The Princess and The Big Boys

"You're playing with the big boys now.
You're playing with the big boys NOW.
Stop this foolish mission.
Watch a true magician.
Give an exhibition how.
Pick up your silly twig, boy.
You're playing with the big boys NOW!"

Steve Martin and Martin Short's animated characters in The Prince of Egypt are what come to my mind.

This weekend, a prized endorsement I earned, without even soliciting it, was approached within minutes for "me-too" status by another candidate.

Then, yesterday, on the "holiday," I got an out-of-the-blue call, indicating that, apparently, one of my fair-weather colleagues at the former Dahlin Smith White Advertising company is challenging an agency-related statement on my website! (For those reading my post from Sunday, it did turn out to truly be a DSW weekend...) It's interesting because the DSW portion of my experience, while vast and significant, is boiled town to two skinny sentences on my site, and not really bragging about the many other significant contributions I made.

It's really disappointing and hurtful to have an "anony-accusor."

"You're playing with the big boys now!"

Even this false-accusatory experience has had its positive side: Re-tracing that time period, I recall being asked to do something I had never done before. Nor, it seemed, had anyone else (other than the partners and executive committee or "E-Comm") in the agency done before on a big-scale (OR done with much success, OR done and been willing to stick his or her neck out and manage the project). There's all that and the fact that managing the Intel pitch for the agency was a major resource drain, with senior talent spread very thin across multiple, simultaneoulsy-running projects.

The project at hand was to re-name a product and provide branding insight. I jumped at the chance to play a leadership role in the wooing of Intel and to learn new skills.

Invigorated by the opportunity. I started reading through issues of Communication Briefings and AdWeek (back then, hard-copy was chiefly the M.O.: All of the historical issues were jammed into impossibly giant, expasive binders). I collected several methodologies and plunged right into the task, preparing "Strategy Briefs" (the agency's way of "grounding" a team) for the scope of work: Re-naming a product that an Oregon-based branch of Intel (the Intel Personal Computer Enhancement Division) wanted re-worked.

I ended up giving brainstorming homework to my assembled team, which even included two of the partners of the agency--The "S" and The "W" (ak.a. Darrell Smith and Jon White), as well as numerous other, more senior members of the agency.

It was a stretch.

I enjoyed the stretch (a pre-cursor to the yogic JJJ?).

I conducted a total of five meetings, guiding, then assembling, input, demanding credibility from a crew with multiple priorities, and landing some great final name suggestions. (Well... maybe not that great... after all, I really cannot recall ANY of the names--except the roguish, joking ones!... Then again, it has been almost 20 years... What is the name of the company we are talking about, again?)

Almost 20 years since those days in our enviably swank 4 Triad Center quarters. It was there that we slogged it out, coming up with ideas ready to present in our heady attempt to become, as a Salt Lake City-based advertising company, the land-locked agency to best not only old-boy Silicon Valley advertising agencies (the DSW partners called them advertising "love gods,"), but the very agency to handle Nike's work.

The day came when we were to head to Oregon. (Eugene, Oregon, I believe.) That was where Intel PCED was located. An emboldened, savvy group, proud of its intrapreneurial nature as contrasted with the Intel mothership in Santa Clara, Calif., PCED viwed itself as Mac; Intel Corporate Marketing and Corporate HQ as PC.

Mac was not in love with DSW.

I found this out during the lunch break of our all-day meeting with Intel PCED.

Apologies for the setting, but it's necessary for this story: I was in a bathroom stall, when suddenly, a buzz of chatter between two women signaled that the main-entry door to the bathroom had swung open: "Can you be-lieve the creative?" was the one's comment/question. I have no idea what the other woman (Intel PCED Veep Kirby Dyess, who went on to be a big-league VC), said, nor do I recall any more of the conversation that the two were having about a "spec" ad the agency proposed.

What I do recall oh-so-very well, is the look on their faces, when they saw me--a member of the Salt Lake City-based agency that was wooing not just their division but the bigger Intel--emerge from my silent stall, smiling, knowing. I washed my hands. Mac was sheepish.

I also recall that DSW won over all of Intel, creating advertising history in unabashedly thieving one of Silicon Valley's most coveted accounts from the home team and besting the Portland-hailing Wieden Kennedy agency of Nike marketing lore. The "little agency that could," DSW, the Mac + PC agency for the company branding the chip inside one's computer, went on to create the one of the best branding campaigns in the history of the world: "Intel Inside." DSW, in one year, had ads for not just Intel, but also for Iomega, in the ultimate advertising showcase: The SuperBowl. "Can you be-lieve that creative?"

As Director of Industry Relations for the agency, I would go on to pitch, then see the results of the efforts as DSW was named Marketing Computers' "Agency of the Year," but, at this point in the 18-month pitch, chalking up the agency's efforts on just one of seven tasks, the thought of winning the account was a distant, if not glum, glimmer.

The rest of the meeting? Power-pointed and strategi-typical, it went without fireworks, and I without much sitting at points in the meeting. (Tamed in their offense, I kind of wondered if the two PCED women tempered themselves, due to the curious bathroom interaction.) On the way home, I shared the story with the partners of DSW, the team lead, and who knows who else. Again, nearly twenty years ago...

Boarding the Lear to head for home, I recalled how silly I had felt that morning.

Being very used to commercial day trips on Delta Airlines to/from San Jose, this was my first trip on a "Lear;" My concept of the "Lear Jet" was akin to a flight scene from a James Bond movie--where folks walk around, pour cocktails, and even--if they are men, get into well-orchestrated sky-fights. The reality? The craft had more the feel of a Cessna 172 "crop-duster" that my rec-flying father used to captain; the kind of plane where your knees are close to your chest and your ears are close to exploding from the irritating sound.

The sound, somewhere out in the future, could still be heard, through that dull knock-tickling against the eardrums--

"You’re playing with the big boys now.

You’re playing with the big boys now."

 

 

Comments

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=648251457]

Hi Jennifer:

I don't know what happened in private meetings at DSW or Intel, but having worked with you at the time, I don't feel you need to defend your contributions to the agency. Not at all.

If we were to zero-out your work at DSW (which I don't) you still have a excellent record for good client and media work.

Don't let the envious get you down. They are always out there.

David Coursey
PC World "Industry Blowhard"
www.techinciter.com

[jjj]

EMBOLDENED, all the more! Thanks, David.
Sincerely... THANKS! :)
jjj

[Deb Henry]

I like playing with the big boys. I'm so jealous you're going to get to play with the Major Leaguer Ralph Becker when you win!

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