EMERGENCY HOCKEY COLUMN: See Ya, JS…Welcome Willie D.

I penned this article for my PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CHEAP SEATS column on Jewels From the Crown. I couldn't hold myself from posting it here too, because why? The Los Angeles Kings, that's why.

Note to reader: Due to unbridled anger scheduling conflicts, I was forced to write the inevitable “John Stevens has been fired!” column on October 20th. That was after the Kings were embarrassed by Buffalo and Stevens uttered the now famous, “I have to be honest. I don’t have an answer at this second.” Yes, actually I wrote this two weeks before they relieved him of his duties. Further, please excuse my insolence when reading. I know John Stevens is maybe the nicest guy in hockey and he had a quiet hand in the two Stanley Cups the Kings won, but for goodness sakes the wheels really fell off on his watch. I refused to be silent when it’s already been bad enough watching him botch my beloved team since the game against Dallas on the final day of the the 2017-18 season. Really, that was the beginning of his end. So Coach Stevens, I want to say that we wouldn’t have these two Stanley Cups without you. You were a great assistant coach. Truly, thank you! To all reading the column after the firing, I appreciate your understanding.

And now, without further ado, the future Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award winning column, “See Ya, JS…”

When we were leaving the Sabres game, a couple of Kings fans were walking ahead of us and humming the words “Lose for Hughes, Lose for Hughes, Lose for Hughes, Lose for Hughes,” almost as if they were chanting the words to a top 40 song.

So much for Champions of California Hockey.

Not only is the defense gone, not only do we only have one playoff win since Brownie raised the Cup the last time, but our fans are singing the names of potential lottery saviors eight games into the season. And if that’s not bad enough, my daughter (the girl who can see a rainbow and sunshine in almost any loss) wasn’t even remotely appalled.

”It’s like they were inside my mind,” my son said with resignation. “I say we trade everything not nailed down and keep Stevens for the whole season. Let’s go for Jack Hughes.” That’s when he sent me this video:

I found that comment mesmerizing: Not that my son wanted to trade everyone not named Drew, Quick, Dustin, or Anze, but his unbiased confidence that keeping John Stevens gave the Kings the best opportunity at finishing with a high lottery pick. Honestly, what more do you need to know? If we’re gunning for Hughes next spring, either we could be unashamed about this mission, fire John Stevens and hire Bob the Security Guard from Lot 1 … or we could keep Stevens and guarantee six more months of blowout losses, defensive breakdowns, motionless offense, clueless excuses and an NHL coach juggling lines every few shifts like he’s forgotten how to coach at all. Unfortunately for Hughes lovers, Rob Blake and the Kings owners imagine that their team still has a chance -- and they might be right, given the lack of team success in the Pacific Division this season -- so Bob the Security Guard from Lot 1 is out.

And so is JS.

JS must be breathing a sigh of relief. In private, at least.

He spent the playoffs against Vegas and this season coaching with the same look that I used have when I was working up the courage to ask the cute waitress out when I was in college. On opening night, his team looked disjointed and lost as they wandered to an overtime loss as his players seemed to refuse to shoot the puck all game. That was followed by a predictable nail biter win against Detroit (!), a miserable game against Winnipeg (16 shots on goal), a shutout against Montreal, wretched losses to Ottawa (!) and Toronto, then an ugly 7-2 loss to the New York Islanders (with the entire Kings team getting lustily booed at the end of the second period).

JS followed-up the Islander game by calling out the team for lack of effort and saying all the things that indicates the team had quit on him. Then tonight, he pulled out his “I don’t have any answers” line tonight after pulling his goaltender with almost five minutes left and down 4-1. Ugh, I’ve never been so upset at a Kings coach. For those of you unaware, the Kings have had 23 previous coaches, so there’s a lot to choose from.

[Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, the John Stevens era!]

Meanwhile, all of the Kings pundits and journalists I respect were doing their rationale trying to figure out “what’s wrong with the Kings?”, with tweets that easily could have been written about Sharks, Ducks or Capitals. You see, it’s not hard to tell when your coach stinks. You typically know when your players are constantly saying things like “We just need to sustain that intensity for three periods,” “We need to play the kind of defense we’re capable of playing,” “I think we’ve got some soul searching to do,” “We’ve got to figure some things out,” and my personal favorite, “We can’t seem to score first," (which is a specialty of John Stevens’s coached games).

