Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [129]
I sat up. I nodded. It sure was a problem. Sitting there, I thought of a recent Fenske bio I’d downloaded before the trip. It mentioned Wieden+Kennedy, where “he learned how to aim high.” It mentioned Nike, the Bomb Factory, and Van Halen. It even said that after graduating from Michigan State University, he “almost became a missionary, but ‘displayed a genuine lack of aptitude for sinlessness.’” What the bio neglected to mention was his time at N. W. Ayer. So what he’d just told the class, based on my presence, was notable because he was suggesting that the problem wasn’t solely the fault of Ayer, or the people at Ayer, or its clients.
There was something confessional in his tone. And as with everything I ever heard him say, like it or not, it rang true.
“You want to make sure you are at a place that appreciates your best,” he continued. “And even then, there will be times when people still won’t get it. Which usually means you’re onto something.”
Next he segued to morals and advertising with integrity.
“Can you keep yourself from doing something that intrudes on people’s privacy?”
And, “You have to ask yourself, when you get an assignment or a new client, do I want to do that for a living? [For instance] I won’t do lottery ads. I think lottery ads are shameless. Beer, not so.”
The students were listening closely, but I wondered if his words could make as much sense to them before they embarked on their careers as they did to me, several years removed from mine. Twenty years of knowledge and experience and cynicism from where they are today.
Before the break he brought his talk full circle, to vocation. “You want the opportunity to do what you want to do: Write a script. A film. A cartoon. Last year someone did a cartoon that was one of the best things I saw here. I came upon him late one night and looked over his shoulder, and it blew me away. Other people I showed said, ‘That’s not advertising.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but did you notice how you leaned in?’”
That’s advertising.
Maybe that’s the confluence of art and advertising, I thought, the ability to make people lean in.
We sat in chairs on a rooftop lounge during a fifteen-minute break. I wanted to talk ads, but Fenske wanted to talk books. Fenske is an avid reader and a poet. On a suggested reading list on his Web site, he cites more literary works than pop culture or advertising books, which is consistent with his opinion that it’s all art.
“Liking what Bukowski writes and believing whether or not he did it are two different things,” he told me, referring to a Bukowski quotation I’d e-mailed him a few days earlier. “Drinking, screwing, and writing all day—you can’t do all three, but it’s fun to read about.” Then he told me that he thinks Flannery O’Connor is brilliant. I mentioned the deft use of religious symbols in one of her stories, and he said, “Don’t get me started on religion. How can you be a writer, how can you write a book, if you think there is nothing else? Don’t get me started.” Did I say there is nothing else, I thought, or is he just saying that? I’d been with him for only ten minutes. I wasn’t ready to get him started.
A few minutes later, as if to make me feel better about my modest career, Fenske mentioned a campaign he said I’d written for General Motors twelve years earlier that was something that “Wieden would buy today.” This did make me feel better, but mostly because I had no idea what campaign he was talking about.
Before we went back inside for the second half of his class, he asked about this book and where my visit to the Brandcenter would fit in. After I was through explaining, he groaned. “I hope it’s not gonna be another fluff piece about this place.”