Timezoneone Blog

            Blog. Spelled backward, it’s gold-pretty close, anyway.  And the family name that sits pretty close to my first name is, of all things, Gold.

            The Gold family is comprised of the lovely and talented Southside Patty (32 years of watching over me, of blond-haired and blue-eyed Scandinavian heritage, nine brothers and sisters). Ben, the eldest (tattooed with characters of his favorite horror movies, lighly-pierced, married, kind, hard, hard rock drummer and barista), Amy (lovely, lovely daughter-in-law wife to Ben, artistic, born and bred in Rockport IL), Max, the second (film editor, 5-string bass player, deep, smart, wise, fine artist, blond, and curly), Mason the third (percussionist with a particular bent for Afro-Cuban hand drums, print producer, willowy, ass-shaking funny, animal loving, party loving), Joe the fourth (film student, trying to figure out where he misplaced his identity, strong as an ox, dancing fool, Vietnamerican), and Zoe the fifth (flute and piano playing, ballet dancing, singing and acting, coffee colored skin, Bat Mitzvahed in an Irish Pub Jewish Vietnamese Princess from the west side of Chicago).

            That’s my Gold family.

            All of our first names are 3 letter names.

            Lor, Pat, Ben, Max, Mason, Joe, and Zoe.

            “Hold on there, wise guy”, you’re saying.  ”What about Mason?  Mason’s not a 3 letter word”.

            Well, he was suppose to be a 3 letter name.  His name was suppose to be Sam.  If he was Sam, Gold family’s little 3 letter name joke would have been kept in tact.  But when Mason was born, much to our disappointment, he did not look like a Sam.  No matter how hard we tried, no matter how we wanted to get past this painful crossroad of life, we could not see a Sam laying there in his little swaddling cloth. 

            So we named him Mason.

            And Mason spelled backward is “no Sam”.

            And blog spelled backward is glob-which takes us nowhere.

Lor Glob - blogging out for the year and potentially forever….

            I’m rarely without something to say.           

            But today, I am.

            Here’s what my somewhat silent day has been about.  I’ve done a story for Promo magazine about our honest-to-god, wild and uniquely positioned organization.  I was moved to put together a list of what I thought were the best of blues, r&b, rock and bawdy bar tunes starting from the 20’s and stretching all the way to the turn of this brand new century.  I did it for a possible new client who loves the art of sound as much as I do and with whom I really consider a new friend.  I was allowed to be thrilled senseless by hearing from a whole lot of people with whom I’ve lost touch-and they found me again. They found me by reading the articles that have come out about us.  And they envy me.  And they’re exceedingly interested in my connection with all of you.  I also got to talk to Brett for an hour.  More importantly, I got to really listen to Brett.  I got to talk to Richie McD about the future-which looks amazing and bright and right because Richie is amazing and bright and right.  I got to hear about the beginnings of TimeZoneSun and why it exists.  I got to look again at the work we’re about to present to Crocs and stare and shake my head yes at what fantastic thinking looks like.  I got to meet David from NZ.  He’s on his way to Indy to take pictures of a Nascar.  And I can’t wait for him to come back so I can buy him a patty melt at Mary’s Diner and talk baseball.  David is here at a supernatural time when both of Chicago’s baseball teams-The Cubs and The White Sox-are both in the playoffs for the first time since 1906.
            What I got to do is reaffirm why I’m here. At TimeZoneOne.  With all of you.

            Everyday is a crossroad.  Every morning I get to choose what I already have and what else I’d like to have.  Every afternoon, I get to wonder if where I am is the place to be-and of course it always is.  And when darkness sets in and the night takes over, I get to hope that I get to do it all over again.    

            I guess it’s not that I have nothing to say.

            It’s that I have too much to say and my mouth hasn’t caught up.

            I guess today, my head has moved down the road but my mouth is hanging out back there, somewhere.

            It’s 4:16pm.  The bottom of the 8^th inning.  The score is 6 to 3, Tampa Bay. Go White Sox.

Lor Gold

            Here’s to a sweet Rosh Hashanah-the celebration of the Jewish New Year.

            It started yesterday and will continue through to next week when the holiday is culminated with Yom Kippur.   Going way, way, way back over 5,000 years ago-even before Robert Johnson and Bill Bernbach-these holy days were created by “my tribe” as an effort to explain why the winter nights got longer and the temps. got colder.  Back then, fear trumped logic.  Still does.  Logic often takes a backseat to fear because logic depends on facts and facts had no real roots until a few thousand years later.  Quite a few.  Facts still don’t seem to matter much to McCain and Sarah Palin-but that’s another crossroad discussion to be saved for  another time.

            This particular holy holiday sets up the constant battle between life and death. Success and failure.  Optimism and dread.  Goodness and evil.  So on and so forth.

