alexbogusky’s posterous

Fear is the mortal enemy of creativity 

FearLessQA video interview with CP+B CDs @bwright303 and @Davesz1


Watch live video from FearLess Q+A on Justin.tv

This is the one to watch if you're in ad school. Bill Wright and Dave Swartz have mastered the craft as well as concept of advertising. In this episode of Fearless they explain what's getting better about the student books they see and what's falling down. Newbie writers and art directors will come away with a deeper knowledge of just how nuanced the business of making world class communication can be. Dave (employee number 28) and Bill (employee number 34) were at CP+B in the early days and explain that growth was never the plan. Only a byproduct of the desire and commitment to be excellent.

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My new job. Mom, please read.

This weekend my mom asked me how I planned to run 32 plus agencies. I laughed and asked her where she’d come up with that one and she said, “I read it on the internet.” Of course! It’s amazing to me how we still believe the stuff we read. I’m as guilty of it as anybody. But here is my own mother, who lives 15 minutes away with actual one-to-one information from me on all my plans and actions, yet she actually reads and believes something that contradicts everything she knows to be true with first hand experience. It’s mind blowing. I might need to get my mom to subscribe to my blog. I think my dad does but only to scan for news or mentions of himself. So here’s one dad.

Fast Company did get my title right and I imagine that they just extrapolated out my current job to come to the conclusion they did. http://tinyurl.com/y8o9nlr They probably assumed that Chief Creative Insurgent was another way of saying Global Creative Director. So what is a Chief Creative Insurgent? Perhaps the best way to explain it is by attaching the note I sent to the MDC network after the announcement. So here it is:

Dear MDC Colleagues,

I've spent the last couple years trying to get a better understanding of some of the changes facing business. How will business deal with changes to the energy system? How will business create sustainable systems? How will business change as consumers become more aware and involved? How will business weave moral purpose into their mission statement? And to understand those issues it has led me to attempt to gain a better understanding of the issues facing humanity. They seem to be inextricably linked.

  Some of this curiosity has created thinking like “The Nine Gorillas”. This is a presentation and a process to get our clients aware and prepared for the changes that are coming. I'm convinced that the changes are many and that how we handle them will be one of the major keys to our survival. To how humanity survives and if the world will be one we'd want to live in.

  I'm also more and more convinced that for capitalism and corporations to evolve into a new, more aware, way of going to market we will have to begin to design new structures. New accounting practices. New sustainable systems. And a new cooperation with customers. As marketers, it seems as though we may not understand what role we will play in all of this. After all, we're not engineers. We're not economists.

  But I have come to believe that without marketers, this next revolution will fail. We must get involved and bring our talents to bear on this corporate and capitalist redesign because we are, in many ways, the conscience of the boardroom. We are the emotional connection from company to customer. We are the voice of the people inside the corporation. We can feel the rightness and wrongness of an issue and not even know why. The world needs that right now. We are the missing ingredient, in the pursuit of what is next.

  So what is a Chief Creative Insurgent? And what role does that play in the MDC network? Miles and the MDC Partners leadership team are fearless in many ways. They see the same issues I do and they want to continue to position all of the MDC agencies in a place of leadership for our clients and the industry. Chief Creative Insurgent is not another way of saying Global Creative Director. I won't be flying from client to client pressing the flesh. I won't be going from MDC agency to agency reviewing the work. An insurgent is defined as someone who challenges the status quo. My job is to question the very definition of marketing and communications and corporate structure. In this role, I'll be doing more of “The Nine Gorillas” work. Writing a book, creating MDC forums and seminars, using my influence with MDC as a way to move this conversation onto the agenda of every CMO, and put MDC at the forefront of that conversation.

  If I've been good at anything over the last 20 years it's been making trouble. I've been lucky to lead a team of the industry’s best trouble makers for a long time. I had one seemingly impossible dream when I started in advertising and that was to leave the industry different than I found it. For people to be able to say, "It was like this before Crispin Porter+Bogusky.  It's like this now." I feel like that's been done.  My career at CPB has allowed me to follow my passions in a way that makes me feel uniquely blessed. At each turn I found a way to do what I love to do, and to do it at CPB. And once again the CPB and MDC family of opportunity seems to provide. With MDC and my new role as Chief Creative Insurgent, I don't have to go anywhere to follow my passions. I can do it right here.  

