Ad Nomad

by Eric Jay Sonnenschein

  They rolled their eyes and told him he was “full of shit.” They would not physically eject Dane and he would not be intimidated.

  Meanwhile, the other students did not understand Dane’s attitude. They did not demand give-and-take in a creative class. They had a mature view of advertising. They saw it as a business. Bosses gave orders and underlings carried them out—without discussion—or were fired.

  Dane viewed this protocol as anti-creative. He saw “The Three Stooges” as corporate tyrants and his cynical peers as poseurs, who craved creative jobs but lacked creative spirit. They in turn saw Dane as a self-defeating trouble-maker.

  This peer animosity finally surfaced in class. Buzz Dingblatz, the burly art director, perused one of Dane’s dog food concepts and said, “I know you guys don’t want to hear this, but I like this ad.”

  Now it was as big as a billboard: The advertising class hates Dane. It was not surprising. Many of his classmates worked long hours in low-level agency jobs and did not always do the assignments. They thought Dane did extra to show them up or to psyche them out, and took revenge by complaining about him. They asked the teachers if “something could be done” about Dane. “The Three Stooges” did all they could to accommodate these concerned students by discouraging him consistently and by vigilantly denigrating his work.

  Eventually, Dane could bear it no more. Hostilities erupted with the tourism ads.

  Dane believed he would ace the tourism assignment. He selected a country where he had served in the Peace Corps, so he knew the subject well—a prerequisite to great advertising. He tried various approaches, focusing on adventure, food and interactions with people—all reasons tourists pay thousands of dollars on their vacations.

  “The Three Stooges” loved an ad promoting Turkey. A student had sketched a tourist bending over as a Turkish soldier inserted an automatic weapon up his butt. “The Three Stooges” laughed hilariously at this. Dane saw the lewd appeal of the cartoon, but did not understand why seeing someone sodomized by a gun would persuade anyone to visit Turkey. Later, red-faced Dick reviewed Dane’s ads, which showed tourists interacting with native people and indigenous animals, and blurted, “I can’t figure these out.”

  “Imagine a gun up someone’s ass and you’ll get it,” Dane gibed.

  “These ads suck!” Dick shouted, “If Val Sambucca taught this class he’d light a match to them and hurl them out the window.”

  “Yeah, a Madison Avenue Cocktail!” Buzz Dingblatz intoned, giving Dick a high-5.

  “I’d like to see you try,” Dane muttered.

  11. MADISON AVENUE COCKTAIL

  The next week “The Three Stooges” brought in a fourth man.

  “We’ve invited a special guest,” Dick announced. “You’ve heard of him. Who hasn’t? Give it up for Val Sambucca.”

  Val Sambucca, a.k.a. The Flamethrower, was the celebrated creative director from Sambucca and Slivovitz, the last independent high-concept boutique shop on the planet. He was famous for a car dealership commercial that showed a young couple driving down the highway in their vehicle with a male voice-over saying, “You are witnessing highway robbery. These people paid sticker price for their minivan…” Sambucca was notorious for abusing students at ID and creatives at his agency.

  The class, reduced to a third of its original number, applauded loudly for The Flamethrower, a short, paunchy man with furtive eyes and a twisted proboscis that had encountered many fists. Sambucca flexed and pointed nervously on the balls of his feet and rubbed his nose vigorously. He looked voracious, yet food was not the object of his appetite. He was after fresh ego. Everyone in the room knew why he came. He was the hit man brought in to take Dane, his attitude, and his concepts down.

  “Val’s been on a teaching sabbatical and he told us at the One Club how much he misses classroom interaction. So we told him to come in and have fun,” Buzz Dingblatz said.

  Sambucca stammered a few perfunctory remarks. He was uncomfortable ad-libbing without a straight-man—the students’ creative efforts. The legend abruptly turned to the concepts on the wall and started to critique. Before commenting on a campaign he asked who wrote it. After marinating a few ads in tepid bile, Sambucca glanced at the teachers for a signal. He came to Dane’s work and the teachers nodded.

  “Who did this ad?”

  “I did,” Dane said.

  He stared at Dane. “What were you thinking?”

