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“This would be a great business if it weren’t for clients and staff.”

This is a bizarre old quote from the marketing agency world. I don’t know who first said it. I don’t know who most recently said it. Both the creator and subsequent relayers have it wrong. The agency business is great for those very reasons: clients and staff. This is a people business beyond question. We work with talented people trying to solve the challenge of motivating other people to buy, endorse, consume, recommend, and eternally love the products and services of a third group of people whose careers are tied to the success of our work.

What could be more interesting than that?

It’s what gets me out of bed every day at 5-something o’clock. Yes in the AM. It’s what keeps me reading emails, industry blogs and case study videos at midnight.

Feel free to heckle. But I love what I do. I love my industry. I can’t tell you how lucky I am.

This Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of my agency TrojanOne. For twenty years I have been challenged with introducing my clients to more consumers. For twenty years I have enjoyed learning how an unimaginable range of industries work. For twenty years I have been surrounded by highly motivated and hard working individuals who have amazed me with their passion, dedication, and inspiration.

Thank you, people. My clients, staff, colleagues, and consumers of the past, the present and the future.

It’s fun becoming a twenty-something.

Mere minutes after the Raptors bandwagon came up one point short against the Nets, a friend mentioned how much they are going to miss the city-wide atmosphere around the playoff run.

You know you live in Toronto when an opening round series, albeit a seven game series, is considered a playoff “run.” But in the 416, even Drake’s 416, seven games of playoff action is a europhic lifetime.

Soon my fellow citizens of Ford Nation will emerge from a different kind of stupor and realize we are right back where we always were: Drinking heavily from a cracked pipe full of offseason optimism. Who really needs abuse therapy? Toronto sports fans.

What do we have to look forward to? A remade TFC squad that still has loads of potential but will be without its best player during the World Cup? A last place Blue Jays team that seems to be more stable than its overhyped 2013 model, but in a division of titans that requires much more consistency? Or perhaps the gridiron Argos, who should have been in back to back Grey Cups last year save for the antics of some Steely rivals?

For basketball and hockey fans it’s now time for the offseason. The months where everyone is a champion and no one is a chump. It’s a season of fiction, fantasy, and forgetfulness. Of reality that is.

If you want to drift into true sports offseason fiction, check out the movie Draft Day. It stars a Kevin Costner decades removed from his Bull Durham glory, and the expansion of the Cleveland Browns who have to look even further back to the original franchise for true glory.

Draft Day is ninety minutes of cliches and Jennifer Garner modeling maternity wear. Then it erupts into thirty minutes of drama, tension, frustration, emotion, and elation. In fact it closes so fast, so unexpectedly, and so uniquely I actually cried during one scene.

So like any good Toronto sports fan who has proven they can weather the storm of defeat, Draft Day offers some highs after a bout of lows. It’s worth watching. It will stoke your offseason optimism.

Plus it will free you from my relentless campaign of Rob Ford puns.

Last week the Neanderthal known as Donald Sterling, born as Donald Tokowitz, decided to take on Magic Johnson in an ill advised game of 1:1.

Tokowitz, who under his current name owns the Los Angeles Clippers, has decided that his current alleged mistress should not be hanging out with Magic Johnson.

Johnson, also known as Earvin, is a humanitarian, NCAA Champion, HIV survivor, NBA Champion, entrepreneur, Olympic Champion, philanthropist, and African-American.

Sterling is an alleged racist, alleged adulterer, alleged bigot, alleged feudal landlord, alleged NBA role model, and according to him, a Superior-American.

Sterling has been fined for evicting tenants from his apartment buildings based on race.

Sterling has been accused of refusing medical coverage to a key employee with cancer.

Sterling has been accused of calling his players “poor black boys from the South.”

With a resume like this, you can see why he is so confident of taking on a slouch like Magic – the same Magic who actually thought he was a friend of Sterling’s!

This morning I heard on the radio that the NBA is considering an “indefinite” suspension for Sterling. That doesn’t sit well with me at all. I think the only course of action is for the NBA to DEFINITELY and DEFIANTLY suspend Sterling.

His type of racism isn’t acceptable at a pickup game, let alone an NBA game, let alone by an NBA owner! I wonder how he would feel if Magic told people to not hang around Sterling because he is Jewish?

