There's no business like no business

Let’s talk about ideas. I’ll start. I have lots and lots of them. Not exactly an earth shattering revelation. After all, it’s what I do for a living. As Hyman Roth put it, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”

But for as many ideas I have being in advertising, I’ve probably had just as many with regards to getting out of advertising. Don’t give me that look. It’s not the confession you think it is. The dirty little secret is everyone in advertising is working off a strategy.

An exit strategy.

I’ve done it as well. I know what you’re thinking: where did I ever find the time? Well, come to find out those endless, countless status meetings, agency pep talks and kick offs are actually good for something besides catching up on my naps.

Under the heading of sticking close to what you know, my late pal Mardel and I decided to open an ad agency of our own called Bigtime Professional Advertising. We did this because, as everyone knows, what the world always needs is one more ad agency. I wrote up some funny stationery that Mardel designed, and we entered it in an awards show under the self-promotion category and won.

So technically, even though we had no accounts, we were an award winning agency.

Then there was my radio production company called Radio Royale. It was Vegas themed, with the business cards looking like casino gambling chips. The tagline was, “It’s radio baby!”

Alright, they can’t all be gems. Let’s just say Dick Orkin’s Radio Ranch, Oink ink Radio and Bert Barz were not threatened.

The next one my friend Michelle South and I came up with. It was called Bar Soap. The idea was to reinvent the laundromats, especially those near colleges and universities, by attaching an upscale bar and restaurant to them. There’d be a large wall of glass on one side where customers could see the state-of-the-art machines and watch their laundry spin. They’d have an app to add more time to the machines, but there’d be a two-hour limit.

And they’d be happy with the results, because after a couple hours drinking who’s going to notice stains anyway, amIrite?

The last example is actually the first idea I had. The Guidance Counselor. After my late, great friend Paula (just realized too many friends are gone now. That’s another post…) who was VP of Marketing at Disneyland hired me to be a creative consultant on the review, I decided I liked being on the other side of the table at agencies. Not gonna lie- it was fun having creative directors who were assholes to me when I was freelancing for them suddenly bowing, scrapinng, serving me coffee and croissants and just generally laughing a little too hard at my jokes all in the name of trying to win the Disney account.

Won’t name names, but do the initials J.M. mean anything? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Anyway, my great, yes you guessed it, late friend George Roux designed my Guidance Counselor stationery when I decided to make a business out of it. That was as far as it ever went.

But now, I’m on a new career path I think is really going to pan out: multiple lottery winner.

Believe me, I’m working on it.

Clean machine

Having followed this blog for some time—and don't tell me if you haven't, I'm fragile right now—I bet you were expecting a picture of an In-N-Out Double Double with animal fries instead of the one you're looking at. I know. I'm as shocked as you are.

But the truth of the matter is I may have finally reached the point where I've decided to turn over a new arugula leaf.

One day I was talking to my friend Maria, who I work with, about the meal she was having. She'd prepared it herself, and not only did it look healthy, it looked delicious—two things I usually find mutually contradictory. Don't get me wrong, I suppose given enough lifetimes I could develop a taste for tofu and sprouts, but frankly I don't see it happening in this one.

Anyway, faced with going to the same five places around the office I always have lunch, and, you know, the chore of finding yet another thing to have off Wahoo's menu (the citrus slaw is overrated), I told Maria if she ever wanted to make a side gig out of it, I'd be first in line, cash American.

The good news is she took me up on it, so today is the first day of the rest of my life. Or at least the rest of my week. We've embarked on a pilot program—as a trial run, she's going to prep healthy, clean-eating lunches for me all week long, and I'm going to eat them.

Today's menu was Grilled Wild Shrimp & Veggie Quinoa salad with feta and pine nuts in a lemon vinaigrette. It was gluten free, sugar free, high protein, high fiber and low sodium.

I'll bet you feel healthier just reading that sentence.

Now look, I'm not going to go to extremes here. I'm putting off the Iron Man Marathon, the triathlon and tryouts for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo until we see how the week goes. I'll let you know.

What I will say is there are cupcakes in the kitchen at work, and after my custom-made, healthy lunch today I don't even have a hankerin' for them.

In fact, right now the only thing I'm craving is lunch tomorrow.

Mr. Tee

A few years ago, I was looking for something I could do to add on to the monumental fortune I've made in advertising. Preferably something not involving monster egos, all-night work sessions, talking to account planners and unimaginably bad pizza.