My new base of operations will be both an office at CPB Boulder and in a little cottage in downtown Boulder which I’ve dubbed The Ivory Cottage. The name is a reference to the Ivory Tower. In the bible, this is a place of lofty thought. Over time, the term has come to mean thoughts and ideas too lofty to be practical or useful. My hope is that this cottage will be an outpost of lofty but practical and down to earth thinking.

  I hope you will take the time to come by The Ivory Cottage and hang out and have a cup of coffee and talk of business evolution and revolution.

Alex Bogusky
Chief Creative Insurgent
MDC Partners

I originally signed it off, “Love, Alex” because that’s always how I signed notes to the agency but I think it was deemed a bit squishy. Need to push harder next time.

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Ari's favorite Toy

This photo is from a new business pitch we did many, many years ago. I can’t seem to recall which one. Ari is seen pointing at a slide that said we were one of the worlds top twenty agencies. Number 18 it looks like. We were very excited.

Fast forward and Ari’s own agency Toy would be on that same list. Yet today, Ari and his partners decision to close their shop was made public. Hard to know what to say. AdAge had this to say. http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=141884

I’m sure it was a very difficult decision but it was handled with the same class, respect and responsibility that Ari has shown throughout his career. They did a lot of damn good work and had a lot of fun and it’s time for the next grand adventure. Now if we can only get him to move to Boulder.  

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Did we just have a Yuri Gagarin moment?

In January I suggested in this blog that reframing the issue of sustainable energy was key to the success in finding and funding alternatives. Global Warming has become a theoretical and political argument that’s preventing us as a nation from confronting the very practical issue that alternatives must come online if we expect to continue to enjoy our place as a global superpower. The opportunity is to use the space race as a model to energize the country and our politicians in a bipartisan effort to quite literally keep American in power. I dubbed the campaign, The Energy Race. (I’ve included that first post below.)

Since then I’ve seen several dozen articles digging deeper into the lead that China has in The Energy Race in different areas of sustainable energy. All of it seemed to make excuses or suggest that the US was losing in this area but winning in other areas. There was nothing quite as all-encompassing or definitive in illustrating we are losing this race as when Americans woke up to newspaper headlines that the first man in space was a Russian Cosmonaut. That event turned rhetoric to action and created a sense of urgency to find a way to move past the Soviets in the space race. Kennedy and his science advisers to came up with a plan. To safely land a man on the moon. Congress accepted the challenge and today we’re still benefiting from the technological push of a nation united to achieve what seemed impossible. And in other good news space exploration ultimately was on of the causes the US and USSR first found common ground on. By 1975 we already had joint missions into space. A little healthy competition turned into even healthier collaboration. Let’s hope we see more of the same in clean energy production.

Well today’s NY Times headline seems like it’s pretty close to a Yuri Gagarin moment. It’s about as plain as can be. China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy. So there it is. The words “energy” and “race” in the same headline. Maybe not in the catchiest order but it’s a start. Quite literally, The Energy Race is already under way and China is out of the blocks and running while we still wait to hear the starter’s gun. I hope everybody in America and Washington especially gets the news today. I hope they hear the starter’s gun today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?hp#

Excerpt from Jan 3rd.
It's certainly obvious that the call to save a fevered planet if falling on deaf ears and has become a politicized argument. Disagreement on the science behind Global Warming has become good political sport. With a disastrous consequence. The thinking now seems to be: if Global Warming isn't real, then good ole fashioned polluting of any kind is justified. Our environment is caught in the cross-hairs. And so is our future. Whether or not Global Warming is real (and I've seen enough evidence to be convinced that it is), we are certainly running out of oil. OPEC reports on reserves would suggest that they are actually making oil. The figures haven't changed in years, but by most independent projections, we are already on the backside of supply. The issue can be depoliticized based on this simple fact: the next superpower will be the first nation to create an unlimited power supply for itself. It's pretty simple.

Thomas suggests that we need to "rely on the force of greed," to kick-start American interest; that the proposition of "a whole new industry," might be more compelling. It might be. But I have two concerns. The first being that it will still be politicized - with traditional energy mostly represented by the Republicans, and alternative energy ("a whole new industry") represented by Democrats. A new political stalemate. Secondly, in this sort of scenario, we will need politicians to level the playing field or even tip it a little in the favor of alternative energy businesses. It is difficult to put much faith in an effective energy bill passing in a system where fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber their clean energy counterparts by a hundred to one.

