Your Man In Saigon III

Way back in March of 08 I was surprised to find a mail in my box from a reader in New York who claimed that Vanity Fair magazine had tread on to The Wild Wild East's turf with their own "Our Man in Saigon" feature. The reader went on to explain that "to your readers, your are our man in Saigon" and wondered what I had thought of the story.

At that point this blog was but a month old and I wondered how I could even have had any readers at such an embrionic stage, but at least one reader there was, and from New York none the less, so I was happy to find any audience at all. A few weeks later I recieved a hard copy of the feature from New York and was able to reference it on the Internet as well. It was interesting, to read a newcomer's view of this city, as I had been here a little over two years at that point, and interesting to read it in a Vanity Fair context. Readers of this blog will certainly not confuse any writing here with the Pulitzer prize winning product of many of the Vanity Fair writers but it was more than curious to read Brian McNally thrust into that context. My comments and introduction to the first story are here.

For those not familiar with all this background suffice to say that Brian McNally is an old friend of Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, and a former restauranteur of quite some repute in New York. It's not difficult to understand Mr. Carter's fascination with his friend's decamp to Saigon in episode number one, but the second installment, published in November, brings a lot of questions to mind, not in the least Vanity Fair's editorial reasoning and various journalistic responsibilities. I had to ask myself just exactly why they were continuing with what one reviewer termed as Mr. McNally's "walking breakdown" I encourage you to read the entire piece here, but will also run through it briefly with Vanity Fair excerpts in colour, which you can click on to see the original, and my comments attached as follows:

"In Vietnam, if the weather doesn’t claim you—whether by scorching heat, the hair-trigger deluges, or a ravaging cyclone—then the swarming traffic or counterfeit medicine will."

A curious introduction at best, as neither the heat was scorching this last year nor did we experience anything so severe as a cyclone, certainly not as far inland as Saigon is situated - the work of the editorial staff at VF is more than plainly evident in McNally's second Web Exclusive "Letter From Saigon". Gone are the patchy transitions and somewhat coloquialy quaint constructions from his first public entry replaced by strands of pristinely elegant prose that might send the most avid reader, or certainly a second year political science student, to his Wiki or Dictionary.com search in hopes of figuring out something like the following:

"No doubt, in the lurid imaginations of Wolfowitz, Perle, and Co., the place is teeming with subversive samizdat cafés, where students and intellectuals, thirsting for democracy, surreptitiously pass mimeographed essays on Thomas Paine from table to table. Apart from the fact that anyone interested in reading essays on Thomas Paine should head straight to the English-language section of any one of a number of bookstores here..."

Aside from being just needlessly erudite, this passage, and a whole political bit around it starts out by violating expat rule number one - "Unless your're a professional journalist or diplomat, stay out of politics in your host country." - and ends by just not being factually responsible in that none of McNally's political wonderings are substantiated for the reader, or other writers, in a way that could illuminate or encourage any positive change - never mind that it's plainly obvious that he's never entered one of the bookstores he references looking for Thomas Paine - of which you will find, of course, absolutely none.

"It’s far more dangerous to expose corruption in Vietnam than to practice it, as the recent widely reported trial of two journalists and two whistle-blowers demonstrated. (Two were sentenced to jail terms for breaking certain vague and paranoid laws such as abusing democratic freedoms and infringing on the interests of the state.)"

I'd be much happier to read McNally's take on restaurants and culture than I would traipse through his political or social ramblings, since in most cases he's way out of his element or just flat wrong, or blind:

"Strip clubs are nonexistent and most bars close at midnight. Scantily clad go-go girls dancing on a stage would be enough to lose a bar its liquor license. Apart from a few streets outside the tourist and ex-pat neighborhoods, street prostitution is represented almost in its entirety by the same two lady-boys who cruise Le Loi Street every night on a moped. There are no brothels that I have ever heard of and, more important, there is no organized crime, and there are no pimps involved in prostitution."

To say there's no organized crime or managed prostitution in a city growing as fast and furiously as Saigon, after having claimed that corruption is rampant in the earlier parts of his story, just doesn't make any fucking sense. And it's not true. I'm quite sure the Vanity Fair code of ethics forbids me to say the word "fucking" but it should also prevent Brian McNally from writing, and Graydon Carter from approving any purported facts about things they don't know fuck all about - since former New York celebrity restauranteurs and Spy magazine writers should not be the first people anyone would pick to route out the underworld in an unknown land.

The absense of any real humanity or real relationships for that matter is what finally permeates this second installment from VF's man-supposedly-in-Saigon. And the question of what he is actually doing here remains yet unanswered.

"There the fashion doyenne who manages to be both genuinely eccentric and genuinely dull, there the Hollywood producer who has written more books than he has read, there the phony English journalist who has been trading for 30 years on an accent that was drowned long ago in the Thames Estuary and, hijacked by happy hour, has rarely seen a sober dusk."

This snippet of carboard cut-out character sketches from New York is about as close as McNally ever gets to relating to people and it's never in a particularly personal nor complimentary fashion, whether in Saigon or New York. It is however evident that he's outgrown New York, at least in his last incarnation, and seems to be spending most of his time contemplating whether there will be anything next, aside from being a VF contributer, or not.

