What's With 2%

There have been many firsts in my personal and business life. I was just 20 years old when I first cracked the spine of David Ogilvy's classic, Confessions of an Advertising Man. Instantly I was aware that I had found someone who understood what my mind had been telling me for some time—that there's nothing truly 'new under the sun', but inspiration and creative genius, potentially, YES!

It was during this period of learning and discovering what the world of advertising was all about, that I heard of a quote that was attributed to Mr. Ogilvy. It went like this, "advertising is 98% plagairism and just 2% creativity." I appreciated this sentiment as it indicated a certain level of humility and at the same time it says, most marketing or advertising is in the 98 percentile, it is the 2 percent that is truly remarkable and therefore worth seeking. This mindset has shaped my approach to marketing for the past 30 years and hence, the name of my blog.

Another, was my first great job as a retail salesman for Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto, Canada. The family who owned this wonderful shop gave me what every young entrepreneurial mind needs—opportunity. Concepts like profit margin and paste-up were terms I regularly dropped at parties to impress upon my friends that I was both a businessman and an ad man. These were heady times.

Many years have passed and retail, wholesale, distribution, radio, desktop publishing, fundraising development, music and the web, have all captured my attention along the way. Two things have remained constant in my 25 plus years in business—a passion to avoid growing up and the belief that Marketing is what makes it all tick.

Today (2005), I act as the President of an exciting technology company that provides real estate agents with web-based lead generation, qualification and management systems. We have been pushing the online envelope for the past 4.75 years and are having a great time doing it.

I am also the father of 3 boys and along with my wife, live in a cosy little neighborhood just 30 miles from Vancouver, Canada, where playing drums in the local Baptist worship band, is part of my weekend enjoyment. Hockey (of course, I AM Canadian), golf, fly fishing, hiking, reading, music, cooking and hospitality, round out this marketing guy.