What price freedom?

The answer is not a series of integers with a dollar sign in front, and the question is who said it? And in all my Googleness I can't find the original quote - and even I had appropriated it and used its spirit in an advertising campaign for GameBoy at one point in time. But the question goes deep into men's hearts when it comes to the freedom one has in one's daily life - to choose the cigarettes one likes, or to smoke at all - breasts or butts - tall or short - secrets or transparency? The only way to understand one's freedom is to have it taken away, or to allow yourself to get to a point where you have unwittingly surrendered it.

"Men want the same thing from their women that they want from their underwear:
a little bit of support, and a little bit of freedom."
~ Jerry Seinfeld

A friend of mine said recently that the advice in my friend Hugh MacLeod's book, Ignore Everybody, had come too late in her life because she had long ago "sold out to corporate America". Another person described her idea of freedom as "going wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted". Freedom means different things to different people. The less of it you have, the more of it you want - but the more of it you give to others, the more of it you get from them. Interesting.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The question of freedom has come up recently in regard to politics. The Chinese can't have Facebook, but they can have a Mercedes. The government in Vietnam doesn't like Facebook either, but they love Bentleys, because you can't really organize much of a protest with a Bentley, but you can with Facebook. And with less than 5% of the world's population, the United States houses 25% of the world's criminals, many just for possession of marijuana, and one in four, a black man. What price freedom, for sure. And what name do you give it? Communism, Democracy, Monarchy or anarchy?

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And so another birthday comes, 54 this time, and it will be nothing like the last one. This one will leave me with the greatest gift of all - the freedom to think beyond.

None but ourselves can free our minds.
~ Bob Marley

That Embarrassing 70s Show - I Was In It!

Oh dear. It's all about to come out of the closet - and I'm not talking about my gayness - although from this photo, you've got to wonder. Note particularly, my full-length denim jumpsuit (I'm on the far left) and my buddy's not-so-delicately-cross-hatched pants. Fucking hilarious, you've got to admit.

This photo comes from Sylvia, a really good art-friend during our freshman year in college and the dude standing next to me is my best friend at that time, Tom Nelson, or "Nels" as everyone knew him. I was known also as "Carls" at the time and together we composed a most deviant organization called "The Swedish Mafia", a clandestine cooperative dedicated to art, beer drinking, cigar smoking, classic car repair (we both drove junk piles of ever-changing make and model including Studebakers, Ford Mustangs a Buick "Invicta" and a Datsun) and the chasing of many women who were essentially bad for our mental health, although many times more than good for our physical health. From that was born another private club, "The Porker Brothers", but that's another story entirely. Tom now makes a "clean" living in custom homes.

In these days, we were both obsessed with getting through school (Black Hawk College in this photo) and finding jobs in the ad business (His mother was an art teacher and his dad had an advertising company of some sort) and Sylvia was a bit of a Tom-boyish art buddy of ours who was just really, really sweet and truly a good friend as well. Little did we understand that these days would pass quickly and this photo is probably the last time I saw or spoke to Sylvia. Until now.

Over the last year, since starting the blog and posting thrice weekly at least, my Internet presence has increased exponentially. Along with Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm pretty easy to find and any great number of voices from my past have popped up recently - and interestingly enough, primarily female - the account executive from my first TV shoot with Bozell & Jacobs in Dallas, the researcher and media woman who worked on the Nintendo Game Boy account with us in the early 90s, and another woman with whom I had an affair with at Leo Burnett. Oh, dear. If 25 year olds start popping up calling me "daddy", I'll start to worry. But that hasn't happened, yet. Yet. So there is definitely another side to being a Web 2.0 provocateur. A side that tax collectors, old enemies and older ex-girlfriends might find to use to exorcise antique angst. But that isn't what has happened to me at all - conversely, everyone I have re-met has been just so sweet and nice that it makes me wonder what kind of a guy I really have been? Even Tom and I are still in contact. Wasn't I supposed to have been a Porsche driving, cocaine snorting, advertising-creative-hero-in-his-own-mind, sort of asshole in all those years up the ladder? Well, we'll do a call-in show for that later. I'm sure we can find a guy I bullied in gym class - or maybe art class for sure. Are there art class bullies?

