Foreword

I went to the Cannes Advertising Festival last year, and as I was walking up the red carpet with the stairs lined with photographers and half the ad people in tuxes and gowns, I started thinking that Scorsese and Almodóvar walked up these same steps a few weeks back at the Cannes Film festival. Maybe they deserve the press and glamour and all that, but this crowd? No. At the end of the day I sell candy. I’m also a satellite TV salesman and a travel agent. The people I walked up the red carpet with at the Grand Palais were car salespeople and hawkers of sugar water.

So keep that in mind. In the advertising world, words like “legendary” and “genius” are thrown around a lot, but at the end of the day the only legendary thing these people did was design a nice computer store and sell a lot of milk.

The people in this book aren’t strangers to fancy accolades, but I don’t think they would ever use the word “genius” to describe themselves. What they would say is they work harder than most, they are always learning, and they are always in search of the “new.” And working harder and never being satisfied, regardless of how I make it sound, is quite admirable even if you are just looking for a new way to sell deodorant.

The hard working people Tracy Tuten interviewed for this book are the types of people you want to learn from. I know this because I have personally learned a lot from them. I have a long past with many of them. There are a few people in this book that I have worked for. There are some that I wanted to work for but they didn’t want to work with me. There is one that I did get to work for but then they fired me. There are also a few who worked for me and are quickly getting to the point where I will one day be working for them.

And what will you learn? Work harder than everyone else, create something that has never existed before, and be very wary of tuxedos.

Gerry Graf
Founder/Creative Director
Barton F. Graf 9000, LLC