To be supremely kind, most advertising is forgettable. The big boys overcome  mediocrity with massive media dollars. Force-feeding the populace is their game and they play it well, much as an army wears down the enemy with waves of infantry. But the majority of business owners don’t have multi-million dollar ad budgets. Their challenge is to create compelling messages, to gain attention amid the noise and the clutter, to somehow be noticed, believed and bought. Well, here’s a flash — it just ain’t happening out there, folks — very, very seldom. Memorable work rarely sees the light of day. Who’s to blame? Ad agencies, about 20 percent of the time. The rest of the fault lies with company management that routinely commit two deadly sins — either they play it safe and avoid risk, or they beg for attention by being different, just for different sake.  For marketers and their masters, making a mistake is unacceptable; so they steer clear of the edge and the pitfalls which lurk there. In the same way teens dress alike to feel accepted, advertisers feel more comfortable with the 80 percent majority, copying trends and enjoying the feeling of belonging and blending. In the other extreme, marketers desperately try to be hip, thinking that “hipness” somehow equates with excellence. Professional marketers work persistently to alter the 80-20 Rule, but it’s hopeless changing an immutable Law of Nature.

Those of us old enough to look back a few decades can better appreciate the blessings of today’s Information Age. It doesn’t seem that long ago, really, that we had to make life’s important decisions by observing parents, by reading and studying, by attending church and listening to our Inner Voice. Thankfully, those days are over. Now, through television and other media connections, we have instantaneous access to the beliefs and opinions of movie stars, professional athletes, talk show hosts, celebrity attorneys and politicians who are uniquely gifted to tell us what to think and how to feel. What a relief. We no longer have to waste precious time examining tiresome literature or grappling with moral, cultural and spiritual issues on our own. Luckily, Geraldo and Oprah are there for us.

A day should never pass this earth unless every human soul kneels to give daily thanks to television. As terrorism, pestilence and hatred sweep across the planet, television is there to see it, document it, dissect it, analyze it and finally announce it. Our having to witness this degradation and misery every hour on the hour ordinarily might lead us to mass melancholia, or worse yet, hysteria, were it not for television’s merciful foresight in allowing only beautiful people to deliver the bad news. Or haven’t you noticed? The talking heads, primarily young women, are primarily blond and primarily svelte, with teeth that dazzle and eyes that sparkle. Although they appear to have been recruited from Hugh Hefner’s personnel archives, they surely must be the very top graduates of the top broadcast journalism schools in the land. In the newsroom, at the weather desk, at the sports desk, on the playing field, at the financial desk, at the crime scene and in the courtroom, their honey-tongues and dulcet tones enunciate and articulate so smoothly and so glibly, that we’re dead dog certain they are as endowed mentally as they are physically. And we must admit that beautiful, charismatic people who speak eloquently are smarter, more believable and thus more worthy than, say, homely people. This must be the absolute truth. Otherwise, by now, the National Organization of Women (NOW) would certainly have filed a class-action suit against the broadcast networks for discrimination. By now, Martha Burk would have nailed the entire industry for rejecting ugly women in favor of the self-assured Megyn Kelly and the bevy of her alluring colleagues. Evidently, NOW must have agreed that ugly women do indeed lack the intellect, the speaking skills, the credibility — perhaps even the work ethic — to face the nation. NOW must have recognized that television audiences would never swallow words coming from a fat lady with bad hair. The message seems crystal clear. Ugly people — especially old ugly women — need not apply as talking heads. The networks don’t want you because the people won’t have you. We want Britney Spear look-a-likes. We want hot looking specimens who never miss a syllable, just as we want political candidates with the gift of the gab, because we the people invariably prefer silver tongues to stout brains. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that how the pretty people talk is more important than what the pretty people say. In any event, despite the evidence that beautiful people are superior in every way, some daring entrepreneur should establish a television news network that hires the brainiest, most articulate, but most physically unappealing people on the planet. If you like, call it UGH!TV. Waddya think? If the programming content and substance of this new network were first-rate, wouldn’t we accept second-rate looks? Not a chance. Well, there’s always radio.