Shawn & Corey
From 2000-2001 I worked for “BlastOff Marketing,” then the hottest integrated marketing firm in the country. They’d racked up some $100 million in annual billings doing promotional work for some of the most recognizable brands in America. At their height they were darlings of such trades as PROMO, Brandweek, and Advertising Age. They were rebels, risk-takers, and out-of-the-box thinkers who knew how to get results on small budgets. But that was just the outside.
On the inside the joint was nuts. Big airy spaces… Odd length walls and curvy corridors… Weird shaped furniture on every floor… Everything washed in bright primary colors… It was like working at IKEA. Top 40, Techno, and Alt. Rock CDs were piped thru the PA system daily; I wore headphones a good 6 hours a day just to keep my own musical tastes intact. Our lunchroom comfortably seated 70… 100 if you lost the full-size pinball machine and ping-pong table. Maybe 110 once you toss that huge home entertainment system: a 60-inch TV with Direct TV, VCR, and DVD players, satellite radio, and floor-model speakers…
And if that wasn’t enough, we had beer on tap. Lemme say that again: We had actual kegs of beer tapped up in the kitchen for random consumption. Plus, Krispy Kremes and bagels were on the kitchen counter every Friday morning. If that wasn’t enough, Corner Bakery usually catered most every meeting that ran over an hour.
Socially, it was one big Will & Grace-Queer Eye-L Word marathon: Over 160 folks. Damn near everyone was gay and white, bi and white, or white and straight-but-really-liked-gay people. Most of the guys reeked of Banana Republic and Hugo Boss with a little International Male flavor thrown in. Half the women dressed like TRL extras. The rest were overgrown alt. Punk-rocker clones—way too sheltered and soft to be rebels or outsiders, but worked real hard to come off as such.
“Shawn” was one of the first cats I met there and still among the best account execs I’ve ever worked with. He was smart. Clients dug him. He always tried to find the big picture. He asked questions. (Nothing worse than a know-it-all.) He was a point guard—tried to make everyone around him better. He also knew how to get in where he fit in.
He came to BlastOff practically fresh out of college. Over the years he built his rep, racked up some nice stats and garnered numerous opportunities to go onto bigger, more prestigious companies. But he stayed put believing BlastOff had more upside (not to mention profit-sharing opportunities). Plus he liked being the underdog and when BlastOff first opened, it was the industry underdog. Shawn was employee number 20-something. By the time I got there, they’d grown to over 230 employees with offices in Chicago, New York, and Canada. It was raining cash and they had new clients lined up like frat boys outside of Wrigley Field. The joint was hot and Shawn was a young gun who’d gotten in on the ground floor.
Out of the roughly 160 in our office maybe 10 were black: myself, Shawn, “Corey” (who I’ll get to in a sec), a couple support staffers and entry-levelers. My problem wasn’t numbers or anyone’s sexuality; it was that at every opportunity BlastOff blew its horn to clients, press, and prospective employees about how inclusive and diverse it was. Their idea of diversity was blondes, brunettes, and redheads. But whatever. And Shawn, having been there since day one, was even more over it than I was.
Shawn had a simple philosophy: Leave a hole wherever you go. When you leave a hole, you leave such an imprint on your department, on your clients, bosses, and co-workers that people never want you to leave. “Leave a hole” meant that when an assignment came up with his name attached to it, everyone immediately thought, “Good, Shawn’s handling it. We’re okay.” But leaving holes was hard.
At first, Shawn got stuck with small accounts—projects no one else wanted or had time to work on. But he took ‘em. He gained clients’ trust, pushed through quality marketing plans, and grew their business. His reward? More small stuff. His response? Leave a hole. He kept growing and excelling, showing and improving despite the occasional misstep here and there. But as BlastOff grew and gained bigger clients, Shawn kept getting passed over while other white, often less-qualified account execs got bigger, higher profile accounts.
Shawn saw the game. Still he kept his mouth shut and kept leaving holes. Eventually his game got so tight he couldn’t be denied. They made him a VP in 2003. Today he’s a respected industry exec who calls his own shots and still leaves holes wherever he goes.
And then there’s “Corey,” another BlastOff account exec. For every Shawn, there’s around 50 or 60 Coreys. Corey was smart, educated, talented, and hardworking. Corey was also a black gay male—one of the hardest things to be in America, and probably harder to be in Corporate America. Between America’s idea of what “black” is and its idea of what “gay” is, being black, gay, and male is just too deep for most to handle. (I mean, how can you be the thugged-out, hypersexual animal prone to crime and violence America defines as Black masculinity then go down on another man and sing show tunes?)
