“I did what the book told me to do.
“I enrolled in The Institute of Design and that’s what you’ll do if you’re smart. I’ll never forget it. My first teacher was this little bald Greek guy. Our first assignment was to go home and write a campaign. I stayed up nights, beating my brains out for concepts and headlines. When I showed up for the next class, I was damn proud of what I’d done. So the little Greek guy points at the wall. ‘Who did this ad?’ he asks. He was pointing at my concept. I was so excited, I nearly pissed myself. ‘I did it,’ I croaked. ‘This is the worst piece of shit on this wall,’ he said. ‘No, it’s the worst piece of shit I have ever seen!’ He tore my ads from the wall and ripped them up so slowly I could hear each paper fiber split. Then he tossed the bits of paper in the air so my work showered on me like confetti.
“I was depressed and humiliated. I didn’t want to go back. I thought I was a deluded piece of crap, but my mom warned me I’d better not quit—I had talent and more importantly she paid for the class. So I did the next assignment and put my concepts on the wall. The little Greek guy looked over all the work and he pointed to one concept. ‘Who did this?’ he demanded. It was mine. ‘This is the best work on the wall. No, it’s the best I have ever seen from a student!’”
“And it was the same concept from the previous week,” The art director onstage interjected.
The audience laughed. Was this rehearsed? The Rock Star Copywriter scowled.
“I took four classes here, got my book together and had four offers before I was finished. This business has lifted me higher than I’ve ever been and it’s dropped me lower than I ever thought I could sink. One week I’m shooting a commercial in Malibu, staying in the bungalow where four major celebrities OD’ed; the next, I’m fired and on my ass in the street. Through it all, I never stopped believing in myself or forgot I was a creative. It may mean nothing in this world but in this business, it’s everything. Once you’re a creative you’re a creative all the way.
“I was interviewing at Applebaum and Flinder with the top guy—ya know, Flinder. I’d already had a few interviews, so I’m in his office, thinking Famous Flinder’s gonna make an offer. He looks at one ad, shuts my book and says, ‘I hate your work. It’s not very good.’ He expected me to leave with my legs between my tail. Well, I got up and shouted in his face, ‘You think you’re God and everybody’s an ant you can step on. Well, I’m no ant and you can’t step on me!’ So he said, ‘You’re hired.’”
“And he put you on the Raid account,” the art director quipped.
The silence in the auditorium shattered into hundreds of pieces of laughter while the Rock Star Copywriter glowered.
“I love my life. You know how I spend my day? Ten o’clock I get to the office. I eat a Danish, have my coffee, and look over the paper. At eleven, I play Frisbee in front of the office building. Afternoons I go to meetings and take in a movie. At six, I eat lunch. In the evening, I start writing. And I go until dawn. Creativity is my life. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I get paid to create something that has never been before. That’s what it means to be a creative and that’s why I love it. I guarantee that if you take my class you can call me at three in the morning to tell me your great idea. And just one more thing—when people tell me, ‘Advertising isn’t brain surgery’ I totally disagree. You see, what I do is like brain surgery. If you’re going to be successful in this business you’d better know your way around the human brain.”
“Everybody wears scrubs where he works,” the art director quipped. The audience laughed. The show was over.
The Rock Star Copywriter fielded questions. Dane asked if he thought it could take ten classes at ID “to finally get it” and write concepts that would get him hired. The Rock Star Copywriter replied that if it took ten classes Dane should think about another line of work. Then he added that an intelligent guy like Dane should be able to do it in three classes, or even two. “If you can do it in one, you must be a genius.”
“Then I’ll just have to be a genius,” Dane thought. He would soon be out of a teaching job and one class at ID was all he could afford.
8. CLASS ACTS
The open house did not encourage Dane, but an advertising class was unavoidable, so he perused the catalogue for a course that seemed right for him. It was imperative to choose well since he had little time to work with and less money to invest.