The Earth Race might ultimately get caught up in the same quagmire that has ensnared Global Warming in part, because of semantics. But I do believe in the potential of the "Race" half of Friedman's idea.

Mr. Friedman mentions the Space Race as a model for the Earth Race. I think this is right on. And with the last work the team and I conceived for Al Gore's Alliance, we wanted to cast the issue in this very same light. The newspaper ad above wasn't very creative and never ran, but we thought the key was just to get the idea out there, to let Americans know they are losing the "Energy Race." The Space Race was a race for global supremacy, not an economic race, and it wasn't "American greed" that won the race, but rather another attribute of the American condition: Competition. Americans hate to lose. They are not okay with it in any way, and this is a race they need to know they are losing. And we're not just losing to gentle nations like Sweden and Denmark. America is losing to nations like Egypt, Morocco, and China. The Chinese government clearly doesn't give a shit about polar bears. They aren't doubling their wind energy production every year for the last four years because they are worried about glaciers. And they aren't building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined because they don't emit carbon dioxide. The reason is simply that they plan to be energy independent and thusly, the next global super power.

Americans deserve to know that this race has already begun and we're getting our collective ass kicked. Would America have gotten to the moon if the Russians hadn't been the first to put a man into space? Hard to know. But Americans hate losing, and losing the first leg of that race kicked the national compulsion to compete into high gear. Who know what we spent to get to the moon and who cares? That investment created the computer age and most of the technologies which have transformed our lives. The Energy Race, if we decide to participate, can do the same thing for our future. If a cleaner, more livable planet is a byproduct of our next great progression, then all the better.

China, like Russia during the Space Race, has an advantage. They have a political system somewhat less beholden to global corporations. America, on the other hand, may no longer have the old-school political power of the Kennedy Era to steer the national destiny in opposition of big business interests. Certainly not without a mandate from the American public. The Energy Race can motivate Americans, but can Americans still steer their own destiny?

It's certainly worth a try since the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.

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Fearless QA video interview with @LincolnSteffens and @Shelton_Scott on The Marcus Graham Project


Watch live video from FearLess Q+A on Justin.tv

One of my favorite shows to date. Shelton and Lincoln share their personal experiences and the work they're doing around diversity in agencies. Lincoln talks about his Marcus Graham Project http://www.marcusgrahamproject.org/ which is mentoring African American advertising professionals and students to help lift them to the next level. We find out where the idea came from (which is brilliant) and how folks can get involved.

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Shooting the shit on FearLess QA with @RobReillyCPB + @tmontague of @JWT_Worldwide


Watch live video from FearLess Q+A on Justin.tv

Rob and Ty get down to the fundamentals of cooperation. Sounds like collaboration is the new competition. And they give tips for how young people can find that collaborative spirit inside.

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Madmen Monk

My friend Dave, who is also a Planner at CP+B, recently began telling me stories about a monk that he had met. He was very impressed with this individual, their conversations and an energy that he seemed to exude which just pulled you in. Dave ran into him at a party in his town and was shocked to see how young children at the party were all drawn to him, too.

It's my understanding that Greg (yes, monks have names like Greg) is a Theravada Buddhist

monk, although he is practiced in many other religions as well. It was also explained to me that he spent three years in silent retreat in Burma. Three years of silence struck me as the kind of discipline and dedication that is extremely unique and I found myself anxious to meet him. Oddly enough, it turns out that he was interested in coming to CP+B. He told me later that in his years of meditation and silence he had found a mindful life that allowed for love and comfort and would have continued to provide more. But he eventually felt his path was to take what he had learned and bring it elsewhere. I'm paraphrasing a bit here but it explained why he found himself at an advertising agency.


