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As July 25th approaches, I have to remind myself where I will be. At 9:00 pm I will hopefully be in front of my television watching the first episode of the fourth season of Mad Men. At the end of last season, we saw Don Draper and some select individuals leave the confines of Sterling Cooper to start a new agency. With the sale of the agency on the horizon, Sterling, Cooper, and Draper convince Land Pryce to fire them and ask him to join them in their new venture. This will explain the subway posters for the premiere to anybody who hasn’t seen the show. For me, this is an exciting time of the show and it reminds me of the days of ThirtySomething when Michael and Elliot planned the hostile takeover of DAA from the hands of Miles Drentell. Both shows understood the massive undertaking and nerve it took to get past the “monolith” of their former companies to start one of their own.
The “monolith” is term that a friend of mine used to describe the outward appearance an agency wants to project to their current or perspective clients. Usually the owners and principals of a company would like their clients to think that there is something special in their process that makes them a unique commodity. Sometimes this is true. I have seen interesting and healthy company philosophies which nurture, mentor, and reward creative ideas. They are few and far between. Most have their own version of special sauce which they like to espouse as the correct way to solve marketing, advertising, and design objectives. It is usually described in the first two pages of the company website. There might even be a company blog in which the principal(s) of the company will edify you on their process on a weekly or even daily basis. These processes usually come with elaborate charts and graphs to explain themselves. And if you have seen or read enough of them, you will notice they are not much different from one another. The monolith serves the purpose to convince clients that there is something special about the company that gives rise to ideas and not the people who work there. And no matter how many times the staff changes, the monolith is still there to assure clients that there is no change in temperature or humidity to the projects currently being taken care of by the agency. There is supposed to be something special in the DNA of the bricks and mortar of the building which makes new ideas come to life.
It is a unique challenge to try to push past the monolith far enough to squeeze thru to carve out a monolith of your own. And I have seen it done. I salute my colleagues and former co-workers who have left the safety of a company in order to find their own creative voice. With their success, I realize that true creative vision does not need a corner office, an expense account, or even a desk. It might just take a morning cup of coffee, a kitchen table, and the lead of a pencil.
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