Thanks so much to Sylvia for this, and for letting those of us who have spent time in divorce court know that there is another side to that 50% figure. Sylvia and her husband in the photo, Jim, are still married. But no damn thanks for the fashion faux pas "outing". Damn that hurts!

Nintendo: What Have I Done For You Lately, II

As I've explained in a previous post, the concept of "What have you done for me lately?", relates especially to creative people working in the advertising business. Basically, you're only as good as your last ad. Not unlike having a hit pop song or winning a particular sports contest, the fame one acquires from writing a popular spot is short-lived, although nice when it lasts.

A recent news report on NPR quoted that $1.7 billion dollars was spent on video games in April – a 50% increase year on year from 2007. The Nintendo Wii system led the pack with the entire industry growing even faster than analyst's predictions. In Asia, the online game business is booming with China's market set to triple in the next couple of years. Who could have known the business would grow to be the entertainment juggernaut it has become today.

Well, Minoru Arakawa could have. Mr. Arakawa was President of Nintendo of America in the 80s and 90s and our client whilst working on the Nintendo business at Leo Burnett in Chicago. We worked with a number of marketing executives on the day-to-day business, one – interestingly named George Harrison, but not the Beatle – but when it came to selling a large campaign, Mr. Arakawa was the final decision maker.

The following spot, called, "Cool", was created as a response to consumer research that indicated that adults, mom's and dad's, were borrowing or swiping their children's GameBoy machines and involving themselves in the growing passion of playing video games. What an interesting phenomena, the idea that adults enjoyed playing these games. This would become the challenge of the spot – to give permission to the target without showing them looking irresponsible or childish.



The spot was created by Jonathan Hoffman and myself and shot by director, Mark Story in L.A. The music was composed by Jon Pederson in New York.

I do recall the issue of silliness becoming an issue during the filming of the spot. One of our client's on production felt the entire thing was just too stylistically goofy. There was a big discussion over the spring-loaded airplanes that don the gate attendant's hat – a small touch we felt was absolutely hilarious. Imagine being on a shoot for a video game maker and being told the work was too goofy. We didn't know what to make of that. Here we had a storyboard and script that were nothing but goofy and were being told to tone it back in small detail – still the number of sly jokes we were able to inject into individual scenes was considerable. I'm particularly still happy with the fact that the airline depicted is named Air Dave.

My how the industry has grown. Our campaign ran for about two years and included other spots and a full print campaign. To my knowledge it has been the only campaign ever to have marketed video games to adults exclusively. Nintendo eventually returned to their core focus of teens and moved away from the adult market, the prevailing wisdom being to allow people to continue playing into their adult years without consciously acknowledging it.

As a post script let me relate this story of discussing my career with my father one day.

From Wild Wild East:

After viewing a commercial I had done on TV, my father commented, "Well, David, that was very nice, but I didn't see you in it." I explained to him that I wasn't an actor but understood his confusion in that I had worked as an actor for a community theatre in my teenage years. He went on to question, "You didn't act in it, you didn't direct it, and you're not the voiceover. I don't understand exactly what you did?"

"Well, I thought of it, Dad. I co-wrote it", I told him.

"Hmm", he retorted, "That seems like the easy part. Everyone else is doing all the work."

And the life of the misunderstood creative mind soldiers on.

For more in the 'What Have I Done For You Latley?' series check here:

(I)WHIDFYL I: American Airlines
(II)WHIDFYL II: Nintendo
(III) WHIDFYL III: Charles & Ray Eames
(IV) WHIDFYL IV: Heartbeat Vietnam