When Becky and I decided to spend her Spring Break in Sri Lanka, I immediately contacted by friend Ranil de Silva, the Managing Director of Leo Burnett Colombo, who has insisted ever since we first met that I must come visit his country. Along with soliciting Ranil’s advice for a workable itinerary for spending 6 days in his country, I wanted to ask Ranil if I could visit Leo Burnett Colombo, to meet the people who’ve spent the last few years producing “advertising” like this:
So I spent the morning at Leo Burnett Colombo, helping introduce the team there to a tech tool I’ve been charged with rolling out to my agency’s Asia Pacific network. It was a delight to be there, to put faces to names I’ve been emailing for a decade, and to have a nice conversation and dialogue with the team about how I might be able to be of service to a group of people whose work I really like. I do believe in having “a servant’s heart”, and I’ve learned over the years that while some people find gratification in public recognition for their talents, other people are just happy to help someone else look good. I’m of the latter persuasion. I’ve been a point guard, a street team member handing out flyers, a show promoter, and a nameless ad brat, and I’m perfectly happy in the shadows dishing out assists to other people who are striving for glory with every inch of their being. There’s merit to selfless service, in whatever context it manifests, and I’m lucky enough to know that success is almost never an individual accomplishment. Behind all the great success stories we revere, there’s a horde of nameless people laboring in the shadows. Steve Jobs was just the face of Apple, and perhaps a fine embodiment of the company’s spirit. But you could make the case that his design team is responsible for his success, though you’d be hard pressed to name a single person on it…
It’s such a pleasure to be able to meet people across the world who are passionate about ideas and creativity. I’ve never considered myself an “adman,” yet this business has taken me across the planet and brought incredible, inspiring people into my life as friends and colleagues. I’m not one of these advertising people drinking the Kool Aid, the Don Drapers of my industry who live the job 100% and can’t extricate themselves from their work. For twelve years I’ve tried hard to maintain some distance from my job, to divide up my existence into neat parcels between what I have to do to earn a living and what I do with my own time. That division made sense when I was younger, when it was enforceable, and I was less invested in my employment, but in recent years it’s completely dissolved. The overlap between my days and nights is simply too large. We are what we do. I am still not an adman, but I’ve spent a dozen years working for a department called Creative Exchange, and it suits me perfectly. Ever since I remember, and long before I worked for Leo Burnett, I’ve always been compelled to spread ideas around, to curate good art, and to try and inspire people with things they might not have heard or seen. To get paid to do that is a pretty sweet gig, and the fact that my job also includes world travel is just gravy. I hope to hang onto this job for as long as I can, because it’s taken me a lot of places and brought me into a circle of amazing people. Plus, my job leaves enough room in my life to make my own music, to write my own stories, to hash out my own creativity, and hopefully to raise a family, while still keeping me tapped into a vibrant community of people exploring what communication looks like in the 21st century. I’m completely down with that. Without my job, I wouldn’t be in Sri Lanka right at this moment, staring at a stunning sunset with my hot wife and marveling at the magic of the multiple UNESCO world heritage sights on my itinerary for the next few days. What’s your job done for you lately?
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