In one of his recent guises, Alex Bogusky was wearing glasses, and with his specs, his boyish good looks, and his newly trimmed hair, he looked to me a little bit like Clark Kent. The appearance seems to be Bogusky casting himself against type, because he has never needed a secret identity. From early on in his career, it has been clear that he was an unstoppable force in advertising and branding. His very start in the business has the ring of myth: While working for his father’s Miami-based design firm, he art-directed a project for another advertising agency in the city. Chuck Porter, a partner at the shop, was so impressed that he called the elder Bogusky and asked him who had done the work. The younger Bogusky was hired shortly after.
With that as his origin story, it has been evident throughout his career that Bogusky was capable of performing creative feats that few others could match. In eight years he quickly rose up through the ranks to become partner of the agency he had joined. During his tenure at what came to be called Crispin Porter + Bogusky the creative director invented and created culture-shifting, award-winning campaigns for clients such as Burger King, the Mini Cooper, Coca-Cola, Florida’s antitobacco initiative, Volkswagen, Microsoft, Virgin Atlantic, and others.
In 2009, Adweek named Bogusky “Creative Director of the Decade,” and his own boss called him the “Steve Jobs” of advertising. CPB won multiple awards from publications and from the esteemed Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Bogusky was able to vitalize, revitalize, and transform the companies who hired him, and he shepherded campaigns that triumphed in TV, print, and online, proving that his know-how had few limitations. His work was defined by its radical unwillingness to do anything less than provoke—think Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, the Truth antitobacco work showing body bags, or Volkswagen ads featuring a car crash. CPB campaigns defied conventions and generated notoriety for the client while building the brand.
With such stunning successes and such a clear mastery of what he does, it would seem strange that Bogusky would leave the agency world. But there has been an inner voice gnawing at him, and he felt it was necessary to heed the message. His 2008 book, The 9-Inch “Diet”: Exposing the Big Conspiracy in America, which pointed out the dangers of our current eating habits and the food industry’s role in encouraging them, was emblematic of the concerns on his radar. He had come to understand the negative impact that corporations were having on our health and the well-being of the planet; he wanted to shift from helping brands to becoming an advocate of consumers. He wanted to do something different. And so, despite multimillion-dollar offers to stay put, he left CPB and put up his own shingle at the Boulder, Colorado–based FearLess Cottage.
Of course, the move only adds to the mythical proportions of his story: The adman who turned his back on the advertising world to shepherd a new era of consumerism. From the cozy space of the FearLess Cottage office, Bogusky is now devoting himself to a number of world-changing initiatives. With the manifesto dubbed the Consumer Bill of Rights, Bogusky is striving to help consumers assert their power. FearLess Cottage itself is working with companies to help them transform their businesses to come into alignment with the new world order, to ensure that they’re working in an authentically sustainable way. Through the collaborative brand COMMON, he is seeking to create an entirely new kind of brand—a cooperative enterprise that would put its imprimatur on the products of like-minded companies based on a foundation of altruism and sustainability.
In our interview, Alex spoke about all this: the dissonance of his current work and past history, his hopes for FearLess Cottage, his philosophy about creative work. If the new endeavors succeed, Bogusky would have yet more milestones to add to his already-astounding legacy. And who would doubt his capability? Throughout his career, he has proved he can do pretty much anything. Alex Bogusky has creative powers beyond those of mere branding mortals.
You have an interesting statement on FearLess Cottage’s website: “Fear is the mortal enemy of innovation and happiness.” Why do you feel this way?
While dabbling with fine art in college, I noticed that if I was ever scared, it came through in my work. I found I couldn’t create anything compelling if I was feeling uneasy or frightened. This became nothing more than a “note to self” at the time, but over the course of my career, I found myself in situations where I had to create the culture for an entire creative department. The most important component of this—and the aspect I spent a lot of time on—was creating a culture where people weren’t afraid. There’s another quote relating to this that I think about a lot: “People are afraid of so many things, but so rarely are they afraid of mediocrity.”
Are you afraid of mediocrity?
I think so. Early on in my career, I was definitely afraid of mediocrity, and it helped push my work into a fearless space. If you’re afraid of mediocrity, you have to push past wherever mediocrity lives. A lot of people believe that there is a right and there is a wrong, and that there are creative rules. I think that trying to figure out what’s the right or wrong way to do things is a form of fear. This inhibits people, and holds them back. In creative departments, you need to create a culture where you can break lots of rules. It probably wouldn’t have the same power now because it’s so common, but wearing T-shirts and jeans was one way of signaling this idea. It became a very important way of saying, “When you walk in here, the rules are not the same.” The idea that you’re willing to break that rule meant that you’re going to break the rules elsewhere.