The course titles were bizarre. Create Naked declared that “fresher than fresh breath won’t help. You need a book that will win respect…” Another course, The One, assured transcendence over hard reality, “Fifteen books an hour come across the creative director’s desk each day. So you want to be The One?” Still another, titled Maximum Exposure, promised that guest creative directors would review student work. “We can’t guarantee a job but you never know. After all, why have a killer book if you can’t get the right people to see it? A warning followed: “No head cases or slackers.” This course cost the most—and it was closed.
Create Naked intrigued Dane. It was taught by Perry Winkel, a creative supervisor at Gadwyn, Dinkinger and Mirmalino, an award-winning boutique agency Dane never heard of. In his blurb, Winkel admonished his readers that “when you go into the big interview you are always naked, whether you wear Armani or Levis. A firm handshake, super-white teeth, and a shoe shine will not land your dream job. This course will teach you how to create smart, jobwinning ads every time.”
As a college professor, Dane had written course descriptions. He recognized in Winkel’s paragraph a balance of Madison Avenue flash and academic thoughtfulness. It exploited a common fear: who never had the humiliating dream of being naked in a public place? Yet under the hucksterism was a commitment to teach advertising like serious writing.
Dane dialed Winkel. A meek, nervous voice answered. Its tone was not tough and provocative like the course description but quavering and fragile. Perry assured Dane that his class would include exercises to overcome writer’s block. He cupped the receiver to tell a colleague, ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I’m on the phone!’ Winkel resumed his discussion with Dane in a taut whisper. “Massive layoffs…can’t talk. But really, take this course. It’ll be fun. I can help…give you job hunting tips.” Dane said Create Naked was at the top of his list. “Okeedokee,” Perry Winkel replied and hung up. It was the deal-breaker. Dane could not take a class with anyone who said, “Ookeedokee.”
For two weeks, Dane searched for a class. After several calls and unanswered voice mails, Dane finally made a solid contact. Brandon Houlihan, who taught a class titled Creative Clinic, worked on major accounts at BYOB, a hallowed agency. Houlihan sounded like a warm and congenial human being, not an irascible psycho poseur. “This is the guy you would want to work with,” Dane thought. He reviewed the course description. Three creatives would teach the class—a creative director, a senior art director and a copywriter. Having three teachers appealed to Dane. Three opinions of his work gave him better odds against ego demolition.
Dane tried to register but the class was full. The ID administrator said he would need the instructors’ permission to enroll. Dane saw this obstacle as a sign that he had found a popular course with the right teachers.
It was a bitterly cold winter. The class convened east of Second Avenue—three trains and a long walk—at 6 PM. In shoe-boots with long toes and raised heels, Dane pounded the sidewalk like he was trying to leave his footprints in the concrete. Advertising was his only career option and he faced extinction. Middle-aged and starting over, he would submit his talent to notoriously arrogant people with tyrannical views and vague aesthetics. Desperate to succeed, Dane resolved to ace this class and impress the teachers. But he would need toughness and resilience to learn from the class without being damaged by it if it went badly.
9. THE THREE STOOGES
Dane entered a large, bleak room that must have once been an art studio. It was full of people in business attire, waiting for the teachers to show. After fif
teen minutes, three husky men traipsed into the room in single file—short, medium and tall. The oldest, shortest and roundest of the three was Dick Billings, the creative director. His face was red, not from windburn or exercise, but agitation. Dick wore a perpetual grimace, as if imminent disaster were his constant companion. The tallest of the crew was Buzz Dingblatz, a burly, curlyhaired man with a pasty face and thick glasses, who looked like an extra in a disaster movie. The man in the middle was Brandon Houlihan, with whom Dane had spoken. He was dark-haired and robust, with the self-assurance of a prosperous bartender.
