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Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

If God manifested himself to us he would do so in the form of a product advertised on TV.

PHILIP K. DICK

Contents

Part 1

It’s Hard to See the Writing on the Wall of a Cubicle

On Moral Advertising and Other Corporate Oxymorons

The Death of Darrin Stephens

One Huckster’s Beginnings

When Agencies Fall

A Tale of Two Chickens

The Healing Power of Yogurt

From Russia with NanoabsorbersTM

Part 2

At Large in Adland

Thoughts on Impressions

The Opposite of Subliminal

Zapping the Zeitgeist

Part 3

The Merchants of What’s Next

In Search of Advertising’s Future in Cannes

Idea Factories

Torched If They Do, Torched If They Don’t

Reunion

The Care and Feeding of the Next Great American Hucksters

Afterword: Who Do I Think I Am?

Acknowledgments

Part 1

It’s Hard to See the Writing

on the Wall of a Cubicle

On Moral Advertising and

Other Corporate Oxymorons

Do you think it would be morally acceptable to work on a beer account? How about light beer? Or hard liquor? For instance, eighty-proof sweet stuff with a cool name that goes down easy, especially for those, ahem, new to drinking. Would you sell it with humor? Sell it with sex? Does alcoholism run in your family? Would you sell it to a younger, potentially underage demographic by casting older people who look young? Would you target a minority? What if it ran only on late-night cable channels?

What about tobacco? Would you make cigarette ads? Would you make cigarette ads if they had huge “YOU WILL DIE IF YOU SMOKE THESE!” warnings plastered across the bottom? Would you do antismoking ads paid for by big tobacco? Would you not under any circumstances do cigarette ads yet work for a company or holding company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year marketing cigarettes and selling them without communications restrictions to the third world? Does cancer run in your family?

Would you work on a military account? Would you if the assignment was to increase the number of eighteen-year-old recruits during an unpopular war? Does your 401(k) portfolio include any corporation or affiliate of a tobacco or defense contracting company?

Would you work on a political campaign if you believed in the candidate? Would you work on one if you didn’t believe in the candidate, if, say, you are a Democrat and your boss (who you had thought was a Democrat) asks you off the record if you would like to fly to Maine to work on the campaign of a certain Republican presidential candidate? Would you play off the fears, anxieties, and prejudices of the public if it would sell your campaign and get you promoted?

Would you work on a fast-food account? Fried chicken? How about fried chicken with gobs of sodium and preservatives but no trans fats and they list the calories on the bucket and they do a separate “Hey, kids, don’t be a fatty!” campaign and put jungle gyms and salad bars at select locations? Does obesity run in your family? Diabetes? Coronary disease?

Would you sell sugary children’s yogurt to moms as a healthy snack choice? Would you bypass the moms and go right at the kids with animated spots starring skateboarding alligators and surfing polar bears on Nickelodeon programming?

How about an oil company? Would you take a creative director’s position running the account of one of the world’s biggest petrochemical companies if it meant a raise and an expense account and an office with eleven more ceiling tiles than that of your nemesis? Would you sleep better at night if your first assignment for mega-oil company was to do a global ad campaign about all the wonderful things it is doing for the environment, even if the media buy for the campaign cost more than the sum total of all the wonderful things they are doing for the environment?

Would the fact that you drive a Prius and intend to switch