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I am leaving Friday, April 23rd, on a VERY long driving trip across the United States. I will be gone for about six weeks. I will do my best to update the site as I travel, but if it comes down to eating an armadillo burger and updating the site, you know what is doing to win.
Steve
People keep giving me their work addresses. Has anybody read anything about the state of the economy? I just sent out an email blast and here are some of the people who have vanished. If you know where they are now, have them send me their HOME address:
Mark Bilfield, Rommel Cinco, Megan Kent, Vanessa Alcazar, Marian Salzman, Theresa Buchanan, Tom Szczepanski, Evert Cillier, Brian Hegedus, Francine Slow, Ivan Horvath, Bradford Briggs, Andy Spade, Nicole Carrington, Ally Longfield, There are others, but I'm having trouble interpreting some of the results of all the rejects.
If you know where they are, don't just tell me where they are, send me their email addresses. My address is on top of the page above, right on the masthead.
It's time for Jane Newman's annual Thorn Tree Benefit to benefit the children of the Samburo Tribe in Africa!
Click here" to read the full pdf file.
Here's a summary from Jane ...
The Thorntree Fundraiser is on the Tuesday the 11th May!!!! Hold the date!!!!!May 11th, 6:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Clodagh Design
670 Broadway, 4th Floor
Between Bond and Great Jones
$30 suggested donation at the doorThis year is going to be the best ever: the most fun and bargains galore!. We have an amazing African bazaar full of our favorite things from Kenya. And a silent auction with fabulous New York cool things to bid on. There is a bar and snacks and when you've shopped you can buy desks, beds, mosquito nets and camels for the school.
Feel free to invite your friends -- as everyone knows who has been before our event is lots of fun, casual and friendly and you are pretty much guaranteed to walk out with a bargain.
We had a great year last year at the school. Ndonyo Wasin has 8 grades and when students leave we want them to be able to go on to a top national high school. The money we made at last years event went on improving the quality of education at the school. We want every student at the school to get into a good national high school. However the government gives the school only 40% of what is needed to run a basic but effective school in Kenya so we filled the gap with extra teachers so there was one for every class, food for breakfast and dinner for the boarders, enough reading books so every student can read 35 books a year, enough camels to give every student a glass of milk a day, mid term and end term exams to monitor progress, school uniforms, a couple of school trips, dormitory supplies and matrons, new desks, a sports outfit for older students and a few other things. It has worked! Grades have increased by 45% since we started and they continue to go up. Maybe one day we can be one of the top schools in the country. Imagine that, a school in the bush in the top 10% of the whole of Kenya. See what you have helped accomplish! Thank you. The children and parents of Ndonyo Wasin send their blessings.
All love,
Jane
Courtesy of Nancy Ullman comes the third in a series of Adweek columns that Jay wrote back in the 80s. Nancy found them in an old folder in her garage and graciously scanned them and sent them to me for posting.
Click once to see the image in a larger size and then click a SECOND time to blow it up to fit your screen.
Received a passionate email this morning from C/D NY alum Scott Lukas at Dosage Consulting about Nike's new Tiger Woods commercial ...
This communications idea is so good on so many levels I don't know where to start. I wanted to send a note around to see what you think.It is a narrative about all of us -- No, we haven't done the despicable things that Tiger has done to his wife, family and business partners. But we all have had our moments in which we have indulged ourselves, used our positions of power, and leveraged our positions in circumstances in ways that just wasn't right. We all have done the wrong thing. We have all had to make decisions about how we face ourselves, the world and our work and loved ones thereafter. We all have to decide our role in how things will carry on for ourselves. Do we have the courage to move on? Learn and progress? Be a better person? To change? It is a cultural moment and experience we all can relate to. Strategically, the narrative is gripping.
It is a profound narrative about Tiger -- I can only imagine the complexity of Tiger's relationship with his deceased father. Bringing his father back to chime in on a topic that the whole world has already chimed in on is riveting. In this spot Earl is Tiger's god, the ultimate judge and sage, confidant and condemner. He is both Tiger and not. It doesn't take long to get into Christian myth, does it? The whole world waits to see how he will react. What will be his next chapter? Creatively, the narrative is gripping.
It is a great use of TELEVISION - This is a public, shared moment. It HAD to have been introduced via TV, a medium most open to a mass public space. Tiger is a public figure. His trials and tribulations have played out in the public space. Yes, most people (including you perhaps) will experience it online, on youtube, in the news, etc. But it will be reported as a TV ad and that's important to the cultural idea. It is Tiger standing before all of us. Looking us in the eye. You get a sense he's got the courage and strength to be special (again), or at least die trying.
It is a great use of timing and context -- Tiger tees off at 1.42pm today. It will be covered live. The next four days will be a circus. Adding this to the cultural conversation and story yet to be written just when everyone's appetite is beginning to peak is very very clever. It is of the moment, culturally, globally.
More on this spot later when I let it soak in more....
http://www.youtube.com/nikegolf#p/u/0/5NTRvlrP2NU
It seems like I've been posting way too many entries like this. Are we getting old?
Melanie Saltzman, who was a media planner in the NY office in the late 80s and early 90s, has died from breast cancer. She is survived by her husband and her little girl, Noelle.
(And thank you to Alisa Cohen-Kessler for letting me know.)
The writer William Gibson, who coined the word "cyberspace," once described "the consumer" as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."
Eve Luppert is now Senior Advisor on HR Innovation and Organizational Excellence for USAID
The alums just keep rolling in!
Found out I missed the party of the century last year. I worked with Julie Nakagama and Judi Chandellor in the Los Angeles office oh so long ago!Lizzy Kelly (Wika)
Last week's email brought back into the fold this "lost" alum, Kim Haskell ...
loved every second of my seven+ years at C/D.Kupe and Jay hired me to do new business in LA - worked with Laurie Coots. i got to go fishing - she got to clean and cook em.
best to you all.
kim haskell, partner
colby haskell+
From somewhere in Scandanavia comes this report from C/D alum Ann Zemenak ...
Ann Zemenak has not vanished. Thanks to the TBWA ski trip, Sulden Italy 1998, I met the man of my dreams and have been living and loving the Nordic life for the past 10 years....now as Ann Sarimo :-).