So my friend and art director extraordinaire Kurt Brushwyler and I kicked around escape plans for a while, and came up with a business idea we could both get behind: t-shirts.

Alright, so it wasn't the most original idea. But we were going to do it in a way that managed to combine two things we loved - t-shirts and Vegas.

I forget the name of it, but for a while there was a little newsletter/brochure you could pick up at any restaurant, usually near the restrooms by the sponsored post card rack and outdated copies of the L.A. Weekly. It listed all kinds of bizarre classes that not only reinforced every stereotype about L.A., but also that no legitimate institution of learning would ever offer.

One of them was How To Get Into The T-Shirt Industry. Coincidence? I think not.

So one night after a long day freelancing at Chiat (is there any other kind?), Kurt and I hopped in his Prius and drove over to the world-famous, two-star Marina Del Rey Marriott for a three-hour class taught by guys who'd hit it big making t-shirts and selling them to Paris Hilton for $95 a piece at Kitson.

It was actually an interesting and educational evening. Needless to say the part about having to go to Vegas at least once a year to hawk our wares at the Magic Fashion Convention was quite appealing.

Our master plan was to get those cart/kiosk things you see in the main promenade of The Forum Shops at Caesar's and sell the t-shirts off of them. It was going to be our test run. If they did well, we'd approach each of the casinos and holding companies about making exclusive t-shirts for their gift shops, with funny lines tailored specifically for each hotel.

I wrote about a couple hundred Vegas/hotel lines, and Kurt started working on designs for them. It was ours, and it was fun.

Right up until I called The Forum Shops to find out about the carts. Come to find out - and if I'd thought about it for a second I would've realized it - that Caesar's owned all the carts in their mall. They didn't rent them to outside vendors.

But since we both come from advertising, and are used to rejection, adversity, broken dreams and plans going awry on a daily basis, we knew exactly how to handle the situation.

We gave up.

Every once in awhile, when Kurt returns a phone call (my hair was black when I called him) or when I see him, we kick around rebooting the idea. But then we move on to more important things, like which sushi place to go to for lunch.

We still own the URL and still have the lines. Plus there are a whole slew of casinos that weren't there the first time around we could approach. So I'm not ruling anything out - we might come back to the idea at some point.

All I know for sure is if we do, there'll definitely be a lot of research involved.

The thrill of the chase

I've written here about how hard it is for agencies to let an account go, even when the hour is late and it's way past time for them to say goodnight.

The flip side of that, and no less sad and demoralizing, is when agencies somehow manage to get themselves an invitation to pitch an account they don't have a chance in hell of getting.

The advertising landscape is littered with storyboards from small, start-up agencies with one office, a purple bean bag chair, a five-year old laptop and a staff of three who all thought they had "just as good a chance as anyone" to land General Motors. Or American Airlines. Or Budweiser. Or Hilton.

It's only after these global accounts go through the review, and do what they were inevitably going to do in the first place - award their business to a global agency - that these agencies feel the cold water tossed in their face, and come to the grim and true-from-the-start realization they never had a chance.

Never. Had. A. Chance.

Despite the amazing creative they did. The unbelievably thorough presentation deck. And the supermodel receptionist, who's brother's cousin's nephew's best friend went to an improv class six years ago with one of the hundred and seventy brand managers, which is how they weaseled an invite to the dance in the first place.

Lot of good your principal involvement, unmatched agility, media agnostic positioning and social integration did you.

It's not hard to see why they take the shot. Every agency wants to play in the big leagues. They all want a showcase account they can hopefully do some killer work on, then use it as a calling card to get into pitches with other global clients they won't stand a chance with.

There's some lesson to be learned here about a sense of entitlement. And believing that just because you have some brilliant insights that's going to be enough get the job done.

Sometimes, many times, with clients that big, sad but true, great ads are the least of it. They're looking for infrastructure, global presence and some actual media leverage to support the effort. Or maybe they're just looking for an agency with some maturity, both figuratively and literally.

The point is, in every industry there's a hierarchy. Steps to climb. Dues to pay. Even if you've been in business a while, it still takes time to arrive.

Everyone wants to be the agency that has the insights the client is going to spark to. But even more valuable to them would be an agency who knows who they are. Knows what they can do and can't do.

Not that you asked, but my suggestion would be to play to your strength. Build your story by going after accounts you can actually win.

If you're as smart as the presentation deck says, you'll know who they are.