All of this athlete talk is a huge misdirect. Every word of it. Players from well-coached teams never say these things. If those quotes look familiar to you, or if those tweets look oddly familiar to others that have been written about your own team, then your coach is underperforming and needs to be shown the door.

So why did the Kings retain JS last summer, you ask? Maybe because there wasn’t an available coach out there who was noticeably better. Except the guy who just won the Stanley Cup and was a free agent (OMG, we could have had Barry Trotz). If you owned an NHL team, would you pay three people to perform the same job for you? Especially when the players and the media purportedly admire and respect your coaching? Of course not. It’s easier to cross your fingers and hope he improves, right? What followed that Vegas sweep in the playoffs was inevitable: JS spent the preseason tinkering with lineups until team chemistry was shot. If JS didn’t have a master plan last season, he certainly doesn’t have one this season and it’s only getting worse.

Look, it’s never fun to write that someone should lose his job. By all accounts, JS is a tremendous fellow -- that’s the main reason both local columnist and the radio guys kept spinning his B.S. and enabled him to go this long without the criticism he’s earned. Even this week, after these Buffalo and Islander games, the writers who understand hockey and all its subtle nuances endorsed JS and collectively absolved him of all blame.

[Note #2 to the readers: This is the end of the pre-written column and fast forward to yesterday.]

Boy, that escalated quickly... I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

This was the talk at home on Sunday — a Ron Burgundy-type reflection on some swift action from GM Rob Blake. Many wanted John Stevens gone, but few thought they would do it 13 games in. My daughter wrapped it up nicely while she took a break from Dapper Days at Disneyland: “Everyone thought Rob wasn’t going to do anything, but he has great awareness of the issues on the team and a win wasn’t going to derail what he thought would ultimately make the team better.”

Note #3 to the reader: Now that JS has actually been fired relieved of his duties, I’ll say something nice about the interim coach and point out that his best quality is that he’s not John Stevens.

When Willie Desjardins steps behind the bench for his first game as Kings interim coach, it’s worth mentioning that he coached Team Canada to a bronze medal in the last Olympics with former King Ben Scrivens as one of his goaltenders. He’s well respected in coaching circles and anyone who can coach a team to a championship in Medicine Hat is legitimate in my book.

Welcome aboard Willie D., our 25th coach.

The king is dead, long live the king.

The Super Bowl of Candy Just Got Real

From the Reese's youtube channel:

No tricks here. Trade in your Halloween candy for Reese's candy. What'd you expect from the GOAT of Halloween?!

This is no trick!

If you your children look into their pillow case-sized bag of Halloween candy and get too many Nerds or candy corn or taffy during their Halloween trick-or-treating, they may be in luck, but only if they are in downtown Manhattan*.

“Disappointment goes in. Reese’s cups come out,” according to the Reese's video.

(Reese's / Melanie O'Sullivan)

Reese's has constructed the the greatest vending machine of all time. It let's consumers trade in your disliked Halloween candy you hate for delicious peanut butter cup. So, if your kids dive into their bags and find the wrong stuff to make candy trades, this vending machine will.

The appropriately named "Reese's Halloween Candy Converter"is your Wonka-esque happiness Golden Ticket for two great tastes in one great candy bar. The awesome machine created by Anomoly is part of the 2018 "Not Sorry" campaign, introduced earlier this year, which is voiced by Will Arnett as the unapologetic voice of the brand.

Anomaly executive creative director Christine Gignac says, "The manifesto is basically—and literally—we know we make the best candy ever known to humankind, therefore we are going to intentionally make you want it. All the time. And no, we're not sorry,"

The candy converter idea came from a brainstorm session centered around trick or treating "and how you really just want to find the house with the good stuff—the Reese's. Full cups instead of the minis, even better," Gignac reports. "That, and knowing that kids already love trading candy for something they want more. There's always stuff in your bag you want to get rid of. This is a major Halloween ritual. So lets put ourselves right in the center of that ritual."

The brand has long been a marketing and advertising innovator. In 1972 they launched their iconic "You got peanut butter on my chocolate!" campaign and Reese's instantly caught the attention of America's sweet tooth:

Sadly, I cannot partake as I am in Jason Vorhees mode:

Happy Halloween!

Note to Reese's, we love your too. How about a machine next year in Hollywood.

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* - The vending machine is located on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square North and East 8th Street — near Washington Square Park from 4 to 9 pm. 10,000 pieces of candy will be available.

