Not so Super

I’ll be the first to admit it. I am not by any stretch of the imagination or in any way a sports fan. I know what you’re thinking: how can someone like me who’s in peak physical condition not be into sports?

I know, it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

I do however occasionally like watching the World Series (baseball, right?) but that’s about it. Unless you count the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes because who doesn’t like horseys.

And reading the Racing Form. And placing bets.

Anyway, when Super Bowl Sunday rolls around every year, for the most part I look at it as the best day of the year to go to the movies, visit Disneyland or shop at South Coast Plaza. At least for about three and a half hours.

But because I’m in the line of work I’m in, I do have to slog through the game and watch the commercials. Including mine.

Here’s the problem: Apple set the bar for Super Bowl spots with their legendary “1984” commercial. You know, the one directed by Ridley Scott that we’re still talking about forty years later. But the downside of that spot was it got advertisers to think that just by pouring a ton of money into a spot, they’d have a memorable, entertaining Super Bowl spot that would ring up championship sales for whatever they were hawking.

Not so fast. If you watched the big game this year, you might’ve noticed there are about sixty examples that prove otherwise.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some enjoyable spots over the years. One of my favorites is this FedEx spot, which lays out in detail exactly what it takes to produce a successful Super Bowl spot. It's a low-res version, but you still get the idea.

Another is the Audi “Prom” spot. Everything about it is right—the casting, the dialog, the story, the production. They even caught lightning in a bottle with the reaction shot of the prom queen after the kiss.

The spot I liked most this year, besides mine, was actually this Disney+ commercial. Simple, engaging and not weighed down with celebrities and production value. It wasn’t forced.

I was discussing the spot with my close personal friend and blogger extraordinaire Rich Siegel, and he reminded me of the other reason I liked it so much. He said “When everyone is shouting, whisper.”

He’s right of course. Enough with the shouting.

In politics. In life. And especially in Super Bowl spots.

Don't ask: Working the weekend

This being Friday night, I started thinking about all the things I have to get done this weekend. And how I'm going to have plenty of time to do them. Know why? Cause I won't be working.

Everyone needs a philosophy to live by. I actually have a few of them, and one is if God wanted me to work on weekends he would've called those days Monday 1 and Monday 2. But he didn't, and I don't.

Anyway, there are plenty of times writing these posts feels like work. You know, the same way you feel when you read them. So since tonight is the official start of my weekend, it's pencils (keyboard) down.

In that spirit, I've opted for a re-post from my critically acclaimed, almost award-winning, fan favorite "Don't Ask" series. I think it'll be a perfectly swell start to your weekend.

Please to enjoy.

I know what you're thinking: why haven't I posted a new installment of my ever popular Don't Ask series - the one that brought you such widely read and revered gems like Don't Ask: Moving, Don't Ask: Picking Up At The Airport, Don't Ask: Loaning You Money, Don't Ask: Sharing A Hotel Room, Don't Ask: Writing A Letter For You and the perennial Don't Ask: Sharing My Food.

Well, tonight's your lucky night. I'm posting my latest in the series, and it's about a particular nuisance that effects every creative person in the business: working the weekend.

Jay Chiat of Chiat/Day fame had a quote that's been misquoted and bounced around ad agencies ever since he said it. If you're in advertising, you're already saying it to yourself: "If you're not here on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday."

Looks like I won't be seeing you Sunday.

Agencies are notorious for their outsized and aggressive disregard for both working smart and your life. If they did the first one, working weekends wouldn't happen nearly as often as it does. Which would mean you'd get some of your life back.

Since I believe agencies will start working smart and utilizing their time more efficiently about the same time I ride my unicorn to Xanadu while drinking from the Holy Grail, I've chosen not to wait. I'm taking it back. Weekends are personal time. They're days of rest by definition. They are non-work days. Here's what I do on weekends. I spend time with my kids. I go out with the wife. I get things done around the house. I veg and binge Breaking Bad again.

Know what I don't do? Work.

Maybe if there were fewer 12-person meetings to kick-off the latest banner ad, not as many mandatory attendance pep talks to rally the troops, and less presentations to the staff from the Executive Group Specialist In Experimental Branding Strategy & Innovative Demographic Search Engine Optimization Solutions, there'd be enough time during the week to get the actual, bill-paying, income producing work done.

Not to brag, but because I have this policy of no weekends, I get my work done during the week. When I pack up Friday night, everything that needed to be done is done. Monday will bring a whole new set of challenges, and I'll get those done during the next five days too.

I know this is a radical position for a freelancer with a kid in college to take. Especially since weekends are usually double time. At a nice day rate, that can add up pretty quick. I know freelancers that hope for weekend work - something about gettin' while the gettin's good. Whatever. When your relationship with your kids turns into a Harry Chapin song, don't come crying to me.

Don't get me wrong. This is not to say I haven't worked weekends and won't again on those very few occasions it's necessary. But it usually isn't, despite the desperation, authoritative tone, insinuations about reputations and false logic that since they have to be there you have to be there. Almost as weak an argument as "If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone else."

