A Note From A Friend

For all my whining and complaining, I have to admit that I've met some of my favorite people in the world in advertising. I have received a lot of very nice messages since I announced I was leaving my agency last week. This is one of my favorites. It makes me proud. It came from Jason Headley, a great writer -- I mean a real writer, as in novels, essays and screenplays -- director, and terrific person. I asked him if I could publish it and he agreed, Here it is.

Bob,

For a guy who had all of his emotions removed in 1997, I had an oddly emotional reaction to reading this. Apparently, I'm going to have to go in for a clean up.

I know I've told you this story once before, but it's worth putting in writing. When I first moved to California with nothing more than a science degree, a guitar, and a dream, I answered a newspaper ad that said, "Sales & Marketing Position: No Experience Necessary." Certain I was still somehow under-qualified, I called. The next day I was driving around the city with a guy who was a door-to-door liar. He had a bunch of shitty art prints in the trunk of his car (the kind that have a giant, white border around them with "Picasso" or whatever written at the bottom). He was going into random offices and telling people that they were leftover from a remodel down the street, that they'd ended up with too many prints and his boss told him to just go unload them at cost. We did this all day. It was embarrassing. I was more embarrassed when someone actually bought one. I was twenty-two and fresh off the turnip truck and I knew better.

I saw a lot of offices that day. Legal offices, dentist offices, insurance offices, just plain old run-of-the-mill office offices. Then we walked into an office that actually looked pretty lively. It was light, airy, colorful. There were young people walking around. Maybe even a pretty girl or two. While my guide for the day was trying to sell framed snake oil to your office manager, I asked the girl at the front desk, "What do you guys do here?" And she said, "We're an advertising agency."

It was Hoffman/Lewis.

I went home that night and reworked my "resume" to make it look like I knew anything about anything having remotely to do with advertising. Then I got a phone book, looked up every ad agency in the city, and got to faxing. I sent that sad slip of paper to everyone in town. Two people called me in for interviews. One place offered me a job as an Account Coordinator. The other offered me a job as the mail boy. After hearing about the details and responsibilities of each position, I chose the mail boy job. I had some dignity, after all.

But that was it. I was in advertising. And while I didn't get an offer from Hoffman/Lewis in that first go-round, I still owe/blame you to this day for my career.

Years later when I started freelancing for you guys, it was pretty special to me. And when you and Sharon offered to bring me on, it was terribly flattering. I walk in and out of a lot of different buildings in this town, but your agency was one of the few where I truly felt welcome and comfortable. As close to a home as I had. I meet a lot of people with a lot of opinions in this business, but yours was always one I respected and considered fully and completely. I always appreciated when you made my work better. I was always proud when you saw my side of things. And I always liked that we could occasionally view things differently but still view each other the same. That's a good way to go about it.

I don't know what Hoffman/Lewis will be to me now that you're leaving and Sharon's gone and Jimmy's gone. It was a great port in an often tumultuous storm out there. I will miss that.

I hope you'll still find the time for a big, boozy lunch with me now and again. If nothing else, it's a fun thing to get to put on our calendars.

Until then.

Jason

What's Everyone So Afraid Of?

I am sometimes approached by editors of advertising or media publications to write pieces for them. In the course of trying to convince me to contribute tendentious pieces to their publications (and not get paid), invariably the following sentence is uttered:

"We're so tired of all the bullshit"

Often when I attend a conference and one of those gee-whiz presentations about the latest online advertising magic is made, people will later approach me at the bar and whisper "what a bunch of bullshit." (By the way, I'm at the bar because that's where they keep the pretzels.)

One recent morning I was having coffee with a person who manages media and marketing conferences and he told me that the biggest problem he has in creating interesting programs is that every presenter wants to be the futurist guru who talks about whatever the hype-cycle miracle of the week is, and all the other speakers are too chicken to challenge.

What I want to know is, what's everybody in advertising so fucking afraid of? Why won't people say what they really think? Even after 10 years of totally erroneous "everything is dead" nonsense, are we still too timid to defend our business and stand up to these buffoons?

Why do publishers keep publishing "all the bullshit" if they're so tired of it?

Why will people only call bullshit in whispered tones in the dim confines of the hotel bar?

Why won't speakers get up and speak their minds?

There is a kind of creeping, low-grade McCarthyism in the advertising world. Everyone's afraid to challenge the loudmouths. "Thought leaders" go from conference to conference being dead-wrong, and everyone is so terrified of being thought odd or old-fashioned that they refuse to speak up.

The ad industry is becoming stinkier and stinkier. And I don't know what smells worse, the bullshit or the chicken shit.

And Now For Something Completely Different

On April 1, I will be leaving my post as chairman and ceo of Hoffman/Lewis.

After a while, being the oldest living adman on Earth loses its allure. I have recently celebrated my 40th anniversary in the agency business. It’s enough. I'm bored.

When you're young you can make excuses for being bored: you need the money, or it's only temporary, or soon you'll be moving up. At my age there's no excuse. The only explanation is laziness.

Over time, a ceo's responsibilities can become substantially ceremonial. I have no appetite or aptitude for that.

It’s time to reevaluate my professional life -- that’s fancy businessguy code for “do something different.”

I intend to continue writing and speaking and whining about advertising. Maybe do some consulting. Also, I have some new business things I’m kicking around. And I understand there’s an opening at the Vatican. I always wanted a helicopter.

But first I’m going to take some time and wander around aimlessly. It's finally an undertaking I feel I can excel at.

There aren’t too many successful second acts in adland and I’m lucky to have one. This blog and the books it has spawned have made my last six years a lot more interesting and a lot more fun (by the way, if you haven’t bought 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising I can’t guarantee your safety.)

While I’ve always tried to speak the truth on this blog, there has been a certain amount I have had to withhold. Without the livelihoods of others at stake, I now expect the blog will be what it has always been, only with a lot more f-bombs.

Also, I intend to make a few little content tweaks. From now on the blog will be written in Swedish and consist mainly of 30-minute chicken recipes.

Love always…