The following is a true story. The names have been changed, not to protect the innocent, but because the guilty are litigeous weasels that would like nothing better than to sue me for telling the truth.

Some time ago, I was the Creative Director of an in-house agency for a software publisher. We’ll call them…um…”MacroGraphics.” I ran a group of creatives known internally as the Creative Services Group.  As the company grew, internal politics reared it’s ugly head. As in many companies, when sales don’t meet projections or expectations, the first people to get blamed are the marketing guys. At MacroGraphics, this took the form of certain people in the sales department suggesting that the company hire an external agency. (I say this with absolute certainty, because one of the directors of sales was a golfing buddy of Stan Richards – head of the Richards Group – and had them come in to do a dog and pony show for the company…without giving me any advanced warning.)  After the Richards Group pitched us, I suggested that if we were really interested in outside help for Creative Services, that we shop around for the best shop to work with. I brought in Seth Werner (the guy that came up with the California Raisins Claymation spots) who was running the Dallas office of Bloom. (Might as well start at the top, right?) While I was busy setting up other meetings, the CEO of MacroGraphics asked me to interview a guy they’d worked with before, who ran a very small Dallas agency. We’ll call him “Jonathan Ricotta.”

Ricotta’s first company had been the first agency-of-record for MacroGraphics back in the day. He’d sold out to one of the big, multi-national agencies, and moved away. When his non-compete was up, he moved back to Dallas, and started a new company. Keep in mind, I was in my late twenties at the time, and did not have any agency experience – especially in regards to agency politics. Ricotta was, shall we say, adept at playing politics as a blood sport. Positively Machiavellian.

Ricotta and I met, where he informed me that the CEO wanted him to consult with Creative Services, giving feedback and critical comments on a new ad campaign. Frankly, I was cool with that, simply because I wanted to see what a “real” agency thought about our work. Ricotta asked me to have my group come up with a dozen or so concepts. We did. He then selected the four best, and asked us to riff off those, expanding and refining the ideas to more polished concepts. We did. I was proud of the work we’d done. I thought we had some good concepts. In fact, we were so confident, we even did a gag ad – a parody of the famous “this is your brain…this is your brain on drugs” ad that the Ad Council had done.

After hours, I quietly made the rounds of my peer group, and the guys in the head office. I showed them our ads and explained the concepts. They were receptive, but wanted to wait to see what Ricotta had come up with.

Ricotta met with me a couple of days before the scheduled dog and pony show to the suits. What he told me made me realize I’d been had – and had no moves left to counter his real agenda. He said “I like your ads. They’re good. Really good. But my team has been working on some ads, too. My guys’ work is better. So here’s what we’re gonna do. At the meeting, you’re going to present my guys work as your own. That way, you’ll show the best work, and keep everybody happy [read: keep your job safe]. I was flabergasted. I refused, flat-out, to do that.

The next morning, the CEO called me into his office, and explained that, since Ricotta felt I wasn’t cooperating with the outside agency/inside agency cooperation, I had been “relieved of my command.” They didn’t fire me, but I was abruptly moved from head of the Creative Services Group to “minister without portfolio” within the company. I asked if I would be allowed to attend the ad meeting, as I was keen to see what was so much better than what we’d come up with.

As the meeting started, it quickly became the kind of exestential experience that would lead you to believe Rod Serling would pop out just any second, doing the Twilight Zone open. Ricotta stepped to the front and explained that his team had come up with some great concepts he was ready to recommend. He explained that he was going to show six different ideas. And then he began to systematically perjure himself, as he revealed the six concepts created by me and the Creative Services Group. He presented our work as his own. None of the ads he showed had been created by his team. At all. None. I sat there, speechless. As I recovered my composure, I thought “Hey, wait…I’ve shown all these concepts to the suits…they’ll know that this is not his work but ours. He’s toast.” Nope. They loved the concepts – so much so in fact, that they showered him with praise. One of the suits actually had the balls to tell him, “This stuff is MUCH better than the concepts that we’ve seen from Creative Services!”

Right.

But the pièce de résistance was still to come. Pulling a page from the Steve Jobs playbook, he said, “I’ve saved the best for last. This concept is so hot, you guys are gonna go nuts.” (His actual quote was crude and sexual in nature…I’ve cleaned it up so as not to offend any of my readers.) He pulled out concept number seven. I thought, “okay…maybe this is it. His guys came up with one concept, and he just used our stuff as a stalking horse to set up his big finish.”

Nope.

The spot he revealed as his “best of the best” was…”This is your brain…This is your brain on our software.”

I’m not kidding.

Nope. Ricotta used our gag ad as his personal “Best of Show.” Never mind that it was not even derivative…it was an out-and-out rip-off of the Ad Council classic.

The suits loved it.

Soon, Ricotta revealed his REAL agenda. Turns out his agency was failing. What he really wanted was my job. And he got it. I was eventually reassigned to the development group, where I became the in-house user interface “evangelist,” charged with trying to improve and unify the look and feel of our many applications. Ricotta went on to take over the CSG, and run it into the ground. He got himself promoted to head of the marketing department, and subsequently got himself fired for sexual harassment and spending great gobs of company money at strip clubs, entertaining friends, vendors, and others.

So what’s the lesson in this? If you’re a creative, you’re probably focused on creative things, and care nothing for politics and climbing the ladder over the bodies of your co-workers. That’s a pity, because there will always be any number of people that are less talented creatively, but immensly gifted in the art of politics. Ignoring office politics will not insulate you from it’s effects. You can generate the best creative in town, and still get shot down by those with an agenda. It happens. But when it does, and you’ve been guilty of being tone-deaf politically, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.

Karma, I can tell you, is an unfeeling, cruel mistress. I learned a lot from the experience. It made me much more aware of politics. But Karma cuts both ways. Some years later, I received a phone call from a company who was interviewing the recently-fired Jon Riccota for a VP of Marketing position. He has put me down as a reference. The HR person was doing their due diligence, and asked me if Ricotta was a good manager and leader.

“Jon Ricotta is the best guy I’ve ever seen at direct mail,” I said.

“Yes, but is he a good department manager? Would he make a good VP of Marketing?”

“Well, Ricotta is great at direct mail.”

“Fine. We’ve established that. But how is he as a creative leader? Can he run a marketing department?”

“Did I mention he’s really, really good at direct mail?”

“Oh. Okay. I get it. You can’t say anything bad about him, for fear of a lawsuit, so instead of saying something bad, you’re choosing to say nothing.”

“Um…if you’re looking for an expert at direct mail, Ricotta’s your guy.”

“Thanks…you’ve been a huge help.”

For the record, he didn’t get the job. I like to think I did my part. And thus began my education in the art of politics.