The uniform of a T-shirt and jeans has become a part of the visual language of the creative class.
I’ve noticed that. Now I wear ties a lot.
So you’re breaking the rules that broke the rules. Why are you so interested in rules?
In advertising and design, there are usually two things going on. One is the effort to propel the discipline forward. The other is the effort to refine the craft as we know it. Both camps are important. I think you can look at people’s work and identify which camp they’re in. There are those who refine the craft as it exists, and they create, in many ways, the most beautiful work. They make the work that is the easiest to like.
Those who are trying to undo the craft or destroy a piece of it—or push the discipline into a new place—that’s important too. And as soon as this type of work is successful, then the craft gets applied to what they’ve done.
Which camp were you in?
I was more in the “pushing it forward” camp. My hope was that, at the end of my career, people could say there was advertising before Crispin Porter + Bogusky and there’s advertising after Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and it changed because of us. And I feel like we did that.
I’ve read that you didn’t really like advertising—that it wasn’t sacred to you. What made you decide to go into advertising in the first place?
In many ways, it was just a fallback. I grew up with design and designers—my parents were both involved in the field—but I wanted to be a professional motorcycle racer and a windsurfer. But those things didn’t turn out so well. I fell back into the family business, the design firm that my dad was running with his brother [the Bogusky Brothers], and wound up getting a job in the agency. I didn’t really know anything about advertising, but I actually did like advertising. Ultimately, for me, what I loved most was the additional impact the copy provided. I found design was often very implicit. Bringing in words made for a more explicit communication and more immediate feedback. I really like that.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky created numerous groundbreaking campaigns and absolutely changed the face of advertising. Why did you leave?
I was having less fun in advertising, and I wasn’t leaping out of bed in the same way that I had for most of my career. I think that it was a very, very good fit for me for a long time, and yet at the same time . . . I’ll tell you something about the way my mind works: I make decisions and I put them in the back of my head. I don’t go back to refer to them, but I know they’re there. One of those decisions related to where I would live—I decided that I would move out west when my kids went to junior high. That’s what compelled us to move to Colorado.
I just don’t think I was a “lifer,” even with my own company. For me, there was something that didn’t make sense about doing one job forever. I felt I had to try some other things.
Was it about trying something new in your life and having another chapter in the arc of your career? Or did you lose your sense of the purpose or intention of advertising?
Well, when I got into advertising, it was a different time in the world.
In what way? Was it more like Mad Men?
I miss the Mad Men era, and I miss the two-martini lunches. When I first got into the business, there was a copywriter at the agency who would close the door and get stoned so he could write copy. Everyone understood this was his process. I miss most of that stuff. But no, that’s not why I left. The world was different because, at the time, we weren’t aware that we were bumping up against the physical boundaries of our ecosystem.
That’s the big change that has occurred. People have become aware of this at different times. Al Gore has known it for thirty years. For me, it’s been five. I realized that the current processes of capitalism are not going to provide a happy outcome. And yet people are beginning to redesign many aspects of business and industry. I felt that advertising was not in the center of this change—in fact, it was clearly outside where these changes were being made. I tried to take that kind of thinking to our clients, and our best thinking was not finding a very receptive audience. Actually, I shouldn’t say “our best thinking.” I felt like my best thinking wasn’t finding a receptive audience.
Why? Why do you think that your best thinking wasn’t finding a receptive audience?
I felt like I was the tail trying to wag the dog. The work that advertising people and agencies can do is really important. But in the traditional relationship, I found it was getting frustrating. So in some ways, I felt it would be more important to leave and try to agitate the industry. When I say “agitate,” I mean in a good way. I didn’t want to annoy—I wanted to begin to move certain issues a bit more to the center. And I felt that leaving the industry would give us an easier pulpit to do it from.
On FearLess Cottage’s website, you say that you want to be “an insurgent in the new consumer revolution.” How would you define “insurgent”? And what do you mean by “the new consumer revolution”? Was there an old consumer revolution?
