I was reading the Daily News today and came across a 2-page spread that is part of AT&T?s new global positioning campaign.

The headline is in small blue type. The body copy is in reverse, in tiny white type. Both are on a black background.

Using reverse type in body copy, at best a risky proposition in magazine advertising, is a deadly sin in newspaper advertising.

Reason: the ink spreads more on the cheaper newsprint paper, encroaching into the white letters, and making the body copy almost unreadable.

I am sure that AT&T uses a big Madison Avenue ad agency to handle their advertising — and it is amazing to me that a professional art director on Madison Avenue does not know this simple design principle.

There are certain industries with inherent flaws that make them, at best, marginally effective.

Traditional book publishing, with too much product (almost 200,000 new books published each year) and returns from bookstores to publishers in the 30% to 50% range, is one of them.

I believe that the ad agency business as practiced today also has a built-in flaw that dooms the majority of it to mediocrity at best, and an outright drain on corporate productivity at worst.

Reason: despite protests to the contrary, Madison Avenue, as evidenced by national ad campaigns, has as its primary objective creativity, not sales.

Example: the Six Flags TV ad campaign with the crazy dancing old guy (rumored to be a young woman in makeup) was the talk of the ad agency world ? widely acclaimed for its humor, energy, and cleverness.

But, according to Parade magazine (8/21/05), after spending a stomach-churning $72 million on the campaign, Six Flags reported the results: no increase in attendance ? and not a drop of added revenue.

That?s a return on investment (ROI) of less than zero, putting Six Flags $72 million in the hole on this marketing boondogle.

Or do you have a different view? Maybe you think the dancing guy was worth it because it ?gained attention? or contributed to ?branding.?

Or maybe you think Six Flags is the exception, not the rule ? and Madison Avenue really, truly does care about making the cash register ring, not just winning Clio awards.

What say you?

So far, it seems not.

Mark Host, a recent Fordham University graduate, launched www.nycxmas.com to sell Christmas trees online with $20,000 of his own savings and a $10,000 loan from his dad.

To date, he has sold only five trees.

But as an article about Mark in the 12/1/05 issue of the Daily News notes, most people don?t buy their tree until mid-December.

So it?s too early to say whether the business will work.

Now, many of the readers of this blog are Internet marketers, so let me ask you guys:

What advice do you have for Mark to make his Internet-based Xmas tree business a smash success?

And what can he do with the site to make money on the off season ? which for Xmas trees is every month of the year except December?

A recent mailing for the National Constitution Center noted somewhat cynically that more teenagers can name the members of the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government.

What this tells us, I think, is that young people find the government and politics increasingly irrelevant, incompetent, evil, or some combination of these ? and that popular culture plays a more important role in their lives.

I know readers of this blog can name the three branches of government. But is pop culture also important to you?

Answer the questions below and judge for yourself:

1. What is Herman Munster?s home address?
2. What is the serial number on the original U.S.S. Enterprise?
3. Name the three teenage boys who have teamed with Batman as Robin?

And of course, searching the Internet to get the answers is cheating.

Yes, says Ken Magill, who in the November 2005 issue of Direct writes: ?Outside politics, 99.9% of blog entries are, well, horseblit linked to more horsesblit.?

The reason he cites is that most blogs are written by people who, in his opinion, don?t write very well.

?The vast majority of people are not professional communicators for a reason,? says Ken. ?They don?t do it very well.?

He concludes that blogs are ?the media phenomenon responsible for the publication of more self-indulgent nonsense than any other in the history of the world.?

I find this difficult to argue with. In fact, I agree with it.

Your thoughts?

Is Madison Avenue ripping off its clients?

Yes, according to my friend Richard Armstrong, one of the top freelance copywriters working today.

His premise is that the ad world?s emphasis on branding is misguided ? and that branding is only one of many factors (and not the most important factor) in selling.

But let Rich explain?.

?I’ve always said that you could fire a high-powered rifle down the middle of Madison Avenue at high-noon on a weekday and not be in danger of hitting anyone who’d ever read a single book about advertising. There is just very little in the way of what I’d call ?technical expertise’ in the world of general advertising.

?But because it’s impossible to survive in business on bullshit alone, a lot of these guys have focused on ?branding? as the alpha and omega of marketing.

?Get three Madison Avenue types in a room and it’s ?branding? this and ?branding? that. But it’s ridiculous.

?Look, I believe in branding. I’m sure you do, too. But to me, it’s just one of MANY credibility factors that go into an advertisement.

?If the product comes from a company that people know and trust, great ? go ahead and make use of that in your ad. But you CAN?T build your whole marketing campaign around it.?

The conclusion: branding is just one of many CREDIBILITY factors in marketing ? and credibility is just one of multiple factors in selling ? so to devote your advertising to building the brand is to do something like 1/10th of the selling job it should be doing.

Do you agree? If so, is Madison Avenue conning or misleading its clients on a massive sale?

Or is branding indeed the holy grail of marketing? And are Richard and I just out of touch with this great truth?

Several direct marketing gurus have said: “If you want to understand what your market is thinking, read the supermarket tabloids.”

But I’m not sure that’s true any more, after reading some tabloids and finding the headlines below.

By the way, 4 of these headlines are real, and one I made up. Can you spot the fake?

1. Man Poses as CPR Dummy to Meet Women.

2. New James Bond Actor is a CIA Spy in Real Life.

3. Man is So Cruel He Has Ice Water In His Veins.

4. Possessed Pepper Shaker Terrorizes Family.

5. Aliens Settle in San Francisco; Refugees Call Their New Home “Little Mercury.”

Having just been given an assignment to write a letter aimed at seniors, and rapidly approaching that status myself, I paused to think about what seniors (and near-seniors, like me) think, feel, and believe.

Here?s what I think senior believe:

1. Idiosyncratic, gruff, even crabby behavior is more accepted in the old than the young.
2. The old days were better than today.
3. The moral decay of society is accelerating at an almost exponential rate.
4. Young people think they know everything, but in fact know almost nothing.
5. Society has become coarse and crude.
6. Technology scares them. They don?t understand it. But they wish they did.
7. Their number one fear: outliving their retirement savings and being financially dependent on others.
8. Their number two fear: old age, illness, and death.

Are these on the money? Or are my assumptions off base?

What other beliefs, feelings, desires, and attitudes do seniors hold that you might play upon when selling or marketing to them?