What I get out of the whole exercise at this point, is that a man in a more than influential publishing position has taken a shine to the seemingly curious travails of an old friend from another life and has given him a platform in which to excorcize whatever late-mid-life demons he may have left and that a tourist - an ex-NYC restauranteur as he might have been - is writing his still naive impressions of a place he had only fantasized about through the decor, staff and dishes of a restaurant he once held sway over.

For my readers, after nearly a year on this blog and three posts a week, I will carry on as their Man In Saigon as a worker, resident, writer and provocateur of a city of which I still believe holds the promise that New York may have had for Mr. McNally in his beginning years there.

For the entire "You man in Saigon Experience" check below:

IV: The search for Brian McNally ends
III: The second Vanity Fair Story
II: The first Vanity Fair story
I: Your Man In Saigon"

"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI

If I didn't walk in this city I would never have seen the sign that proclaimed the title of this post - "Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" nor would I have had the ability to understand that it is a menu item, the first on a list of other more understandable ones, and the sign, designed to entice customers into the joint, just one more in the melange of maligned English descriptions that make up a large part of this city's attempts at foreign relations. The dish described is simply fresh Vietnamese spring rolls, not the deep-fried variety, filled with a standard pork/shrimp/veggie mixture but the word that threw me off was disposed? I understood foggy in that the ricepaper is not clearly transparent but why disposed? Was it not good enough for some other purpose? Would ricepaper officionados avoid this particular variety? Does that mean it's recycled? In an effort to increase the green promotion of Saigon I will certainly make a point of revisiting this establishment when they are open and suggesting to management that the word disposed be supplanted by the word recycled to increase the freshness appeal and overall appetisement of the advertisement. Do you think they'll understand? The vagaries of walking always serve in some way or another to enhance what might otherwise be a boring day. Why just take a taxi home from work when you can avail yourself of all the pleasures of all the little things awaiting, that you are, at instant, unaware of? Let the rabbits out of the hats, the cats from their bags and genies from bottles. Pandora's box holds a day's worth of secret surprises all if you just take another step. The half-hatched egg seller from my last Little Things post was was closed so it was time to visit the back of the Phu Nuan Market and see the lady from my Lunch With Obama entry. Mmm, mmm, mmm. She served up a similar bowl of noodles to my visit before with fried springrolls and sliced sausages on top, but my surprise came when I asked for a drink. She then produced another woman from the stall behind who then produced a perfect English speaking husband who then asked me what kind of shake I was looking for - how he knew I prefered a shake will remain beyond me. I ordered an orange with ice and sweetened condensed milk that would turn out to as close as I can remember to an Orange Julius from one of my childhood trips to California. I recalled trying to convince my father to open an Orange Julius franchise back home in Illinois and his perplexed reaction to this 10 year old entrepreneur. He remains perplexed today. The number three bus would be my bus of choice today as I had walked quite enough and felt a bit stuffed after my feed and drink. Lunch cost two dollars - the bus, 20 cents. Arriving at the Ben Thanh Saigon bus station is a little like arriving in the Bolivian train station that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid find in the film of the same name - minus the attractive Burt Bacharach soundtrack. It's got chickens outside, conical hatted ladies vending noodles and cigarrette smoking officials to help you find your bus - that is, if you speak Vietnamese. And it's got busses - hundreds of them all coming and going, barely stopping to let the old passengers off and the new ones on, in a symphony of musical big tin can chairs that can only be described as comical - if not oddly efficient. I depart. The Nguyen Kim electronics store is Vietnam's version of a Sam's wholesale but a whole lot more Vietnamese. Crowded onto a street corner that could barely hold a drivethrough McDonalds in the States it boasts four floors of more varieties of stuff than you've ever seen. I counted over 80 different kinds of microwaves, 100 types of refrigerators - all different- and the most dizzying array of vacuum cleaners I had seen since Korea. Orientals are fastidiously clean and have the electronics to prove it. Two monks were busy bargaining with a salesperson over a huge deep freeze with an icemaker and computer readout screen on the polished stainless steel door. I come here when the rest of the world is going to shit just so I can put into perspective that the $80 billion IMF bailout of Korea during the Asian financial crisis of 1997 was but a drop in the bucket of what the US is going through right now - $150 billion for AIG, another $45b to Citibank and Merrill, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Goldman... et al, oh fuck, I loose track - and see that another truckload of Samsung whatevers just won't be enough for these people. My January 5th, 2009 copy of Newsweek reminds me that "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." It also cautions that "It is not expected that kings philosophize or that pholosophers become kings, nor is it to be desired, because possession of power corrupts the free judgement of reason inevitably." As we American's, and the world as a whole, welcome the change of a new administration in the free world, is is worthy to note the authors of the previous quotes - Machiaveli on the former and Plato for the latter - as we hopefully set our expectations for our new leaders appropriately and realize that there's a whole world of rolled, foggy, disposed, ricepaper salesmen out there and we'll need to decide very carefully what to order when the new world menus appear. The Vietnamese will then cook it for us in a Samsung, Toshiba or Electrolux depending on which model was on sale on which particular day.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

