36 years ago I watched a Sikorsky Sky Crane lift the final section of the CN tower mast into place from the Student’s Union office in Ryerson’s Business Building where I was finishing up by formal education.

The following year I began my apprenticeship as a media estimator with Red Foster’s acclaimed ad agency. Since then I’ve been a student of Jack MacLaren, David Ogilvy, Mssrs. Batton, Barton, Durstein and Osborne and a host of their mentors as well. I’ve been a Media Director, Account Director – and now a Creative Director.

In hindsight my favorite mentor was Mr. Edward Karthaus, Group Account Director with Baker Lovick Advertising, a Canadian shop owned by BBDO, Chicago. I worked with Ed for about four years as a Media Planner on the Chrysler Truck and Peugeot Automobile accounts. He was very American, small, in his 70’s, always wore grey wool suits with pin-stripe shirts, suspenders (and a belt), black brogues with thick soles, and coke-bottle glasses. I don’t ever recall him laughing. He demanded and commanded my respect.

When he asked me to do something he stuck around and made sure it was done right before he left: even if that meant sticking around until two in the morning or coming in on the weekend. He was clear and precise with his instructions and in conjunction with his definition of the challenge he left no room for confusion. While he demanded my best, he always ensured that I had a proper forum and an attentive audience to present to. I took me years to master that skill - and many more years to really appreciate this task's level of difficulty.

When I left Baker Lovick Advertising to pursue another challenge Ed gave me this advice: “don’t look up and keep your nose to the grind-stone for at least six months. Then, when you do look up you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come.” On my fare-well card he wrote this brief missive: “Frank - stay out on the thin ice. - Ed."

I did as he suggested - and of course, Ed was right. The thin ice is where the greatest learning takes place. 

About a year and a half later he encouraged his peers to give me a call and get me to help them to set up a new business division called BBDO Retail, Toronto.

I answered the call and Ed was pleased that I did.

Thanks to Ed’s tough but fair instruction, support and encouragement I’ve had an incredible career run that is still going strong today – 35 years later.

I haven’t thought about Ed for over 25 years now, and I can’t call him up: if he were still alive, he’d be about 120 now.

So I’ll just share this with you for now and encourage you to get in touch with your Mr. Karthaus and thank him or her for the doors of opportunity (s)he introduced you to.

September 10, 2013 postscript!

Frank,

I was on the internet and came across your blog about my father, Ed Karthaus.  My name is Ed as well and I am happy to tell you that he is indeed alive and well. He just celebrated his 89^th birthday last Friday and is in great health, as is my mother. Your words in your blog meant a lot to me and I wanted to give you my father’s phone number, 416-XXX-XXXX (same number for 48 years).

Thank you for the blog post.

Ed Karthaus Jr.

January 23, 2015 postscript.

Mr. Karhaus passed away in his sleep - age 90. 

In my religion we've lost a good man whose short life has come to an end and gained a Buddha of infinite light and grace to guide us. 

Wow!

When I started reading this recruitment ad I was intrigued.

As I read on I felt intimidated – do I really have what it takes?

Then I got to the desired skills section and laughed: where on earth does someone with “3+ years in an ad agency or other related service industry" assemble that kind of world-class portfolio of account management skills?

• What are they really screening for - Hyperbolae?

• Would you trust your world-class brand to an Account Manager with 3+ years of agency or related service industry experience?

 Almost every day I get lists like these. If I collected them all and tried to act on them I don’t think I’d get very far with my day. They remind me of my mother when I was a kid – telling me to wear clean underwear, an undershirt, appropriate cloths, sit up straight, chew my food twenty times, go straight to school, or bed, etc.

Her “lists” were part of her child training routine, not a replacement for it.

The lists I use today are SHORT and rank what projects we need to do.

Not how to do them. That’s the purview of training which I see less and less of today because everyone wants everything fast + cheap. So there's no time or financial margin left for training. I wish business leaders would wake up, return to basics and deep-six all these dumb lists.

They are not a substitute for, and a VERY poor supplement to, genuine training.

I’m very good at what I do because people took the time to train me, years of practice and my commitment to making the good better and the better best.

Not because of (how to do) lists.

Every other day, or night, I get a call from my local Duct Cleaning Service providers.

When the calls began a few years ago they came from India. I could tell because of the phone numbers, accents and names. Names like Krishna and Kamala.

Then everyone was sent back to school and had their accents adjusted and fed a few colloquial phrases. Soon after they were assigned a pseudonym and their calls were routed through a 416-exchange.

Somewhere out there, there are a bunch of disturbed call center owners + operators that are assuring their clients that these new “call localization” strategies are responsible double digit sales increases. Their key presentation slide might look something like this:

Tactics + Response rate

India Calling              1/ 1000

416 Calling                2 / 1000

416+Pseudonym       4 / 1000

Clearly things can only get better.

I don’t think so. I think that the duct cleaning campaigns demonstrate that some ideas are just bad ideas that need to stay in the box.

That when you try to refine a bad idea you do more harm than good.

The increase in Duct Cleaning sales may serve a few lucky little businesses but they have tarred the medium with the brush of illegitimacy.

Hold on.

I need to take this call.

Hey I’ve just won three free nights in Wawa!

 This is an excerpt from a letter to one of my clients.

I’m posting it because I’ve written this memo or presented this argument at least 100 times in my career. So from now on I’ll just link to this blog post.

___________________

 Dear all,

Thank-you for your negative response to my creative recommendations.

I cannot think of a better way to demonstrate why I believe that we MUST always ask our clients to approve each creative brief before we begin work on their projects. If we don’t we’re just playing pin the tail on the donkey. This includes work you do for your agency too.

• As wise Brand Stewards and brilliant Account Directors, we should be checking for more than logic and typos in the creative brief. We should ensure the brief ties back to the advertising plan - which ties back to the marketing plan - which ties back to the business plan.
• As insightful Creative Directors we MUST understand how the ad (campaign), will help the brand manager move the ad plan, the marketing plan and the overall business plan forward - X yards towards the annual or quarterly "goal-line". If we don’t understand that, we are hobbling our ability to help our clients. In plain terms that means – we’re not doing our jobs and are providing inferior value.
• As Agency Directors we must see ourselves as bridge builders. Our (communications) work needs to bridge the intellectual gap between the brand and the customer with practical and emotional constructs that lead to long-term positive brand-biased behavior changes.
• "Faster + Cheaper" propositions break brands.
• "Better", information + education make brands. 

Next steps:

• Lets meet and agree the real objectives, discuss the creative options in the correct context and then choose the option that serves the brand plan best.

As usual,

Frank by name + nature.