Alex Bogusky set to invent a new capitalism

Alex Bogusky is putting meat on the bones of his plan to spark a consumer revolution. Along with collaborators Rob Schuham and John Bielenberg, he has unveiled nothing less than a roadmap for reinventing capitalism. Bogusky can't leave behind his agency roots in one key area: It's still all about creativity. This new kind of capitalism, he believes, needs to be built by creative people of all stripes. The end goal is a kinder, gentler capitalism that does more than help the rich get richer but "spreads love and prosperity to all stakeholders." The spiel in his presentation is pretty New Agey, opening with water ripples and the disclaimer that the ex-CP+B creative chief isn't a Communist. The overall point—that consumer empowerment, growing inequality and vast structural issues facing our planet are changing economic dynamics—is provocative. There's definitely a chance Bogusky is on to something. He's not alone: Havas Media Lab director Umair Haque is proposing many of the same capitalism reforms based on values like transparency, collaboration and sustainability. Whether what they're proposing—a new kind of capitalism imbued with more focus on meaning beyond the bottom line—is possible is up for debate. Bogusky and crew plan to attempt it through a new open-source brand, Common, which anyone with a sustainable idea can use. The Common brand is devoted to "rapidly prototyping many progressive businesses that unleash creativity to solve social problems." It's an interesting vision and certainly puts a lot more flesh on Bogusky's decision to turn his back on advertising to become a self-styled "consumer advocate." You can watch the entire presentation over at Bogusky's Fearless Revolution site.

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Bogusky reboots as a consumer advocate

When Alex Bogusky left Crispin Porter + Bogusky and the ad world, speculation quickly turned to what he’d do next. Bogusky gave some broad hints by continuing his “Fearless” Web show and focusing squarely on sustainability issues. He admitted that his concerns about industrialized food put him in conflict with CP+B clients, which include Burger King and Domino’s. Now Bogusky is making the move to recast himself as, yes, a "consumer advocate." As he explains at his new Fearless Revolution site, Bogusky sees a big shift under way, empowered by the Internet, where consumers take back control of what exactly they consume. "The data on the web and the creation of new tools for consumers to access that data in real time is going to change the relationship between consumers and those they consume from," he writes. "Our expectations as consumers, in what we deserve for the dollar we hand over, are way too low. All our dollars — both tax dollars and consumption dollars — should never go to waste. But today, our consumption dollars often blindly pay for products and services that appear to be cheap, but come with hidden costs." (You can hear a lot more in the video of his recent speech at conservation event "Turning the Tide," from which the picture above is taken.) Bogusky is assembling a band of folks in the communications industry to push forward this agenda, which includes rewriting the Consumer Bill of Rights. The cynics will say it’s easy to turn against vapid consumerism after you’ve made millions from it. Nonetheless, it will be intriguing to see if a talented communicator like Bogusky can achieve the same success in the world at large as he saw in the ad world.

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Aw ... Alex Bogusky + Miles Nadal = BFF

If you thought the long holiday weekend meant we could move on from Alex Bogusky's decision to leave advertising, think again. Fast Company.com came out with a post by Danielle Sacks about Bogusky (pictured). This is the same writer who once began a piece about Crispin Porter + Bogusky by quoting a staffer comparing Alex to Jesus Christ. The latest item suggests some drama behind Bogusky's "divorce" from MDC Partners. Not so, both MDC CEO Miles Nadal and Bogusky claim in dual blog posts of their own. Nadal gives the creative superstar some heavy praise, going on to quote from a "Love, Alex" e-mail Bogusky sent when he resigned. Bogusky's take affirms his fidelity to Nadal: "I left advertising. I did. But I didn't leave Miles, and I don't plan to leave any of my other friends I've made over the years." Phew.

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Alex Bogusky muses on advertising ethics

Alex Bogusky penned an interesting piece on PSFK. It leads with the idea of creating yet another Cannes Lions category—for agencies that engage in something called "accurate, careful and ethical use of advertising." The more compelling bits are Bogusky tying himself in knots trying to explain how blurry the ethical line is in advertising. Oddly, he says he used to be opposed to working on pharma, which creates life-saving drugs, but would have done tobacco, which does not. (He changed his mind on tobacco after working on the "Truth" campaign.) Then there's Crispin Porter + Bogusky's Burger King work. I hadn't known that the agency told Burger King it wouldn't do any work aimed at children. Bogusky says he was "livid" when the shop's SpongeBob commercial, which he says was aimed at adults, was recut and targeted at kids on Nickelodeon. CP+B got the spot pulled, he says. It's an interesting quandary. I can't help but wonder, however, if creating a cool, cartoony mascot for BK didn't help it hawk burgers to children anyway.

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Alex Bogusky deconstructs climate change

Alex Bogusky, the Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative chief who is now chief creative insurgent at MDC Partners, is pretty passionate about cleaning up the environment. He's already spearheaded CP+B's involvement in B-Cycle, an urban bike-sharing system. Now, he's put his creative and acting talents to use in the clip below, submitted to Design 21's Living Climate Change video contest, aimed at showing how global warming will affect our lives in 20 or 30 years. Bogusky wants to cut through the scientific mumbo-jumbo of the climate debate and get down to a simple truth—that pollution is bad, and clean is good. The idea is to treat pollution the same we do littering: as something to be stopped. It's a nice message, although it will surely rankle those who think the Crispin folks are a little too big for their britches. After all, the shop is already crowdsourcing ideas from creatives on cleaning up the BP oil spill.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

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Alex Bogusky doesn't want bears murdered

