Silent witness.

More than a month has elapsed since my last post, violating a rule suggested to me years ago by my former Ammirati & Puris art director colleague Elsebeth Thomsen. At the time, in the early days of this blog, I struggled to post something every day. Elsebeth pointed out that posting once a week would be more than reasonable. “Most people struggle to keep up with more than that,” is what I think I recall her saying. 

With Elsebeth’s permission, I began to post once a week, and have pretty much kept to this schedule ever since, but recently I’ve found it a challenge to hold even to this diminished commitment. There are subjects I could talk about, but the value they would deliver is at best minimal (if that), and I don’t want to insult you or anyone else who’s patient and tolerant enough to read what I write. I could repost pieces I felt are helpful, but this somehow smacks of sight-of-hand – a kind of a cheat – as if I’m creating new content when in fact I’m not. 

The weeks roll by. I tell myself I’m busy writing other stuff – the presentation I gave in New York to the agency AKA, the TED talk I hope to give, if the TED gods deem it worthy – but this is a lie. 

I haven’t posted to Adventures because I have nothing helpful, illuminating, or instructive to say. I wouldn’t be writing this post either, were it not for something that came up the other evening. 

A few old hands from Ammirati – as one person pointed out, we once were (relatively) young hands – got together for dinner. For a reason I can’t recall, someone raised the subject of my blog, which prompted one of my colleagues to say, “I’ve only commented twice, but I’ve read everything you’ve ever written.”  

The conversation moves on from there, but as I sit at my computer now, I’m thinking about this. As much as I relish the comments I receive from the small cadre of friends who follow and comment on the blog, I wonder if there are others who share this view, each of whom serves as a kind silent witness, watchful and welcoming, but without reason to respond.  

So what is the take-away from this evening among agency alums? If there is anything at all worth noting, it likely is this: advertising is a hard business, full of peril, populated by the more than occasional wayward client, typified by more disappointments and setbacks that most of us care to admit. What rescues it from tragedy is the people; the colleagues who become collaborators, the collaborators who become friends. More than even the work or the money, it is the people who make this business worthy of pursuit.

Although our once (near) great and (mostly) beloved agency, Ammirati & Puris, is a memory – consumed by an agency holding company more concerned with its share price than its mission to serve clients well – it never will be history to us. It will live on, immortal, in evenings like the one we shared. 

Do we look happy in the photo? We do; we are among friends, each person, in their own way, another kind of silent witness to why advertising matters.