The three teachers bobbed and weaved before their eager multitude of students, avoiding one another like intelligent billiard balls. Dane saw that they were unprepared to teach the first class and were committing timeocide—mowing down the minutes with depraved indifference. They believed the first class was a waste since there was no student work to evaluate, but without planned remarks, exercises or handouts to fill the gap, they faced the perdition of teaching without a plan—they had to improvise.
The troika delivered their autobiographies and recounted anecdotes about the quirks of the business. Buzz Dingblatz, the art director, worked his way into the major agency from a design studio. His partner, Brandon Houlihan, was a traffic coordinator when Dingblatz lost his partner. Houlihan’s boss asked Buzz, “Why don’t you give this guy a shot?” Buzz and Houlihan were so compatible that clients asked if they were married.
The creative director, red-faced Dick, talked quietly out of the side of his mouth, like one half of him had something to say the other half did not want to hear. The highlight of the first class was Dick’s story about a commercial he wrote featuring a smart dog and a TV star. The commercial was smart and funny and had Clio written all over it. The product manager loved the spot and they found a brilliant canine to star in it. Then, just before the shoot, the client insisted on hiring his favorite TV star, an action-oriented actor, famous for car chases and stunts, to play opposite the smart dog.
“It ruined the commercial,” Dick moaned, “The actor was unprofessional—and bad—while the dog was spot on. He was a consummate professional and would get this resigned look, as if to say, ‘Why me?’
“Hard as we tried, we couldn’t salvage it. Afterwards, friends in the business would say, ‘Great spot! But what’s the actor doing there?’ Every time I think of it, it gets me right here.” Dick tapped his chest and winced. “But that’s our business. Heartbreak and acid indigestion are occupational hazards. It’s tough getting great work done—or even good work. When it happens it’s a miracle. But we keep fighting. I tell my guys all the time to keep their heads up, no matter how many times they get shot down.”
The first assignment was to promote a music and video superstore on Times Square. The three teachers dismissed the class with the exhortation, “Go out there and write good ads!”
After the first session, the teachers signed Dane into the class, and he wasted no time optimizing his opportunity. The ensuing afternoon, he reconnoitered the superstore, took photographs, and carefully observed its dimensions and offerings, then devised not one but three campaigns, each with a different tone and mood.
The second class had the voltage of an opening night. Every student hoped to be the one who “had it,” for the teachers from BYOB to be “blown away” by their work. Concepts were taped to the walls. One by one, Dane’s classmates were disabused of their dream of “making it,” slammed by criticism and ridicule. When the teachers came to Dane’s nine ads on the wall, they asked who had done them all. Dane proudly raised his hand, believing his industry would be commended.
“Don’t ever do three campaigns again!” Dick, the red-faced creative director, rebuked him.
“I’m sorry,” Dane replied. “I didn’t know which direction was best. I hoped you’d guide me. In Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy advised going into a presentation with more than one campaign.”
“David Ogilvy?” Dick grimaced as if Dane had activated his heartburn. “You’re comparing yourself to David Ogilvy?”
“I was just taking a page from his book,” Dane said.
“Is David Ogilvy teaching the class?” Buzz Dingblatz, the burly art director, asked.
“I don’t see him here,” Houlihan, the dart-playing copywriter, added.
The three teachers “critiqued” Dane’s work on the wall. They were energetic and organized in their assaults. They focused on Dane’s “redeeming social value concept,” in which a suicide hotline operator, a cop and a psychiatrist each claimed in a rhyming headline how the superstore reduced suicide, crime and depression in New York.
“Is the rhyming headline your attempt at rap?” Dingblatz, the art director, jeered.
“It’s a mnemonic device,” Dane said.
“A moronic device?” Dingblatz chortled.
“Mnemonic. It helps people remember.”
“Rhyme is never used in ads,” Houlihan, the beer-bellied copywriter, added.
“Isn’t that a good reason to use it?” Dane asked.
“Not if it’s bad rhyme,” red-faced Dick, the creative director, joined in. “Anyway, suicide, crime and mental illness should never appear in ads. It’s in bad taste.”
