LOSING A BATTLE, BUT WINNING THE WAR

I lost a job yesterday.

For the uninitiated, when we creative types (who peer through that imaginary box made with our thumbs and forefingers) are asked to bid on a project, the process goes something like this:

The folks who make their living like Don Draper and Peggy Olsen toil countless hours and drag their precious idea through a phalanx of those who would seek to destroy it. When the raw concept is deemed fit for polishing to a brilliant shine, they ask someone like me, and as many as four others at the same time, to tell them how the shine might be achieved.

A phone call introduces everyone and we have a conversation that floats somewhere between odd first date and a love connection on a short flight.

Then we go our separate ways. They, back to other pieces of business and time with their families and me to the computer for days of thinking and writing. The timing is indiscriminate, this one with a short deadline and landing square in the middle of my time in Paris.

Writing a treatment is not easy. One must achieve a perfect balance that gets the creative team excited about the artistic possibilities with their project in your hands and lets their client know that you will find that art while deferring to the Gods of commerce.

Many, many hours of research and base covering serve as a foundation for the days of poetry that follow. And then it gets read, and reread, and read again.

A pitch call is the last step.

You can feel the energy or lack of it from the introductions of everyone in the room and often times, more on the phone from other cities. It’s usually about 45 minutes of trading ideas, agreements and disagreements.

A couple days pass and your people either get a lot of attention from their people or they don’t. This time we got a ton of attention. All looked pretty good until we heard the buzz kill line:

“It’s between you and (fill in the blank), we can’t decide. Gonna take both treatments to the client.” If you hear this, it means one of two things. A: They don’t want to hurt your feelings just yet because the client hasn’t signed off on the other guy, or B: It truly is a deadlock.

Neither is good to hear and true to form, we lost.

It sucks to lose a project of any stripe. But this one was to shoot in Chicago, my favorite city in America, and home to my dear friend Adam Kaplan and all those wonderful people at Ogilvy Chicago, with whom I’ve shared so many hours in such far flung places as New Zealand, Chile and South Africa.

Major bummer.

I got the text, after a missed phone call, on our way to the Hollywood Bowl for one of the classical night concerts. I had made a nice dinner (a copy of Raphael Lunetta’s Roasted Pear Salad from Jiraffe Bistro and Jean-Georges’s Sautéed Chicken with Figs) and chose a 1993 Michel-Schlumberger Dry Creek Valley Merlot in anticipation of better news.

Sweltering anger turned to dark depression on our walk up the ramp to our box. Setting up for the meal, by now, is like showering- a series of repeated movements toward the same end. Serene’s father was with us and his presence was helpful, trying to help elevate my mood. Plating the dinner softened things even more, and by the time we ate and cleaned up the wine was doing its job very well. The program was Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto Number 3 with Uzbek soloist Behzod Abduraimov pounding the Steinway into submission, followed by one of my favorite pieces: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

During intermission, as is the routine, I wandered down to Randy and Gretchen Newman’s box for a dose of love, humor, and biting sarcasm. Gretchen is one of my favorite people on the planet. We share a love of cooking and laughing at the world and I always enjoy our brief soirees at The Bowl.  I had not nearly enough time to talk to Randy about his brilliant new record, but tried.

We talked about some kind of woodblock or something and this new guitar we like… (obscure Newman lyric reference).

By the time we arrived home I had almost forgotten the day’s crappy news, almost.

But now I am armed with more art and cynicism and love and music for the next volley in the advertising wars.