Corey’s path was similar to Shawn’s; both started at roughly the same time, both with small accounts. But as slow as Shawn’s rise was, Corey’s was stuck in park. Their bosses’ mentality seemed to be “promoting one is enough.” They promoted recent college grads ahead of Corey. They fast-tracked outsiders ahead of him, too. But Corey kept working hard and never complained. In the year I worked with him I learned something else about him: people liked him.
Now when I say, “people liked him” I don’t mean we thought Corey was a nice guy. I mean clients were often so relaxed around Corey that they trusted his judgment and took his advice. To this day, Corey’s the only account exec, male or female, I ever worked with who could consistently get coherent answers out of clients and get clients to push dates back. I watched him do it time and time again. They wouldn’t listen to us, but they listened to him. People really liked him.
You can’t teach height, you can’t teach speed, and you can’t teach, “Like me enough to let me help you.” You either have that or you don’t. And when you try to learn it or buy it, it usually comes off as fake. When you get a player with skills like that, you draft ‘em. (I swear, you give me a couple people like that plus a few quality role players to do some heavy-lifting behind the scenes and I’ll be on the cover of Adweek in five years.)
But instead they kept Corey on the bench and setting picks for everyone else to get the good shots. Corey kept doing the little things while others got the glamorous stuff. Again, I watched people (all white) with nowhere near his potential lap him: college grads, people he helped train, etc. And like Shawn, Corey kept quiet and kept working. Every once in a while when no one was looking we’d talk about it. It bothered him but he just saw it for what it was. Plus, the whole company knew what was going on; to verbalize it would’ve just been redundant.
I also think Corey felt that this was one of the few places in town that he felt in professionally. I doubt there was any company of BlastOff’s size and profile in a market the size of Chicago where Corey could openly be Corey and be fully accepted. But the funny part was that for all their boasts of inclusiveness, Corey was still an outsider. He was like them, but he wasn’t one of them. (Over the years I’ve learned that “gay and white” isn’t nearly the same as “gay and black.” It’s like gay blacks are the GLBT community’s pet fetishes or mascots. The only time they seem to get attention is in sex, music, or when gay activists want to equate gay rights with racism and Black civil rights.)
Anyway, Corey stayed. In fact, I ran into him recently. He’s still there, still “fitting in.”
On the inside the joint was nuts. Big airy spaces… Odd length walls and curvy corridors… Weird shaped furniture on every floor… Everything washed in bright primary colors… It was like working at IKEA. Top 40, Techno, and Alt. Rock CDs were piped thru the PA system daily; I wore headphones a good 6 hours a day just to keep my own musical tastes intact. Our lunchroom comfortably seated 70… 100 if you lost the full-size pinball machine and ping-pong table. Maybe 110 once you toss that huge home entertainment system: a 60-inch TV with Direct TV, VCR, and DVD players, satellite radio, and floor-model speakers…
And if that wasn’t enough, we had beer on tap. Lemme say that again: We had actual kegs of beer tapped up in the kitchen for random consumption. Plus, Krispy Kremes and bagels were on the kitchen counter every Friday morning. If that wasn’t enough, Corner Bakery usually catered most every meeting that ran over an hour.
Socially, it was one big Will & Grace-Queer Eye-L Word marathon: Over 160 folks. Damn near everyone was gay and white, bi and white, or white and straight-but-really-liked-gay people. Most of the guys reeked of Banana Republic and Hugo Boss with a little International Male flavor thrown in. Half the women dressed like TRL extras. The rest were overgrown alt. Punk-rocker clones—way too sheltered and soft to be rebels or outsiders, but worked real hard to come off as such.
“Shawn” was one of the first cats I met there and still among the best account execs I’ve ever worked with. He was smart. Clients dug him. He always tried to find the big picture. He asked questions. (Nothing worse than a know-it-all.) He was a point guard—tried to make everyone around him better. He also knew how to get in where he fit in.
He came to BlastOff practically fresh out of college. Over the years he built his rep, racked up some nice stats and garnered numerous opportunities to go onto bigger, more prestigious companies. But he stayed put believing BlastOff had more upside (not to mention profit-sharing opportunities). Plus he liked being the underdog and when BlastOff first opened, it was the industry underdog. Shawn was employee number 20-something. By the time I got there, they’d grown to over 230 employees with offices in Chicago, New York, and Canada. It was raining cash and they had new clients lined up like frat boys outside of Wrigley Field. The joint was hot and Shawn was a young gun who’d gotten in on the ground floor.