Cold Fusion by Hot Injection: The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz II

Response to our first Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz was so astounding, we've decided to keep it as a regular feature. This month's physicist is none other than Dr. Trang Phoung Phoung and whatever she may lack upstairs is more than made up for by the lower levels. Is that a test tube rack she's packin' or what? But forget that, on with the quiz. Below, you'll find a question in Bold Faced Type. Consider the question, come up with your answer, and then "mouse over" the question to reveal our physicist's answer. Should you disagree with it, we'll be more than happy to arrange a mud-wrestling match between your sorry ass and the more than fit Dr. Phoung to decide the winner. Or you can check with Kinky Solutions for a man's perspective.

"Can I maintain a woody during ColdFusion?"


For more quizzes, check here:

Iran's Ahmadinedschad - The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz VII
Did Sarah Palin Just Nuke Herself? - The Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz VI
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz V
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz IV
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz III
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz II
Vietnamese Nuclear Physics Quiz I.

Marketing Predictions 2009

From deep in the epicenter of the marketing brain-trust, right here in Vietnam, come my predictions for the industry in 2009. And how, you may ask, might I be equipped to delve deep inside the world of marketing from the vantage point of this very developing market? Because this is where I believe the immediate future of the business lies, not necessarily in Vietnam, but in markets like Vietnam, who can provide a petrie dish for embrionic business ideas before they are launched into larger markets. And I have not been the first person to have this idea. That credit goes first this year to Sir Martin Sorrell, who, aside from possibly being the most creative man in contemporary marketing, due to his Dell project and other WPP initiatives, has made no secret of his intention to focus his company's growth in emerging markets as opposed to the developed ones who are most certainly at the beginning of a global recession that will last anywhere from ten to eighteen months, depending on who you listen to. Developing market growth in advertising and marketing has been forcast for 25% whilst mature markets like the States, Europe and Japan will most certainly clock in well below ten percent, and could even reach into the negative numbers in some sectors, automotive and banking included.

Aside from the more obvious growth projections, working in a market like this provides a window into consumer behaviour and insights that will be the future of marketing engines for at least my lifetime in the business and a blueprint of how the Asian market, and I mean the Asian market alone, will be the salvation of global business in any great number of ways over the next 50 years. Before I launch into the predictions phase of this post, lets rewind to a few of my past entries and collect a little data: In February, my post, "Are The Boggerati Missing The Market" began to point out the importance of Asia on the Internet with Korea, China and Vietnam playing major digital roles. In March, I followed up with "Old Numbers: Good Morning Vietnam", a post that pointed out, quite simply, Asia's Internet dominance in the world - currently, and for the rest of the future as anybody living will know it. I'm including a graph here showing Asia's Internet penetration superiority. But it wasn't until June when the pieces began to fall into place for me with the post "Martin Sorrell and The Siliconmunists Storm Saigon" where the link between traditional advertising and digital became blurry and started to seem like almost the same thing - because the company that Sir Martin bought into in Vietnam, is as much a media company as it is an advertising agency - not disimilar to the kind of company Dentsu in Japan was after being forged from the remnants of the ministries of information and propaganda after WWII. SocialJulio on Twitter furthered my thinking in this area with a flip/flop speculation that Google will buy Publicis, just days after Sorrell did his Vietnam deal. At virtually the same time as all of this, the US banking failure started to unfold as Fannie, Freddie and Lehman all represented by Dewey, Cheatham and Howe began to go belly up as illustrated by Brian Romero in my post, "America: Land of the Free, Home of the Slave" and continued with the mass bailouts requested in September as chronicled in my "Billion Here/Billion There" entry. All the while I continued my social marketing education with eclectic posts like, "Attracton vs. Conversion - How To Power Your Blog", a mix of exotic street observation, social theory, marketing and business speculation, that propelled The Wild Wild East Dailies to a Technorati rank well inside the top 1/2% of blogs worldwide - clearly there was a convergence of all this disparate thinking waiting in the wings. By fall it was beginning to hit me. Watching the Vietnam Advertising Association stumble through a quietly launched Advertising Institute and a mysteriously promoted awards show I began to wonder if they had ever heard of the Internet, much less thought of it as a means to promote their initiatives - but then I realized that this was not just a Vietnamese phenomenen but a global one when the local BIG SHOW, a distinctly multinational event, managed their advertising show without a digital category or even a website to show for it - all on the heels of a more than successful first BarCampSaigon, a digital non-conference held at RMIT University, the picture became crystal clear: If traditional advertising and digital didn't converge, they would kill each other, because neither one will be going very far without the other.

And so now, without further adieu, even though I've sufficiently let parts of the cat out of the bag - my Marketing Predictions for 2009:

#1) Traditional Advertising Expenditures (TV, Radio, Print) will shrink by 20% due to world financial contractions + the lack of Olympic and US Political spend - digital spend will more than double. And where do I get these numbers you ask? Well, I read all the industry data I can and then just pull them out of my ass of course. It's nearly as accurate as any Wall Street dartboard technique or the studied predictions of most financial analysts.

