Send fries in lieu of flowers

Michael James Delligatti deserved more.

He is after all the man who invented a uniquely American culinary icon. Made literally billions for the company he worked with and for. And his invention was a very happy meal indeed.

Delligatti should've died last week at the age of 98 (maybe Big Macs aren't so bad for you) with an estate worth billions to leave his heirs. But all he got from McDonald's for his creation that's responsible for over 25% of their profits is a plaque.

Some people might argue that's more than Moe Green got (Godfather reference, look it up). But for my McMoney, it wasn't enough.

Delligatti was a franchisee who told McDonald's they should offer a double-patty burger. McDonald's, having the foresight and keen intuition for trends that they demonstrate even to this day, told him no. So, as the NY Times said, Delligatti went rogue. He ordered a larger, sesame-seed bun from a local baker, split it in three and made his own double-patty burger.

To everyone's surprise but his, sales skyrocketed. Funny thing. Once that happened, suddenly McDonald's was interested in offering what later became the Big Mac.

There seems to be a tradition of companies who make money off of these innovative ideas by screwing the people who come up with them.

One of the more famous instances was Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who created a little character with a red cape you might've heard of - Superman. There were a slew of lawsuits, settlements and more lawsuits with the two families about ownership, and they still continue to this day (too much to go into here, but if you want to read more about it you'll find it here).

Ronald Wayne, the third founder of Apple along with Jobs and Wozniak. Wayne quit a few days into the partnership, scared the boys didn't know what they were doing and he'd be on the hook financially. If he'd held onto his stock, which he sold for $800, it would've been worth over $32 billion today. He took himself out of the equation, but still it would've been good karma for Jobs to reward him with a stipend for getting the company on its feet.

Philo T. Farnsworth, the farm boy who actually invented television at fourteen-years old and got screwed out of the patent by RCA.

John Walker, inventor of the self-igniting friction sticks, or as we call them in my country, matches.

How about Gary Kildall, inventor of the operating system you're probably using a version of right now. He got royally hosed by a nerdy billionaire from Seattle who usually gets the credit.

Of course, there's a saying my therapist taught me. I know what you're saying to yourself "But Jeff, you seem so well-adjusted, why would you have a therapist?" You have no idea.

Anyway, what she always says is there are no victims, only volunteers.

Many of these people didn't patent their ideas in spite of being urged to. Or some signed a contract without reading it. However they lost hold of their brain work, it seems ashame they weren't able to benefit from the rewards of it.

Even if a company owned their ideas fair and square, there's more than enough money to go around. Giving the creators some of it just seems like the right thing to do. Although I realize we're living in a post right-thing-to-do era.

Anyway, rest in peace Mr. Delligatti. I've enjoyed your creation many times over the years, and still indulge the occasional craving for it. Only now I take out the middle slice of bread.

It's a lot healthier that way.

Into the fryer

I was reading an article about how minimum wage employees at McDonald's are going to go after the company because they occasionally get themselves burned on the job. Seems to me if you're working with hot grills, fryers full of hot oil and flames, getting burned just might be an occupational hazard.

Still, it's no fun. I know from experience.

The first job I ever had was at Fisher's Hamburgers at the Town and Country Shopping Center, across from Farmer's Market on 3rd and Fairfax. At the time, Fisher's was one of L.A.'s renowned hamburger places, often mentioned in the same revered breath by burger lovers as Tommy's, Cassell's, Dolores' and The Apple Pan. I'd eaten at Fisher's for years with my parents, and liked it so much I decided I wanted to work there. Displaying an unusual amount of moxie for a kid as young as I was at the time, I went in one day, walked right up to the owner - a man named Howard Shear - and asked if I could have a job. To my everlasting surprise, he gave me one.

I won't go into dates and ages, because that's on a need-to-know basis. And you don't need to know. Let's just say I could only dream of making the minimum wage McDonald's employees get today.

I learned all the details of how the restaurant worked. I made tartar sauce and thousand island dressing (not together) in vats in back that were so big we stirred them with our arms. Still not sure how the health department let that one get by. I also learned how to work all the stations at Fisher's: the register, the grill, the soda fountain, and the french fries.

The fryers were like the ones in the picture - big vats of oil heated to 400 degrees. The way you made fries was by putting raw, sliced potatoes in the basket, lowering it into the oil, and setting the timer for a couple minutes. When the fries were ready, you'd lift the basket out by the handle and shake the excess oil off the fries. In that process, lots of fries fell into the oil. Because of that, the fryers had to be cleaned many times during the course of the day.

The way you cleaned the fries out was by running a strainer over the top of the oil and scooping them up.

One day, I was cleaning the fryer and the handle on the strainer was a little greasy (Strainer? You strainer you brought her. Thanks, I'll be here all week). So I'm holding the greasy strainer handle, and it suddenly slips out of my hand and disappears down into the fryer. Without thinking, my cat-like reflexes kicked into action and I reached down into the boiling oil up to my elbow to grab it.

As we say in my country, not a smart move.