Career Killers and How to Avoid Them

Read the new column: click here.

Okay, so where am I?

It's almost time to leave town...vacation style. Well, working vacation. Actually just working at my moonlighting gig. Shhhhh, it's top secret...

Before I get to the business at hand in this column, I want to report on the homework assignment I spoke of in the last column. The good news (for me at least) is that I got the gig for the hockey website Jewels From The Crown, an SB Nation site dedicated to my beloved Los Angeles Kings. I'll be writing a weekly opinion column called “Perspectives from the Cheap Seats.” The best part about all of this so far is the killer bio they put up:

Michael Lloyd used to sit in Jack Kent Cooke’s office at the Fabulous Forum stuffing season tickets into envelopes. Since then he’s grown up to be a modern-day mad man with a couple of Clio Awards and Emmys to his credit while penning multiple books. As a 45-year Kings fan, Lloyd brings a unique brand of angst and perspective to the cheap seats.

Yeah, that's fairly awesome!

Speaking of killers...there are the seven deadly sins and the seven marketing career killers. Believing in bogus platitudes, falling into cognitive bias, clustering into cliques and four other things that could stop your marketing career in its tracks.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” Italian philosopher George Santayana famously said. In the workplace, the saying may as well be, “Those who cannot learn from the errors of others are doomed to make the same mistakes.”

Author Becki Saltzman wrote about seven career killers in her recent book, "Living Curiously: How to Use Curiosity to Be Remarkable and Do Good Stuff". Each is very common and likely noticeable by anyone who has worked in an office setting, and each can stop a high-potential career in its tracks.

To combat these career killers, Saltzman suggests bringing curiosity to work every day.

“Bringing a dose of curiosity to your expectations, you can remain curious prior to being judgmental, fearful, complacent or critical,” she says.

Here are Saltzman’s seven career killers and how marketers can reverse course on them.

1. Believing in bogus platitudes

Statements such as “Let’s not reinvent the wheel” and “The customer is always right”​ are clichés and beliefs that can end up being major roadblocks to career advancement.

“Platitudes can be a trap in marketing,” Saltzman says, adding that most of these platitudes, such as “Quitting is the easiest thing to do,” don’t ring true in many situations.

“Tell that to me with a pitcher of margaritas and a bowl of chips in front of me,” she says with a laugh.

Instead of believing in these cliché maxims, Saltzman suggests testing assumptions by looking at these sayings with curiosity and skepticism. Test and explore how they can relate to aspects of work, such as the review and promotion process, evaluation of leaders and hiring or firing of employees.

Saltzman gave an example of how dangerous it can be to adhere too strictly to platitudes. She was working as a sales manager at a retail shop when a customer tried to return a vial of perfume; the vial was filled with urine.

“My employee was like, ‘What do I do? The customer is always right.’ But that’s the time where you may have to elevate curiosity a little bit to see if that actually matches reality and if ‘The customer is always right’ is going to fit with the review process,” she says.

Illustration by Andrew Joyner

2. Clustering into cliques

Becoming cliquish at work can provide a sense of belonging and security, but it can also mean putting a cap on your potential at work by branding yourself as a group instead of an individual.

Instead of forming a friend group, a la high school, Saltzman suggests expanding work networks to be broader. Knowing more people will provide more opportunity to jump into leadership roles, she says.

3. Trying too hard to be interesting

Most people want their effort to be recognized, but perceived effort can be a dangerous thing. Often, those who try too hard can come off as self-centered or desperate to coworkers and executives.

Instead of trying too hard to be interesting, Saltzman says employees should become more curious at work and focus on being interested in what they’re doing. This, in turn, will make others more curious about who they are and what they do.

“My gig is curiosity,” she says. “I think most people get trapped into [these career killers] because they think they show up to work on time, they do a good job, they get their work done, they don’t make excuses, they don’t fall into the trap of these career killers. But they’re not curious enough to see beneath the curtain.”

Become curious about work by asking questions of coworkers about what they like about their job and what policies they would put into action. Figure out something unique about a coworker or uncommon commonalities between you.

4. Gravitating toward groupthink

​​​Getting caught up in groupthink may be one of the more difficult traps to avoid; it’s tough to be a single dissenting voice among a group of people saying, “Yes.”

Saltzman says that she often asks clients whether they’d rather be wrong in a crowd or right by themselves, and concedes that the answer isn’t always clear.

