Don't care package

It seems like a good time to rerun this post I did a little over two years ago. It appears as it did then, except for a minor tweak or two here and there. After all, I don't want to strain myself.

First, I'd like to send my sincere thanks to everyone for all your emails, calls and notes asking why Rotation and Balance hasn't had any new posts for a few weeks. All of us here at RNB International Headquarters have been deeply touched by your demonstration of enthusiasm for our blog, and your genuine concern why we haven't been posting more often.

Nah, I'm just funnin' ya. No one gives a crap.

The truth is I could never put up another post, and the impact on your life would be zip. Zilch. Zero. And probably some other "Z" word I'm too lazy to find.

Don't feel bad, as apparently you haven't. I work in advertising - I'm used to it.

You wouldn't think it at first glance, but the product is essentially the same between this blog and advertising. When it's there, and it's clever or engaging on an emotional, humorous or intellectual level, you like seeing it.

But when it's not there you don't miss it at all.

It's a lot like my high school girlfriend that way.

At any rate, we've been undergoing an "organizational restructuring" here at the main office. Our editorial and contributing writer staff has been streamlined for better efficiency, more frequent postings and articles you can relate to that will help you find happiness in being your true self.

Oh, wait, that was the staff over at O. Disregard that.

What we've done here at RNB is fired all the planners wearing knit caps (for a good laugh, see what my pal and Round Seventeen auteur Rich Siegel thinks of knit caps). So hopefully the work should be more frequent and a lot better, even without their unique insights.

Here's hoping you'll (continue to?) enjoy the renewed, reinvigorated, recharged, re-tooled and some other "R" word Rotation and Balance.

When I get around to writing it.

Just another roll of the dice

If there's one thing I have a lot of experience at it's waiting for Springsteen tickets. I've been doing it a long time. I can even remember back to the days before the interwebs, when my friend Kim and I would line up at the now extinct Music Plus store in Westwood or the Marina, and wait in line fifteen hours with throngs of the faithful, swapping war stories and seating victories, and promising we'd all see each other at the show.

The difference between then and now is at Music Plus, you knew you were going to walk away with tickets.

This morning at 10 a.m. tickets went on sale for the March 19 show at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. I, like so many other of my Bruce tramp friends, was online the minute they did, credit card in hand. And from the very first click, Ticketmaster threw up a sign saying "No tickets available for this event." Poof, they're gone.

After hitting refresh a few times, I managed to get four tickets which the family and I will enjoy. They're not front-of-the-plane seats we've become accustomed to, but we're in the building, it's Bruce and that's all that matters.

I'm not going to give you the predictable whine about Ticketmaster. From the price gouging fees to selling directly to brokers, their evil ways have been documented time and again. My personal feeling is it doesn't matter. There's always a huge market and not much incentive for them to change.

I'm optimistic about some things, realistic about others.

The truth of the matter is I endure the wait, the frustration and the anxiety of it all every time and I'll keep doing it. Bruce tickets have always been like a box of chocolates. Fortunately, I've been in a position for many years to either afford alternative channels (brokers), or have friends with contacts wrangle some mighty fine seats for me.

But as I said, when it's Bruce, just being in the building is enough.

For thirty years, my aforementioned friend Kim has been with me at every Bruce on sale drama, and almost every show I've been to - including the very two Madison Square Garden reunion shows where his DVD Live In New York was recorded.

Over the last nineteen years, my friend Alan has traipsed up and down the California coast with me more than a couple times, and to Arizona, enduring some very sketchy hotels to follow Bruce.

And thirteen years ago, I met my red-headed woman Jessie at an agency we worked at together. Her office was plastered with Bruce posters and pictures, including one of her with him. When I was telling another person who worked there how much I like Bruce, she said, "I've got someone you have to meet." Jessie has been at all the shows with us. In fact, Jessie twisted my arm and had me get GA seats at a show in Pac Bell Park in San Francisco. We were on the rail, five feet away from Bruce - best seats ever.

I'm not exactly sure how many years I've known Chris, but he is a spectacular Bruce friend who always manages to find out everything we need to know long before anyone else does. He also manages to find the music before anyone else has heard it. Enough said.

I don't know if it's a religion or a cult, a compulsion or a necessity. Maybe it's all of them. I do know every single time, what I've gotten out of it has been more than worth everything I've had to go through to get there. And I've been there so many times I've lost count.

I'm grateful I have my Bruce tramp pals who're ready to go through it all with me unwaveringly each and every time.

Sure I wish it were easier to get good seats for the shows. But over the years all of us have been lucky enough to learn the same lesson over and over.

When it comes to the ticket train, faith will be rewarded.