“When did taste become a benchmark for advertising?” Dane asked. That stopped the argument.
“Just don’t do three campaigns again,” Dick Billings said.
Dane felt dejected and confused. After trying so hard to choose the right class, he found himself in a bloated cohort of 45 students with three instructors who thought little of his ability and hated him. But it was too late to change. Even if he did, what guarantee did he have that another teacher would be more receptive? Since calculation and chance brought him here, he would stay. He did not speculate that this experience foreshadowed worse to come.
For several weeks Dane dragged himself to class with ads he liked, which the teachers reviled. His one consolation was that they were tough on other students, too. Maybe they were captious in order to weed out thin-skinned dilettantes. The next week confirmed his hypothesis. Fifteen students had dropped out.
Creative reviews were a clumsy ballet. The three teachers paced and ambled with enough lumbering agility not to crash into each other while dissecting the creative offerings on the wall. Each critique was a springboard for personal tangents about people, incidents and favorite ads. The teachers’ free associations were so free that after 10 minutes, they paused, blinked and asked which ad they were assessing.
This was slapstick education so Dane dubbed them “The Three Stooges.”
Yet while Dane belittled the three instructors, he wanted nothing more than to be anointed “The Fourth Stooge.” He tried to make himself more likeable by asking questions after class. His stratagem seemed to pay off. Red-faced Dick, the creative director, praised one of his ads as smart and funny. “If you can do 11 more ads like this I can find you a job at any agency,” he told Dane.
Dane would have been ecstatic about Dick’s good review if he understood why the captious creative director liked this particular ad, which he considered quiet and dry. At any rate, even if he could replicate one ad 11 times without being called a self-cloning El Redundo, didn’t repetition kill creativity?
Despite his reservations, Dane viewed Dick Billings’ approval as a propitious sign that he was “getting it,” which prompted him to send a query letter to creative directors in 50 agencies, including Billings, soliciting an entry-level job. After one class, red-faced Dick told Dane that he had received the letter and pointed out to him that he misspelled David Ogilvy’s name. This seemed more significant to him than the content of the letter, which he characterized as “cheeky.” Dick told Dane that he should find the right way to sell himself.
“How do I do that?” Dane asked eagerly, sensing that at last he would learn something of value.
“Sell yourself. Not your shirt,” red-faced Dick replied, flicking
Dane’s baggy chemise with disdain.
10. THE ALIENATOR
For several weeks, the class lurched toward its conclusion without incident. Dane’s concepts received favorable but tepid notice that made him feel less than optimistic about his prospects. He tried to get on the teachers’ good sides, but their bad sides were turned to him at all times. Worry and frustration overwhelmed his internal filtration system and reached toxic levels.
Dane became needlessly contentious. During one session the class discussed an assignment for a GPS tracking system. One student wrote the headline, “Map-makers hate our guts.” “The Three Stooges” thought this idea was brilliant since they claimed that most people hated reading maps. That did not sound right to Dane.
“What about the nine million members of the National Geographic Society who love maps?” he asked. “The NGS even offers one as a premium.”
Houlihan, the copywriter, was furious. “That’s what’s wrong with this class. There are too many lawyers. Who cares about National Geographic readers? What the fuck does that have to do with a GPS?”
“Plenty,” Dane replied, “National Geographic readers are affluent and likely to travel. Market research would probably target them as your audience. And don’t forget the millions of AAA members. They’re also avid map-readers.”
“That’s it, I’ve had it. We’re the teachers and if you don’t like it here, then leave!” red-faced Dick cried, his flush deepening to crimson, his neck pulsing like an infection.
“I paid for the class,” Dane objected. “You’re teachers. Do you expect us to passively agree with everything you say and never ask a question or make a relevant point? What kind of education is that? I’m raising a legitimate advertising issue and you’re going ballistic. You have to know your audience, right?”
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