One of my favorite professors used to say, “Life is cumulative.” After nearly 25 years creating advertising, I don’t just believe it, I’m proof.

Turns out I had an gift for fallacious reasoning. Which made me lousy at proving a theorem, but incredibly good at writing copy.

One day, after failing yet another exam on differential equations, I walked to the other side of campus and signed up for Intro to Advertising 101. The first assignment was to come up with an ad to be entered into a national student advertising contest.

I won first prize.

That got me $1,500 and an internship at a New York advertising agency called McCaffrey & McCall.

Here’s how bad I was at math: I thought $1,500 was going to be plenty to live on in New York for the summer.

The Formative Years

The most important thing I learned during my summer internship was that there was a difference between good advertising and bad advertising. I decided that I’d rather do good advertising, thank you very much.

Around the corner from McCaffrey & McCall was an agency called Scali, McCabe, Sloves, where the creative director, Ed McCabe, was considered to be one of the greatest copywriters in advertising history. Somehow –– and I suppose it proves I have an ability to craft a compelling message –– I got Ed to hire me.

I worked my butt off every single day working for Scali, and in exchange I got a tremendous foundation in crafting powerful verbal communications. But after a couple of years I came to an uncomfortable realization: A lot of the advertising that was affecting me didn’t even have a verbal component. It was entirely visual.

I’m talking about the advertising for Nike, California Cooler, Apple Computer, and Porsche — all of whom happened to be clients of Chiat/Day.

I had to start over.

Higher Education

I learned more than I dreamed I could have at that agency, not just about advertising, but about marketing, branding, presenting, and sleep deprivation. And when two of Chiat’s luminaries left to start their own agency, they chose me — of all the insanely talented people working there — to build it with them.

But after working for them for a couple of years, I had another uncomfortable realization: I liked Pepsi commercials. More than liked them, actually. I found myself responding to them.

Problem was, the work Pepsi was doing didn’t adhere to any of the rules I’d learned, either at Chiat or Scali. It was neither persuasive or evocative. It was entertaining.

Again, I had to start over.

Post-Graduate Studies

Maybe I should have made the jump into Hollywood, but I had become a pretty respected name in advertising and besides, Pepsi’s agency offered me a job. I became Senior Vice President/Creative Director at BBDO, creating national and international advertising campaigns for Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Visa, Skippy, and a couple of other brands you may be familiar with.

The agency also gave me a really tasty perk: After a long, hard day of work, the agency agreed to send me to film school for a long, hard night of study. At NYU.

And Then I Became A Baby Director

After a couple of years of advertising days and film school nights, I realized I had learned far more about directing by paying attention on shoots with big-name directors than I could possibly pick up in classes, so I decided to put together a reel. It had four spots on it, one of which was shortlisted at Cannes and another which was inaugurated into the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Suddenly, I was a director.

What’s nice about directing commercials is that the work is sporadic, but it pays quite well. For the first time in my professional life, I had both free time and money.

I suppose I suffer from some weird dysfunction that doesn’t allow me to sit still. In addition to the hundreds of commercials I directed, I wrote, produced, and directed several short films, the most ambitious of which was called ‘Burning Passion’. In its rough cut form the film played in more than two dozen film festivals, where it won three Gold Awards, two Audience Awards, three Screenwriting Awards, and a Best Directorial Debut.

I wanted to master every aspect of directing that I could, so I kept writing, finishing more than a dozen feature scripts. I also took classes through the Beverly Hills Playhouse and The Groundlings in order to learn how to work with actors and performed stand-up comedy to try and master comedic timing. And I got deep into photography, developing a unique photographic technique involving shooting through liquids which, by the way, earned me the title of Photographer of the Year by the International Color Awards in 2006.

But then I had another uncomfortable realization: Entertainment wasn’t enough. Not even with good writing and evocative visuals behind it.

The moment came at the Sundance Film Festival when I saw a weird little film out of Mali. In spite of the fact that the movie wasn’t incredibly stylish or entertaining in a conventional sense –– and I couldn’t tell you how well it was written because it was in French –– there was something magical about it. It felt authentic.

And once again, I had to start over.

My Blue Period

By a stroke of good fortune, I was cleaned out by a business manager I’d considered a friend which meant that I no longer had the resources to gild an otherwise inauthentic existence. No more fancy cars, expensive clothes, and exotic vacations.

When I finished feeling sorry for myself, I began getting back in touch with the fundamentals I’d learned years before. I wrote — not as a way to show off, but for the pure cathartic experience of writing. My photography became more personal, too, and I found that the techniques I’d learned to work with actors were actually quite useful in getting them to personal performances as well.

I reevaluated every aspect of my life, which led me to move to Portland, Oregon. My wife and I had two kids who are growing up ignorant of a world in which play dates are strategically planned in order to further a parent’s career.

In three years in Portland, I put down deeper roots than I had after 14 years in LA.

And Ultimately, Triumph!

I have come to the point where I realize the power of a well-crafted message and refuse to wield that power on behalf of clients I find unethical or on messages that are duplicitous.

Not because I’m on some holy mission to make the world a better place, but because I can’t help but give 100% of my time and effort to a project and I want to feel good about every single minute I spend away from my kids.

I have accumulated a ton of skills and a healthy dose of perspective that together enable me to create pieces that are meaningful, entertaining, stylish, and well-written.

I hope you agree.

The End,

or as we used to say in math,

Q.E.D.