So go ahead, talk about how I'm too good to come in on Saturday. How I don't want to be a team player. How pissed everyone's going to be that they're at work and I'm not.

And if you want to tell me to my face, fine.

Call me. I'll be at home.

Don't ask: Working the weekend

I know what you're thinking: why haven't I posted a new installment of my ever popular Don't Ask series - the one that brought you such widely read and revered gems like Don't Ask: Moving, Don't Ask: Picking Up At The Airport, Don't Ask: Loaning You Money, Don't Ask: Sharing A Hotel Room, Don't Ask: Writing A Letter For You and the perennial Don't Ask: Sharing My Food.

Well, tonight's your lucky night. I'm posting my latest in the series, and it's about a particular nuisance that effects every creative person in the business: working the weekend.

Jay Chiat of Chiat/Day fame had a quote that's been misquoted and bounced around ad agencies ever since he said it. If you're in advertising, you're already saying it to yourself: "If you're not here on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday."

Looks like I won't be seeing you Sunday.

Agencies are notorious for their outsized and aggressive disregard for both working smart and your life. If they did the first one, working weekends wouldn't happen nearly as often as it does. Which would mean you'd get some of your life back.

Since I believe agencies will start working smart and utilizing their time more efficiently about the same time I ride my unicorn to Xanadu while drinking from the Holy Grail, I've chosen not to wait. I'm taking it back. Weekends are personal time. They're days of rest by definition. They are non-work days. Here's what I do on weekends. I spend time with my kids. I go out with the wife. I get things done around the house. I veg and binge Breaking Bad again.

Know what I don't do? Work.

Maybe if there were fewer 12-person meetings to kick-off the latest banner ad, not as many mandatory attendance pep talks to rally the troops, and less presentations to the staff from the Executive Group Specialist In Experimental Branding Strategy & Innovative Demographic Search Engine Optimization Solutions, there'd be enough time during the week to get the actual, bill-paying, income producing work done.

Not to brag, but because I have this policy of no weekends, I get my work done during the week. When I pack up Friday night, everything that needed to be done is done. Monday will bring a whole new set of challenges, and I'll get those done during the next five days too.

I know this is a radical position for a freelancer with a kid in college to take. Especially since weekends are usually double time. At a nice day rate, that can add up pretty quick. I know freelancers that hope for weekend work - something about gettin' while the gettin's good. Whatever. When your relationship with your kids turns into a Harry Chapin song, don't come crying to me.

Don't get me wrong. This is not to say I haven't worked weekends and won't again on those very few occasions it's necessary. But it usually isn't, despite the desperation, authoritative tone, insinuations about reputations and false logic that since they have to be there you have to be there. Almost as weak an argument as "If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone else."

So go ahead, talk about how I'm too good to come in on Saturday. How I don't want to be a team player. How pissed everyone's going to be that they're at work and I'm not.

And if you want to tell me to my face, fine.

Call me. I'll be at home.

Paper trail

My pal Rich Siegel over at Round Seventeen put up a post today that got me thinking, nostalgically, about the non-advertising jobs I’ve had.

It’s a long list.

I won't take you through them all, although delivery boy for Leo's Flowers and driver for Bob Hope's best friend did have their post-worthy moments. Another time.

For today, under the heading of “What were you thinking?!” jobs, one of my first was a paperboy for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. If that name isn't familiar, it's because the Herald doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for a long time. It was a great newspaper, from a bygone time when L.A. was a two paper town.

I’d get the papers tossed off the truck in bundles in front of my house. Then I'd have to fold and rubber band them, put them in the giant canvas bags that hung and swung from the towering handlebars of my Schwinn Stingray, and try not to lose my balance as I went wobbling on wheels down the street delivering them.

The only thing worse than the daily paper was the Sunday Herald. Thick, filled with crappy ads someone wrote (who would want that job?), hard to fold and heavy to throw, I figured out early on why Sunday mornings were a time for prayer.

In all modesty, I have to say I did develop into a pretty good pitcher, chucking those papers dead center on to the Welcome mats of subscribers homes I rode past. If major league baseball had been scouting paperboys, things might've been different.

Back then, the way I got paid was to go and get it. There were no credit payments, PayPal or online payments. At the end of each month, I’d go door-to-door, my receipt book in hand, and try to collect payment for the month of papers my subscribers had already received.

See if you can figure out how many ways this was a bad idea.

Child knocking on doors at dinnertime? Child carrying money on him? Child arguing with adults about getting paid? Adults swearing at child about paying for the paper? Suffice it to say that even though I was making some change, the end of the month was not something I looked forward to.

Like the papers, the job eventually folded (see what I did there?). But I learned a lot about myself, a great lesson on how I felt about starting the day early, working hard and getting the job done.

It's a lesson I remember each and every day. When I get in at 10.