When I first sat down to talk to Greg it was the middle of a typical fast-paced CP+B day. He was meeting with our quality of life people about teaching some Yoga classes but I just wanted to sit and talk. And I guess, to see what all the fuss was about. The first thing that struck me was that this man was very present and very much operating from a place of love. There was no ego. No wall. No judgement. And quick to smile. He found joy his joy in life in the very second we were occupying. The conversation was fun and eventually we started talking spiritually and I sort of blurted out where I found myself stuck. He didn't say much, but what he said literally left me flat on my back staring up at the ceiling with a huge smile on my face. Greg may be the only Theravada Buddhist monk I have ever met but I'm going to say this guy is the real deal. Damn good monk action.

Greg and I eventually got around to talking about how he could help CP+B. It was my feeling that the Yoga would be good, but even better would be if more of the staff could just spend time talking with him. If the mindfulness of the whole organization increased wouldn't we work together better. If the mindfulness of the whole agency increased wouldn't our work carry that same mindfulness forward? I think so. I think I've experienced it before. Greg thought so, too.


I've changed around my working situation a bit and I don't work at CP+B anymore. I have the title of Founding Partner and an office, but that's just how we have always rolled at CP+B. I don't get paid by CP+B and I don't have any day-to-day responsibility so it's not my call anymore if Greg the monk teaches mindfulness at CP+B. But a nontraditional corporate culture is still in the DNA so I'd be surprised if I didn't see him in the halls in the future.

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Posted from Boulder, CO

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What's your dream?

This Sunday the family was all together and we were collectively wondering how to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.s birthday. Martin Luther King, Jr. is in our opinion one of the greatest men of the last century and while he is celebrated with a national holiday we were a bit curious that there wasn't an obvious ritual to observe the day. Most of our favorite holidays come with some ritual. Fourth of July has its ritual of fireworks and the flag. Christmas has the ritual of giving. New years has its ritual of resolution. And my favorite, Thanksgiving, has the ritual of giving thanks. Most of our ideas weren't very good or inspiring and they seemed to miss the essence of the man. Still, I think my 10 year old daughter took keen interest in our brainstorm session as we tried to tie ritual to our observation of the day.
But it wasn't really obvious until the next morning at breakfast as she unveiled what is sure to be our new tradition. Her presentation started with a recap of Mr. King and his dream. She then handed each of us a piece of paper with the heading, "I have a dream that:" already written across the top. We were then instructed to fill out our own dream for the world. And then read it to the group. It was harder than I might have expected. Because to do it right this wasn't a dream that was about yourself. This was a selfless dream. This was an audacious and seemingly impossible dream. This was a dream that would mean you had to change and sacrifice. This was a prophetic dream to do what is right. All the dreams around the table were different and distinct and it was so fun we went around twice.
Just like Mr. King many of us around our table won't be there to see those dreams come true. I hope my kids do. But Martin Luther King, Jr. proved that if we spend time to get in touch with our dreams and then go to work on our dreams even the most lofty of ideas and ideals will come true. And if we do nothing, nothing is what we will get. I'm sure of that.

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FearLessQA video interview with the Green Garage guys. Can you make any car leaner and greener?


Watch live video from FearLess Q+A on Justin.tv

Green Garage is a Boulder based start up with a plan to make every car in America run leaner and greener. Their mobile retail concept brings the garage to you or your office. Each truck and it's crew of Car Huggers make up a full service garage on wheels. And their green oil change and filter will last you 30,000 miles instead of the industry standard of 3,000. So it just might save money too. Save time. Save green. And do a little greening. It's just crazy enough to work.

CPB has been helping to get this idea off the ground with environmental design and branding and they have brought us in as a partner. We've had the honor to have skin in the game of some of the companies with work with and it's always a huge learning experience. We're not the only agency that's experimented in this area so there just seems to be a general feeling that it's a place the industry might like to go. I think the main driver has been to be part of a big payoff if things go well. That seems like the wrong reason to me because it can change your desires for the company. So we have an investment in Method from our work with them early on to launch that brand. To see the ultimate return on that we would hope for a sale of that brand. I don't want to root for a company to be sold. I want to root for long term health of the company. So for me the reason be an actual financial partner has always been compelling just goes back to the making of something. In advertising we're blessed to get the opportunity to make things almost constantly. And making is fun and making a lot is a lot of fun. But what we make doesn't have much physicality to it. To make something more solid and substantial is a kick in the pants and in this business we have a void there. So that's what I love about having partnerships like Green Garage. When the Green Garage truck drives by it's fun to be able to point it out to the kids and not just say, "Dad helped design that." But to be able to say, "Dad helped MAKE that."