#2) Y&R will cease to exist. Or if you don't like that name, say DDB or Leo Burnett or any other once great agency brand that's been marginalized by it's present holding company. Maybe it's Grey or another. The point here is not to get the name right but to predict the end of a once great name. Why? Because when push comes to shove, somebody's going to get shoved out. It's not rocket science. Why did WPP create an entirely new agency to service Dell when they already had three perfectly good ones? Because the nature of the business is changing and some dinosaur needs to die.
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#3) Google will Buy Publicis. Because Publicis already bought the search business from Google? Well maybe. And maybe there are enough synergies to have it all make sense. It seems as if this buying business has the possibility of going two different ways. Plan "B" is discussed in the next prediction.
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#4) WPP will buy VinaGame. I know this is strictly a local prediction, but let's widen it to include the idea that it makes sense to buy digital delivery systems while they're available at reasonable rates to have waiting in the wings for clients who will want them anyway in the not-so-distant-future. Why not buy AOL? Advertising holding companies buying digital delivery media makes perfect sense because it guarantees that any message can be uniquely targeted right through to the final consumer with no weak links in the chain - and gives the digital company access to creative content providers who can create branded vehicles for clients - like the soap operas became for Procter & Gamble so many years ago.

So those are my calls for 2009. You can rake me over the coals on the financials until the cows come home because I haven't done financials on any of this, that's Sir Martin's job - but if you do that, you're missing the point - the point being is that we have two very complimentary businesses going through two very different trajectories right now - digital on the way up and traditional on the way down. There's bound to be some creative destruction in the middle.

For more information about Brand Marketing Training in Vietnam, go here <.

For more on Creativity, Education and the like, check below:

"Do Our Schools Kill Creativity?" - Sir Ken Robinson
Brand Marketing and Staff Training in Vietnam
2009 Marketing Predictions
The Language Barrier - An Asian Business Conundrum

For more on digital marketing and social networking see:

Xing vs. LinkedIn: Round II
Trial and Error: The New Normal
What's Wrong With My Social Networking? Xing vs. LinkedIn I
Low Tech Germany. Who Knew?
Advertising People and Blogs
How to Write the Best Blog in the World
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If Blogs Are Free Does That Make Them Worthless?
Detri-Viral Marketing II: The Top 10 Social Media Blunders
Bright Lights, Big Internet and the WWED
Saigon Digital Marketing Conference Successfully Avoids Plumbers Convention
A Tale of Many Marketing Conferences
Detri-Viral Marketing I: How Web 2.0 Can Go Against A Brand
Marketing Predictions for 2009
Barcamp Saigon 2008
"Ignore Everybody" is Born: A Plug for Hugh MacLeod
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market? Asia has Risen,
Into the Gapinvoid - Web 2.0 Social Networking Born 20 Years Ago

Has Been - What Have I Done For You Lately IV

Christmas began quietly with a fine Special K breakfast and one or more of my more than loved homemade drip coffees, I forget. I lingered, languished and played the holiday boy until boredom set in - besides, it was time to finish the Christmas blog post I had begun the day before - so it was off to the cafe to finish, just in time to hit America aping Santa at his chores. I could have my post in their stockings without making a sound before sunrise. My phone chortled with sprinklets of sound that told me I had text messages in hand: one from Australia, another from a friend and finally one that was rather hard to place. It was a from a guy I would have previously called a friend but hadn't seen in a month. He sent a flurry of cryptic texts to me a month ago and moved from his apartment quickly enough that the owner had asked me later if I knew where he had gone. She wanted to know why he had left so many shirts and other items still in the house. There was no mention of money owed so it's safe to say he paid the rent, but by his rather stealthy escape, was clear he didn't much want to let anybody know where he was going. But the Christmas text message was about as curious as his texts a month ago. Broken words and snippets of clarity revealed that he was not happy with my description in this blog of a person we know who carts around a thousand pills in his cargo pants from a previous post. The text signed off by calling me a "has-been" and that was it. It was quickly followed by another text that said "Merry Christmas cockroach" - and honestly, since I haven't seen the guy in over a month, don't know what the intent of the slurs was. We had no issues before. Between friends these things can roll off one's back pretty easily and even be considered terms of endearment. How many times have guys called other guys dickhead or scumbag just to slap the other on the back and be off to the next topic of locker room discourse. Plenty. But this didn't strike me in that way - a friendly way. Honestly, I'm not sure how it struck me - on Christmas day. Maybe odd would be the best description. I've included a William Shatner song called "Has-Been" in the podcast. It's odd too, but in a good way.

It did, however, dovetail with something the guy with all the pills used to say to me, and he said it more than once. "My how the mighty have fallen", he was fond of saying in reference to my former six-figure corporate life, compared to what some would call simple and others might say pauperly life today. After a few times hearing it, I confronted him, "Why do you say that to me?", I asked him. "Do you think it makes me feel good? Is it a compliment? Or does it just make you feel good to say it?" - My intent here was not to get an answer but to get him to stop it. It was patently rude and maybe conciously insensitive. I had seen him insult his girfriend repeatedly, to her face by calling her fat and criticizing her English, and wanted no part of this part of this person. I knew he had this in him, but I considered myself his friend and outside of his wrath - but apparantly not - so this was no kind of friendship I needed. Maybe he and the text message guy have become friends now.