Whenever we write about Alex Bogusky, there is a vocal minority who aren't very enamored of the Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative chairman. Count one of his Colorado neighbors in this crowd. Bogusky told a funny story on his blog last night about how he received an admonishing Post-it note (above) on the door of his home, accusing him of complicity in the possible future murder of a bear by putting his trash out too soon. The note calls Bogusky "septic scum" and a "dirt bag." It also encourages him to move back to the East Coast. Bogusky, a writer an art director by trade, posted quite a funny reply to the anonymous neighbor on telephone poles around the neighborhood.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

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Alex Bogusky has a Facebook impersonator

Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative chief Alex Bogusky has become quite the social-media star. After swearing off Twitter, he's become quite prolific on the service, not to mention popular, with more than 15,000 followers. He's waded further into the oversharing waters with a Posterous blog (he says it isn't really a blog, but it has all the elements of one) that's featured some interesting posts, although his interview with himself understandably rubbed some the wrong way. It turns out Bogusky also has quite a burgeoning following on Facebook with a fan page at Facebook.com/BoguskyAlex. Only he didn't set it up. The page pulls in his Twitter feeds, videos of Crispin campaigns and a few different profile photos of the man. Bogusky posted on Twitter that the page "isn't me," but it's a nice flip to be the only adman to have a Facebook fan page created for him.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Previously on AdFreak:
Amid downturn, WPP brass poke each other

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Q&A: Alex Bogusky on his return to Twitter

Alex Bogusky began using Twitter again last night after almost two months away. He spoke with Adweek's Brian Morrissey about his return.
  Q. When you stopped using Twitter in March, you said it just wasn't for you. What changed?
  A. Well, the thing that made it very difficult for me was that I'm a communicator at heart but Twitter opened up too much surface area for me to communicate on. I couldn't keep up, and it pulled time from other pursuits. So, it just made me feel bad. After I stopped, a fellow named Steven Verbruggen contacted me through my e-mail, which I had posted in case anybody wanted to keep a dialog. He had a blog, and he began a follower drive to convince me to start again. At the time I had about 1,500 followers, so he asked how many would it take to convince me, and I threw out 3,000 because it seemed unlikely. [Read the full interview at TweetFreak.]

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

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Oh no, Alex Bogusky broke up with Twitter

Twitter is losing Alex Bogusky. I repeat, Twitter is losing Alex Bogusky. This morning, after posting for three months, the Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative leader said he's packing it in. "Signing off twitter. Just not for me. I really enjoyed the time and it was fun to follow and be followed by such a lively group. Love, Alex." No, sir, we will not let you go. Steve Wax, a partner at digital shop Campfire, has suggested a boycott of all CP+B brands until Alex agrees to share his every thought with the world. On a more serious note, it's too bad. Bogusky was interesting, often funny and frequently interacted with other users. (CP+B confirmed it was actually Bogusky, not a doppelganger.) He even took a shot at Bob Greenberg after the R/GA CEO dismissed Crispin's work as "viral stunts." Is his losing interest a sign that Twitter has jumped the shark?

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

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Bogusky: Part deity. Part mechanic of cool.

"He looked like Jesus." This is the quote Fast Company uses to begin its new cover paean to Crispin Porter + Bogusky. You can imagine the hockey-haired fellow in question: Alex Bogusky, described as a dead ringer for the Son of God. The source of the quote is an art director depicted as “a blushing 27-year-old hipster in gray New Balance sneakers and a zip-up hoodie.” Who is this smitten fawn? Poor thing. The article by writer Danielle Sacks is ostensibly about Crispin’s Herculean task to make Microsoft cool again after getting the snot beaten out of it by Apple’s cool products and ads. Whenever Fast Company covers advertising agencies, the results are uneven. Let us take a moment to reflect on the JWT story two ago (also written by Sacks) with Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan sledgehammering walls. This time around, Bogusky gets full-on adulation from Sacks. He’s a “mechanic of cool” and “for nearly a decade, the unhip have flocked to Bogusky in the hope that a little of his mystique might rub off.” Bogusky has one line that will really have the Crispin-hating hordes in a lather: “Life conspires to beat the rebel out of you.” But the most interesting part of a pretty standard puff piece is probably Chuck Porter laying into MDC, saying it shouldn’t be a publicly traded company and “is not designed at this point to deliver ongoing quarter-on-quarter growth.” And Chuck is MDC's “chief strategist.” Ouch. Oh, and by the way, Crispin’s Microsoft work is due to break in July. UPDATE: The story has now been posted online.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

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eBay auction promises Bogusky's head on a platter

Settle down, Bogusky haters. An eBay auction for what appears to be Alex Bogusky's head on a platter is not an offer to strike down the shaggy-haired creative prince. In fact, even the lovingly constructed commemorative platter featuring both a brooding, godlike Bogusky and laid-back, sensitive, guitar-playing Bogusky seems to be a sham. It appears that a seller calling him/herself Ad Scribe is selling the domain name AlexBogusky.com— perfect for "a BK blog," "DIY tips on building shelves for all those damn awards" or "Hair tips," according to the listing. But Bogusky isn't the only ad-guy domain that's up for grabs. Ad Scribe also has listed DavidLubars.com, commemorated as a bobblehead doll, and LeeClow.com, illustrated with a piece of toast burnt with the likeness of Clow himself. Says Ad Scribe of the toast, which he/she claims to have promptly eaten: "Just last year, some casino paid $28K for a piece of toast with the image of Mary, Mother of Jesus. Now I'm not comparing Lee to Mary … but I'm guessing Lee has a better reel." There are nine days left to bid on the items, which boast a rather ambitious $100 reserve. Any takers?

—Posted Deanna Zammit

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