My very first time

My recent posting of my first ever TV ad rekindled a memory that is one of my most vivid memories of all.

A few weeks after we’d shot that spot it played, for the very first time, to an audience of Budweiser beer wholesalers. Thousands of them in a hotel in Vegas. It brought the house down. It was an instant hit.

So they put it on TV soon thereafter. Mostly in sports programming. At the time the very popular college basketball championships were on. The NCAA as it’s known. I didn’t know this. yet.

One night after a hard day’s Bud Light thinkin’ i suggested to my parter that we get a beer.

There was a huge sports bar not far from our office so we went there. It was packed with young NCAA basketball fans.

And right after we’d gotten our beers, the most perfect thing that could have happened at that moment, happened at that moment.

Our ad appeared on all the big screens in this very big bar. The music boomed out of the speakers. And as i looked around the hall i could see friends nudging friends to watch the ad. I thought that was strange. And the ad played out. And everybody laughed real hard. This is the country that gave us The Three Stooges. They loved it.

But what happened next was crazy.

They applauded! They all clapped involuntarily for a stupid beer ad! They couldn’t help it. Wow. I know they were all drunk, but still.

I was hooked.

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NEW YORK SHARPENS YOU

I am very glad I lived in New York City when I was in my early 20s. I was still absorbent and flexible.

It was a formative experience. I lived there for five years and really liked it. If you’re impatient, you’ll love New York.

I experienced the city from a surprisingly numerous points of view in the time I was there. I went from bottom of the rung immigrant (albeit white, educated, legal and English-speaking) to a minor peak in the foothills creative advertising world in two years. It felt like twenty years. New York takes it out of you.

I remember showing my green card with my pic to the HR girl when I finally got my dream ad agency job. My green card had been issued two years previously.

She took one look at it, and then at me, and in a tone right from the lips of Samantha from Sex And The City, said “Boy, Noo Yawk really did a number on you kid!”

New York had done a number on me. It took me two years to get what I wanted.

Back then that was an eternity!