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.