Actually, that’s a question I don’t need to ponder.

Update: NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced on Tuesday, April 29 that Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA and has been fined $2.5 million. The fine will be donated to organizations dedicated to anti-discrimination and tolerance efforts. Click here for more information.

Sometimes I don’t like talking about books I’ve read for fear of you recognizing their influence on me.

I should be so lucky this effect takes place after inhaling Ben Horowitz’s masterpiece – “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”.

Horowitz, one half of the Silicon Valley powerhouse VC Andreessen Horowitz, launched his career at Netscape, then became co-founder and CEO of LoudCloud, which he sold for $ 1.6 billion after nearly going bankrupt several times. Today, he has a weekly blog with ten million followers. His book makes it clear why his fandom is so immense.

“The Hard Thing About Hard Things” has one specific purpose: to coach CEO’s on how to be CEO’s. It’s what Horowitz dishes out professionally as a revered Silicon Valley mentor. Through his day job and his own coming of age experience as a young CEO, he realized there is no owner’s manual for being a business owner.

Running a company or an enterprise isn’t easy. Who do you confide in? Tell your employees too much and they may get spooked. Unleash your challenges with your board and soon you’ll be unemployed and unemployable. Let your clients in on your secret fears and your competitor will be happily exceeding their monthly sales targets.

What Horowitz produced is not so much a book, but a friend. Less of a business classic and more of a daily game plan. There is no preaching, though I’m now a convert.

I’m not going to share any of the amazing content with you. It’s up to you if you want to put the effort in by reading this energizing dish or perhaps choosing a less inspirational snack, like observing the impact on someone who has, such as yours truly.

It was a year ago this week that terror struck the Boston Marathon.

Few of us could imagine that a running event would become a target for terrorism. Especially terrorists whose motives and hatred seem less about America and more about Eastern Europe.

I was in Chicago, at a conference on sponsorship and events of all things, when the tragic word reached us. The horror of the situation touched a pragmatic nerve in all of us. What if that had been my event?

There is no doubt the starting line of the 2014 Boston Marathon will be more emotional than we can imagine. The tribute to the victims and the celebration of the return of the race will only be trumped by the feelings expended at the finish line. For all of those who complete the home stretch down Boylston Street, the nightmare of 2013 will be impossible to ignore. But I am sure the supporters and spectators who crowd the street will do their best to help them turn the page.

Over the next week, tributes, stories, and memories will be shared through every media and digital outlet imaginable. I want to share two that I read and watched that left me teary, emotional, and still angry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/portraits-boston-marathon-survivors_n_5127871.html
 
http://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let_us_run_climb_and_dance

March Madness has been replaced by Athlete Madness during this year’s NCAA Basketball Championships.

While Connecticut’s upstart Huskies left the hardwood tonight crowned as the 2014 Men’s Champions, the issues dogging American university sports are just reaching a tipping point.

You’ve heard them all by now I am sure. Northwestern’s football players earning the court approved right to formalize a union. Kentucky’s one-and-done recruiting strategy that essentially offers a quick path to millions. Concussions. Academic fraud. Rogue boosters. Even more rogue agents. Coaches abandoning recruits. Video games featuring athlete likenesses with no compensation. The issues are swirling around like a full court press.

For me the issue could be ironed out if a sense of equity was installed. Why can Duke’s basketball coach earn $ 9 million annually, yet a player can’t eat a booster bought burger? Why can coaches jump to their next job with no repercussions, yet a player must lose a season in their prime for doing the same?

I don’t believe the players should be paid. They in effect already are. I don’t think players should get a cut of TV or sponsorship deals. But I do believe they should be able to sell their autographs, secure personal sponsors, or get a job based on their fame. Their institution is benefitting immensely from the brand they are building. Why shouldn’t they?

Yes, I know I have opened a can of worms that might be impossible to police. But imagine telling a student on a music scholarship they can’t earn a few bucks in a weekend band. Or a computer science student that they can’t write code for a local startup. Or an academic standout to forget about that well paid summer job.