Change in the weather

It occurred to me that agencies have a lot in common with the weather. No matter how hard you try to predict it, you really can’t be sure what it’s going to be from one day to the next.

In fact, there are some weather terms that can just as easily be applied to the agency culture as well as the inhabitants. For example:

Jet Stream

You know when the creative director, account supervisor, planner, junior account executive (in charge of the carry-ons) and research director board a plane together to fly to yet another Adweek seminar on Digital Creativity Strategies and Better Banner Ads in the Caribbean? The one you told them about and wanted to go to, except there was no budget for you? That’s the Jet Stream.

The Mean Temperature

Agencies are notoriously angry places. It doesn't take much to set them off. Someone's work sold and yours didn't. You weren't invited to a meeting you should've been at (don't worry-meetings are like buses). No one brought in bagels. Someone looked at you the wrong way. People at agencies have thin skins and long memories. They're not exactly rays of sunshine to begin with, but when they feel they've been wronged they're meaner than a junkyard dog having his anal glands expressed. When you figure out exactly who's mad at who, and how mad they are, that's the Mean Temperature.

High Pressure System

These kind of systems can be created in a number of ways. An approaching deadline. A meeting with HR. Finding out what someone else makes. The creative director wants to "talk" about his/her "idea." These systems can be found daily in the ever changing environment of the agency world.

Unstable Air

This is usually found in meetings where planners are involved. They're almost always telling you their insight that just isn't quite insightful enough. Usually they know it, and as a result aren't making the point as confidently as they'd hoped. Hence, unstable air.

Wind Chill

What you get when that joke you made about the creative director gets back to them.

Warm Front

The new receptionist. That's all I'm sayin'.

Of course, there are many more terms that apply, but I'll leave them for another post. After all, many of you reading this still think of advertising as a fun, glamorous, star-studded business to be in.

And I wouldn't want to rain on your parade.

The first idea

When it’s not a business about fiscal quarters, increasing shareholder value, holding-company leadership bonuses, revenue increasing, maximizing efficiencies (euphemism for cleaning house), and cutting freelancer day rates (cause that’s where the real expense is), advertising is occasionally a business of ideas.

Ideas come at a variety of speeds, and the first one always gets there the fastest. That’s why it’s first, hello?

There are two schools of thought about the first idea. One is that it’s never the right one. The other is that it’s always the right one.

I can’t answer definitively. What I will say is more often than not in my career (pauses to laugh hysterically for using the word "career"), the first idea has been the right one. And if not the right one, then the best one.

The problem is, in advertising the first idea gets a bad rap. People say things like “It’s too obvious.” “You didn’t put any time against it.” “It doesn’t address all 350 bullet points on the brief.” All true at one time or another. Still doesn’t mean it’s not right.

Almost universally in ad agency culture, management likes to put on a show. Or at least watch one.

They like you to work late into the night, fueled on nothing but bad pizza and micro-brewed beer that almost tastes as good as cat pee and smells twice as bad, to show how dedicated and loyal you are to the agency, the client and, most importantly, the creative director.

Hallways are lined with dozens of 4’x8’ foam core boards plastered (just like the creatives) with hundreds of ideas and drawings, none of them as good as the first idea.

Meetings are called to kick around even more ideas. Mostly they're ideas for more meetings.

Even though people are burned out, every angle has been covered, the ideas are all starting to sound the same, and they’ll never present more than three to the client, and none of them are as good as the first one, the show goes on.

Way past the point of exhaustion, when the pizza is gone and the sun's about to come up, eventually someone musters enough awake to say something like “Remember that first idea we had at the beginning, what about that?” Then everyone in the room nods like a shelf of Peyton Manning bobbleheads on the San Andreas fault, and the creative director claims he/she always loved that idea from the beginning.

It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in bullshit.

I suppose thinking it will change anytime soon is futile. And besides, I get paid to come up with all those ideas. As long as the checks continue to clear, I'll keep doing it.

Anyway, my point as you've probably guessed by now is never throw away the first idea.

And always buy stock in foam core.

The always waiting room

Since my four-month gig working on a Japanese car brand (starts with an M, ends with an A) ended last Friday, I decided to take this short week off and catch up on some things that needed doing.

One of those was running my beautiful daughter to a couple doctor appointments. I always jump at the chance to do it, because my girl is pretty smart and extremely funny, and there are few things I enjoy as much as getting the chance to spend quality time with her whenever I can.

I just didn't know we were going to have that much time together.

Yesterday I took her to the eye doctor. Now, me being me, I don't go to just any doctor. I always look for The Guy. Our eye doctor is one of the top guys in the country, so just getting in is an accomplishment.

