And then I abandoned them. I got a piece of parchment that said my thoughts and ideas were superior to those without one.

I looked around the lobby of the Best Western where Schneider was putting up the class. Almost all men, mostly my age—that was a surprise—who had worked the same job for the same employer until they were laid off. Sounded familiar. They stood or sat around drinking coffee under the blaring glare of the morning news all of them dressed in jeans or overalls. They were rough guys who were familiar with their local hardware store and had the hands to prove it.

They’d made their own way not counting on a college education to propel them into a selective club. They used simple words but communicated effectively. Their attitudes ranged. Some were conservative. Some liberal. All aware of the world around them. They were real. They lived in the real world. They just accepted their place and grizzled about events knowing that the big picture really didn’t mean anything to them. It’s not that they didn’t feel apart of the world, just that they knew what we in business keep denying. The crystal ball we viewed the rest of humanity through was badly smudged. If only we’d paid attention our own propaganda for Windex.

These were not stupid people. They were here to find an answer to the question of downsizing. They had families—most anyway—they had to take care of them. Driving a truck for whatever reason seemed like the one job they could get. Not because of their education, but because there were just no jobs in their communities. Trucking is a job that’s everywhere.

So here was my audience. Watching TV night after night finding a cerebral pause during commercial breaks to comment on Monday Night Football, the day behind the wheel or about their families. Anything, but the painstakingly strategic commercial with a flannel-clad spokesman. No once noticed and certainly no one cared.

Suddenly I felt free. I was about to travel the country as a professional driver and not worrying about the idiotic world of consumer behavior. Here’s how the consumer was behaving. He was out having a life. And it didn’t stop for the President’s Day Toyota-thon or even put it on hold for clumping cat litter. The consumer as a person was smart. Articulate. Which, by the way means: 1. to utter intelligible speech and 2. to express thoughts, ideas, or feelings coherently.

Left to the intelligencia, articulate was something only we had exclusive right to. Articulating was about communicating. Our audience didn’t communicate, they only listened to what we told them. We were tastemakers to a nation and that was leaving a bad taste in the mouth of consumers. Because, as it turns out, everyone communicates. Even without an education.

One man I met at Schneider/National training was an aged farmer from Iowa. Rail thin with a face of sagging leather, he told me in the study suite one night that he was having trouble with the tests because he couldn’t read.

My first reaction was how could anyone not know how to read? That was inconceivable. There’s no way you can make it through life without being able to read. But the real world rang loudly the next morning in class when we began reviewing the DOT rules for driving and he was called on to read the 10-hour rule. It was like being in second grade again, everyone heaving a collective sighed when the teacher picked someone else to read a difficult passage. But here was this grown man—a grandfather—who struggled with the simplest of passages. His words were like fingernails on a chalkboard. Patiently, the room fell silent as he wrestled the text to the mat only to be pinned by phonics.

Late into the evenings after class, I tried to help him by having him read (or with my help struggle to read) every question in the study guide. During a break he told me he’d worked for a grain elevator operator in Iowa his whole life. He’d quit school to help his family having lost his father and an older brother to World War II. He wanted to go to war, but the government told him as the only man in the household, he’d have to stay home. So he took a job as a laborer at a grain rail yard. His job didn’t require he be able to read. Just push a button and do physical labor.

Along he way, he did the things a man does in life. Married the girl two farms over. Had children. Worked hard to put them through school. And eventually bury his wife after the ravages of cancer. He didn’t need to be able to read to do all those things. Just live.
When the grain elevator closed its doors he had no place else to go. With no savings—he was not paid well, even by Iowa standards—he would not be able to support himself or keep up the payments on the few worldly possessions he’d been able to acquire.

He was not stupid because he couldn’t read. He understood issues that affected him. He knew how to ask for help, something I’ve seen even the smartest people struggle with. There was compassion in his voice mixed with confusion. He asked me, “When is it my turn?” He’d given up so much over the course of his life for others and now he was cast out like a worn cog. He did not feel stupid. He felt left out. There was a party going on his entire life, but because he made a commitment to help his family, he couldn’t read the invitation. And now it was too late. He was at the door, but no one would let him in. He’d lived the life he was cast and suddenly was told he should have done it differently. That’s stupid.

A few days later he was released from the training. There was too much paperwork involved in trucking for him to succeed. I don’t blame Schneider/National for making the choice they did. Hard decisions happen every day. We all have to make them. None of us could do anything at that moment to fix the situation. I was not the only person helping him during his short time in training. And no one, not one person made a joke about him. Yet, had he shown up for a focus group in my old ivory tower we would have had a field day belittling him while elevating ourselves to a god-like level of reverence and intellect. The more I was around truckers, the more I came to appreciate their worldview. Life’s authenticity was not hidden among the platitudes that powerbrokers and dealmakers shower upon themselves. It existed in the cockpit of an eighteen-wheeler rolling across Nebraska with a load of material goods to the elite.

I regret now that my time with Schneider/National was limited. Cut short when the industry called on my talents to help out on two new business pitches for a small Chicago ad agency. I won them both for them…and…paid handsomely for the effort. Then promptly let me go. But my experience on the road brought me to a much larger shop where I landed on, of all things, a trucking account. But a day doesn’t go by that I don’t envy those mariners of the concrete sea. They live life, one day at a time. One destination at a time.

Yeah, everybody’s smart. We’re all the best and the brightest. We just have bad days. Problems arise that make any of us feel inadequate or even stupid. Whether you’re Bill Gates or George Bush, you’re still going to get your penis stuck in your fly every once in awhile. And sure as shit, it’s gonna hurt and you’re gonna say, “damn that was stupid.” Like the client aching over the flannel decision, it wasn’t flannel that was at the heart of the issue, but the insecurity of sounding stupid. As long as everyone sounds stupid, I don’t sound so stupid. And that makes me smart. But it’s specious logic. To be truly smart, you only have to be honest with yourself. You only need to be real.