Dan on the new building.

When we started, no one in their right mind wanted to come to this weird
little city on the banks of the Willamette (Portland, Oregon), cut off from
the cultural mainstream, hell, cut off from culture, period. A city with
virtually no nightlife. No history. I mean, the first house here was a log
cabin built in 1844. That wasn’t that long ago, guys. The only ad people
you could get to even consider moving here were people who had been
fired from every legitimate and illegitimate agency in the country. Or kids
fresh out of school, who didn’t know any better We started as a ship of
fools. And that, I firmly believe, is why we have succeeded. We were
struggling to figure out what an advertising agency actually was. And our
one and only client, Nike, was trying to get a grip on what a client was
supposed to do with one. We were both incredibly stupid. That was the
key. See, when you don’t know, you try desperately to find out. But the
minute you think you know, the minute you go – oh, yeah, we’ve been
here before, no sense reinventing the wheel – you stop learning, stop
questioning, and start believing in your own wisdom, you’re dead. You’re
not stupid anymore, you are fucking dead.

Well, in 23 days, we are going to leave home. And in 36 days, when we

land in the Pearl (new building), much of what we thought we knew – like
where the bathrooms are – we won’t for sure. Good luck with the
phones, the Xerox, the ability to ship and receive, to get your shirts
laundered, to find a pool hall, a pencil, a friend, that approved script, or a
moment of peace and quiet. What used to come easy will take work. All
the little shit that you weren’t even aware of, but that made your life
comfortable, will have vanished. Life will become a little less routine, our
actions a little less unconscious. I can’t wait. See I have this addiction to
chaos. I love it when I’m a bit anxious. It’s a sickness, okay. But it works
for me. And the older I get, the more I need what upsets me, shocks me,
makes me squirm, or get angry. The older I get, the more I value what
forces me to take a second look. The more I respect people who don’t
automatically respect me. I love this agency the most, when it’s off
balance. Moving at 7,000 miles an hour, trying to take a sharp left turn,
everybody holding their breath, laughing like hell, occasionally throwing
up but smiling, and leaning right to make sure the fucking thing doesn’t
trip over. Chaos does this amazing thing that order can’t: it engages you.
It gets right in your face and with freakish breath issues a challenge. It
asks stuff of you, order never will. And it shows you stuff, all the weird
shit, that order tries to hide. Chaos is the only thing that honestly wants
you to grow. The only friend who really helps you be creative. Demands
that you be creative. Now, clearly, there are some disciplines in this
organisation that don’t really need to have chaos as their operating
policy. I’m thinking finance. I’m thinking traffic. But even in those
departments that need to operate with Germanic precision, even there,
we need enough uncertainty that we are forced to question how we do
what we do so efficiently. And maybe, why we do it all.

The other thing chaos does is challenge authority. It cares more about
truth than power. Political figures are fascinated with the agency and
some have come by on a fairly frequent basis, just to share a meal, get
our sense of things. I remember the first time a certain senator spent a
couple of hours in our conference room with about a dozen freaks from
the agency. He wasn’t there to lecture, or press the flesh, but to listen. It
was a fascinating meeting, very frank, wide ranging. When I drove him
back to the airport, he said, “what an amazing group of people. So
young, so bright, so well informed. But I gotta tell you what was most
astonishing was the complete lack of deference …. To you, to me, to
anyone.” He wasn’t complaining, he was just mesmerized by the
informality, the absence of authority.

I’m trying to get at something here that is very difficult to put into words.
But it is the foundation upon which this agency is built. It is difficult to
express, because it isn’t exactly a business philosophy. I’m not sure
anyone here is smart enough to have a working philosophy. It is more an
experience. Something we felt early on, and that we have tried to be true
to as we have grown. For me, personally, it happened when the agency
was maybe two years old. There were 11 of us. I was listening to a voice
tape one night, late, or early, and fell asleep. When I woke up, the old
reel to reel had run out and the tape was going flop, flop, flop, flop. And I
had this existential crisis, I guess you could say. I was a young father of
four children. Who I seldom saw. All my time being poured into this
stupid set-up. All our finances tied up in boxes of pencils, copy
machines, chairs, telephones, glazed donuts and coffee. To make stupid
ads? What was the bloody point? Well, the point was not Dan or
Dave (David Kennedy). The point was for Dan and Dave to create a
place where people could come and live up to their full potential. Where
they could do the best work of their career. Because that place relished
freedom, diversity, and unpredictability. A place with very few rules. In
case you haven’t heard ours, here they are. These rules David actually
found in an empty file drawer when we were exiting our previous place
of employment.

