So here’s the thing: a couple of people have called me crazy and possibly stupid for calling Tony Chapman, the CEO of Capital C, the ad agency behind Nissan’s Hypercube contest of which I’m a contestant, a douchebag the other day. (Alternalink with more comments.) They don’t care about what I said, they care about it hurting my chances of winning a new Cube, which I so desperately need and if a couple of people have said this, then I know at least triple that are thinking it so I figured I’d address that briefly. (Briefly! HA! I’ve never been brief in my life!)

First, let it be said that I have it on very good authority that Tony Chapman is a nice guy, but you can be a nice guy and still be a phony ad douche at the same time. Believe me, it’s totally possible. As I explained in my original post, I became disappointed in Tony after the Twitter debacle and silently took the post down that I’d made a couple of weeks prior where I praised him for being a forward thinker in a sea of what I consider to be mostly backwards thinkers.  At that point I was merely saddened that I’d been duped, it wouldn’t be until Tony said idiotic, douchebaggy things to the press about who should win these Cubes that I got mad. He said things that may impress other ad douches, but they didn’t impress me and they didn’t impress a lot of other people in the Hypercube contest and I wouldn’t have been true to nature if I didn’t write something about it.

I have called out my own mother on this blog a thousand times worse, the fact of the matter is, if  I have a legitimate beef about someone or some thing I’m probably going to blog about it and I don’t really care who you are or what the cost is to me. Speaking my mind, being true to my own thoughts and feelings and being HONEST is more important to me than just about anything.

I felt that saying something now, before I knew if I was a winner or loser in this contest, was my only option. If I was a winner and pissed off “the man in charge” and they changed their minds, I’d never know so it wouldn’t make a difference. I couldn’t wait until after the winners were announced because if I won, I think I’d basically be contractually obligated not to say anything and I’d be an asshole if I did (“hey here’s this awesome gift!” “oh thanks, hey btw I think you’re a douchebag!” – it just doesn’t work). Believe it or not, even I know when to shut up and just say “thank you”. If I lost and then said my piece, it would sound like sour grapes and that I was a sore loser.

So, I did what I always do and just wrote what I felt as I felt it, consequences be damned.  And don’t get me wrong, before I hit “publish” on that post, I wondered out loud if it was a good idea and obviously I ultimately decided that I didn’t care. Will what I said have an effect on the outcome of the contest? It’s possible, but the more I’ve thought about it over the past couple of days, the more I’ve though that if there is an effect, it’s just as possible that it’ll be a positive one. They chose the winners two weeks ago and if I happened to be one, then it’s just possible that the powers that be read what I wrote and it reaffirmed their decision. I’m not saying that would definitely be the case, I’m saying it’s just as possible as Cap C being totally offended and choosing someone else instead.

My point is that if I’m not a winner on the 23rd, I’m never going to wonder if the outcome would have been any different had I kept my mouth shut.

According to Bennett Klein in the comments on the x-post to Live Journal of the original post, Tony Chapman was to send me a “note” that day, but he must be a busy guy, as all admen tend to be, because as of right now, nothing’s shown up in my inbox. Truth be told, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what he would want to say to me but that’s what I was told so I guess we’ll see. Maybe he’ll be at the Hypercube event in Toronto on the 23rd and we can have a little chat. (If I even go…as per usual, I’m agonizing over that very decision and it basically boils down to whether or not I can find something decent at Value Village this weekend to wear. I have an outfit in mind, I’m just not all that confident I’ll be able to afford to put it together.)

Okay so that’s all I have to say about Tony Chapman. I thought I’d said it all in my last post, but people got all worried about me blowing my shot at a Cube that I thought I’d explain my thought process a little better. If you still think it was a stupid thing to do, so be it, what’s done is done and neither of us will ever know for sure, so it doesn’t even matter.

Moving right along, yet staying on the topic of advertising…

This week my friends over at I Have An Idea launched the new version of their site and I gotta say it’s pretty spiffy. I even tested out their blogging tools for them because I’m a good friend like that. So, if you have any interest in joining the ad industry at all, IHAI is probably a good place to start lurking.

As I said in my blog post over there, I can’t seem to shake the ad industry and give up that interest for good, so I’m going to stop trying. It’s obvious the universe likes when I get in a huff over something stupid an advertiser or agency has done and when I get giddy about something done right, so I intend to share more of that here in this blog, along with posting on IHAI a little more. A job in the ad industry is still never going to happen though and I just wanted to say that in case of my post being misread.

Anyway, I’m running on the usual 3 hours of sleep, my back is absolutely killing me and I can’t really think of anything else to say, so I guess I’m going to shut the fuck up and go take a nap.

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

(Oh and obviously this was x-posted to LJ for consistency’s sake.)