Our society has a very short memory, and I love to go back and look into our cultural history. One of the most interesting things I like to look at is the term “consumer.” People actually don’t like being labeled a “consumer.” Nevertheless, I use the word a lot—I have yet to find a synonym that I can replace it with. People say, “I’m more than a consumer!” And yes, of course they’re consumers, but where is your power to change things when you’re a consumer? And many people say, “Well, I’m not a consumer, I’m not okay with that label.” In a recent tweet to someone, I said, “I’ll stop calling you a consumer when you stop breathing and eating.” Obviously, none of us can stop consuming. It’s just part of what it is to be human. But “consumer” has become a bad word despite the fact that “consumerism” actually began as a title for a consumer movement. It really was!
Consumerism was the movement to protect consumers. Now it’s become the definition of overconsumption.
But historically, that’s not the original definition of the word.
Words get corrupted, changed, and moved around, but the idea of consumers being empowered actually began with the term “consumerism.” when I started thinking about this, I went back and looked to see if there was a consumer’s bill of rights. I not only found that one existed, but I also discovered that John F. Kennedy wrote it in 1962—in 1962. There was a lot going on at the time—the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and civil rights battles. Yet, somehow, he thought this was important. He authored the Consumer Bill of Rights, and it is amazing. Its principles are dated now, but the reality is the relationship between company and consumer has evolved and can evolve further. But we need to have more democracy in the relationship—in most cases, we’re talking about putting more democracy into capitalism. It’s not a democratic system right now.
Corporations now have more rights than most people.
Yeah, they have limited liability that we don’t have, and they have the right to give in unlimited ways to political campaigns, which we also don’t have. They have many more rights than people do.
What do you feel needs to come out of the new consumer revolution? If the new consumer revolution is successful, how will it change us?
Well, I wrote the new Bill of Rights. I want companies to sign it, and I’ve met with a few that seem willing to do so. Truly progressive companies will sign this. And then consumers can start to think about what isn’t democratic in the relationship they currently have with corporations. This relationship is just like anything else: whatever you’re used to seems to be the way it should be. At one time, it was acceptable to have kings. You’d have one person with unlimited power who could do whatever he wanted. The people of that era thought, “That’s fine, and anything else is going to throw us into anarchy.” The first time we experimented with democracy was a total leap into the dark. We thought it could work, but no one in the history of the planet had ever tried it. Then the new system becomes part of our awareness, and it subsequently creates new expectations on both sides.
In order for something like a Bill of Rights to be broadly successful, it seems to me that corporations would have to give up a lot. This is particularly true for the giant companies selling fast-moving consumer goods. Why on earth would they want things to change, given how successful they currently are?
I’ve been trying to understand this, and I’ve been using physics to look at it. Throughout history, we’ve refined our theories and models of physics because the old theories didn’t fit what we observed. That’s how we got to quantum physics The old ways and the old principles that corporations used for capitalist purposes are not working as well as they used to. There are new sets of rules that are beginning to outperform the old set of rules.
I’m not exactly sure how these “new rules” might be impacting corporations. But it seems to me that the companies selling fast-moving consumer goods are trying to reposition their products so that they might be seen as, for lack of better term, good for consumers. But the ultimate goal still seems to be “sell more product.” For the most part, corporations are not saying, “Let’s try to do things in a different way, or let’s try to establish new rules in an effort to make the world a better place.” Their behavior is still targeted to pleasing Wall Street.
Correct. There’s very little discussion about selling less of anything.
I recently had a conversation with Milton Glaser, and he said the same thing. He told me that those of us in branding must figure out how to get people to stop buying things. People shouldn’t have to buy certain things over and over. They should be made well enough to last longer, or even last forever.
I think that that discussion is beginning. All of this is about awareness, unfortunately, and the awareness of these issues has not yet permeated our culture. There is no way that there are going to be laws created that are going to protect us from ourselves. Because—as you mentioned—corporations have a “suprademocracy,” they don’t need to listen to anyone. Their influence on democracy means that we won’t be able to change these things with an edict from us alone. It will need to be through awareness. The conversation around sustainability has just reached a certain level of awareness. And what Milton is talking about is design instructing culture. We can’t get there until we go through what we’re going through now, but this conversation is starting to happen. I recently interviewed two people on my Internet show, FearLess, and we were talking about the Eco Index. The Eco Index measures everything about a production facility or a product and calculates a sustainability score. It’s an open-source index that anybody can use.