Don’t act big. No sharp stuff. Follow directions. And shut up when
someone is talking.
The only other thing essential to know is our priorities. They were arrived
at after a fifth of Cutty Sark (we couldn’t afford the good stuff):

1. The work

2. The client/agency relationship

3. Yourself

This has been summarised into: The work comes first. And while it
served as a great compass for many years, it has become the focus of
much discussion and dissent of late. Well, it ain’t the holy writ. If you
want to junk it, we can junk it. But here’s what insight the thing is based
on. In big agencies, the client/agency relationship is the most sacred
thing. The difficulty seems to be that the work then serves the
relationship, and everything becomes political. And when things get
political, the work suffers. And when the work suffers, the business
suffers, then the client agency relationship suffers, and you suffer. In
creative boutiques, the ego is supreme. The work is there to enhance
personal reputations. If I said the work is wonderful, the work is
wonderful. Shut up and sell it. Problem here: again, the work slip is, the
client agency relationship goes south. When we say the work comes
first, we are saying that things work best when everyone – client and
agency alike – are focussed on whether or not this is great damn work.
Politics aside. Egos aside. Is this hot shit, or not? There is this revisionist
history that says in the old days, Wieden + Kennedy didn’t compromise
on the work. If the client didn’t buy it, we’d say goodbye account exec or
goodbye client. Oh, really? Actually, the idea was that if you had a client
that let you do great work, then you could always find a way to pull it off.
If they were so blind they didn’t get your idea after hours of argument
and pleading, you simply went back to the boards. But you didn’t
compromise. You always would come back with something as good, or
better. Because you knew you could. Even when you didn’t know, you
knew. Or someone knew. And when we say the client/agency
relationship is second to the work, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
Because the work is a direct reflection of the quality of that relationship.
If it is strained, the work shows it. If people are having fun, it shows. If
people are bleeding, it shows. If people are just trying to turn other
people on, it shows. And that’s when it’s most effective. And when we
put the individual last, it’s simply because of that weird old paradox in life
that you serve yourself best when you serve others first. You might note,
that while we say the work comes first, we don’t put it up in our lobby.
And we don’t showcase our awards. What we honour are the individuals,
in all their wackiness, that make Wieden + Kennedy what it is.
All very interesting, Dan. All very idealistic. But, dude, let’s talk about
money. Money is a very seductive thing. I never expected to have any. I
never entered the business with the goal of making great gobs of it. But I
like having money. And apparently, judging from some conversations I’ve
had at year end, so do you. So, this agency is committed to securing big,
healthy portions of it. I can tell you, however, that we wouldn’t have
made a lot of the decisions we have, if maximising profit was the primary
goal of this organisation. To me, money is like oxygen. You can’t live
without it. But is not the reason for living.

Have we sold out? I don’t think so. But it’s a question we must
continually ask ourselves. Because I don’t think we’ll necessarily see it
coming. And this, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t just my issue. Or the
partners’. It is everyone’s. If we want Wieden + Kennedy to remain
Wieden + Kennedy we gotta keep each other honest. Nobody ever got
fired around here for being a confrontational asshole.

So, so ….. where to from here ? Just about anywhere our heart desires.
I mean it. Look at us now. We are new again. New people, I mean totally
new. Some percent of us just got here in the last 24 months. We got a
new home. A list of new clients. A healthy balance sheet. Offices all over
the globe. A creative reputation second to none. We are independently
owned. And fuckin’ crazy as hell. It is interesting to hear talk about the
good old days, but that agency no longer exists. All I need is that weird
thing that seems to hang around in the ether here. That wacked out
affection for letting go of the handrails. For throwing yourself off a cliff.
We are making this up as we go. All of us. It is a joke, I know. But this is
the most plastic of organisations. It needs you to realise itself fully. But
I’ll try my best to tell you about the dream I’ve been having.

I see images of chaos and sometimes barbarism. Images of wildness

and fury. Images of people entangled and separate. Images of people
yelling at each other; they are so mad they are spitting nails. And I see
images of people kissing each other, out of lust, friendship, insanity or
maybe because they’ve been offered sufficient amounts of money. This
is a garden of earthly delight-type stuff I’m talking about here. I see
images of the future and rapid change, the kind that make your head
spin and sucks your breath away. I see creativity in other people that
surpasses my own wildest imaginings. And in addition to this blurry,
exotic, high-volume stew of images and emotions, I see four corny,
sappy, overly sentimental, trite, Norman Rockwellian images very
clearly:

STEADFASTNESS, COURAGE, FAITH AND ABIDING LOVE.