Thank you Dan. For the wisdom, mischief, and forgiveness

I met Dan thirteen years ago on my first day of work at Wieden+Kennedy as Head of Planning.

The morning of introductions and inductions had gone smoothly.

Then in the afternoon I was told:

“We need you to jump on a video call with Portland to discuss Coca-Cola.”

"Cool", I said.

“It’s with Dan”.

“Fuck’”.

I thought.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK”.

I was wearing a T-shirt with the face of Ernie from Sesame Street with the word “GENIUS” emblazoned in capitals.

(Mine was at least grey, not salmon pink)

What had seemed like an ironic and ingratiating sartorial choice that morning now just felt suicidal.

"Oh fuck".

My career at Wieden would be over before it had even started.

So we sat in the big meeting room and dialled in.

Dan squinted, and leaned into the camera, his face filling the entire screen.

“Does that say… GENIUS?” he asked.

“Yes, sir”, I squeaked, “The one that says ASSHOLE is in the wash”.

Dan chuckled.

I wasn’t fired.

And so it was that Dan’s appreciation of misfits (and in my case, fools) changed the direction of my life.

For which I shall be eternally grateful.

Anyway.

Dan had a habit of tossing out wisdom, insight and truth bombs without even trying. I don’t know what it was.

That healthy disdain for advertising? A fearless lack of regard for the judgments of others? A complete intolerance for bullshit? His inability to think about things in anything other than deeply human terms? His appetite for mischief?

I don’t know.

But there are some words of his that I have kept returning to again and again these past thirteen years.

Because they’re an antidote to bullshit, fear, joyless conformity and the delusion that what we do can be turned into an orderly, scientific, predictable, frictionless, standardised, professional process:

"I have an addiction to chaos. I love it when I’m anxious, I love this agency the most when it’s off balance, moving at 7,000 miles an hour, trying to take a sharp left turn everybody holding their breath, laughing like hell, occasionally throwing up but smiling, and leaning right to make sure the fucking thing doesn’t tip over.

Chaos does this amazing thing that order can’t: it engages you… It asks stuff of you, order never will. And it shows you stuff, all the weird shit, that order tries to hide. Chaos is the only thing that honestly wants you to grow… It cares more about truth than power."

Words to live and to work by, I believe.

Anyway, thanks for the wisdom and mischief, Dan.

And thanks for forgiving me for that T-shirt.