Apr.10.2007 There’s no reason to walk across the country
When I think of ways to grow as a human being, I often look to be nicer to people, visit my family more, work out more, give more to charity…whatever nonsense people do to hide their inner emptiness. I suppose that’s why I’m not the leader of a large advertising agency then because, if I were, I’d engage in an idiotic publicity stunt to walk across the country over the span of six years.
The 3,000-mile journey starts Sept. 30 in southern Maine and will wind through New England as the fall leaves turn. Clients needn’t worry: He’ll be armed with his BlackBerry and cell.
“I want to connect again with real families, schools and urban and rural festivals,” Spence said as he announced his impending journey at an industry event this week.
The genesis of the trek is a belief that marketing cannot lose sight of consumers and perhaps boardroom discussions, and experts running “regression analyses” may have left him too far removed.
“Will this make me a better marketer? I hope so,” he said. “Will it make me a better person? I am betting everything on it.”
Spence’s journey looks to take six years, as he said he will walk 25 days a year and 20 miles a day.
A bit of a cop out. When I think “walk across the country,” I think very little rest, not walking like 1/14th of the year. If you want to go across the country like that for the purpose you say, why not just drive? I don’t know that I’d want my agency to be so inefficient.
And who could possibly care so much about an industry to give up six years of their life, particularly an industry that any mook can be, and has been, able to do? Not only that, but he wants to stop any sort of quantitative analysis, meaning he wants marketing to be stripped of one of the only things that a) require a real learned skill and b) determine the effectiveness of your work.
The person I really weep for, other than this guy’s family, is his 2nd in command, who now has to not only take over all of Spence’s duties but also has to explain to people that this crazy guy going across the country is both less of a douche than he seems and also not as crazy as he seems. In an industry in which many companies are buying an agency’s credibility as much as they are their actual ideas, it seems like it might be a bit of a problem when your CEO is stealing schtick from a decade old Tom Hanks movie.
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