“You’re… Fired”: My Life Story
I was fired five times. Five. Good news, each “you’re fired” led to personal success.
Before I get into my personal story, I want to make it clear that my definition of being fired is not necessarily the usual one. Traditionally, being fired means that you’ve been axed, sacked, canned, let go, terminated, or dismissed. In most cases, people get fired for poor performance, misconduct, breaking company rules, or other issues related to their work or behavior (plus the lovely phrase: downsized often due to a corporate reorganization).
To be very au current, given today’s evolving work universe, someone might have been AI’d. To be more direct, let’s just call it what it is… many careers are about to be brutally fucked by Artificial Intelligence. Not yet rampant. Stay tuned, as some bigly disruption is coming fast.
My firings were never due to poor performance (well, my Adidas case might be an exception). Stay tuned for that intriguing story.
Firing has gone in two directions. In my management career, I unfortunately had to fire people. In every case, letting someone go was extremely painful and upsetting for everyone involved.
Because the act was so painful for me, I have been fascinated (and repulsed) that the term “You’re fired” became part of our vernacular and was even applauded by fans of Donald Trump’s TV show The Apprentice.
This humiliating public dismissal became a bedrock vibe that helped elevate Trump’s popularity and belief in his business acumen. It proved to the unwashed just what a great businessman he has been. Americans have an interesting take on what makes a boss great. They also seem to love Trump’s use of gold…. Everywhere.
1. Fired Number One: Northwest.
I started my advertising career in 1980 at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, New York’s largest advertising agency. We had multiple floors in the iconic Chrysler Building. DFS’s clients included major brands like Toyota, P&G, General Mills, RJR Nabisco, HP, and Wendy’s.
Not a bad place to launch a career. The 1980s advertising world rocked. My own clients included General Mills (cereals and Yoplait Yogurt), Sara Lee, and Western Union (yes, Western Union, its EasyLink service, get this, was the first commercial email app). Since the term email had yet to exist, as brilliant marketers, we called the benefit “Instant Mail.”
In my third year at DFS, I was asked to run the Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines account. At the time, the third largest U.S. airline. Not just run the account; I was asked to move to Minneapolis and become the GM of our new office dedicated to this $60,000,000 advertising account. It was a rather good career move as it allowed me to move past my tier of account execs.
DFS inherited the business because our client, Republic Airlines, had been purchased by Northwest, and, well, good news, Northwest liked our style vs. Republic’s existing advertising agency.
Northwest bought Republic to build out its domestic routes. At that time, Northwest, then known as Northwest Orient Airways, was best known for its international service, particularly its leadership in North America-Asia routes. The airline’s “Great Circle Route,” developed in the 1930s, carried more flights to Asia than any other airline.
Back in the 1980s, Northwest was not considered a quality product. The planes were old. The seats were worn. The in-flight service kinda sucked.
To get ahead of the airline’s service failures, we brought in innovative marketing. We launched the most lucrative frequent flier program. We gave away more miles and therefore trips than any other airline. The airline’s largess worked at a time when domestic and global business travel was starting to boom. Good timing.
On the positive side, Northwest was the U.S. to Asia leader in terms of the number of westbound flights. The airline flew to China, Guam, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Unfortunately, the international product was uncompetitive and increasingly at risk due to superior service from leading Asian carriers. Northwest was like a Volkswagen compared to a Ferrari. The airline’s dominance was also at risk from United Airlines, which was introducing new Asia routes.
To save the international business, we turned to what I called ‘information as a service’. An uncommon brand attribute in the 1980s.
Our Asia Series was designed to help newbie American businesspeople learn how to conduct business across unfamiliar Asian cultures. Examples: we taught Americans how and when to bow in Japan, how to deliver the right gifts in China, and how to survive a karaoke night in Seoul. These business tips were delivered via a series of TV commercials, 90-second radio infomercials, booklets, and even 900 numbers (yes, those were mostly porn in those days).
The Asia Series was so successful that we won a bunch of creative accolades and prestigious EFFIE Awards for the client and agency. EFFIEs were awarded by the American Marketing Association in recognition of marketing excellence and proven results.
Back to getting fired.
At a snazzy New York hotel EFFIE Award dinner, I was sitting at a table of Northwest and DFS execs. One of the Northwest people was Christopher Clouser, Northwest’s brand-new SVP and chief communications officer. At one point during our celebration, Chris turned to me to tell me that the Airline was putting the account up for review. REVIEW! I knew what this meant. We were eventually going to be fired. Chris would soon move the account to J. Walter Thompson, where he had good friends.
Yikes. Fired at an award dinner celebrating one of my most cherished marketing programs. An industry-leading program that helped to save the airline’s international business.
A dinner that put me out of a job but sweetly launched the next stage of my business career.
2. Fired Number Two: On to London.
The DFS agency, which by then had been gobbled up by Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide, the globe’s largest advertising agency group, liked me. That said, I was in the precarious position of not managing a profitable client and agency team. Having no client and team was not a follow-the-yellow-brick-road position in an agency world where senior management was defined by their client account and its revenues. At this point, I was sans portfolio.
To put this loss into perspective, Northwest’s $60,000,000 in ad spend translated to $9,000,000 in revenue and $6,000,000 in agency profits. “All” due to me. So, losing this account was a career-stalling event.
But, but, they liked me. After a couple of months of career fumbling, I was asked to move to our London headquarters to take on the position of European Director, running the Johnson & Johnson account across Europe and the Middle East. And run European business development. I remember asking our president if this was a good move for me. In agency speak, he said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
A few short weeks later, I found myself in London, settling in and searching for a house for my expat family, which would follow me shortly after. All a bit rushed and hectic, all exacerbated by our having just had our brand-new baby girl, who joined our two-year-old son in the move. We were now a family of four expats. Kudos to Mary Lee for pulling this crazy move all together… while I was hanging out with my new English buddies.
How did I reward her? While she was settling into our Notting Hill house, I made an overnight business trip to our Amsterdam office. Well, to make a grueling story short, I had my hip severely broken in a side collision car crash. This happened after a couple of office cocktails on our way to dinner. I was in a car driven by a colleague.
Fast story. I woke up in an Amstelveen hospital. A tall, handsome blonde doctor wheeled me over to the X-ray and said, with a Dutch smile, YUP, you’re a bit broken. Visualize this from a Saatchi management perspective: business cocktails at a company office, a car driven by a Saatchi employee, a serious crash, I’m a new London employee… not surprising our global agency management went kind of WHOA.
I was sent back to London in a medical Learjet (with a glorious epidural). Mary Lee found me the best English hip surgeon, and I’ve been dancing since. And I became a world-famous Saatchi dude – the dude that survived the after-work cocktail party. Ad people like crazy stories.
But there is always a but, right? Since I was out of action for a few weeks, I lost the business development job. Fired again. And J&J was not that needy. I was moved up to the quiet executive floor in a big, all-white office that had once been Maurice Saatchi’s when he launched the company. I smoked Cuban cigars to align with the other executives. I waited for lunch so I could go out with the Saville Road-clad blokes to drink too much claret.
Happy to be living in London. But not happy to be bored. Not my ADHD style. [Read more…] about I Was Fired – A Lot – A ‘Happy Ending’ Story