  Dane started to explain his thought process when Sambucca interrupted. “I didn’t ask you what you were thinking because I wanted to know what you were thinking. I asked what you were thinking, as in ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ To which the best response would have been, ‘Not too fucking much!’ What is this? You call this a headline? This ad should not be on the wall. This ad should never have been conceived. This copy wastes the paper it’s written on. It insults the tree that gave its life for the paper. This concept abuses the eyes that read it. Let’s put this ad to good use.”

  Sambucca ripped Dane’s ad from the wall, crumbled the paper, extracted his gold Dunhill lighter and struck the flint, emitting sparks and a reek of lighter fluid. As if protected by divine toner, Dane’s crumpled ad failed to light. Sambucca flicked his lighter repeatedly until he burned the hairs on his forefinger and scorched a corner of the sheet. Before his concept was cremated, Dane leaped from his seat and lunged at Sambucca.

  “Barbecue the ad and you eat it!” Dane yelled.

  The Flamethrower had a reputation to protect and was impervious to threats. He took his pyrotechnics as seriously as Macy’s on the 4th of July and did not relent. He applied his lighter flame again to the conceptual wad as Dane grabbed his arm. They struggled. Dane pinned Sambucca’s wrist and the lighter fell from his hand. The five-time Clio winner smashed the charred, crumpled concept in Dane’s face as if to make him eat his words. Infuriated by this upgrade in degradation, Dane wrestled his adversary to the floor, pinned his arms and stuffed the charred ad in the mad guru’s mouth.

  “Your work is not only bad, it tastes bad!” Sambucca shouted.

  “In your garbage mouth everything tastes bad!” Dane retorted.

  When the squirming and fisticuffs on the floor had abated, “The Three Stooges” pried Dane off of Sambucca.

  “This man is in the Advertising Hall of Fame! You can be expelled from ID for this!” red-faced Dick ranted. “You’ll never work in this town!”

  “You and he can go to prison for what he did!” Dane replied. “Setting fires in a building with no working fireplace is arson! And everyone here is a witness!”

  Neither Sambucca nor “The Three Stooges” ever considered the legal ramifications of their mischief. They now regarded one another with teeth-gnashing panic. Yet even when faced with possible felony charges, they invoked the First Amendment. They claimed that lighting student work and tossing it from windows was protected speech; furthermore, it was Sambucca’s trademarked teaching style. “If the First Amendment doesn’t protect you from shouting, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded room, it won’t protect you from setting the fire,” Dane pointed out. They grew quiet after that and red-faced Dick Billings reclaimed his sheepish, worried look.

  They told Dane they would forget about the fracas if he would.

  The fireball incident altered the mood of the class. By the last session in late April, only five students remained of the original 45. The room, once packed like a rush hour train, had become drafty. Just one student found the teachers’ favor, a self-described hack, who drew concepts deftly with magic markers. Though Dane attended every session and completed every assignment, he had little sense of accomplishment, only pride in his diligence and stamina. He gave himself credit for not giving up like 40 others in the class, but thought that maybe he should have, since the consensus was that he would not succeed at this difficult, new career.

  Dane left the last class by himself and headed west on 23rd Street, his gait less emphatic than ten weeks before. He had lost his swagger and looked be
aten up, if not beaten down. He had fought The Institute of Design to a stand-off, but holding his own offered dubious consolation since the ordeal did not result in a job.

  At one of the many corners Dane crossed that evening, another of the five class finishers stood next to him while they waited for the light to change. In ten weeks, Dane and this classmate never spoke but now they walked together and discussed their plans. Dane’s fellow “alumnus” was a filmmaker who needed a real job. He had many friends in advertising and was more conservative in every way than Dane ever was. Before their paths diverged, the ex-classmate had a few parting words for Dane.

  “One thing I’ll say about you, man, is you’re coming from a different place. That’s a real advantage in this business. I didn’t always like where you were coming from, but it was always original.”

  Dane received this comment as his final grade. It was a mixed review that promised conflict, difficulty and a happy ending. “The Three Stooges” gave Dane a B-.

