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Teachers Wanted – by Harris Davis

Friday, June 4, 2010

Note From Erik: I met Harris Davis during a January screening of “Lemonade” in NYC and we instantly connected. He believes there’s a place for ethics and integrity in advertising as well as advertising schools. So do I. What do you think?

——

Back in November 2003 in NYC, an art director friend of mine found himself unemployed. With no compelling full-time or freelance prospects, he tried his hand at teaching advertising in a local university. The money sucked, but it was steady sucky money. And it was technically an ad gig.

Cut to three years later. He had become a wildly popular teacher with the students.  Killer portfolio pieces were coming out of his classes and several of his students landed great jobs after graduating. And, most important, he loved teaching. A lot. He even volunteered his own time to run an extra-curricular concepting class at night for his graduating students, which he recruited me to help teach.

After just one class session, I was totally hooked on this teaching thing. By the end of the 6-week class, we decided to start our own ad school. It was our lemonade moment. Now in its second year, The Mission unites our passion for nurturing creative talent with our personal values of social responsibility. You could call it an ad school with a conscience—the first of its kind.

So back to teaching, and the point of this piece. If you are in advertising but find yourself out of work (fairly likely if you’re reading this blog), or maybe just checked out of work, teaching can be a wonderful remedy. I’ll explain:

You get to play creative director.

Teaching allows me to do something that I’m rarely in a position to do at work, even though I’m more than capable. For two hours a night, one night a week, I get to spend quality time with creatives, review their work, discuss the thinking behind it and provide direction. I would never rely on an agency job to afford me that kind of professional development and experience, even if I was a creative director already.

You choose the assignments.

Unless you run your own agency or have your own clients, you don’t have much say in what you work on. Teaching lets you assign projects that you think will benefit the students most. And you can pick something new every week, every two weeks, or whatever you think is appropriate. The assignments I give are ones that I think my students will genuinely give a shit about and will enjoy doing the research and concepting for. Their passion for the project is usually pretty evident in the quality and range of the ideas they bring to class.

You write the briefs.

How many times have you gotten a brief from an account exec that is (a) a novel and (b) a novel written explicitly for client approval rather than a thumbs up from the creative department. As a teacher, not only do you choose what the students work on, but you author the briefs. We provide our teachers with a template to help them keep their briefs clear, insightful, thought-provoking and, um, brief.

You’re exposed to great ideas. Lots of ‘em.

With the ridiculously tight timing, silo’d work environments and rampant “just get it out the door” mentalities of most agencies, you rarely walk into a conference room and see 20 to 30 compelling, well-thought-out ideas tacked to the walls—pitches being the exception. Teaching gives you an opportunity to be literally immersed in great ideas dreamed up by eager creatives in a collaborative spirit. Their work might even inspire you the next time you sit down alone in your cube and put pen to paper.

You get excited about the business again.

Only a handful of agencies make you genuinely excited to show up every day. I never worked at one. And as a result, I constantly questioned my career choice and struggled to be as excited about being in advertising as when I first got into it over a decade ago. Teaching delivers on that much needed confirmation that, yes, you truly love this business—crap deadlines, hack bosses, uncourageous clients and all.

You get paid.

It’s not exactly your day rate, but considering the nature of the job (see all points above)—and the fact that it might be your only job—it’s a pretty damn good way to earn some scratch.

__________________

Harris Davis and Jeff Cooper are the co-founders of The Mission. They are actively recruiting teachers in NYC and other major cities. If you’re interested in teaching or taking a class, check out themissionnyc.com for more info and give them a shout.

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The Short Attention Span Career – by Brad

Thursday, June 3, 2010

I was in a meeting this week and someone asked me how long did I work for my first agency.

“Eight years,” I said.

Everyone looked up.

Judging by the expressions around the conference table, you would’ve thought I was the 2,000-year-old man.

(with a Mel Brooks old man accent): Let me tell you about 1999! Oy! The black sketch books we carried around! People listened to music on CDs! Oh boy, were they shiny! You would stack them on your desk like waffles! We didn’t know any better!

