The "low bid" economy.

All over America things are being built. Highways, levees, bridges, houses, housing projects, mine-shafts. Even ad campaigns.

In our current MBAelstrom of thought, when those projects are put out for RFP, if they don't go to a crony, they go to the lowest bid. According to Alan Weisman's new book, which will soon be a classic, "The World Without Us," the results of low-bidding are crashing around us everyday. (Even in Iraq--the war that was supposed to cost us nothing, remember.)

In advertising, which this blog is nominally about, Clients wind up with low-bid creative (Hot pockets!), low-bid innovation, low-bid client service and worst, low-bid results. And those CMOs that buy into the low-bid adconomy? Their average tenure is down to a new low...23 months. Let's low-bid them adieu.