  Case 1-D

  HAVE BOOK, WILL HIRE

  12. SIX MONTH CHECKUP/2nd OPINION

  After The Institute of Design, Dane felt prepared to revisit Thor Kevorksen and show him what he had done in six months. He was confident that Thor would be impressed by his commitment and offer him a job, or recommend him for one at his own agency. After a month of postponements, Thor finally sat with Dane in his office and flipped through his book. The old protégé watched his reluctant mentor blink, wince and furrow his brow. He measured each sporadic guffaw and cringed when Kevorksen shook his head sternly.

  Moments later, Kevorksen closed the book with ritual precision and looked Dane in the eye.

  “You’ve made significant progress,” Thor said. “The book is getting there.”

  “Getting there?” Dane repeated like a sad parrot. “It’s not there yet?”

  “No. But you’re close,” Kevorksen nodded effusively.

  Kevorksen maintained that Dane had three good campaigns, as opposed to the one he started with, but it was still not enough. Dane needed one more campaign and a few “one-offs” or single ads. In his financial uncertainty, Dane perceived “close” as a light year away. He controlled his dejection by exhaling in short puffs through his nose. Kevorksen noticed this and frowned with concern.

  “Are you okay?” he asked his old protégé.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dane reassured him. “This is how I process bitter disappointment.”

  “Oh, that’s neat,” Kevorksen said. “But like I said, you’re really close. There’s a lot of good stuff. It just needs…a little more.”

  “Thor, that’s great, but I mean, I wondered if I couldn’t get an entry level job with my good stuff and then get better on the job…You know, I have a family and my teaching job is almost over.”

  Kevorksen smiled at Dane with wistful eyes and pursed lips, like he was about to tell a seven-year old he could not give him a cookie.

  “No, that’s not how it works, Dane. I wish it were. But believe me, when it’s there, you’ll get the job. All you need is tweaking and a more professional feel. You know, better art direction.”

  “That’s all? How can I get better art direction?” Dane asked.

  “You’ll have to find an art director who’ll work with you.”

  “Can you recommend anyone?”

  “No. Sorry. All the art directors I know are so busy.”

  Dane thanked Kevorksen for his help but cursed him under his breath. It was his luck to have a mentor who saved the worst news till last and finished with one final daunting task. How would Dane find an art director if he did not work at an agency?

  Doris, his depressed neighbor, had an agency job, so Dane asked her to recommend an art director. She said art directors she knew were too busy, but one studio artist might be available. He was always in trouble for changing art directors’ layouts and making unsolicited design suggestions. Since he was angling to become an art director, he might be willing to work with Dane.

  “That’s terrific!” Dane replied. Doris looked at him quizzically, unsure why he was enthusiastic.

  “He changes headlines and body copy, too,” she reminded Dane, as if he had not understood the first time.

  “That’s okay. He’s an ambitious underdog. He has passion, like me!”

  Doris sighed.

  “He’s terrible but he’s all I can come up with. Here is his contact information. Make sure he doesn’t change your concepts or your words. If he does, call him on it.”

  13. THE SEAGULL & THE GARLIC KNOT

  Lance Brubaker worked in the studio of Wyatt-Knight, a hip mainstream agency. The décor at Wyatt-Knight was someone’s idea of the creative process, an adult’s kindergarten nostalgia. Splotches of primary color covered the rubberized linoleum walls and floors as if buckets of poster paint had been heaved at them. The walls were festooned with crayon doodles and scarred by rubber bumps, craters, and fuzzy coral-like protuberances, making it resemble a synthetic vertical reef.

  Contrary to most agencies, the Wyatt-Knight production studio was the neatest space in the complex. Lance Brubaker sat in the middle of it, a large, affable man insulated by earphones and sunglasses and hovering over his computer like a caveman over fire.

  Lance and Dane strolled to the South Street wharf, occupied benches facing the harbor, chewed garlic knots, and mused on life. Lance said he hailed from a small Pennsylvania town, where he starred as a high school swimmer and soccer player.

  “Swimming tore up my shoulder and soccer blew out my knee,” Lance reflected. “But what hurt most was winter swim practice at 5 AM. That first dive in the freezing pool was like smashing into a pane of glass naked.”