Eight years in advertising is an eternity. My next job lasted two. As a freelancer, I now count work cycles in weeks. Sometimes, in days. I guess the next logical step would be to work at a place for eight hours before moving on somewhere else.

Longevity used to be celebrated. End of year holiday parties would call out people who worked at an agency for 10, 20, 30, 40(!) years. It’s one thing to read a book by David Ogilvy. It’s another to have actually reported to him.

Ad people like to move around. We all know that many agencies don’t do much to encourage longevity any more. There’s kind of a natural flow of hirings and layoffs to keep agency culture fluid. This is not necessarily a bad thing until you realize that no one at in your department knows anyone above a certain level on the org chart, or where the damn toner cartridge is.

I once read that people under 40 in today’s workforce will change careers seven to eight times in their lifetime. I’m starting to see why.

They aren’t given much of a choice.

Unless they don’t want to eat.

Brad Mislow is a regular contributor for this site and an irregular person overall. If you see him, say hello.

Filed in Survival, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

Economic Rope-a-dope

Thursday, May 27, 2010

You can’t win, economy.

The more you swing, the stronger I get.

Biding my time.

Waiting until I can barely feel your jabs.

And your body blows feel like pixie taps.

Are you ready?

‘Cause here it comes.

You may be up in points.

But it’s a 12-round fight.

And I’m about to knock your ass out.

Filed in Gentle Nudging, Survival | | Comments (3)

There Is No Lemonade – by Aaron Templer

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Ever hear the Hindu story about the tree that grants wishes? It’s a good one.

An uncle tells a group of kids that a banyan tree will grant any wish that they desire. They rush outside to the tree and excitedly make their wishes. But unexpectedly they find that the tree also gives a wish’s opposite. With candy comes stomachaches. With toys, boredom.

Hopelessly focused on end results – fruits of actions – the kids try to solve their dilemma by asking for bigger toys and sweeter candy. The opposite continues to follow: more boredom and stronger stomachaches.

As the kids get older they ask for wealth, power, money, fame. They get these things along with greed, insomnia, paranoia, anxiety. Some are convinced they aren’t wishing smart enough and keep trying. Some become frustrated and wish for death to end it all, only to be granted the opposite: rebirth, under the same tree, with the same level of awareness.

To some, this story is just an athletic way to say “be careful what you wish for” (who knows? maybe it’s the fountainhead for that saying). But I think it’s more sophisticated than that. For me, it’s a reminder that turning lemons to lemonade is a process. It rarely (if ever) has a well-defined end.

Long before creating our dual-independent life, my wife and I made many choices that set us up to live the life we strive for today. (My wife is the driver of this, by the way. Without her I’d live in a van down by the river. Forever adjusting my pants, barking about what you need to do to make a meaningful life.)

But without a doubt the most important part of our process is dedicating ourselves, everyday, to avoid the temptation of focusing on some kind of end result. We’re simply happiest when we aren’t focused on the fruits at all.

Not that there aren’t pragmatic, rational things that you need to deal with. There are. Savings, cost-cutting, spending discipline, life insurance. But they make the process possible. It’s the picking of lemons when you don’t feel like it. Getting up everyday to mix it. Sticking to the pure sugar when the bad stuff is more convenient.

I bring this up because for all the talk of changing the world by focusing on the passion you have within you, it’s all too tempting to focus on some kind of endless search for a result. If you work toward a rigid idea of a big payoff, the payoff will inevitably come in a different form than what you had in mind. You’ll be disappointed, and the cycle carries on. And on. And on.

The self-guided professionals I admire get up every day to pursue something in line with their own conscious, ignoring the pull from the fruits to the best of their ability. Lives that are simply led. Giving not back, but along the way instead.

Every now and then – especially when you’re starting – temptations arise that pull you away from a productive focus. Like when you see someone in your industry bullshitting and getting paid for it. How does that idiot make money and I’m scraping this month? How does that blowhard get the speaking gig and I’m stuck on the sidelines?