Everything went into slow motion. I looked down at my arm in the oil for what felt like hours, but in reality was only seconds. Next, I realized I could feel it burning and yanked it out (with the strainer in hand - mission accomplished). I dropped the strainer, and made a beeline to the ice machine by the soda fountain and rammed my red, right arm into the ice. To this day, I can hear the sizzling of the ice on my hot skin.

Fortunately, I'd gotten there fast enough. The ice took the burn away, and I had no scarring. Other than the emotional kind for doing something so stupid.

But the most important thing is I learned a valuable lesson I still use to this very day.

Don't go asking for jobs if you don't really need one.

Both sides now

When you work in the insurance business, you don't get to have an opinion about whether the claim form is filled out correctly - it either is or it isn't. If you're fixing cars, no one's looking for an opinion about the intricacies and meaning of the repair - it's either fixed or it's not. In the case of the Saab 900 I used to own, it was not. Whole other story.

In advertising, the lines are more blurred when it comes to the work. There's room for opinions. And, as anyone on the creative side of the business will tell you, everyone has one.

One of the unspoken agreements when you work at an agency is the expectation you're going to be a company man, an advocate of the work regardless of its merits, good or bad, subtle or crass, exploitative or not. And if you're a stakeholder in the work - a writer, art director or producer - the agreement isn't that unspoken. Of course you're going to defend your work.

Here's the thing though. If you're going to work in this business, you have to put on your big boy pants and realize that there are going to be lots of opinions about the work, and they're not all going to agree with yours.

Case in point: the recent McDonald's "Signs" commercial. I already told you what I think of it here. Over 20 years ago I worked on McDonald's, but their advertising has changed several times over the years. And the fact that I got paid to work on it a very long time ago didn't buy them a promise I'd love everything they do forever and ever.

No one sets out to do a crass, exploitative, manipulative, cynical spot on purpose. At least I hope they don't. But even if you're a stakeholder, you have to realize the world is not having their checks signed by the same people you are. There'll be different opinions.

It's the price of admission to work in this business.

So it really comes down to two choices. You can let opinions that don't agree with yours roll off your back.

Or you can gear up and spend a lot of energy fighting each and every one like they're a kitchen grease fire that needs to be put out.

Which would be a complete waste of time. Not unlike that McDonald's spot.

I'm hatin' it

There really are so few things that offend me in advertising. In fact, for the most part, I usually feel the same way about it that I do about free speech and comedy material - everything's fair game.

But even though they're sometimes hard to see, the lines are there. And McDonald's, in my opinion, has crossed one with this commercial.

I recognize the neighborhood McDonald's is just that: a member of the community, and a business that wants to support it. And to that end, I think there's nothing wrong with posting messages on their reader boards about what's going on in their town, their state or the world.

But when they make a manipulative (Carry On as the soundtrack? Subtle.), crass commercial exploiting genuine tragedy in the world, it's offensive. How many minutes away are we from the spot with the Je susis Charlie sign?

It might get a pass if it were genuinely in service of the greater good. But, let's not kid ourselves or let them kid us. They're doing it to sell their cereal-filled, heart-attack inducing, greasy little burgers.

McDonald's, with it's menu of over a hundred items and rapidly declining sales, lost it's way a long time ago.

Too bad they don't have an agency that can help them find their way back.

Where credit's due

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Nowhere is that truer than in advertising.

When a campaign or an individual spot happens to hit big - locally, regionally and especially nationally - it seems everyone who was in the building, in one meeting, used to work on the business or walked by the conference room while it was being presented is ready to jump on the credit bandwagon.

The industry is lousy with examples of it: VW. Joe Isuzu. Apple. Nike. FedEx. Nissan. The list goes on and on. And on.

In the late 80's, there was a McDonald's campaign called Mac Tonight. It sprang from a local promotion by an operator's group for dinner at McDonald's. It was created by my friend and former art director partner Jim Benedict before we worked together.

Under the agency leadership of Brad Ball and Mark Davis, Jim was given the freedom and support to create a genuinely unique, fun and memorable spot for a client who wasn't particularly known for taking risks. With Jim's vision of a quarter moon leading man, and parody lyrics to Bobby Darin's "Mac The Knife", the spot took off in a way no one saw coming.

Wildly popular, McDonald's picked up the promotion nationally and suddenly it was everywhere.

What happened next was sadly familiar.

The executive creative director at the time (who has since long gone) started giving national press interviews about how he came up with the concept - some bullshit about how he was looking at the moon one night and it just came to him. Jim started getting assigned to other, less visible accounts. And his name was mysteriously absent from both the interviews and award show entries (and the spot won many awards).

To no one's surprise, McDonald's wanted to pool out the character and did in other, lesser spots created by the people who claimed they'd done the original.

To their own credit, the agency leadership was always honorable about rightfully giving the credit to Jim.

But, creatively speaking, low people in high places are a devious mix. If you've worked for one - and eventually we all do - I'm sure you have war stories of your own to tell.

Jim eventually became a creative director at McCann, where he continued to take on the challenge of doing outstandingly creative work for clients that had reputations for being resistant to it (I'm looking at you Nestlé). He died in 1994.

The agency, even in its current incarnation, still displays the spot on its website. And it should. It continues to be a great success story.

For them, and for Jim.