“Sometimes it’s a matter of picking your battles,” she says. “Sometimes you can’t be the contrarian that’s always poking. By the same token, sometimes you can’t be the silent one. But [you must] always be taking the pulse of the crowd [and figure out if it’s a battle worth fighting]. The stakes may be high, but you’re probably not ever going to differentiate yourself as a leader if that’s something you won’t do.”

Engaging in new ways of thinking and suggesting other coworkers do the same thing can go a long way toward eliminating groupthink in a work environment, Saltzman says.

“Just falling into anti- or pro-groupthink is dangerous. I’d suggest too much groupthink has a much greater downside than too little.”

Avoiding groupthink certainly does not mean avoiding working with others. Dana Glasgo, a career coach based in Cincinatti, says employees may want to find a good mentor internally to help them grow within the company.

“Networking is the key [to becoming a top employee],” she says.

5. Becoming too familiar with coworkers or bosses

Not knowing your coworkers and bosses well enough certainly isn’t good, but Saltzman says becoming too familiar can be even more of a career killer. Sharing too much or “knowing too much,” thereby becoming less curious, can lead to stagnation at work, she says.

Instead, she suggests finding the right balance between knowing and sharing. Be familiar with people, but not so familiar that things get dramatic or you become incurious about coworkers or work itself.

Becoming too familiar may also breed gossip, especially when in concert with cliques. Glasgo says employees need to have a positive attitude at work.

“You’re there to do a job, and that’s what they’re paying you to do,” she says. “Keeping that attitude right is important.”

6. Mental Sand Traps

“Mental sand traps,” or cognitive biases and mental shortcuts, are the most dangerous of the seven career killers, Saltzman says. Confirmation bias, for one, may cause someone to always believe they’re correct, even if they are not.

“That kind of belief system allows us to think that we’re doing the right thing and we miss cues in all of these career killers that might be illuminated if we weren’t caught in these mental sand traps,” she says. “From a practical, tactical standpoint, the first thing [to counteract this] is becoming really comfortable with being wrong. In the workplace, that’s hard. We’re not awarded for making mistakes and being wrong.”

Saltzman says people should practice being wrong outside of work when the stakes are not as high. This can be as simple as testing assumptions outside of work or taking up a new hobby.

“You realize [being wrong] doesn’t kill you,” she says. “Maybe you call it the beginner’s mindset​ or the mindset of not being an expert. You start seeing how that mindset is OK to bring to an area where you may need to be perceived as more of an expert, such as the workplace.”

7. Behavior bombs

No one likes being around someone who flies off the handle, easily gets angry or holds passive aggressive grudges. Saltzman says these are “behavior bombs,” something that may cause people to erupt when confronted with others’ selfish behavior, not being listened to or a perceived lack of fairness, among other issues.

To confront this issue, Saltzman says a simple solution is to figure out “what pisses you off,” your behavior bomb, so that you can recognize when it pops up among coworkers or bosses.

“Before you figure out your behavior bombs, figuring out what are the behavior bomb triggers and why [they happen], be really curious about it: Why do you think that’s an appropriate way to be?” she says. “Once you’ve identified that and you get really curious, you almost get so analytical that you don’t react to it thoughtlessly. You can chuckle at catching yourself before these trigger behavior bombs [take hold] because you can see nuance in things you thought were so absolute.”

Saltzman suggests elevating curiosity over criticism, judgment, fear and complacency as an ordering mechanism. This, she believes, can help stave off most of these career killers.

Hong Kong Tourism Board: You Should Have Called the Media Guy!

Okay, so where am I?

I'm phone watching once again, half-heatedly expecting Dr. Peter Lam, Chairman of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, or their executive director Anthony Lau, to call me to sort out this mess created by their sexist and creepy “Treasures of the Heart” tourism commercial.

Before I go on my whimsical rant about how the watchful eyes of the Media Guy could have saved Hong Kong millions of dollars in bad publicity, let's go to the tape to view this tone-deaf advertisement.

My eyes tell me this is more an ad about human trafficking. Showcasing the controlling relationship one has over the other is a lesson in manipulation.

I understand that “Treasures", directed by Chan Chi-fat, endeavors to showcase an spontaneous starry-eyed escapade but rapidly degenerated into a 1:45-minute movie trailer that can best be played out as a Halloween thriller. This is more Taken 5 than Love Actually. All we need is Liam Neeson talking about his special skills and this poor young lady being loaded into a shipping container and we're all set.