It’s a toxic focus on an end result – money, fame, position of authority. Recognizing that it’s all a process, my wife and I often help each other pull back from the temptation to judge, be jealous, and draw connections to what we’re doing wrong. If you decide to follow your passion and go it alone, you’ve got to — got to — find someone to help you expel that toxin from your system and bring you back to your idea of success. I’m not much of a sharey-emotionally kind of guy to be giving this advice (just ask my wife), but I don’t think you can do this part alone. I know I couldn’t.

Here’s another temptation that can derail you from focusing on the right things: Jealous people who try to strip you of your power. Anyone who’s gone it alone has experienced this. If you decide to unplug from the matrix, I’m warning you now that there will be people who will find a reason — and unhesitatingly tell you about it — why it is that you’re able to unplug and they can’t.

You have a spouse. You don’t have a spouse. Your spouse works. Your spouse doesn’t work. Your kids are young. Your kids are old. You got a severance. You didn’t get a severance.

Someone I considered a friend actually told me – out loud – that I was lucky to have a Sugar Momma. Crazy. I went from disbelief, to pissed, to confused. The guy clearly chose to forget what kind of professional my wife has chosen to be. Or what our life together actually is. (Or what it means to be a supportive friend for that matter.)

Support for a solo endeavor is a sophisticated thing. It flows in and out of relationships. Your partner might provide more support in one form or another at a particular point in time, but you’re sacrificing in other ways. (If you aren’t, you better. Fast.)

My wife and I sacrifice for a pretty simple notion of success. We went to the zoo together on a Tuesday once. Once we worked remotely together at my in-laws house for a day, and spent the night. And now that we’ve put skiing back in our life after cutting it as an unnecessary expense during cash-strapped startup time, we figured out that of all our ski days this year exactly zero were on a weekend. We followed the snow, not the prescribed days of the week.

Skiing provides another metaphor of our life together. My wife skis well. Really well. She has a passion for it, developed after years of coming to Colorado on vacation when she was a kid in the Midwest. When it came time to find a home after law school, she uprooted with little network support, took the Colorado bar, and set out to make a life for herself in an environment that provided her so many meaningful relationships. And also so she could ski.

She truly followed her heart. When I go skiing with her, I feel like I’m along for the ride. I almost get more joy from watching her do her thing during our days together on the slopes than I do from skiing itself.

This focus on the path and not the destination? Avoiding the wishing tree? It’s a bump run for me. It doesn’t come naturally. I try, and keep trying. And I experience moments of relative success here and there. But I probably would never have been aware of the run, how to get there, or how to prepare before hitting it if it wasn’t for my wife. She keeps me going in the proper direction.

There’s a Sugar Mamma for ya’. More like a Champagne Powder Mama.

Focusing on the money part of the equation also ignores the other, often more difficult and draining aspects of support that the people in your life will give you. Whatever kind financial support my wife has given me, sharing a paycheck will never test her resolve to the degree that my behavior and emotional bullshit does.

The courage to follow our passion and avoiding the temptation of the wishing tree comes in the form of discarding the Jones’s idea of success and never letting anyone strip us of the strength it took to do it in the first place.

And the more I learn to accept the gift that is my wife, the happier we both are.

It’s a process. Every moment of every day. Sometimes I go to the tree and wish for things. It’s inevitable. When I’m strong enough to seek support, I pull back and focus on what’s in front of me.

Because that’s all there ever is: What’s in front of us. There is no end. The means are all.

The banyan tree story ends with a kid who was disabled and couldn’t go outside to the wishing tree with his friends. He observed their behavior from afar. Pained to watch his friends in their doomed loop, he said that if he were under the tree he would wish that his friends would see the errors of their ways. That they’d understand that fruits of end-results only cause more pain and lead nowhere.

He gained Moksha from this, of course, and became one with the universe. An end result that can only be gained by not focusing on it at all.

____________

Aaron Templer (AT) mashes up leadership with strategy, branding and integrated marketing for clients in search of the why. aarontempler.com

Filed in Guest Post, Kum Ba Yah, Lemonade | | Comments (9)

To Be Or To Do? That Is the Question.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

When we were kids we said, “When I grow up, I want to BE a _____.”

Now that we’re adults, we ask, “What do you DO for work?”

What happened between the ages of 8 and 30 that we stopped wanting to “be” something and started “doing” work?

