Wishing for a Happy New Year Now

Is it 2002 yet?

There is so much about 2001 worth leaving behind that I thought maybe we could skip the last two months and proceed directly to January.

There was so much talk of a recession at the start of the year it’s as if the entire country conspired to make sure it occurred. Then an event happened that made us all wish financial troubles were the only thing to worry about.

Here are some of the wishes I have for next year — which, as far as I’m concerned, begins Nov. 1.

• That our gracious speakers at PROMO Expo all receive healthy raises, lucrative promotions, huge bonuses, and surprise vacation packages. The marketing executives who present each year are the single most important part of the conference’s success, and they offer their knowledge, their time, and (in nearly all cases) a chunk of their travel budget while receiving little in return. We cannot adequately express our gratitude — this year more than ever before.

• That the media will not, in their mission to continue feeding the news pipeline with human-interest stories about the Sept. 11 attacks, find the need to expose as frauds all of the people first praised as heroes. So, that caring business executive may not have been as sincere as he sounded in interviews? Let it rest.

• That the need (however real or imagined) to respond to the nation’s crisis through marketing will not produce too many cloyingly opportunistic promotions. The few we’ve seen already were enough.

• That the Emmy Awards are canceled forever. What was all the fuss about? Holding an awards program to celebrate the TV industry was inappropriate following the attacks? I’ve got no argument there. But the Emmys were trivial last year, and they’ll be trivial again next year. Nobody thought to cancel Big Brother, did they?

• That agencies won’t be too upset if PROMO doesn’t always identify them by their official names. The “Surge at DraftWorldwide” moniker is only a few months old, but has already become a typographer’s nightmare. Likewise, I pledge to do everything in my power to avoid ever printing the name “asterisk*.” (See “Agencies” for an explanation.)

  This thought just occurred to me: When Wunderman Cato Johnson changed its name to Impiric, we felt compelled for months to refer to the agency as “formerly WCJ.” But when it changed back to Wunderman, no other reference seemed necessary. Can we keep it simple, please? You don’t see Kraft Foods changing its name to Epicuriosity or anything, do you?

• That the many corporations which donated money, food, and services to disaster-relief efforts, then did little or nothing to publicize their actions, receive an ROI they’ve never before imagined. And that the handful of corporations which did more publicizing than donating get nothing but the tax break.

• Finally, and most importantly, that everyone out there has as little strife in their lives as I do in mine. Whenever I stop complaining long enough to count my blessings (and I’ve been doing that a lot more often lately), I realize that life is pretty good.