How do you make a girl follow your manipulative directions and do anything you say? Well, that’s an easy one: take her passport.

Dr. Lam and Mr. Lau, did you watch this before greenlighting this to air? If you sent this to me as your media consultant, after a single viewing I would have penned you this email:

“It’s utterly criminal to take somebody's passport to impede them from traveling. In fact, this is a textbook maneuver favored by sex traffickers in the Far East to trap girls and women. Please see attached a revised script where you can save most of your footage and eliminate the ominous undertones of this spot.”

During the flashbacks in the spot, we gain insights on the their relationship including where they fell in love and where they argued and where her camera was obliterated. The make good at the end where he gives her a new camera and instructs her to “Don’t forget to put my photo up on your dorm door...” is also textbook male sociopath behavior.

The core messaging of the boyfriend’s negative influence on the girl—one who is on a journey to better her own life—wasn’t lost on me as my head spun around on its axis while watching it.

It left me murmuring to Dr. Lam, Mr. Lau, and the entire Hong Kong Tourism Board: “What were you thinking?” This spot does little else than to embolden emotional abuse in relationships while dressing it up as “romance” and “love.” After watching this, Hong Kong has zippo appeal and would never encourage sane people to visit. As Vivian Ward would say, “Big mistake. Big. Huge”

Also, I must admonish the headline writers for the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Really, is this the type of thing that gets people booking airline bundles on Expedia?

“Girl meets boy. Girl leaves boy. Boy hides girl's passport: A #ShamShuiPo love story.” 

I called Dr. Lam and Mr. Lau, but an entire day has passed and alas, my phone hasn't rung, nor will I think it is going to happen. Gentlemen, my ringer is on and I'll answer 24/7. My fees are small(ish) and will save you further humiliation on the back end on future campaigns. I can turn almost anything into gold. ICYMI, I was able to convince the New York Times that Damascus was a top 10 destination once upon a time!

Don't say a second time, "We should have called the Media Guy!" I'll be waiting with my special set of media skills.

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This is what happens when you take a girl's passport and Liam Neeson gets wind of it:

Previous "You Should Have Called the Media Guy" Columns:

Burger King
H&M
The American Red Cross
Pepsi
Kellogg's
Anaheim Ducks
T-Mobile, Dove, and McDonald's

Before Coffee Your Brain Doesn't Work So Well

I love this little lady...

Okay, so where am I?

On the heels of the Clio win, I’m in front of my television after having watched a hockey game for the third time gleaning inspiration for a “homework assignment” I am working on as a tryout to contribute to a popular website. Who knows where it will lead? Who cares though? It’s great as an old dog to try new tricks.

All of this triggered my anxieties from my old days as a copywriter. Those endless nights in front of Selectric Typewriters with the hum urging my fingers into action, and, later, word processors with their fancy white cursors doing the same on the green background.

Being a copywriter is an amazing, yet disturbing occupation. I mean, you get paid to put words to paper. It’s one part brilliance and one part perseverance. It’s the art of sculpting fog as I’ve covered before.

The brilliance is that a copywriter has the ability to generate sales and positive branding for your clients while the perseverance comes from grinding through the feedback that rocks you to your core. The wrong set of “constructive criticism can trigger a full-scale identity crisis and make you wonder if you’re in the wrong profession.

The biggest influence I ever had in the copywriter world (and the Ad Man/Media Guy world) is that I never want the emotional wave that swallows you whole when you think you’re a fraud or incompetent. Yes kids, this how you feel when your client asks, “ Who the hell wrote this copy?” Every day, I think back to those instances and it energizes me to not only knock out my daily tasks, but think of those big ideas as well.

For me being a copywriter spurred an entire career. For me, that’s 32 years and counting. If this is the trade you desire, I celebrate your courage, innovation, and idiocy. Each day is a fresh scuffle against stalling, that blinking cursor, and those voices in your mind that scream you don’t really know what you’re doing. Best career ever.

So without further procrastination, here’s a quick tick list of the things you need to do in order be a successful ad agency copywriter.

Consume caffeine.

Not a coffee person? I wasn’t either. But, hey, this is what we do. Before you lift open your Mac Book, head to the coffeemaker and brew yourself a K-cup. If you want people to think you’re cool, drink it black—like your heart. If you want to truly appreciate the taste, splash some cream in it. It’s the perfect remedy for a late night or the more than occasional doldrums that plague the work day.

