01/14/2025
ďżźSome leaders have said that 2025 will be one of the last normal years that we ever have and thatâs all thanks to AI. Perhaps they are đŻ percent on this prediction, that we will have 100 years of tech progress, in five. What do you all think?
The merger and team created from 2 larger corporations in advertising with a main AI reasoning for the shift & name change. As a Chicagoan, I see the writing on the wall, pun intended.
In our World that is on fire or drowning or being shook to its core,
This is but a small change in the scheme of things but then againâŚ.
Chicagoâs iconic Advertising firm, Leo Burnett. they say The founder preferred to be called Mr. Burnett and never Leo. Iâm not exactly sure how ďżźto see this change as being respectful but alasâŚ. business made a decision due to merger & AI is a big reason for the merger and change.
âď¸âď¸âď¸âď¸âď¸A Speech given by Leo Burnett ďżźin Chicago on December 1st, 1967 on when his name should be removed:
âSomewhere along the line, after I am finally off the premises, youâor your successorsâmay want to take my name off the premises, too.
You may want to call yourselves âTwain, Rogers, Sawyer and Finn, Inc.â Or "Ajax Advertising,â or Something. That will certainly be okay with me, if itâs good for you.
But let me tell you when I might demand that you take my name off the doorâŚ
That will be the day when you spend more time trying to make money and less time making advertising. Our kind of advertising.
When you forget that the sheer fun of ad-making and the lift you get out of it, the creative climate of the place, should be as important as money to the very special breed of writers and artists and business professionals who compose this company of ours, and make it tick.
When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough.
When you lose your itch to do the job well for its own sakeâregardless of the client, or the money, or the effort it takes.
When you lose your passion for thoroughness; your hatred of loose ends.
When you stop reaching for the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produces the fresh, the memorable, and the believable effect.
When you stop rededicating yourselves every day to the idea that better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is all about.
When you are no longer what Thoreau called âa corporation with a conscience,â which means to me, a corporation of conscientious men and women.
When you begin to compromise your integrity, which has always been the heartâs blood, the very guts of this agency.
When you stoop to convenient expediency and rationalize yourselves into acts of opportunism, for the sake of a fast buck.
When you show the slightest sign of crudeness, inappropriateness or smart-aleckness, and lose that subtle sense of the fitness of things.
When your main interest becomes a matter of size just to be big, rather than good, hard, wonderful work.
When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows, from zero to five, in the walls of your office.
When you lose your humility and become big-shot weisenheimers, a little too big for your boots.
When the apples come down to being just apples for eating, or for polishingâno longer a part of our tone, our personality.
When you disapprove of something, and start tearing the hell out of the man who did it rather than the work itself.
When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.
When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administered, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.
When you start giving lip service to this being a creative agency and stop really being one.
Finally, when you lose your respect for the lonely manâthe man at his typewriter, or his drawing board, or behind his camera, or just scribbling notes with one of our big black pencils, or working all night on a media plan. When you forget that the lonely manâand thank God for himâhas made the agency we now have, possible. When you forget heâs the man who, because he is reaching harder, sometimes actually gets hold of, for a moment, one of those hot, unreachable stars.
That, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door.
And by golly, it will be taken off the door. Even if I have to materialize long enough some night to rub it out myself, on every one of your floors.
And before I de-materialize again, I will paint out that star-reaching symbol too. And burn all the stationery. Perhaps tear up a few ads in passing. And throw every god-damned apple1 down the elevator shafts. You just wonât know the place, the next morning. Youâll have to find another name.â âď¸âď¸âď¸âď¸âď¸