I've noticed, maybe particularly here in Vietnam, or maybe particularly at this stage in my life, that there are a great number of people who derive some sort of pleasure from the misfortunes of others. And they make a point of pointing it out in social situations. The water-cooler people. They do it because it makes them feel better about themselves, I suppose - or it makes them feel as if the things they haven't accomplished weren't that important anyway - a kind of cognitive dissonance, "See, that guy failed, so it's better that I didn't even try to do what he did in the first place". - This kind of attitude would truly drive me loony, or suicidal, or both, because the one thing I can say about my time on this planet is that I've made goals, accomplished them, and then made more, repeatedly - always on the same cycle - like surfing. If anything I can could be considered by many to be feloniously guilty of trying to do too many things and putting more on my plate at any one time than would be considered do-able by many - many, maybe more intelligent people. But I do it anyway, maybe a little less than I used to, but I still do it. This desire to chase after things that are not whithin my immediate daily grasp has become a pattern over the years - and a pattern I have become accustomed to - like an addiction, but an oddly healthy and profitable one - like surfing. By continually creating and accomplishing new objectives makes one a serial has-been in almost all ways. To succeed you must leave the past life behind - realize it, learn from it, and then put it on the mantle where it belongs, but leave it behind to get over the next wave. Surf safely. Another wave is always on it's way, if you're ready.

Has-Been #1: Actor - Probably the first time I became a has-been was my exit from the world of theatre. At the age of thirteen I had become an unintentional child-star of our local community theatre by accompanying a friend to auditions and then landing the role he was seeking. The Moss/Hart production was trashed but the reviewers had been kind to me and complimented my spirited performance. My role was depicted by a newspaper photo of another actor hitting me over the head with a stick. My character was to be a dickhead and I had apparently executed that quite nicely. I continued with that theatre for a number of years before a role for a coming-of-age young man came up, the role of George in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". After a good number of auditions I was informed by the director that I should stick with teenage roles as I did not possess the physical attributes to take this character from the ages of 18 to 28 as called for in the script. I became a has-been actor immediately and took the position of assistant director on that production, a position that would serve me well later, in the advertising business - in that job I learned how to organize a cast, crew and put on a show. A has-been actor moves on.

Has-Been #2: Painter - "David, you have no taste." These were the words of my High School painting teacher Mrs. Partridge on viewing my latest Frank Stella imitation. But later at the gallery exhibition I heard people interpreting all sorts of things in my paintings that I certainly had not intended. Good things. The lesson here is that everyone sees something different, so just keep on painting and wait for the people who like your stuff to buy it. Truth was, I was a terrible painter, in the classical sense, but knew my sensibilities would be perfect for the burgeoning field of graphic design. The has-been painter moves along.

Has-Been #3: Student - My first project for the graphic design program at Southern Illinois University drew the attention of Mr. Mahieu, our notoriously persnickety typography teacher, in the comment, "For the first time in my career one student has scored 100% on his first assignment. Mr. Carlson, would you please stand up." That pretty much ended my career there. Everyone immediately hated me and wanted nothing more than for me to fall off the face of the earth and die. I was later nominated for the department award, did not recieve it, and went on to be the only student ever from the program to work for two top ten agencies. The has-been student goes to work.

Has-Been #4: Employee - Over the next 17 years I would work for 6 different advertising agencies with a birth and death and rebirth cycle to each transition. With one, I declined a 30% raise to pursue something that offered more freedom. At another I declined a similar raise and a VP title to pursue the same. I was fired from two and got unbelievably better positions after each. And at the last, I just flat quit. "Dave, you've been with us for eight years and you don't seem to be fitting into the family", said Bud Ujhelyi at the Leo Burnett company in Chicago. I'm quite sure he meant that I had missed some important ass to kiss but honestly, the place was churning senior management so quickly that by the time you kissed any ass it was no sooner being booted out the door. Fucking pointless, so I did very little of that. My last day came on July 4th, 1996 with a more than rude fax in Korea from the home office calling me home because of financial reasons. Independence day. And the has-been employee becomes the President.

Has-Been #5: President/CEO - The formation of CarlsonCreative in Seoul was a whole lot more emotion than logic, but in the end was supported by sensible finance, good business sense and superior work. We chased the big agencies in town like rats to the sewer and managed to place work in international award shows along with making our bucks. At our apex, people were just fucking scared of us. Learning that international events like SARS and 9/11 along with the resulting finacial contractions were well beyond my grasp was not an easy lesson for me. I fought it until I had spent every last dime we had. Would getting out earlier had been a better idea? I remember at the time that we had thirty grand left and saying "Who wants to go back to the US with 30 grand in his pocket? You'll just be a dog people can kick around". To this day, I'm glad I stayed and fought. At least I got to spend the money at my own company. The has-been President/CEO moves into the unemployment line.