Keep a daily to do list.

Talk to your boss. Make a list. Shape your day. If you do, you’ll be put on projects and business you crave and desire.

Battle writer’s block.

Blink….blink…blink…

There she is again: that blinking cursor. You swear up and down you killed it yesterday, but she’s back, like that cat from Pet Sematary. Don’t be scared. Kill the bear, or rather, the blank doc. Down that morning coffee and bring your special set of skills and wage battle. The blinking cursor is going down once again.

Base camps.

No one every climbed Everest in a day and you can’t do it with your mountain of work. Build some momentum If I have an email that just needs a subject line, I’m moving that bad boy to the top of my list.

Be a firefighter.

Quench all fires as soon as possible. The urgent projects and needy clients you’re your attention first. Keep them happy and you will have the mental real estate to be as creative you want later in the day.

Inspirational views for a potential third Clio.

Focus on billable work.

Don’t daydream all day and try to knock out work in a tiny window leaving only a handful of billable hours for your agency to bill. For you newbies, billable work is merely the labor your clients authorize payments for. More work means more revenue for the agency. Fill up that time sheet and you will mostly likely see your own paycheck rise at annual review time.

Take your constitutionals.

I’ve spent my days chained to my desk throughout my agency days. Don’t do that yourself. Take a break—not a long one, but enough of one to stretch your legs. Go for a quick walk and grab a Starbuck. You’ll get back to your desk revitalized and prepared for the blinking cursor.

Know when to call it a day.

If you say to yourself, “nobody told me there would be days like this…” remember that I just did! Some days are tougher than others. They won’t all be like this. Some days you won’t have it.

Go home, find your happy spot. For goodness sakes, get some good sleep in. The blinking cursor will be ready for you tomorrow morning.

--

So there you have it…now it’s time to channel my inner wordsmith and deliver a winner on this old dog, new trick homework assignment.

Click to enlarge.

Think Different

Okay, so where am I?

I'm preparing creative briefs, artwork that will be presented, and the structure for meeting notes that are due after each meeting.

I go to more meeting than you do, guaranteed.

Illustration by Andrew Joyner

I’m often astounded, but not principally shocked, at what a terrible job meetings do at their stated objective. What’s the problem? After all, these are important gatherings, run by equally important professionals that work diligently to satisfy the typical attendee.

And that, of course, is the drawback.

Facts don’t alter people’s behavior.

Emotion alters people’s behavior.

Storytelling and irrational impulses are what alter behavior. Seldom do facts or bullet points achieve this objective.

If all we require were facts, then books alone would be adequate.

I mean, when the Surgeon General announced that smoking was fatal, how many smokers rushed to quit their death sticks? That was 1964 when Luther L. Terry, M.D., Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, released the first report of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health and stated results based on more than 7,000 articles relating to smoking. They didn’t even ban cigarette ads on television until 1970!

Human are illogical. Change agents (maybe that’s you, maybe not) can battle that and fixate about the need to present more and more facts, or we can embrace irrational behavior and make change happen.

Meetings are designed to get your average staff to change their behavior. By “average”, I mean typical—the masses, the center of the bellcurve. That’s a practical goal, isn’t it? By classification, most people (in any given populace) are in the middle of that bell curve. Change them and you’re on the yellow brick road.

The bellcurve—if this group would absorb, take action and move forward to make things happen with just a memo, you wouldn’t need to have a meeting. But we end up blocking afternoons for average meetings to sit in average conference rooms (or average conference call lines) to hear average speakers (no, the Media Guy isn’t included in the average speaker category) doing presentations filled with average bullet points. And it’s all beyond criticism.

But it just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work when you’re presenting at the finals of an RFP (request for proposal) either. Your facts and your service and your rates can be the finest in town, but that doesn’t mean the order is yours…

…and it breaks down at your annual review…

…and it even occurs in a one-on-one with the highway patrol or a cashier or a bartender.

People are irrational and they typically make choices that have zero to do with facts. And, yet we waste most of our time refining our facts and have very little concerned with the rest.

Close your eyes and think deeply. I bet the most influential learning moments you’ve ever had didn’t take place in a gloomy meeting room.

Meeting organizers (and more important, their staff) spend virtually all of their time and money doing one of two things: 1. Nourishing the center of the bell curve, and, 2) Evading failure.