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Blogging on telephone poles

Dawn was cracking but could not yet be described as broken. It was one of those Spring mornings that fills you with promises of warmth and sunshine, and I was on my way to go for a solo mountain bike ride. I was still bleary-eyed as I slipped out the door as quietly as possible, so it's surprising that I even saw the yellow post-it note on our front door. My heart skipped a beat. It must be a sweet note from my wife or kids. How fun! In this frame of mind, I began to read the following words: "You will be responsible & held accountable for the murder..."  This didn’t' seem like something my wife would write. It's neither cute nor funny. Confused, I read on: "...for the murder of the bear you are baiting and luring with your trash you septic scum!" This was clearly not a love note. "...Go back to the east coast where you belong dirt bag!" 

Damn. "Dirt bag" is hard to argue with, but the rest felt a bit extreme. I quickly spun around and scanned the street for anybody that might be watching to see my reaction. Nobody. My first thought was to crumple up the note and throw it away. Who was this person who had spewed such vitriol? The note had seemingly stolen away all the friends I thought I had on my street. And you have to understand, we are blessed with the world’s coolest bunch of neighbors on the world’s coolest block. But now I rattled each one off in my head as a possible suspect. My day was ruined; maybe my week, and possibly my life on Highland Ave. This little note had changed my life and I wasn't sure how to put my life back the way it was. Something inside told me that throwing it away was not the solution. So I stuck it back on the door. On my way to the trail head, I went around back and sure enough, something had gotten into our trash. My sense was raccoons were responsible, but it could’ve been a bear. They do come into the neighborhood on occasion. 

The ride gave me a lot of time to think and I came up with a plan. I also realized that I'd left the same booby trap I had stumbled into, in my wife’s path. I called as soon as I could. "Did you see the note on the door yet?" I asked. To which she replied, "Yes, and it's ruined my whole day." It was only 8:30 AM but we both knew she was right. "Don't worry," I said, "I have a plan."

The next day, I brought the note to work and blew it up as big as I could, 11X17 inches, along with my reply. My plan was to post my answer to this note on telephone poles around the neighborhood. What I had realized was that the anonymity of the note had stolen away my ability to answer my accuser. I could fix that. And although I was curious who had left the note, I was most curious to know who hadn't. I needed to know that the neighbors we chat with every day were really our friends. 

My post read as follows: 

"Dear Neighbor: I got your note (see below) but was unable to locate any signature, so I am posting this in the hopes of getting back to you. I spoke with my son about not putting the trash out the night before pickup and he gets it. As outlined in your note his actions may have led to the ‘murder of a bear.’ He doesn't want to be responsible for the murder of a bear, or the manslaughter of a bear, or even the aggravated assault of bear. In fact, he has assumed a very pro-bear stance. At this point, his concern for the perpetuity of genus ursus is unequivocal. 
As far as your suggestion that me and my family "go back east," I can only surmise that you belong to one of the indigenous tribes of this area. And while I am sorry about the encroachment of Europeans into these lands, I firmly believe that if I were to return, another person of European descent would take my place. 
Anyway, it's been a pleasure corresponding with you. As our relationship evolves, it is my hope that our continued dialogue will lead to even more dramatic improvements in the neighborhood. 

Love, 
Alex Bogusky

P.S.: I congratulate you on the turn of phrase, ‘septic scum.’ The vitriol and imagery, and clever use of alliteration, more than make up for the fact that it's a bit redundant.”

That night, I posted this up in around my ‘hood. As I drove to work the next morning, I noticed groups of neighbors huddled around telephone poles, reading and chuckling. By the time I got to the office, my phone was ringing with calls of support and theories about who the mysterious note writer was. That weekend, many neighbors went out of their way to assure me that they were glad to have the Boguskys on the block, and expressed how much they enjoyed my reply. One woman had a friend who had received a very similar note only two months after moving in. She was relieved to see she wasn’t alone. I think if I had been her, I might’ve just moved. After a couple years of living here, we were blessed to have established a foundation of friends. There was something about putting it all out there that was cathartic for everybody. Shining a light on the note that was left in the dark, washed away all its power. And suddenly, we lived on the best street with the best neighbors in the best town again.

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