Be implies self. Be is who we are. Do is just a way to pass the time for money.

We would all be happier, healthier, and yes, more financially successful if we pursued what we wanted to be instead of just something to do.

Watch this astounding TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson about a revolution in learning. It has everything to do with staying true to what you wanted to be when you were a kid.

Filed in Entrepreneurism, Gentle Nudging, Pontifurbation | | Comments (3)

Monday Morning Walk – by Greg Knoff

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Note from Erik: This guest post was originally submitted on April 23rd…which will be relevant in the next sentence.

Today, April 23rd, is my fifth wedding anniversary with the most beautiful woman who ever walked the face of the earth. But that’s a different story.

I also find myself in the same position I found myself last April — Laid off.

“We have eliminated your position” was what I was told yesterday. Difference this time is that I was totally blindsided, whereas last year’s “position elimination” was a planned event due to an office closing. As far as I can tell, this one’s a case of the old accounting principle named LIFO.

Last In First Out. At least that’s what I’ll say to make myself feel better.

One other life changing event took place yesterday morning as well. My wife and I finally put ourselves in the position to put an offer on our dream house. Our first house at the age of 38.  It only took hours to get a counter offer that would have led to our planned purchase price.  So we called our broker and now we are backing out. And we also cancelled our anniversary weekend getaway to Lenox, MA.

It feels as if the last year never happened and we’re in the same position now as we were a year ago. Uncertain, scared, mad, feeling inadequate and devastated.  Except for this time it’s flushed our home buying dreams and transition out of the city and into the burbs down the toilet….at least for now.

While I will wallow in my own despair for a bit, it’s time to draw back on the lessons I was raised on.  Hard work, honesty and perseverance…so for now I’ll feel bad, go to bed and start the next day more positive than the day before.

Next.

A very wise man (my father) once told me that “adversity introduces a man to himself.” So I will take the same pensive walk to the unemployment office in Boston that I took almost a year ago to the day, trying to embrace the experience and learn from it. But for a few reasons mentioned above this one will be different. I’ll fill out the necessary forms walking away with my packet pondering what’s next. I’d like to think what’s next will be better than what has been.

One thing I do know is that my wife and I will spend the weekend together in our Boston apartment sharing quality time with each other.  Then I’ll take that walk on Monday morning.

____________

Greg Knoff is a two-time out-of-work account guy with 13 years of experience. He can be found here on LinkedIn, or you can see what he does while out of work at gtknoff.com

Filed in Guest Post, Layoffs, Uncategorized | | Comments (2)

Any Good Evolution Takes Time

Monday, May 24, 2010

I want to do something meaningful like Clark Moss, who got axed from his job as an executive creative director and started his own social-responsibility business.

I want to be at peace like Jonathan Fields, who left his big time Wall St. lawyer gig, became a yogi, then became a small business consultant.

I want to create doodads of hope. Blogs and books and films and speaking engagements that tell stories of people who inspire me.

I want my success story to be about telling other people’s success stories.These people motivate the hell out of me, as they should you.

It’s not altruistic. I’d like to get paid for doing this. Something in the six figure range would be nice. Maybe seven some day.

Problem is, I want it now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now. And I get frustrated when the progress isn’t as instant as I hoped it would be.

But there’s a process for a reason. Back at the Creative Circus, I was hell-bent on graduating ahead of schedule. So I worked my ass off, skipped ahead a couple of quarters, and graduated in a year and a half instead of the requisite two.

Hindsight, though, tells me I could have used those couple of extra quarters to polish and reconcept and tighten and rewrite my book from merely above average to the top 1%. I would have strengthened my relationships, broadened my network, and gotten a better job upon graduation. (Although, I loved my first post-Circus agency. May have been the best advertising gig of my career.)

But I didn’t. My impatience got the better of me. I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. There was no enjoying the journey. No accepting the lessons of the day.

But there is a lesson for me now. And that is, simply, to breathe. Accept this process. Embrace the mistakes. Know that I am on a path, and that what I think is my point B — the metamorphosis into a successful filmmaker/author/blogger/speaker — is really point Z.