That’s why the standard meeting is, well, standard.

That’s why the refreshments (if you’re lucky enough to get them) and the setting and the venue and the location and the chairs and the layout and the agenda are… standard.

If you want to run a meeting (a brainstorming meeting, a board meeting, a zoning commission meeting) that is destined to perform as well as your past meetings, then the best thing to do is to run it the way you’ve always been running it, right?

So, here’s the challenge: figure out how to do the different [Read: THINK DIFFERENT ala Apple].
Figure out how to change the interactions that people have with one another.

-Figure out how to change what they talk about in the elevator, or at lunch.

-Figure out how to create an atmosphere where people walk in ready to learn and change and challenge, as opposed to finding the middle ground where approvals occur.

-Figure out how to create a revolution, every meeting, every time.

But be prepared for what happens next.

Be prepared for the National Geographic-style appreciation of human beings as clever mammals in suits who are relentlessly claiming power and marking territory, when doing so gives no assistance to the pack and it’s all a knee-jerk affirmation of ego.

For us creatives, see trivial versions of this as writers working out slogans, and of directors and VPs in raptor-mode, swooping in to “improve” our work, and top bosses, and eventually clients, either saying yes to the best stuff or further “improving it” in ways that water it down or make it senseless or insignificant…

…but that’s another story for another day.

The Ad Biz: Office Stabbings and Media Guy Origins

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This is the famous passage from the Statue of Liberty poem. New Colossus and its famous last lines have become part of American history. It's also part of the foundation of the unique inclusion of the advertising business.

Once upon a time in the ad world...

Advertising is the only business in the world that takes in the anti-social, the closet drunks, the outed potheads, your basic weirdos, and embraces the egomaniac braggarts. You won't make it as an account executive with a pothead rep, but most likely you can last as a copywriter or an art director if your pupils are a bit dilated. Eccentrics are drawn to the business and welcomed into it. Your finest selection of eccentric is typically found on the creative side, among the copywriters and art directors.

We get a lot of crazies. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people in our industry who, if they were currently working for Lloyd's of London, would have found themselves in the looney bin (or rehab). At review time their bosses lean back and say, “This guy is really going nuts,” and then have HR call home and say, “ I think it’s time we get him some help him because, you know, he’s doing off things.”

Take a good friend of mine, Mark Lewin*, for example. He’s a real a legend. A flake of epic proportions. Mark once worked for XYZ Advertising* for five hours. He had been hired as a graphic designer and asked to start at eight in the morning because XYZ is a by-the-book shop. Sure enough, Mark shows up on day one right on time He meets some key staff, fills out all the forms you have to fill out on the first day on a job, and then around 1:05 he goes out to lunch. He had a regular Wednesday lunch partner with someone at Tate & McMann*. Well, they had a nice lunch like they always do and the guy says, “Why don’t you come to work with me at Tate & McMann as a copywriter?”

They get down to specifics and Mark is offered a job (better than the one he’s got at XYZ). So he goes down to Tate & McMann meets Danny McMann*, the co-owner of that agency, and accepts the offer at about three in the afternoon.

But he couldn’t resist picking up the phone. He’s still up at Tate & McMann and he dials XYZ and asks for personnel. He says, “My name is Mark Lewin. I was working for you this morning. I worked for you for approximately five and a half hours.” And the woman on the other side says, “Yes, what can I do for you?”

Mark says, “I just wanted to know, have I accumulated any vacation time? I know I’ve only been working at XYZ for five and a half hours, but if there’s any vacation money due me I wish you’d send it to me in care of Tate & McMann.”

Once upon a time, I worked at Tate & McMann. The agency was like a school, except all the kids seemed to be crazy. It was my first real job in advertising. I mean my first legitimate job. I was toiling away taking orders from the big bosses and spending my days on the phone trying to get magazine editors and writers to place my client's news releases. I spent a lot of time on hold getting cauliflower ears waiting for my pitch to start.

I found that the whole place was filled with young guys who suddenly discovered that somebody was going to pay them a lot of money for doing these things called advertising and public relations, and all of us got caught up in the insanity of it and went crazy. A whole group of people slowly went out of their skulls.

I did too.

I mean I put a hockey puck through a plate glass window once...and got promoted for my efforts!

This was my initiation into the world of promotion.