Has-Been #6: Teacher - For all of the teachers who set that out as their goal and love to teach, I salute you. For all those doing it because you can't find work or success in your chosen field I say, get the fuck out of the education business and pursue your dreams - I certainly have pursued mine and it's been a mix of catching those dreams along with the emotional and financial viruses that accompany them. Currently I'm teaching and taking in the odd marketing consulting job when it comes along, but I'm much better suited to something other than teaching and it's just not where I plan to spend the rest of my working life. I need to be a has-been teacher and move on, once again.

I can't imagine ever saying to anyone that they are a has-been. Should I meet an actor, an artist, a musician, a pop-star, a mathemetitian, a business person or anyone (and I've met quite a few of the above) who has enjoyed any modicum of success at any time in their carreer, I would say, "good for you". I would respect them and know that they played at the top of their game for as long as their game would have them. I can't see that calling someone a has-been serves much more purpose than maybe making a never-been feel better. Can you imagine two has-beens in a bar insulting each other? That's a damn funny movie scene.

I'm going to stick with the writing for now. Then, when I finish with that, I can be a has-been human, cause I has-been a lot of things in my life but never dead!

Joyeux Noël - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X

This Christmas week began with 2 half-hatched eggs (a Vietnamese delicacy of partially developed chicken embryos in shell), a mix of rice cakes and eggs fried together served with spicy sauce, mint leaves and an avocado shake. Frogs were served the next day at a streetside restaurant and were a meal I had been so looking forward to. As a young man, my parents had introduced a tradition to me of being able to choose any restaurant of my liking for my birthday meal each year. My choice, every year that I can remember, was the Plantation restaurant in Moline Illinois. The Plantation was a grand old mansion that had been the residence of Willard Velie, creator of the Velie automobile and maternal grandson of John Deere. By the mid 1960s the home had been sold a number of times and converted into a restaurant with different cuisine themes in different rooms - Continental in the main room, French in the Library and a sort of tea and crumpets affair on the terraces in the daytime. But my favourite, an American phenomena at the time, was the Polynesian affair in the cellar, popularized by the Trader Vic's chain in major cities but represented at the Plantation in Moline, Illinois as the Tahitian Room. In that room they had bamboo tables, grass huts - just two of them, and a piano bar, where wanna-be Dean Martins could sit around the piano and sing if they liked. The huts were known to book months in advance and so at a very young age, maybe eight, I learned to coax my mother to call the Tahitian Room plenty early, so that we were always assured of having a hut for my birthday. I thought it was exotic. But that was only the beginning of my annual birthday adventure. I can't imagine that the frog legs were much of a big seller at the Tahitian Room; in the Plantation restaurant; in Moline; Rock Island county; on the Mississippi; in the Illinois corn fields; in the United States of America; on the Continent of North America, in the Western Hemisphere; on this Earth; in the Solar System; in the Universe; in the mind of God or the mind of Thornton Wilder, pictured above - but they were my favourite menu item in our town and the one reason I had so looked forward to enjoying a pair on the street here in Saigon this Christmas. It was not my birthday, but it seemed like it could have been. For the record, my particular frog didn't exactly have the legs of a Calaveras County long jumper - they were a little skinny - but the idea was the same and I loved it. Shopping for food in Saigon around Christmas is really no different than anywhere else - they are nearly out of everything. The staff at Veggies, the expat hangout for psuedo gourmet stuff, were pretty much out of cheer when I arrived and had had their fill of crabby foreign housewives looking for Christmas goose, foie gras or bread pudding and gave me appropriately crabby service. Finished is the English word the Vietnamese use when they are out of something or just don't have it and it was used repeatedly to respond to my request for smoked cheddar, cocktail onions and a number of other things I thought would spruce up my holiday diet. The onions were for my Dean Martinis. I left with a stash of Coleman's mustard at a 50% discount and an over-priced slab of Gorgonzola. Quite happy I was, even at that. The Frost/Nixon film was my Christmas Eve cinematic fare at a local mini-cinema followed by Batman Returns on Christmas day itself, presumably because it's plot is situated around the holiday season and features penguins. Funny the way HBO programmers see things in Asia - "Let's see, we need a Christmas/cartoon/action film with snow". I had also seen a film a few nights previous that was a documentary on the child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church. An interesting programming choice as well this season, it was quite convincing and a bit sobering to say the least. I was raised Catholic and although I saw through the iconography and politicization of the faith at a reasonably early age had not ever really come to see what was going on behind all the mythologized mystery. This film saw to that. The hymns of the church drew me in off the street on the evening of Christmas day itself and I spent a few minutes at the rear of the naïve to reflect amongst the 12 stations of the cross and other - to anyone else from any other religion - bizarre imagery cast upon the parishioners. If they could get young people to believe in all of that, there was no telling what a kid might believe as he grew up in this most surreal of faiths. Interesting that the main barrel vault of a Catholic church is called the naïve, achitecturally, which is also the base of the word naiveté. I had a nice Christmas anyway, taking my time to have just a few simple pleasures and enjoy just a few minutes. The family sent emails - there was plenty of Christmas spam on Facebook - and even a few good wish texts on my phone. Phat called and rushed me to a local pub so he could deliver my Christmas card. Phat is the man who handles my visa. And then home to the gorgonzola and a glass of Shiraz. Christmas in Vietnam. Mmmmerry.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