  Lance’s dad worked long hours at his butcher shop on Main Street. He loathed young Lance’s addiction to TV and video games. “Ha! I learned everything I know today from TV and video games and I make more money than my old man ever did,” Lance cracked ironically, heaving half a garlic knot on the river. “I still play video games, only now it’s with InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. And TV is where I get my ideas.”

  A seagull swooped down and retrieved the garlic knot Lance had tossed on the water. The enterprising bird perched on a railing and pecked at the morsel as Dane and Lance reviewed each other’s work. Lance liked Dane’s concepts and agreed to help him bring the portfolio to a more professional level—with layouts and logos.

  After their collaboration pact, the two men shared quiet time staring at the East River, which eddied and churned before them.

  “I can’t wait to be a full-fledged creative,” Lance said. “Then I can act like my shit doesn’t stink.”

  “Yeah,” Dane agreed, as if this were a universal aspiration.

  The seagull that nibbled Lance’s garlic knot took wing and suddenly plunged into the churning river.

  Dane and Lance rarely met after that first meeting. When Lance needed images for layouts Dane researched them at the Public Library. Dane enjoyed rummaging for photographs and was pleased when Lance approved the ones he found. Lance did not change Dane’s concepts as much as Doris had predicted, except for the dog food campaign which “The Three Stooges” loved. Lance put the race dog pictures under filters so they were in lurid red, sickly black and white, and X-ray. He drained the color from the dogs’ fur so they looked like ghoulish monsters.

  Dane asked Lance to restore the colors but the designer resisted.

  “You don’t want race dogs in your book,” Lance insisted. “You’d have the ASPCA and PETA all over your ass. Those dogs are gruesomely mistreated.”

  Dane met Lance in June and expected a professional-looking book and a job by fall. But the project, so close to completion in summer, dragged on for months. Lance was as hard to pin down as Kevorksen. Dane phoned his collaborator once a week but his calls were never returned. He wondered if Lance was angry, or wanted compensation. When he caught him on the phone after weeks of trying, he was so relieved that he forgot his anger. Dane brooked Lance’s exotic excuse
s for not delivering the ads—strained thumb ligaments from a foosball tournament, a rare fungus contracted from his wife, a rash from agency toilet paper—since he could ill afford to antagonize him.

  In mid-winter, nine months after the seagull died from the garlic knot, Lance said the portfolio was nearly done. Only one ad needed a final detail—Buses tell the best stories—which Dane had done in The Advangelist’s class. Kevorksen claimed it was Dane’s best. Now it needed a logo to make it look like a real ad and Dane had no idea where to find one. Then he recalled he had taken a long bus trip years before. Fortunately, Dane traveled so seldom that the bus tag with the logo was still looped around the valise handle. Even luckier, the Happy Trails Bus Line had not changed its logo. Dane clipped the tag and phoned Lance.

  “So put them in the mail and I’ll get them next week,” Lance said. “I need to get this done. I’ll come up to your house,” Dane replied.

  “You care so much that you’ll come all the way up here? OK. I’ll drop the logo into the layout while you wait.”

  Dane and Becky drove to Lance’s house in Tarrytown. It was a cottage halfway up a steep hill. Its nicest feature was a skylight that made Lance’s attic office bright and warm. Lance inserted the last detail on the first and best ad campaign Dane had ever done. Now the concepts looked like ads and Dane could shop the portfolio like he was serious about a job.

  Lance had one more gift for Dane. It was the name of a creative recruiter, who had helped him in the past. Lance told Dane to use his name when he called her.

  14. A SLAP IN THE FACE

  Connie Melman’s slogan was “I don’t find jobs. I make careers.” She worked for a recruiting firm in the Flatiron district where many agencies had migrated for cheaper space. Dane tried to relax in the waiting room. This would be the first time he showed off his new improved portfolio. He scavenged the coffee table by the couch for reading matter and found a new issue of Ad Age. A large post-it was affixed to it with a bold-faced message: “If you steal this magazine, you will never work again.” Dane turned the pages of the magazine nervously. He was afraid that he would accidentally defile it and disqualify himself from future employment. He put down the magazine and kept himself loose by rubbing his jaws and slapping his face.