"Every morning, I'd walk into the agency lobby and be greeted with quotes on the wall from late creative head Bill Bernbach. Whether you're running a business, a football team, or a whole country, it's never good to continually rely on dead people for leadership. But my agency didn't give a shit, so those stupid Bernbach quotes are now etched into my skull."
"Now it's 25 years later and I'm the pompous ad prick. In fact, I'm still so attached to the art of the sale that I volunteered to conduct a brand strategy session for Defector Media at our summer offsite this year. I had not written, nor delivered, a PowerPoint deck in literal decades. And yet I still made the offer, because we'd owned this company for five years and it was time to refine our elevator pitch."
"To my surprise, my colleagues agreed and took me up on my offer. Shit. Even stranger, they ended up liking the exercise. After I went through the deck, Ray Ratto himself said to me, "That was far more useful than I thought it would be." That's the Ratto equivalent of a full kiss on the lips. So I'm gonna give you a condensed version of that same presentation right now. For fun. Lucky you."
An advertising professional recounts a first ad job at DDB where lobby quotes from Bill Bernbach greeted employees daily. Those quotes, including 'I warn you against believing that advertising is a science,' irritated the professional while an unhappy assistant account executive. Twenty-five years later the same person embraced ad pomposity, volunteered to lead a brand strategy session for Defector Media, and rebuilt a PowerPoint deck after decades without presenting. Colleagues unexpectedly praised the exercise, with Ray Ratto calling it more useful than expected. A condensed version of that brand strategy presentation is offered.
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