The Vietnam Advertising Festival: Young Lions Stage a Coup at the Zoo

Thank the young lions, for making a day at the zoo a real hot spot for the future of Vietnam Advertising. The Young Lions are a group of young ad professionals who exhibited their work at the Vietnam Advertising Festival held at the Ho Chi Minh City Zoo on Friday and Saturday of this last week - sponsored by the Vietnam Advertising Association and Sunflower Media. In keeping with my review of The BIG SHOW a few weeks ago, I'll continue the format of dividing this piece up into it's respective parts of The venue, The work, The participants and The result. These are basically what make up an advertising industry event and aside from your opinion, and there are many, probably what one experiences in the final evaluation.

The venue:

If you had your choice of cages between the ones featured at The Cage Bar, where the BIG SHOW was hosted, or the ones at the HCMC Zoo, go for the zoo. Providing a walking boulevard approach, flanked by banners and posters for the event, the entrance to the zoo both calms and excites as visitors are drawn in to what ends up as a small stage surrounded by viewing areas for the exhibits with not a cage to be found in the proximity. On this promenade, jugglers, caligraphers and graphiti artists line the walks and invite the guests to interact with the event whilst the strains of a punk band screetch through a rapid-fire rendition of Jingle Bells - not particularly original but a certainly spirited rendition. My trip to the zoo occured on Saturday afternoon, so avoiding the Friday start and pontificating and officiating that so often go along with these things was probably a good idea.

Once drawn to the viewing area the "festival" as it was billed, divided itself up into three distinct display areas for three distincly different shows, starting with the Vietnam Young Lions exhibit, an exploration on recyclable, reusable and decidedly green concepts, organized by Sunflower Media. This for me was the absolute highlight of the entire event, in terms of actual work, and I'm only sorry that neither the Young Lions website nor a non-existing website for Sunflower is able to show you any of the work. Photos and bios of the participating teams were shown, the TVs worked well to show the film concepts, and the work was presented at a size that made it a joy to view - BIG - not little bitty double-truck ads lost on a wall of white space.

The second and least thoughtfully designed area was designated for the Vietnam Advertising Association's Golden Bell awards and overall I found it a boxy disappointment. None of the TVs were working and most of the smallishly mounted ads lacked appropriate translations for the International audience they sought to attract through the Saigon Times.

The third area, with large format image-changing kiosks at it's center, was home to the Cannes Lion winners of 2008. Packed full of inspiring work and all images of museum display size and quality things were easy to understand and enjoy. Also, all the credits and detail information for the winning work appeared in both English and Vietnamese.

The work:

The Young Lions were the hit of the show in my book. Hopefully their website will be able to show the great number of excellent concepts that went into their environmental campaigns. It seems also that props should go to Sunflower Media for coraling, scheduling and presenting this effort in an extremely professional manner. My favorite ad excecution involved a shot of a discarded Pepsi can and a string of copy solutions as to what the can could become after it's life as a softdrink dispenser, including, last but not least - a can of Coca Cola. Refuse reincarnation in the ultimate sense.

Looking at the Golden Bells presentation left me wondering what I was missing. Where was the Child Helmet Campaign described in winning announcements and where in the hell were the Vietnamese advertising agencies? Aside from one of the judges describing to me that the jurying was "surprisingly non-political" and impartial, is someone going to tell me that not a single entry from Golden, Storm-Eye or Dat Viet (VAC) could make the cut? Methinks not. I suspect that, just as last year, many agencies did not even enter the show and that could have been due to high fees, political wrangling of thousands of egos, or simple lack of proper timing and promotion on behalf of the organising committee. This year the Golden Bells were held in stealth fashion and only allowed to be viewed through the prism of an edited and time delayed TV program that could not have done much to have encouraged the comaraderie, competition and cohesiveness that are very much needed in the industry now. The presentation at the zoo did nothing to advance the prestige of the event nor to encourage agencies to enter in the future. Rather than looking like something one wanted to be a part of, it looked alone, incomplete and uncared for. None of the TVs worked and aside from a guestbook one could sign had no interactivity whatsoever. What about computer to highlight digital work? What about a website for the sponsoring organization or the show itself? Nuff said.

What can one say about Cannes winning work? Plenty, but suffice to say it was all inspiring on different levels and made one just want to work a whole hellovalot harder starting immediately - or get a brain upgrade - immediately. What stood out for me were the two print campaigns from Saatchi and Saatchi Vietnam. World class work being done right under our noses and not a peep out of the Golden Bells about it. Something doesn't add up there. The Cu Chi Museum campaign scored on the marriage of art and copy and whilst I didn't think there was much breakthrough in the Western Union campaign when I saw it at the BIG SHOW, I can understand what the judges liked about it and agree with them. The message of the Canne presentation this year was simple: You can do world-calss work right here in Vietnam.

