Page 234 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

The Real Bibliography 225

repeat what they did, but that you can be inspired by their creativity
and learn useful lessons from their methods.
I’ve been touting the value of biographies for years and recommend-
ing them to people as a source of creative inspiration. Well, my theory
was tested a number of years ago when I came across a biography in a
little country inn where my wife and I were staying in central Massa-
chusetts. On the bookshelf was a biography of Ed McMahon. With all
due respect to Ed McMahon, who certainly has achieved a great deal in
his life, I wouldn’t have thought of him necessarily as biography mate-
rial. I mean, he was second banana to Johnny Carson. Star Search. Bud-
weiser commercials. Do you get my point? That said, I took the book to
my room and decided to delve into it. Wouldn’t you know, very early in
the book (around page 3) I found one of the secrets to Ed McMahon’s
success. It was some advice his dad had given him early on in life: “When
you walk into a room, act like you belong there.”
For some reason that resonated with me. When you walk into a
room, act like you belong there. Then it occurred to me that my humble
little ad agency in Providence, Rhode Island, which I started in 1978,
had, by the mid-1980s, achieved national if not global prominence as one
of the most highly awarded advertising agencies in the world. It occurred
to me that an important turning point in our growth was when a young
copywriter right out of school asked me, “Who’s the competition?”
Here we were, a small ad agency in Providence, Rhode Island, in
the shadow of Boston, which was in the shadow of Madison Avenue.
We could have seen ourselves as a local agency, but we thought a little
bigger, as a regional agency. When we opened our doors, we decided to
compete against the largest agencies in Boston, at that time Humphrey
Browning McDougall and Hill Holliday. When this wet-behind-the-
ears kid asked me who the competition was, that was my answer.
Not satisfied with my answer, apparently, he said, “What about the
best advertising in the world? What about the best advertising of all
time?” The Doyle Dane Bernbach, the Scali, McCabe, Sloves, the Ally &
Gargano stuff. Those brilliant guys in California, Chiat/Day. Those guys

"Yes, grandson, I was the one who thought
of that big idea so many years ago."
Timeline of a great idea (continued)

Timeline of a lousy idea (continued)