Alex Bogusky is a clever, exacting man. I interviewed him on DishyMix and have posted this exerpt from the show because it’s both entertaining and inspiring. Enjoy!
Susan Bratton: One of the things that you said in an interview with the Ad Club was that account people have a bigger impact on the success of the business and the work that you do with your clients than do the creative people. People think about your agency as being so creative driven. So it surprised me when you talked about the account people really being the make-or-break on any relationship. Can you talk about that more?
Alex Bogusky: Yeah. I’ve never really been able to explain it other than the obvious because they often are the point person on the relationship. But when we assign an account person I pretty much know the level of the work that we’re going to get. And it wouldn’t matter how talented the creative person is if that account person isn’t as talented or more talented, you’re not going to see the work ultimately being great. That’s something that I think is maybe a bitter pill to swallow as a creative person. But it’s also reality and helpful, and I think anytime you’re dealing with reality it’s a good place to start.
Susan Bratton: So here’s a question from one of our Dishy Mix listeners. A lot of times when I have someone on, I like to give our listeners an opportunity to send me questions that they’d like to ask you, and I’d like to honor that. And here’s one that really goes with this flow. Mrinal Desai, who is business development and a product evangelist at a company called Cross Loop Incorporated, wants to know how you hire people with imagination and then sustain that imagination as they grow within their job and as your agency as a business grows?
Alex Bogusky: I wish I knew that. We’d be so much better. It’s so hard. I have a very funny way of looking at portfolios. And I’ve always pretty much disregarded video. I tend to look at print. And I have very strange tastes. So when people ask me to review their books, I don’t like to do it. And I will also disclaim it by saying: Most of what I like will be very different than what other people are going to like. And it’s not my second guessing; it’s actually true. When I have commented on books, and I’ll say: I’d take out this, this, and this; I’d leave this, and most people will say: “Wow, that’s the opposite of what everyone else told me.”
So what we look for is really thinking that’s more akin to cultural jamming, and less like advertising than the advertising craft. So I always look at the advertising world as there’s the craft and it’s sort of the state of advertising as it exists and great work is done within the craft where it’s the finest art direction, the finest copy, and just the state of the art as it is done really well. And that’s great and I really appreciate that. I tend to be more excited about changing what the state of the craft is. So if advertising’s like this, I like to imagine well could it be like this. Can we jam culture in a different way that hasn’t happened before. Most people aren’t thinking that way in the business and don’t necessarily want to think that way. And I don’t blame them because it’s our thing; it’s not for everybody.
But finding those people and then bringing them in, it’s challenging, because the biggest mistake people will make when they come here is they’ll try to do what they think we’ve done before, or what they think we’d like because we’ve done it before. And, in fact, our attitude is: Well, we already did that. We don’t want to do it again. Trying to convince people and give people the confidence to go into new spaces that at CPB haven’t gone, but actually the industry hasn’t gone. It’s really difficult. It’s especially difficult for young people because they maybe don’t have the holistic history. The people that do best here are actually the people who have spent two to four years in the industry at another shop and just had the spirit just beaten out of them. And they’re nearly dead, and they crawl into the shop, and they’re just happy to be here. And they realize that, wow, we want what they wanted to do. But that’s always challenging, and we’re always working on how to convince people that you really want great work and you’re not just saying you want great work.
Susan Bratton: I liked your phrase: culture jamming. I would have called that unusual publicity combined with media, kinds of turning things on their head. Examples:
- How you got Molson to retool their beer label production facility
- Making the Mini Cooper into “transformers” and taking cars and putting them in random places
- The yellow staples you used in the fold for the Rolling Stones ad
- The Virgin Atlantic ads in the hotel porn channel
- Or even the most annoying thing that you’ve probably ever done which is covering the book about your company called Hoopla in sandpaper. Which is just irksome. The first thing I did was say, “Oh! I can’t stand to touch this book.” “I have to take this cover off.” I was so pissed at the cover of your book that I threw it in the trash.
Alex Bogusky: Well, you’ll be happy to know the first coffee table it ever ruined was my own.
Susan Bratton: So you’ve done a lot of these things that really make people think, really make them stop, and that’s what you’re known for. That’s your cultural jamming, right?
Alex Bogusky: Well, usually the cultural jamming might sit on a level above those specific –
Susan Bratton: Those are tactics that support the culture jam?
Alex Bogusky: Yeah. The culture jamming would be largely with Mini Cooper. There’s a lot of culture jamming around small cars versus SUV’s. So playing that tension was the space that we thought a lot about and spent a lot of time on. But, I don’t really read the industry trades but I will read Ad Busters.
I just think Ad Busters is more akin to — obviously I’m coming at it from a different direction, but I think the approach is more akin than most traditional advertising. Most advertising tends to be, you find a trend and then you try to lie about your product to convince people that it actually fits within the trend.
Susan Bratton: Like what? Give me an example of that.