A few years ago our agency, CarlsonCreative, in Seoul brought the New York Art Directors Show into town because we had gotten one tiny little bit of direct mail in it. We comandeered an art gallery for a week, got all the press and TV out and pretty much put it in the big agency's faces - Cheil, O&M, JWT and the like that a little 4 person shop could score on Madison Avenue. During the show the gallery owner came up to me and asked "How come none of the big agencies have ever brought a show this big to town and you did?" "Because we can", I answered, "because we can". Saatchi has just fired a warning shot over the bow of all the agencies in town. Because they can. Will anyone take the bait?

The participants:

The Vietnam Advertising Association: Huge points for just getting this thing off the ground and making a real go at promoting, educating and stirring the fire up in the business. Many points subtracted for poor promotion, no website and a fragmented effort on the Golden Bells.

The Young Lions: I've said enough already. I hope they just keep doing.

Sunflower Media: Although it's hard to know where where responsibilities begin and end between large groups of people, it's obvious that Sunflower's attention on the Young Lions effort was right where it needed to be. Professionnal and on target. But they need a website. Hello 2009?

The result:

The results of the efforts, I suspect, will result in the country becoming the most professional it has ever been in the industry - you could see it in the faces and comments of the students who attended the show, shot the hell out of it with their cel-phones, and wrote in the guest books. Maybe I missed all the big agency big-wigs by attending on a breezy Saturday afternoon Instead of a Friday morning but luckily the breeze was not blowing from the elephant house, so the amount of crap I had to deal with was probably significantly less than I would have, had I allowed a bunch of agency blokes to chat me up.

In the future it would be nice to see a morphing of this event and the Golden Bells together. It seems unessessary to do an event for filming and an event for attending. Last years Bells were a horrible TV taping affair with a house full of bussed-in college students - enough to fill a wide angle lense and essentially nobody in the industry was there unless they were getting an award. I can't imagine this year was any different. Put on a good event, film it, reality show style and I'm sure a talented TV producer can cut it all up into a watchable hour- minus the gawdy dance routines.

As far as the educational aspects and being able to bring creative interaction into the scene during the year, I am working with a group of talented individuals from all around the industry, with a particular focus on Internet and digital. Hopefully we be able to get our first event off in the spring and augment this excellent starting effort. If you have ideas or would like to contribute, please do let me know.

On My Meds Again in Saigon...

First off, my apologies for not being your intrepid three-time-a-week blogger that you've come to know and read. This week began the third week of one of my regular season changing colds as the affliction descended into Strep Throat and then Bronchitus. It was time for a trip to the pharmacie - but unlike an American pharmacy with a "y" I was able to get my packet of Amoxilan, a prescription I already knew I needed, without a trip to an HMO certified Indian (from India) doctor and be on my way to recovery for about 75 cents. Yes, that's seventy five good old American cents. A price that in Vietnam, a country rated much lower than US's lofty perch of #37 on the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Care Rankings chart (right below Costa Rica), was more than fair. I wouldn't have given this a great deal of thought had I not seen Michael Moore's "SiCKO" again on HBO recently and had cause to consider just how good my health care system is, here in this developing country, as opposed to the good ole US of A. The last time I was in the US I had broken a collar bone in a bicycle accident and was not able to see a doctor because of lack of medical coverage. My father's Chiropractor told me it was indeed broken but he could not reset it. He went on to describe how many athletes continued to play with various kinds of broken appendages, as if I were asking for some kind of exotic cosmetic surgery, and said it would heal all by itself just fine. That's what you get in America when the doctor is the past team Chiro for the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Top medical care that is.

Thankfully I am in excellent health, compared to my colleagues at my age, and have not had anything beyond this breakage and an itchy winky in my adult medical history. And no, I'm not going to tell the itchy winky story. It was a long time ago, but pretty fucking funny all the same.

Now in repair, I promise I will be off injured reserve and back to my snarky self by tomorrow. I really hate it when I can't write.

As a bookend, my American friends might ask if there is any downside to letting patients diagnose themselves and prance into the pharmacie anytime they want for their fill of antibiotics or more psychotropic solutions, and I will impart this observation: Blame it on naivete, or just plain not looking for three years, but the number of foreign perscription drug addicts in this town is positively startling, once you are trained to look out for the signs. Consider the high school mathematics teacher who, without fail, everytime you see him, has a breast pocket full of pills in little foil pop-out packets and has now taken to wearing cargo pants - you know, the ones with the Jungle-Jim pockets on the legs - to conceal all the other perscription drugs he is using. I have know him for a few years now. He claims to have any great number of afflictions but the only one I can be sure of is hypocondria - plus whatever caused him to just verbally tear me a new asshole one night with no provocation, added in. God knows, I've known and befriended my share of alcoholics in my time and certainly been part of the clan for good spells, but never have I had to learn the habits of people on chemicals that I can't even spell. Geez, in a way, alcoholics are simple. These other things are still a mystery to me - but one I will not venture to uncover by providing myself as a guinea pig - "Give me another shot of that Amoxilan doc", I scream, as I tighten the rubber tube around my bicep and punch open another foiled capsule...