As Johnny B. Truant says, “There’s always a lag between envisioning a goal and getting it.”

Watch this Honda Film about failure. It had a huge influence on “Lemonade,” both philosophically and filmically. And it continues to teach me appreciation for the hard-learned lessons along the way.

Filed in Entrepreneurism, Gentle Nudging, Pontifurbation | | Comments (16)

“Lemonade” Cube Grenade

Friday, May 21, 2010

There’s a fantastic community of people out there who get off on helping others overcome their bullshit excuses for complacency. One of the best is Hugh MacLeod, the always genius and often surly cartoonist, author, and blogger behind GapingVoid.

Like me, Hugh once worked in advertising. Unlike me, he’s figured out how to fully commit to his art, no longer straddling between the two worlds.

I woke up yesterday to this message on Twitter. Turns out, Hugh created the above Cube Grenade in my honor. (For the definition of a “Cube Grenade,” click here.) He often does these for private commission, so to say I’m flattered is an understatement.

But the truth is, he’s always giving away his art. He’s one of the few entrepreneurs who fully embrace that you get by giving. And not just philosophically, but in real, financial terms. By giving freely of his work, he’s established his brand. People know him now. And he gets hired to do more of it.

I have much to learn from him.

Filed in Entrepreneurism, Ideas, Karma, Lemonade, Shameless We-Promo | | Comments (3)

Pop!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I’m a sucker for meaningless milestones, and believe it or not we are experiencing one right now. Seeing that we’re approaching the summer of 2010, that means we’ve hit the 10-year-mark of the bursting of the dot com bubble.

Let’s take a trip through time, shall we?

It’s spring/summer 2000. The NASDAQ is hitting the 5,000 mark. The print (chuckle…) magazine the Industry Standard is as thick as a phone book and practically bursting with ads for start-ups – all of which are as graphically confusing as their company’s business models. AOL and Time Warner just completed the “merger of the century.” Everyone has a Motorola Star-Tac cell phone and uses them for phone calls (really!). If you worked in advertising then, you were working on at least one goofy dot com account (most likely doing traditional advertising for them, ironically) that acted as if they had more VC money than BP, pre-spill. You sat through PowerPoint presentations in their downtown offices staffed with private chefs and furnished with billiard tables, table tennis, foosball and some archaic video game from the 80s. Every presentation showed how the company was going to “change the way we _____ ______”, and was followed by a slide of future profit projections represented by an arrow, pointing ever-upward.

Didn’t exactly turn out that way, did it, class?

For us in the ad biz, 2000 was the beginning a long process of downsizing and constriction, leading up to today. Agencies began to shrink. Layoffs began. Expense and production budgets were slashed. Then came 9/11 and things got worse. The housing bubble that excited most of America didn’t reverse the downward spirial of traditional advertising agencies. Years of steady decline continued with the rise of digital media. Then came 2008, and the rest is history.

The immediate aftermath of the 2000 crash was quite a shock. First of all, our sugar daddy dot com clients disappeared. No more hanging out in hip downtown lofts. No more lavish dinners/bar tabs on the company dime. However, if you wanted a deal on used ping-pong tables or Aeron chairs, just name your price. Second, people who left advertising, finance, law, etc., for dot com glory and riches soon returned to advertising, finance, law, etc. They were somewhat humbled that they had to return to Career Path Plan A in order to make a living like normal folk. Lastly, creativity in advertising took a hit. Creatives had the run of the land in the dot com boom in 1995-2000. Don’t believe me? Look up TV spots of that era for outpost.com (hamsters shot out of a cannon), pets.com (a fucking talking sock!), the initial yahoo ads (talking dolphin, especially), the initial Etrade ads (money up the wazoo)…I could go on. The point is it was a time when outrageousness was expected and demanded. These companies needed the attention of consumers and investors alike, and you didn’t get it by being quiet or humble, so it was thought. After the burst, creativity took a hit and most companies wanted conservative messaging. The pendulum had swung. 9/11 made it worse. Then we had to be conservative and patriotic. Don’t question it, do it. We’re at Code Orange, for chrissakes.

