Ads that never made the cut

These days I don't spend my time pursuing work in advertising. Those days are gone. 

Besides what are the chances some copywriter-less agency or client would choose me out of 763 other applicants? Particularly when my day rate is more than 87 times more than them. 

Combined.

I do spend considerable time reaching out to past colleagues. Just to stay in touch. And to keep my fat fingers on the pulse, the fading pulse, of the industry.

Just caught up with an art director who works, and still works, with my last employer. While bitching and moaning about the lack of leadership, the layoffs and the plunging stock price, I happened to be paging through some of our older correspondence. See, this kid also worked for me while I was a Group Creative Director at Y&R in Irvine back in the 2000 oughts.

He had fished out some old print ads we did for Sony Electronics. 

For the most part the work stood the test of time. I've screen-grabbed one of them for your perusal. It's a bit autobiographical in that my grandparents did come from Grodno. Or one of the other grayish shtetls in the Litvak Area of Eastern Europe before they escaped the Kossacks, Aryans and other ne'erdowells seeking to scalp them and bury them in a pit of lime.

This ad and several more like it that spanned the entire fakakta Sony line up of products did not get approved. Instead, they bought a forgettable slew of crap from our NY office. Sold to them by two slick ad hacks who took every opportunity to stab me in the back.

It didn't occur to me then but it's glaring now. I was not at the top of my game. Otherwise I would have raised bloody hell.

But I didn't because I had two small children. I was commuting more than 100 miles a day. And prior to taking the job in Irvine, I had been suffering from a series of panic attacks. 

Debilitating panic attacks. 

I didn't even know what they were at the time. I knew how to cover them up. With bravado. Humor. And a stoic front. But the truth is, I shouldn't have been in front of clients. And certainly not to conduct presentations worth millions of dollars.

Why am I picking at this scab now? Because I can. 

Because many people in our industry are going through similar, if not greater troubles. And because I really wish I had a print ad in my book with a statue of an oversized foot in Grodno, Poland.

That's what it's missing.