That loud thud heard at noon on Tuesday was the sound of several hundred jaws dropping in disbelief — and dismay — as Chicago’s new mayor, Rahm Emanuel, addressed the city’s advertising community at a Chicago Advertising Federation luncheon in the Chicago Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom.
The speech was — to say the least — a shocking display of what’s in store for Chicago residents for the next four years, as well as a mostly unsuccessful attempt to rally Chicago’s rather beleaguered ad industry — if that was indeed Emanuel’s goal for the 10 or 15 minutes he was at the podium before rapidly exiting the event.
Emanuel was much too busy, it appeared, to actually break bread with the room full of ad execs who looked more gussied up than usual — no doubt in anticipation of spending a couple of hours with da mayor.
Even so, we came away from the mayor’s speech — brief as it was — with a few observations.
First, if Emanuel has any hope of becoming an effective speaker and leader in this city, he needs much better speech writers. And fast. We thought his inauguration speech was long and vapid. But this address to the ad community was much worse, though blessedly shorter.
We’re not sure where the mayor found the few facts he spouted on Tuesday, but they were injected, it seems, to make the crowd believe they are an important cog in Chicago’s economy.
Emanuel went so far as to say the ad industry represents a whopping 14 percent of the city’s economic activity. As soon as they heard that, the attendees around us were scratching their collective heads at what sounded like a wildly inflated number.
Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago the Chicago ad industry might have wielded that much economic weight in the city.
But not today.
Not after having experienced so much downsizing, the outright closing of so many shops and the defection of so many big clients from local agencies to shops in other cities.
Yet Emanuel’s questionable data really wasn’t the biggest problem with his speech.
What was far worse was the snake oil he sprinkled on those gathered before him — the kind of quasi-inspirational palaver we would expect from a two-bit door-to-door salesman. Not the city’s new mayor that many are counting on to lead us to a better and more fiscally sound tomorrow.
We’re talking about the part of Emanuel’s speech where he dared to posit that Chicago might be on the verge of eclipsing New York City as the epicenter of the national advertising industry. That suggested a cluelessness on Emanuel’s part that doesn’t bode well for his efforts to turn around this city and solve its many problems.
Okay, so maybe advertising isn’t his thing.
Emanuel also did himself no favors by referencing the 1,300 jobs United Airlines announced it would move to Chicago shortly after the mayor took office. It sounded very much like he was giving himself a big pat on the back.
Did it not occur to Emanuel it makes no sense to boast of such an accomplishment given that United and other carriers have shed tens of thousands of jobs over the past decade? What are a mere 1,300 jobs compared to that?
These issues notwithstanding, what was saddest of all about Emanuel’s talk Tuesday was the near total absence of any warmth in the presentation. It was a rote recitation that left many in the room feeling this is, for the most part, a detached, impersonal man in charge of Chicago’s fate.
If only he, or his speech writer, could have taken the time to personalize this speech using a story with a little color, a bit of detail that might have indicated he or someone in his office cared enough — or was curious enough — to delve beneath the surface and give a human face to a business that means so much to this city’s economy.
But that wasn’t what the audience got Tuesday. Instead, they got just a brief glimpse of Emanuel and the way he operates. A most disturbing glimpse, to be sure.
DDB’S NEW PRESIDENT PETER McGUINESS WILL NEED TIME TO ADJUST
DDB/Chicago is bringing in Interpublic Group veteran Peter McGuinness to fill the role of president, left vacant last December, when the ineffective Rick Carpenter was dumped from the job. McGuinness most recently was CEO of Interpublic’s Gotham unit.
Carpenter exited DDB some six months after Ewan Paterson arrived from across the pond to fill the long-vacant post of chief creative officer, which had been empty since Paul Tilley committed suicide.
With McGuinness soon to be on board at DDB, the question now becomes whether he will prove more effective than Carpenter did at turning around the agency.
Like Carpenter (and Paterson for that matter), McGuinness is a newbie to the Chicago ad scene, so he will have to figure out the pros and cons of the situation here. Having never tasted of the uniquely Midwestern advertising industry experience that is Chicago, McGuinness will surely need some time to adjust.
With Paterson and McGuinness soon to be the new co-captains of DDB/Chicago, the fact remains much work still needs to be done at the agency, once a creative powerhouse in the local industry.
The shop hasn’t fully lived up to that creative reputation for some time. And it has yet to get that really big, high-profile account win that would suggest all is well once again with DDB/Chicago.
Contact Lewis Lazare at LewisL3@aol.com