Her appointment was for 10:30 a.m. And since I'd rather be an hour early than a minute late, we were there around 10:20. We waited patiently in the waiting area as other people got called in. About 11:00 a.m. they came out and then made the psyche move you've seen so many times in doctors' offices. They called her in, and we thought the appointment was going to happen. But they brought her into a room, where an intern or nurse or assistant or someone gave her a quick vision test, then directed us to wait in another badly decorated waiting room.

At 11:30 I went to the front desk and in my nicest, most charming, impatient voice said we'd been there an hour and did they have an ETA on her seeing the doctor.

She was next in line, and about ten minutes later she finally got in to see The Guy.

Today, she had an appointment at 3 p.m. for a problem she's been having with her wrist. She played volleyball for a few years, and has had a some injuries to her hands and wrist. Her current pain is a souvenir from those days.

Her hand and wrist doctor also happens to be The Guy in his field. Directions they provide include how to get there from LAX, where people from all over the world fly in to see him.

Virtually the exact same thing happened - into another room, an assistant asking some questions, and then made to wait. And wait. And wait.

Finally, an hour and ten minutes after the appointed time, he breezed in, said sorry about the wait, and proceeded with his brief exam.

I understand the top people are in demand, and a little waiting is to be expected. But how many bad schedulers can there be in the same city? Color me old fashioned, but isn't the idea of an appointment to get there at a time convenient to you? And doesn't waiting over an hour after that time defeat the purpose of making an appointment in the first place?

Naive I know.

All this waiting does at least give me a chance to use a line I like to use when I ask how long it'll be. I go up to the desk and ask, then I say "I had black hair when we came in here." If you knew me, you'd know how funny that is (hashtag Silver Fox).

Anyway, doctor visits are done for a while now, and what with school and her social life I probably won't get to spend as much quality time with my girl as I'd like. But at least I know she'll still make time to talk with me every day.

"Dad, can I borrow your car?" and "Do you have a twenty?" counts as talking, right?

Remains of the day

Shrink wrapped, pine box, paw print in clay and a Forget Me Not card on top, Max came home today. It's safe to say just not in the way we'd all hoped.

When I went to our vet to pick up Max's remains, there was a lobby full of anxious pet owners waiting to see the doctors. I can only imagine me walking out with a pine box filled with the ashes of a 90 lb. German Shepherd was not a confidence builder.

We're all moving forward, but slowly. His empty crate with the thick mattress pad still sits in the corner of our living room. While it would take about one minute to collapse it and put it away, no one seems quite ready to do it yet. We're still grieving the loss, and I imagine the same will be true with his remains.

We have this nice notion of spreading his ashes around the yard where he loved to play and hang out, saying a few words, shedding a few tears and then moving on. But the truth is not a day goes by where the conversation doesn't turn to Max, and we get a little weepy.

So like disassembling his crate, it's going to take a while for us to work up to the finality of spreading his ashes and saying goodbye for the last time.

Strange as it sounds, it is nice to have him home. And I think Max, being the fun-loving playful guy he always was, would appreciate what I've said to his remains several times since they've been here.

"Max, stay."

Exit strategy

This is the good part of freelance. And the bad part.

This week, I wrap up four months at the agency I was booked at for five. Whole other post.

Anyway, what it means is it's time to start planning my exit strategy, something I've done many times before. It's never the same routine, but it does involve many of the same components.

I'll begin by sending out a few emails. Then I'll graduate to a little dialing for dollars, you know, the personal touch. And of course, a little social network networking is always a good thing. This is what it looks like to me as Friday rapidly approaches.

Once Friday is past, I know from experience my priorities will shift, and my first week off will begin to look a little different.

First order of business will be a long overdue lunch with my great friend Carrie. Then, as long as everyone's working and I'm not, perhaps a matinee or two are in order, just to stay current. Of course, we all know Breaking Bad isn't going to binge itself again, so I'll have to - yes, have to - devote a few hours to that. If there's nothing else to do, I may read Siegel's book again. Then there's always all those things I was going to do over the Christmas break that still need tending to.

The way it usually goes is when I'm finally ready to tackle those odd jobs that've been piling up around the house, I'll get booked for a gig and have to put them on the back burner. Again.

Here's the thing: I'm not one of those people who goes crazy when they're not working. I can not work with the best of them. I put the call out to the universe, and so far it's always answered with fun, lucrative, challenging gigs and a vast selection...er...large number...um....wide variety....ok, a few great people to work with at each agency.

Of course, once the call to the universe is out, I hope I don't have to answer it at least until I'm done with Season 5.