The NCAA is long past being an “amateur” pursuit, much as the Olympics have. Brazenly, why shouldn’t a player’s father get $ 100,000 to steer his daughter to a certain lacrosse school? What’s immoral about leveraging your skills for financial gain? Why shouldn’t a family who invested in their prodigy for over a decade see some potential return? Isn’t that the American Way?

College athletics is an amazing cultural institution, yet fraught with controversy. But like any organization, they need to realize their people are their best asset.

I would rather this blog be about the fictional British rags to riches band that carried the same title for the 1991 movie. But alas this movie is about real people.

Maybe you have some of these people who float around your organization. They are the opposite of The Commitments.

I don’t actually know what to name them. But let me describe their habits and maybe you can label this species.

Their first trait is they make promises to have you something at a vague time. My blood-boiler is “end of day.” I own eight watches and none of them have EOD on their faces.

Anyone promising End of Day is already working on their excuses. Insert canine culprit here.

The next behavioural flaw is the lack of communication. The truly committed provide an update on their progress because they are secure in knowing they are going to provide a timely delivery. Ms. End of Day is already in hiding because they aren’t going to deliver and they don’t realize that a simple heads up will reduce much grief later.

The third trait of the delinquent comes with the actual delivery of the deliverable. It’s couched with a lame, insincere apology at best and drowned in blame of others who allegedly kept the false promiser from delivering.

The last and most amazing trait of the culprit is the right back at you. They have an incredible ability to respond to your inquiry about the missed deadline with a stinging dose of betrayal that you’re being too hard on them. In the milliseconds it takes to share their plight online, they are now the victim and you (me) are the bad ass bad guy boss, customer, business partner…..

I’ve had enough of these people. This is real life. Not a movie. Please help me by naming this predator. So that way when I apply for my hurting licence I can let the warden what I intend to kill.

Apologies for those who were waiting more “real time” IEG Sponsorship Conference updates from me last week… I got delinquent after two posts!

Which is too bad, because on Tuesday there were two amazing presentations which deserved recognition. One from Ogilvy Brazil about “Immortal Fans”… an organ donor card campaign featuring Brazilian soccer team, Sport Club Recife. If you haven’t seen this magic before your eyes… search it out.

The other, by Hugh Evans of the Global Poverty Project, was even more impressive due to its global impact and scale. Evans too is worth a search on the w-w-w-dot.

But beyond some great presentations, there is an underlying itch I need to scratch about many of the contributors. It appears that conference speaking circa 2014 has been reduced to slides filled with social media logos (do you really think I don’t know what the Twitter logo is?) and self-congratulatory case study videos (hosting kids in your corporate lobby now constitutes community service?).

Every presenter seems to think they are somehow unique by telling us they are in the content business. Every brand thinks they are the only company doing storytelling. Every marketer somehow thinks their grassroots campaign is more grassroots than the next grassroots marketer.

But what’s missing for me is some reference to strategy, some identification of the challenges they faced, and some acknowledgment of results. Those presenters at IEG who addressed these points were the most memorable, and I would suspect, the most successful in the real world!

Day 1 highlights for me were: 1. Maker Media; 2. Coca-Cola; 3. Allergic Outbreak.

Allergic Outbreak? Is that a new property? No, that was me developing full body hives after eating something, maybe the shrimp ceviche, at the evening reception. For the second straight trip (see SXSW blog) that I have gotten sick. Hmm, maybe it’s time for me to stay home.

The good side of Day 1 were two great presentations. 

Coca-Cola demonstrated how they have moved sponsorship beyond partnership to entrepreneurship. Their venture collaborations with properties and tech entrepreneurs are giving them a unique edge. Whether it be Spotify or Misfit, Coke has been leveraging their own marketing and distribution scale while simultaneously tapping into the agility of startups. They like to instigate collisions of opposites and lovers to forge new ground.

Speaking of startups, the Maker Media presentation focussed on what I would call almost “pre-startups”. Their Maker Faire event is the event of the future. Featuring garage inspired inventors demonstrating their pet projects and creations, Maker Faire is the county fair for smart people. They are a uniquely open sourced event to the point where they share their learnings with startup competitors and also refuse to allow category exclusivity for their sponsors. 

Innovation, Collaboration, Collision, Invention.

I’m not allergic to any of the above.