Joy Miller* is an unusual lady. She's extremely demure and a very good creative director. One day I was working with her on some of the first ads I had ever collaborated on. We’re grinding away and her phone rang. In addition to unusual, Joy is a picture of intensity person when she’s working and she keeps working, ignoring the phone. Minutes pass. The phone is still ringing. Five, six cycles of ringing. I looked nervously at the phone, perhaps my brow dropped a bit of sweat, but since I was new I deduce that maybe Joy likes a phone to ring for incessantly before she picks it up. It’s still ringing and she still doesn’t answer it but I can see she’s getting more irritated by the second. It's building up to an explosion. Finally she picks up one of those heavy duty X-ACTO knives and she stabs the phone. Not simply cut the wire or something simple like that. I mean she cut right through it, right from the handpiece all the way through the the bottom of the phone. “That should hold it,” she said.

I looked at her and then I said, “I think I hear my phone ringing, be right back.” I didn’t come back for a few days (hey I was young!) until the commotion settled down and I knew my copy was solid (if not brilliant). Years later, I still see Joy and we have a chuckle about it, along with a good cigar. How many people stab their phones? She didn’t joke around with it, either, I mean she wanted to kill that phone. The funny thing is that even after she stabbed it, it still rang. Joy was much calmer after that little incident.

We had another art director at Tate & McMann, named Phil Silverstein*. In the middle of a brainstorming/strategy meeting, Phil decided to leave his wife. His conversation at home went something like this:

Phil: “I’m leaving you. I have a girlfriend.”  

His wife: “How can you do this to me?”  

Phil: "I told you, I have a girlfriend.” 

His wife: “Why me, why Phil why?” 

Phil: “I'll stay but what’s wrong with having a girlfriend? All the other guys at the agency have girlfriends. Why can’t I have one too?”

His wife decided to go after all the men at the agency, regardless if they were married or not. She got into Phil's smartphone backup and restored his contacts to an older phone. She crafted a plan to call all of the wives and girlfriends on his team to tell them that all of us were cheating. Then Phil informed us that she decided not to make the phone calls, but instead she was planning to go all Lorena Bobbitt on us. That when we all got nervous and searched for a good place to hide if she showed up. In dark recesses of the darkroom in the creative department there was a closet with a false wall that no one knew about except Joy and me. I struck a deal with Joy that if we ever heard his wife screaming on the floor she would shepherd me to the closet and stay there until the storm ended. Every man for himself in this situation. You probably think I am joking, but her voicemail was methodically crystal clear: “I’m going to go up and get all you cheating motherf**kers.”

There are a couple of classic stories involving destructive employees. There is a fantastically insane copywriter named Vic*. During a client lunch at the end of the three-martini era, Vic decided that six martinis was the right limit. He came back feeling depressed about everything (except the client he offended with his filthy mouth). After visiting all of us with offices, he decided to quit the ad world and started tearing up his office...throwing picture frames and printers, tossing a computer monitor into the hallway, breaking the chair. His plan to resign was not to craft a short and sweet letter to HR, but rather to destroy everything in his path.

The only thing he had left to handle was his desk. He ripped his blinds off, opened his window and tried to get his monolith of a desk up and out of the window. By now, all of the noise vibrating from his office attracted the admin staff who rushed his door trying to stop the madness as his desk was teetering in the window pane.

For years people would speak about the legendary Vic desk incident. Myth or reality. I ran into him a few years back at an American Marketing Association event and asked him about the validity of the story. He said, “one hundred per cent it's true, but it was only on the alley side side of the building.” I mean, how can you help but low a guy that realizes that if his desk goes out on the street side it causes problems and potential death, but it’s alright on the alley side? That’s a nutty, yet rational man.

I wouldn’t want to give the impression that all of us creatives are out of our minds. Really, I only know of one stabbing that ever took place, besides the phone incident, of course.

A photographer named Maggie* once got into a heated argument with our account executive over an ad, so she calmly stabbed the AE with her high-end fountain pen. Yes, there was blood and agonizing moans, but the AE only needed eight stitches and he lived. The agency had to punish Maggie, so their solution was to send her to Hawaii to photograph a new resort client we had. I ran into the AE in Hollywood, reeking of pot and looking manic. He was carrying his cashmere coat over one arm and his Shinola briefcase in the other. He had a weeklong growth of beard and called me Dan throughout our brief catch-up.

On the whole, there’s not that much violence....to be continued...

*-Names are changed to protect the guilty.