            All crossroads.  All divergent paths that can’t be ignored.

            So there I sat yesterday, hour after hour, in the House of the Everlasting.  Having a think about who I am, about what I expect of me, about what I have to do and, yes, about TimeZoneOne.

            TimeZoneOne is a well-considered choice.  My choice.  One that allows me to have a far more interesting life, a greater sense of personal and group success, the positive energy of optimism and the undisputed goodness of truth.

            Life, success, optimism and goodness.

            Here’s to you, my friends. 

Lor Gold

They (we) constantly bust their (our) brains over which road is the road less traveled and why. Oftentimes, what makes madmen and women so damn mad is that while the crossroad torments us, there’s no other place we’d rather be.

The reason why is because we know that creation for us, is far more progressive than duplication. We know that while experience is massively important, it rarely tells us what to do. We should only give experience an extremely limited tip of the hat so that it merely informs us as to what to watch out for. To the creativity minded, which is apparent in all functioning facets of TimeZoneOne, merely existing on experience is like driving on tracks down the same road-over and over and over and over again. You’ll get there, you’ll be safe. You’ll be sound. And you’ll be bored.

Which brings me to something not at all boring: Madmen.

Madmen is a true crossroads drama in that its purpose is to entertain, delight, and inform the world of our business through fresh faces, fashion and film. It dares to be different. It dares to sidestep the status quo. It depicts those creative spirits who, with confidence, bravado, cigarettes, booze, and unbridled creativity in a world of unbridled new media (television, at the time) took the roads less traveled and won-big.

This show is a very well done reflection of real Madmen and Madwomen. Madness with real names-George Lois, Jerry Della Famina, Mary Wells, Sir Frank Lowe, and the Cohen Brothers of advertising, Saatchi and his younger brother Saatchi. The maddest of the mad men who set out to break the rules for these crazy, rule breaking bastards was Bill Bernbach.

The attached clip is a bit of work he lead that, like Robert Johnson, changed the way we do things today.

You”ll see the Levy’s Rye Bread work in this clip.

The line he created is “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s”.

Bernbach was Jewish. He made himself a sandwich of corn beef on two slices of Levy’s and wrote the line, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s…because no Jew would ever eat this shit”.

He said the most creative thing we can do is tell the truth about what you’re trying to sell. If you can’t tell the truth, at least tell a half truth.

See you tomorrow.

Lor Goldstein

I can’t go 5 steps forward, backward ,to the left, or to the right, without somehow crow barring the art of sound into the conversation. So forgive me this short word about Robert Johnson.

Robert was, still is, and will always be this world’s greatest bluesman. Anybody who knows the blues, had the blues, or will someday suffer from the blues, will know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t yet how Robert was awarded his godlike status:

• He sold his soul to the Devil.
• At a crossroad.
• Deep inside the Mississippi Delta.

Within 10 years, he became a god and then he died. Before he did, he played chops like nobody ever heard or felt before. Music that exposed the soul and all of its nerve endings. Music that flashed so much light on what’s bad, it made you feel good.

Music that changed music by infecting the likes of Zeppelin, Dylan, Clapton, Guy, and Hendrix.

All I’m saying is a Crossroad is a crazy powerful place.

And that’s where all of us Zoners-every one of us-are standing.

We’re at a powerful place at a crossroad somewhere between New Zealand and the US. I arrived at mine sometime in July. After knowing The Richards and Raewyn for a few years, I decided to buy back my soul from the Devil and sell it to them. Now I’m here with you.

Me, you, TimeZoneOne, Chicago, Chistchurch, both our countries, this planet-its all standing at the same crossroad Johnson stood at. And we have, like he had, decisions to make. Interesting, extraordinary, worthwhile, artistic decisions.

Talking about which way we turn is what I’m going to do with my week on the blog. I’m calling this week, “At the Crossroad”.

So walk with me.

Blog Debutant Lor Gold

We are delighted to welcome Lor Gold to our Zone and to our blog.

Lor is a marketing and advertising pioneer, a true industry heavyweight with deep experience in all categories.

He joins TimeZoneOne as Chief Global Creative Officer and in so doing he takes a big step from an Old World agency life to a New World agency life of time-shifting, off-shoring, fresh not frozen creative, Skyping, going deep, 24 hour teams and ‘up close’ creative and campaigns.

You can call Lor on 312 436 1448 or email him at lor.gold@timezoneone.com and he can tell you more.

His new TimeZoneOne friends welcome him; we love having him around and know that our clients will too.

All the Zoners

PS. Hope you enjoy the video, he ís quite photogenic (oddly).

TimeZoneOne names Lor Gold Global Chief Creative Officer September 29 2008
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