When we started talking about scoring design, it became apparent how difficult this is. “Trendy design” is obviously not as sustainable as more classic design. For people to realize this, design has to instruct culture, and then culture makes the change. Nowadays, if I walk down the street with something trendy and new, people might look at me and think, “That’s cool.” If design begins to influence this space, then the reaction would be very different, because that same trendy thing will no longer be cool. It will not be cool because it essentially says, “I’m using something that I won’t be able to use next year or the year after. It’s going to go out of style.” To choose something that will quickly go out of style would become uncool. Design could reframe fashion and what’s cool in a way that could change people’s behavior. But you can’t do this without awareness. The power of design is that it can start to create the awareness. The people working on the Eco Index are beginning to be able to determine how they would score the “designing of things” by assessing everything from carbon dioxide footprint to how zippers are made and how much nylon a product contains.
Do you consider this part of the new consumer revolution? Is this the kind of work that you want to be part of?
Yes, but I want to play on both sides. With FearLess Cottage, we play on the consumer side. We’re trying to build that awareness for the consumer, and we’re trying to generate higher expectations from a relationship with a corporation. The current relationship can be described as “I’m going to give you this dollar. And in exchange for this dollar, I get these goods.”
We want to change the equation to “In exchange for this dollar, I not only get these goods, I get a completely transparent look at how you behave and how you created this product. I also get a complete and transparent look into what you believe politically. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll take my dollar elsewhere.”
If that were the expectation, people would have a very, very powerful impact through their consumption.
How do you think that could happen? How could that model be implemented?
That’s why I need to work this from both sides. At FearLess, we are working on what the consumer expects in a way that puts pressure on the company. When I say pressure, I don’t mean pressure that takes the form of “the stick,” but that takes the form of “the carrot.” Corporations are really good at stiff-arming government. But we’ve worked in the business, and we know they’re also passionate about knowing what “wind” the customer has this week. We have to begin creating these winds for customers, and corporations will move in response, because they want to pursue the dollar. There’s no doubt about that—we’ve seen that over and over.
With FearLess, we’re working on consumer awareness. With our initiative COMMON—which is a community, a business incubator, and a collaborative brand—we’re working on prototyping new corporate structures and relationships. This work came out of the realization that a lot of people wanted to get involved with FearLess and didn’t know how they could. So we created something that involved designers in an effort to reimagine the world and reimagine capitalism. I don’t think designers necessarily feel like they have permission to do that.
Tell me about COMMON. You just described it as a collaborative brand. How is it collaborative? What are your hopes for it?
Let me step back at bit. One of the big questions we need to ask and answer is, “How can we all have enough?” To Milton’s point, we are moving into a time where we just can’t keep buying more stuff. Here’s an example of this: you probably own a drill, right?
Yes.
How often do you use that drill?
Not very often.
Almost everyone has a power drill, right? Other than people who work in the construction business, we collectively don’t use them very often. There’s an abundance of drills that is not necessary. Up to now, society hasn’t been particularly good at collaborating and sharing. I live in a really highend neighborhood in Boulder, and yet three of my neighbors all chipped in to buy one lawn mower. They did so not because they can’t afford one individually, but because they realize how dumb it would be for each person to have a lawn mower. When you collaborate, you unlock value. Where there was once value for one individual, there’s suddenly value for three.
Many companies are beginning to do this with their own collaborations. The Eco Index is a version of this—the wal-Mart Index, which wal-Mart is using to assess the sustainability of their suppliers and products, is as well. And the company moved from squeezing value out of their of suppliers to beginning to invest in them by making their shipping space available in what would otherwise would be empty wal-Mart trucks. There is tremendous value within organizations that we can unlock. There’s a lot of “more” there. In essence, we can consume less but have just as much. This is a very important, fundamental notion.
When I first looked at this—as an ad guy and a marketing guy—I saw that when assessing a company and its total market value, often half of its value is made of this thing called “brand.” The truly progressive companies are working on that half of their company to figure out how to be more collaborative and efficient in order to create better value for themselves and others. They wouldn’t normally be able to access their brand value. Now they can.
How do you feel about brands? Why do you think that they’re so important to people?
There is a “badge” value to brands that is probably both good and bad. I was originally going to suggest it might be all bad, but I’m not really sure it is . . . But maybe it is. If you take a very Buddhist perspective on this and notice that you have this inclination to badge yourself in order to feel worthy, then that is certainly a problem. You may still be able to take a Buddhist approach and consider badging yourself only with things you’re a fan of. And that would be okay, I guess. Then again, thinking about Buddhists—they wear the robes. That’s basically . . . a brand. It’s an impossible irony to avoid.