Out of the roughly 160 in our office maybe 10 were black: myself, Shawn, “Corey” (who I’ll get to in a sec), a couple support staffers and entry-levelers. My problem wasn’t numbers or anyone’s sexuality; it was that at every opportunity BlastOff blew its horn to clients, press, and prospective employees about how inclusive and diverse it was. Their idea of diversity was blondes, brunettes, and redheads. But whatever. And Shawn, having been there since day one, was even more over it than I was.
Shawn had a simple philosophy: Leave a hole wherever you go. When you leave a hole, you leave such an imprint on your department, on your clients, bosses, and co-workers that people never want you to leave. “Leave a hole” meant that when an assignment came up with his name attached to it, everyone immediately thought, “Good, Shawn’s handling it. We’re okay.” But leaving holes was hard.
At first, Shawn got stuck with small accounts—projects no one else wanted or had time to work on. But he took ‘em. He gained clients’ trust, pushed through quality marketing plans, and grew their business. His reward? More small stuff. His response? Leave a hole. He kept growing and excelling, showing and improving despite the occasional misstep here and there. But as BlastOff grew and gained bigger clients, Shawn kept getting passed over while other white, often less-qualified account execs got bigger, higher profile accounts.
Shawn saw the game. Still he kept his mouth shut and kept leaving holes. Eventually his game got so tight he couldn’t be denied. They made him a VP in 2003. Today he’s a respected industry exec who calls his own shots and still leaves holes wherever he goes.
And then there’s “Corey,” another BlastOff account exec. For every Shawn, there’s around 50 or 60 Coreys. Corey was smart, educated, talented, and hardworking. Corey was also a black gay male—one of the hardest things to be in America, and probably harder to be in Corporate America. Between America’s idea of what “black” is and its idea of what “gay” is, being black, gay, and male is just too deep for most to handle. (I mean, how can you be the thugged-out, hypersexual animal prone to crime and violence America defines as Black masculinity then go down on another man and sing show tunes?)
Corey’s path was similar to Shawn’s; both started at roughly the same time, both with small accounts. But as slow as Shawn’s rise was, Corey’s was stuck in park. Their bosses’ mentality seemed to be “promoting one is enough.” They promoted recent college grads ahead of Corey. They fast-tracked outsiders ahead of him, too. But Corey kept working hard and never complained. In the year I worked with him I learned something else about him: people liked him.
Now when I say, “people liked him” I don’t mean we thought Corey was a nice guy. I mean clients were often so relaxed around Corey that they trusted his judgment and took his advice. To this day, Corey’s the only account exec, male or female, I ever worked with who could consistently get coherent answers out of clients and get clients to push dates back. I watched him do it time and time again. They wouldn’t listen to us, but they listened to him. People really liked him.
You can’t teach height, you can’t teach speed, and you can’t teach, “Like me enough to let me help you.” You either have that or you don’t. And when you try to learn it or buy it, it usually comes off as fake. When you get a player with skills like that, you draft ‘em. (I swear, you give me a couple people like that plus a few quality role players to do some heavy-lifting behind the scenes and I’ll be on the cover of Adweek in five years.)
But instead they kept Corey on the bench and setting picks for everyone else to get the good shots. Corey kept doing the little things while others got the glamorous stuff. Again, I watched people (all white) with nowhere near his potential lap him: college grads, people he helped train, etc. And like Shawn, Corey kept quiet and kept working. Every once in a while when no one was looking we’d talk about it. It bothered him but he just saw it for what it was. Plus, the whole company knew what was going on; to verbalize it would’ve just been redundant.
I also think Corey felt that this was one of the few places in town that he felt in professionally. I doubt there was any company of BlastOff’s size and profile in a market the size of Chicago where Corey could openly be Corey and be fully accepted. But the funny part was that for all their boasts of inclusiveness, Corey was still an outsider. He was like them, but he wasn’t one of them. (Over the years I’ve learned that “gay and white” isn’t nearly the same as “gay and black.” It’s like gay blacks are the GLBT community’s pet fetishes or mascots. The only time they seem to get attention is in sex, music, or when gay activists want to equate gay rights with racism and Black civil rights.)
Anyway, Corey stayed. In fact, I ran into him recently. He’s still there, still “fitting in.”