Ten years after, here were are. Many of us are still in advertising, and to us those days of the dot com bubble are as distant as those from the Mad Men era. It’s a very different business now. Some say that’s the last time advertising was fun. They may be right.

What were you doing in advertising in 2000? What accounts were you working on? What was the most outrageous/excessive assignment you found yourself doing? When was the moment you said to yourself, “this is BS and is going to fall like a house of cards one day”?

Please comment. The time machine is on.

Brad Mislow is a freelance senior copywriter who’s worked on…oh I think you know me by now.

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This Life Is Under Construction, Please Check Back Later

Monday, May 17, 2010

It was a tough decision to write this post.

I’m someone who believes that when you think and act positively and with hope, those things come back to you. Likewise, the converse is true. We all know people with a cloud of doom over their heads. They expect their lives to suck so their lives suck so they expect their lives to suck so their lives suck so they expect their lives to suck…etc.

I choose to be the opposite of that. I try to write about good stuff. People who have succeeded. Stories of adversity overcome. I don’t want to invite defeat into my life, nor into yours. So when things get rocky for me personally, I see no need to report on it. Unless if, by doing so, it helps you in some way.

This is one of those times.

As you know, I’ve spent the past year encouraging people to get off their asses and take risks. This blog, “Lemonade,” talks I’ve given, the book I’m writing…they are all in an effort to both preach the values I believe and be a living example of them. But my biggest fear is that I will be the cobbler with shoeless kids. That at the end of the day, it will all be a bunch of smoke.

So here is an honest breakdown of both the hopes and challenges I face. Not because I believe in what I’m doing with less conviction. But to reinforce how important that conviction is, especially in difficult and trying times.

The Challenges:

  1. Seeing more than two feet in front of me: Every month is a fire drill. Will we have the mortgage? Can we afford health insurance? How are we paying for my son’s karate lessons? We’re even applying for Obama’s federal mortgage restructuring program in the hopes that we’ll be able to keep our home.
  2. Debt: Every time I travel to do a screening, my expenses are reimbursed. But by the time I see those checks, new expenses crop up. And interest accrues. It’s a frustrating game of catch up that I haven’t experienced since I was in my 20s.
  3. Family stress: My daughter is a four year old social extrovert who needs other children to play with. Problem is, extended preschool costs $5k/year, which we can’t afford. So my wife plays countless games of “I Can Do That!” and Chutes & Ladders. Every. Single. Day. That’s not healthy for anybody.
  4. Personal stress: Think I like denying my kids the preschool they need? Think it’s easy for me chastise Wall St. for taking bailout money on one side of my mouth and then apply for it on the other? Think I like hearing my wife tell me she’s afraid to open the bank statements? I lose sleep over these things every night.

Why It’s Worth It:

  1. “Lemonade” and PFTA are making a profound difference in people’s lives: Emails like this, comments like this, and tweets like this make me feel like the message isn’t falling on deaf ears.
  2. The Carrots Are Getting Closer: I have a literary agent from ICM who believes in the book. We’ve been going back and forth on the proposal for months and are getting really close to unleashing it on publishers.
  3. We’re close to having “Lemonade” air on TV, potentially exposing it to tens of millions of households around the world
  4. We cancelled our cable television, home telephone, and YMCA memberships. This is under “Worth It” because they are un-necessities we should have gotten rid of a long time ago.
  5. There is gaining momentum for “Lemonade, Detroit”: The talent working on it is ridiculous. The city is opening its arms to a film that wants to uncover the good instead of sensationalizing the bad. Two of my favorite ad agencies in the world have contacted me about doing the advertising, marketing and promotions for it. And I am in discussions with a couple of different brands to underwrite the whole project.

So that brings me to you. As I said, I typically wouldn’t unload on readers like this. But I think it’s important for you to see that I am committed. And if you’re going through a difficult time while trying to do something new and important and challenging, it’s probably difficult precisely because of how important it is. Plus, you can take some solace in the fact that you’re not alone.

So, please, keep at it. And I will, too.

Filed in Detroit, Entrepreneurism, Gentle Nudging, Kvetches, Lemonade | | Comments (22)