Another level on which what used to be our unified culture has become fragmented and compartmentalized

There's a thought-provoking story today at the WSJ about the challenge Publicis, the world's largest conglomerate of advertising agencies, is running into. It recently was approached by one of its biggest clients - McDonald's - which wanted as unified approach to its messaging, something that would be thematically and conceptually uniform as it was presented everywhere from social media to in-store tray liners.

It pointed up for Publicis a generational fork in the road about over just what the basic concept of messaging is all about:

Publicis had an army of copywriters, art directors and computer engineers, but when senior executives gathered in 2016 to come up with a pitch for McDonald’s, debates erupted over the meaning of such basic terms as “data” and “content,” recalls Britt Nolan, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA.

Publicis lost the McDonald’s contract to Omnicom Group Inc., which had worked with Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to assemble a team of creative talent and data experts.

That blow convinced current Publicis Chief Executive Arthur Sadoun of the need to more quickly shatter the boundaries between the sprawling company’s many fiefs, which includes such agencies as Saatchi & Saatchi and Razorfish.

“There is a big debate: Where is our industry going?” he said in a recent interview. “You have very different people that need to work together.”

The ad industry is in upheaval as it grapples with the rise of big data and analytics. Ad giants such as WPP PLC, Omnicom and Publicis have gone on acquisition sprees, bringing legions of information-technology experts into their ranks.

The influx has opened a cultural divide on Madison Avenue between the new arrivals and an old guard of “creatives”—the pitchmen, copywriters and artists that have shaped advertising since the end of World War II. The digital talent has questioned the attachment of traditional agencies to TV ad campaigns, while creatives have complained about engineers interfering with carefully honed client pitches.

Think about the slogans and iconic mascots of various brands that have insinuated themselves in to the national consciousness over the past several decades, from "See the USA in a Chevrolet" to Elsie the Cow to Mr. Clean, with his earring, bald head and magnificent biceps, to "I'd like to teach the world to sing" to "Where's the beef?" to, of course, Ronald McDonald and "You deserve a break today."  These were images and hummable snatches of melody that gave us a common frame of reference.

Now the real aim of it all has been laid bare: getting the consumer to trade dollars for that double-decker cheeseburger with special sauce flying out of the chute.

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it just seems like one more realm of post-American life in which there's no room for a little whimsy. We've sacrificed our sense of the jaunty for real-time big-data analysis of what people want to stuff their faces with as they zip off to whatever it is they do to keep the numbers positive in their own lives.

The article ends with this vignette, and if it's meant to reassure, it is a tenuous effort:

In June, Mr. Sadoun arrived at the Cannes award ceremony to make his debut as chief executive. He made a surprise announcement: In 2018, the company’s creative teams wouldn’t come to Cannes and other award ceremonies. The budget, he said, was being redirected to help fund the algorithm project, which was code-named Marcel and expected to cost tens of millions of dollars.

Thousands of miles away, in the Chicago skyscraper that houses Leo Burnett’s headquarters, employees were shocked, according to several of them. If the algorithm assembled teams from across the entire Publicis workforce, they feared, Leo Burnett’s ranks would shrink and its brand would fade.

At the foot of the building, someone covered the agency’s granite sign with a flimsy sheet of paper bearing the letters “MARCEL.” The stunt was a thinly veiled reference to a retirement speech by the agency’s founder. In 1967, Leo Burnett had told his successors to rename the company if they ever strayed from his philosophy of placing creativity at the heart of their business.

A few weeks later, Mr. Sadoun flew to Chicago. “Who put up that sign?” he asked a room of about 200 executives gathered on the 21st floor. As unease spread across the room, the CEO explained he was proud to see creative spirit was alive at the agency.

“I don’t want to fire them,” he said. “I want to congratulate them.”

Well, that's nice, but in a "culture" in which actual art and actual entertainment are in such a state of ruin, there's something kind of sad about seeing the "art" of using some creative flair to get you to consume a product lose ground as well.