Do you think there’s something hardwired in our brains that compels us to visually signal that we belong to a specific group with certain values? I recently read about a study at Oxford University that examined cultures all over the world and determined that religion comes naturally—even instinctively—to humans, and that we see an unseen agent at work in the world. The idea that God exists is prevalent and deep-rooted. I often wonder if branding is something that is also “prewired” in us, given our need to project what we believe, where we belong, and who we are.
I think that branding is very, very much intertwined with religion. If we are wired by a higher power for religion and for God, then I think we could be wired for branding as well.
Why do you think that?
In all these cases, they seem to work in parallel in terms of the way we badge ourselves, and each one of them is a little mini–belief system.
Let’s return to the question I asked earlier: What is your biggest goal for FearLess Cottage and COMMON?
My goals are pretty easy to attain. I remember the first time someone said congratulations to me for all my success in advertising, I was really offended by it.
Why?
Because I had been creatively successful for a long time prior to that, but it just wasn’t as evident financially. I was offended that they used money as a gauge of success.
Do you think you would have left Crispin Porter + Bogusky and made this dramatic change in your life if you hadn’t been as successful financially?
That’s a good question. How can I really answer it? Early in my career, I didn’t care much about money because I didn’t think I would ever have a decent job, so I didn’t think I’d ever own a home. All of this has been incredibly surprising to me.
Why did you feel like you would never be able to attain those things?
My family was essentially lower middle class, and I didn’t go to college. I started working, and I couldn’t comprehend how I would be able to afford a home. What I wanted most from my career was to have a good time working with people that I really liked. That was it. That was my goal for my career, and I was able to achieve that pretty early. And after that, it was just a matter of “Can you keep that going?” Then it transformed into other kinds of success that might fit other people’s definitions, but I had already achieved the fundamental piece for me. When I think about success for FearLess, I already feel that it’s been successful in many ways. I feel that my goal of bringing attention to ideas that are important for designers and marketers is happening. It’s not one of those “finish line” things. Success and being “finished” for me are two different things. Success is something you can carry with you through a career. I would rather think, “I’m being successful,” than “I’m going to achieve success.”
When you were working at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, you created campaigns for Burger King, which is also a client I’ve worked with. Do you ever feel guilty for any of that work, or any of the commercials you’ve worked on throughout your career?
I don’t feel guilty. Burger King is a Miami company. As a Miami kid, my feeling was, “Burger King: Yeah! McDonald’s: Screw them!” I grew up eating whoppers. When I got the chance to work with Burger King, it was more about helping a company that had been laying off people for eight years and trying to turn things around for them. What I didn’t realize until the last couple years is that the whoppers I ate were not the same whoppers that are served now.
What do you mean?
The industrialized food system has changed the food for everybody in it. The problem is not necessarily McDonald’s or Burger King, or anyone in the food system. It’s the system itself that has subsidized the overfarming of corn and soy. Now corn and soy get cut up, sliced up, diced up, and turned into all sorts of different things. These kinds of transformations have also changed our beef system. So the beef that I ate as a kid isn’t anything like the beef that we eat now. As those realizations came to me, there was a values conflict. But that process only started about two years go.
So today, I couldn’t work on it. But when I started, it was very much in my sweet spot. As I evolved, the things that I could work on evolved. This has bigger implications. As I looked at trying to bring the agency in line with where my values were moving, I couldn’t do it without firing two hundred to three hundred people. I didn’t feel that people should lose their jobs because my values had shifted and theirs hadn’t. That didn’t seem right. Particularly since I wasn’t 100 percent certain that I was correct.
So I can’t say that I feel guilty. You know what I feel guilty of?
I feel guilty of not working harder to understand things earlier, when I could have.
Maybe I just got too excited about the growth of the agency. And I lost that critical eye. I want to be honest with myself about it. I don’t want to kid myself. To answer your question: No, I never felt like working on Burger King was a mistake. I actually felt that working on Volkswagen was a mistake. We resigned working on the Mini to work with Volkswagen.
Of the decisions I made, that one was the hardest. I understand why I made it: I made it purely for financial reasons. We felt we were at risk by having only one giant account—Burger King—and we needed to balance it. But it was a purely financial decision, and it went against my heart, because I so loved working on the Mini. Most of the decisions we made, we made with heart. The only things we screwed up were decisions where we only used our head.