Alex Bogusky: For Burger King all the trends were toward metro-sexuality at the time when we started working on it. And we were actually doing a campaign with Virgin around the notion of jetrosexuality. And yet for Burger King we needed guys to feel good and for heavy fast food users to feel good about having a great savory burger. And cultural wasn’t really saying that was okay. If you looked at things like — we did a spot called “manthem” for Burger King a few years ago. And it was a take on: I am woman, hear me roar. But it was: I am man, hear me roar. And guys burning their underwear and things like that. And getting away from tofu and getting back into burgers. So that’s the space that I just have fun playing in. Generally culture is going multiple directions at any one time. And pop culture, specifically, is always having this conversation with itself about where to go. A lot of advertisers talk about relevance, but they never define it. What is relevant? To me be relevant is to be in the conversation that pop culture is having about any particular topic. But if you’re going to be relevant, you’re going to be somewhat controversial because culture hasn’t really decided, okay, this is the direction now. And so, you have to be — if you want to do that kind of work, you have to be okay with the heat that comes with being relevant.
Susan Bratton: Well, as an agency, you love to make sniglets or portmanteaus. You just talked about jetrosexuals for your Virgin Atlantic. That was kind of a psychographic profile of your target customer. What was great is that even if you weren’t a jetrosexual, you kind of wanted to be one, and you could identify with that campaign.
Alex Bogusky: Yeah, or you want to be one every now and then.
Susan Bratton: And then you came up with this concept of mantropy for Maxim Magazine. You’ve done a lot of man-oriented things. And I thought it would be interesting to find out if you’re suffering from mantropy. So I was going to turn the tables on you and make you take the quiz for us. Can I do that?
Alex Bogusky: Yeah, sure.
Susan Bratton: So, yes or no. Do you wear pretend car racing shoes?
Alex Bogusky: No.
Susan Bratton: Do you have an issue with excessive Smoothie consumption?
Alex Bogusky: No.
Susan Bratton: How about, here’s one two-wheeled. Two-wheeled transportation under 500 cc’s?
Alex Bogusky: Let’s see.
Susan Bratton: You have to say yes.
Alex Bogusky: Well, I do. I have two two-wheeled vehicles under 500 cc’s - trial bikes. But I’ve got several over 500 cc’s as well.
Susan Bratton: So does that balance it all out, or are you starting to lean toward –
Alex Bogusky: I think I’m right down the middle there.
Susan Bratton: So it’s 50/50 on whether there’s some mantropy happening here.
Alex Bogusky: Yeah.
Susan Bratton: Let’s ask a few more questions. Oh, here’s one. Is your wallet over 150 square centimeters. That is: Do you carry a mansack or a man purse, or a murse, as they’ve been taken to be called now. You don’t carry a murse?
Alex Bogusky: No, no. I don’t. I am sort of your classic dad wallet; just way too thick causing spinal issues.
Susan Bratton: Is that right? Okay. How about a temporary tribal tattoo; any of those?
Alex Bogusky: I don’t.
Susan Bratton: I saw two interesting twists recently on the tribal tattoo concept. This could help if you want to be mantropy-esque without actually having to have a tattoo. One was this kind of gauzy pull-on sleeve that looked like it could make your whole arm look like a tattoo. It was like this sheer, kind of stretchy fabric printed with a tattoo on it. You could pull that on your arm and just wear that. So kind of from a far, it would look like that.
Alex Bogusky: I’ve seen those.
Alex Bogusky: My son has a pair. And his hero is one of the creative directors that works here, who’s got complete sleeves and tattoos up his neck and back and arms and legs. And so for Halloween last year, he actually dressed this creative director. It really hurt the guy’s feelings to know that he was a Halloween costume.
Susan Bratton: I think he was more like an idol.
Alex Bogusky: Don’t worry. He’s very tough.
Susan Bratton: He was more like an idol; not a Halloween costume. Yeah, the other one I saw were these like laser cut pieces of real thin latex rubber. And you could wear it around your arm and it looked like one of those Maori tattoos but you could take it on and off. It was like tribal tattoo rubber jewelry. So I think that was pretty good. So do you have an inkling toward that?
Alex Bogusky: I missed all the tattoos. I have no tattoos. I’m from the generation right before tattoos.
Susan Bratton: I am too. I’m the tat free generation. So I guess we’re not going to get any yes to frequent seaweed wraps or buffed fingernails?
Alex Bogusky: No.
Susan Bratton: Especially because your bio says that you frequently have bloody, oozing, gashes.
Alex Bogusky: Yeah. I was like years ago I had a pretty good run in terms of fashion, and I was voted as one of the top three most fashionable people in advertising.
Susan Bratton: Oh, really?
Alex Bogusky: Yeah. But moving to Boulder, it’s just all gone.
Susan Bratton: It’s all Gramici pants now.
Alex Bogusky: Yeah. Do you know what I do, a sport, which I think would probably put me somewhere on the spectrum here, is I do like the “manpris” on occasion.
Susan Bratton: Oh, capris. I like those too.
Alex Bogusky: Okay, it’s okay for you to like them. It’s not okay for me to be sporting them.
Susan Bratton: But I meant on men. I like them on men. You do have to have shapely calves to wear those. I find that the men who have the shapely calves tend to support those.
