How to succeed in advertising by never giving up

This is a story about advertising.

It was the mid-80’s. My hair was too long. I was probably a little too thin. And I drove a red flared van. I was also a student at the University of Oregon, having returned to college after a few years of my brief full-time career in the culinary arts.

On top of a heavy course load, I was working my way through school and holding down two jobs. One was cooking at a private restaurant in Eugene called The Towne Club with an old Navy chef named Mac, which allowed me hear some pretty amazing stories and eat more prime rib than any other college student I knew. Except for my buddy Scott. He worked there, too. And the other job was “working” at a suntan salon on campus called Sun Shower, which allowed me to not only study but also keep a tan year around, the latter being something not easily done in Oregon.

But I also had a third job, one that I earned college credit for instead of a paycheck. And that was as the coach of a 7th grade basketball team. At that time, junior high school basketball was part of the Eugene Sports League (ESL), a pay-to-play organization that helped fund local sports and gave every kid who wanted to play a chance to play. My team was one from Jefferson Junior High and was sponsored by Union Oyster, which was either a fish restaurant or a heavy metal rock band, I'm not exactly sure.

On any given day, I’d have 10 or 12 kids amped up at 3:00 in the afternoon and ready to burn off some energy. Except for one day. And it was a game day. That day there was a school ski trip and more than half the team opted for the slopes instead of the hardwood. In fact, only five kids suited up that day, not all of whom were the normal starters. One kid was tall and gangly with a wobbly 13-year old frame. And another kid was kind of pudgy and had the strangest looking shot from his hip. I nicknamed him “The Cannon.”

Nonetheless, five kids there were. So five kids played.

We looked terrible in the first quarter against the team from Kennedy and were outscored 14-9, although it felt like a lot more. And by halftime we were down even more, 25-18. We continued our downward slide 31-23 in the third quarter.

And then things got really bad. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, one of my usual starters fouled out of the game, leaving us with only four players. In the EPL, you could play with fewer than five kids as long as the game was still competitive. And the referee though it was still competitive. So we kept playing, four kids against five.

Then a couple of minutes later, one of my other starters fouled out of the game. Surely, we were done for. I called a timeout. In the huddle, only three kids remained. The tall, gangly kid. The pudgy kid. And the last of the starters. All three were sweaty and nervous and weren’t sure what to do. Three kids against five? I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, either.

But then I was.

We had always practiced the triangle offense. So I assured the kids it would work with just three players. And somehow, it did. Somehow we started creeping back into the game, one procession after the next, all from points scored from two of the players. As we got closer and closer, the gymnasium was starting to fill up with more and more parents and players for the game to be played after ours. They couldn’t believe what they were seeing and started cheering them on.

The other team couldn’t believe it either. How could this happen? So with only seconds to go and up by just two points, they did what they thought would win the game. They fouled the kid who had only scored one basket all game – the pudgy kid.

But what they didn’t know was, even though he had the most awkward-looking shot that he released from hip level, the one thing that kid could do was shoot free throws. The first one went in. And so did the second one. Both from the hip. Both made the crowd go nuts. The game was now tied and we were going into overtime, three kids against five.

In overtime, momentum was on our side. The triangle was working. Both on offense and defense. They even fouled the pudgy kid again thinking there was no way he could do it twice. But he did. Both shots, too.

And then it happened. If it were in a movie, it would have been filmed in slow motion. The clock ticked down to zero and the scoreboard read 49-46 in our favor. The gym roared. The exhausted starter leapt into my arms and started crying. The tall, gangly kid had an ear-to-ear grin on his face. And the pudgy kid was no longer the pudgy kid. He was the hero. He was “The Cannon.”

I keep the scorebook pages from that game framed in my office at home as a reminder that anything is possible with effort, heart and belief. Remarkably, like a lot of things in life, the exact same three things it takes to succeed in advertising.