Long ago, I worked in advertising. Our clients raced to dominate markets, and we were ambitious, so we cooked up wildly complex projects, always “due yesterday.”
No surprise, the team’s burnout risk ran high. As CEO, I racked my brain to find ways to ease the strain and revive our collective “body” after such overloads.
Parties were an obvious way to vent emotions, but this wasn’t a crew of insurance agents—it was a gang of creative minds. So, the internal brief was to stun those who stun others.
That’s how the “Drunk Bus” was born.
Here’s how it went. On Friday night, we rented a regular city bus, loaded it with whiskey and cola, and hit the road. The route wound spontaneously through memorable spots. Each expedition member picked a place in the city that meant something personal to him or her. When we arrived, our crew piled out and listened to the “speaker” share what happened there.
As you’d guess, we landed in the most unremarkable, odd, even unsettling places, transformed by the stories. After all, our agency had the country’s sharpest talents.
I don’t recall the places, but the experience of the journey sticks with me. It felt like we rediscovered our beloved city, goofing off and laughing. In truth, we glimpsed the inner worlds of our team.
More than that, those memories revealed each man to himself. The paradox? We saw each person’s uniqueness while threads of trust wove our group tighter.
Only now do I see the secret—how we managed to craft and reinvent our clients’ brands, shaking up entire markets.
Sure, we searched intuitively, acted on impulse, yet in the things that mattered most, we were strikingly right.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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