Some phrases stay with forever for reasons we’ll never fully understand.

“Whither goeth thou America, in thy big black car, in the night.”

Some phrases make us laugh and get used over and over again.

“You fucked up. You trusted us.”

“Yes Madam, I am drunk. And you are ugly and tomorrow I will be sober”

And some phrases we’d give anything to have authored.

The job of an Ad Guy is to understand this and be the dark soul that comes up with this magical drivel.

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I sold out. I sold The Ad Ranch.

My baby.

My ad agency.

That thing that defined who the hell I was (well, kinda).

I had the agency for more than a dozen years.

A dozen years.

A dozen years. Had to repeat that.

For an Ad Guy, that is several centuries.

We Ad Guys have very short attention spans. We can’t survive any other way in this business. Or maybe it’s the other way. The Masters of Concentration do other things. They design bridges or financial plans or own insurance companies. They can love One Thing and feel good every day doing that One Thing.

Us Ad Guys cant live like that. Sorry.

And not that that is bad. Big world. Need all the talent we can get to keep it spinning.

But us Ad Guys have short attention spans. We can dive deeply into a thing and know enough about it to somehow, in a short time, to feel it in our souls. Feel it enough to find that thing hidden inside that will make people care about it.

And if we didn’t have that skill to move quickly in and out, we couldn’t survive this bizarre business.

One day we’re selling medical equipment.

The next day we’re selling urinal cakes.

The next day we’re selling software.

That afternoon, we’re selling cookie dough.

Who knows, maybe urinal cake cookie dough is next.

And if we had to only care about ONE of those things for any length of time (day, week, month, 40 years)… We’d implode like a poodle in a microwave.

We’re an odd race.

But we’re fun at parties and the world needs us.

That’s why “in house” ad agencies die.

You just can’t expect great ad minds to care about the same shit every day. They dry up and whither and blow away like so much fireplace ash.

Wait. What did I start writing about…

I was talking about selling out.

Back to the beginning.

I sold The Ad Ranch. Sold it to an Austin company called Catapult Systems. I actually took a Real Job.

My first Real Job in those dozen years.

Where to start.

Catapult.

They’re a Microsoft consulting company based in Austin with a half dozen offices and around 300 people. They build Microsoft systems, customized for big companies. Sharepoint is a big one. They also build custom apps for companies need to solve a problem that nobody else has.

An odd company to buy an ad agency one might think.

But maybe not. They work with some pretty impressive technology from some pretty impressive companies. They build huge sites, both internal and external facing.
But everything they do is based on a marketing problem. Every web site is there to be a marketing tool, even if only your employees see it.

So it was a good fit. And it’s been a blast to make the transition.

After a dozen years as a stylin little boutique agency, moving to becoming a part of a large company has been an interesting transition. And one I’ve enjoyed very much.

So I’m looking forward to the next couple years. Change is good. Good change is better. I’ll be writing about this transition more and more unless I’m working 30 hours a day.

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OK. I’ve never been a football fan. Never got it. Who cares. It’s a game. Games are silly wastes of time. The world will keep spinning if we win or lose. I’ve just never been competitive that way.

Blame my upbringing I suppose. I grew up in LA. A city of several billion without a pro football team. I grew up not on the Pop Warner field, but riding my bike to the beach to surf or heading to karate practice. Not big team sports.

So football was something other people cared about.

That was till TCU came along. My daughter is now a sophomore there and her first semester, TCU came up out of nowhere to become one of the nations top teams. Many thought THE nations top team. A little private university in Ft. Worth with only 7000 students was suddenly on the national stage. Last year they had a perfect season to land a spot in some obscure bowl named after greasy snack food.

I don’t pretend to understand the whole BCS, BCS Buster, Bowl thing. Beyond the boundries of my life. I should care now, but there are plenty of other people out there to care so I don’t have to.

But little TCU has been relegated to the back of the Bowl Bus. The big guys don’t want to deal with them. Hows it going to look when a school just twice as big as my fricken high school beats a monster program like UT.

So little TCU got ignored. So did Boise State and a few others.

But TCU will not be ignored. And for the Horned Frogs to go to the Rose Bowl and come home winners with true class, was amazing.

But back to that “why I’m a football fan and I get it” thing.
And why an Ad Guy would finally get it.

It’s GREAT marketing!

Marketing is seduction. Seduction starts in the mind and works it’s way down to the pants (which, in this case, means the wallet).

Since TCU started this big-stage football rise, their place on the national platform has risen dramatically. Everyone loves a winner. Everyone wants to BE a winner. And football is our modern day gladiator. Not as bloody or full of lions, but the same thing. (I found NASCAR to be the same thing… amazing experience. Louder and bigger and more likely to explode).
Now their applications are through the roof. Suddenly this little obscure “Christian” school is a destination. Big programs don’t want to tangle with them. Purple and white are great colors to be seen in.

The idea of Horned Toads isn’t, well, whatever the hell it was before. (OK, quick aside here… I grew up with a Horny Toad as a pet. They are extinct or something now. But you could buy em in pet stores when I was a kid. They were flat lizards that sat there till they sprinted off and vanished and you had to bug your Mom to buy you a fish or hamster or something. Well, they do have little horns, but they’re not really toads. They’re lizards. And toads are NOT frogs. Toads are toads. So they were misnamed from the start. But nobody ever called them Horned Frogs… They’re NOT frogs… THEY’RE LIZARDS!

Someone explain this to me.

Trivia. Horny Toads can squirt blood from some little duct in their eyes. Probably a good reason why they’re extinct or something.)

Had to get that off my chest.

Back to this football thing.

As I crawl through my 50’s, I become aware of many things. This must where enlightenment comes… or something.

I’ve learned to accept football and sports in general as a “spectator” thing. I never felt I had time or mental capacity to waste on that crap.

But now that I’m paying for the damn team, and I have a dog in the hunt (Texas phrase. Sorry), I care.

Not care enough to get in a fight, or watch every game, but I can appreciate the whole experience. And watching my Horned Frogs WIN the rose bowl (row 11, right behind the far right tuba in the TCU band baby) was an amazing experience.

To me that is the equivalent of a religious experience.

That same “we’re all ONE against whatever (satan, the other team, whatever)” thing is powerful juju.

And great marketing.

I just spent a couple thousand dollars to join that church. And on my flight back to Austin, I’m proudly wearing my ghastly purple TCU baseball cap. And I high-fived others wearing purple. I bought Southwest cocktails for 20+ others wearing TCU garb. I got the “horny toad fingers” from an old lady in a wheelchair and purple shawl (loved that… moment of silence please).
Hell, I love the whole concept and I didn’t even to go school there.
I went to school at Cal State Long Beach.

We don’t even have a damn football team. Women’s volleyball is the Big Sport there.
Mmmmmhmmmm.

So I get football. I get baseball (went to see the our Texas home team win) and watched TCU in the College World Series.

Hell, I even appreciate rugby.

I’ve moved beyond my “screw everything” LA Surfrat Thing.

I do have friends who shake their heads and wonder if I’ve been possessed by demons. I’ve always been the guy that poked holes in whatever they cared about. But now I’m starting to care about stupid shit.

Go figure. Guess it’s Middle Age. But really, at 52, this aint the middle. This is the Home Stretch. Guess everything tasted good eventually.

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