Good Day Advertising

k.d. lang, “Maybe,” off All You Can Eat. And before that, Michael McDonald, “That’s Why.” And it is Good Day Advertising. Zanger with you.

Here’s the thing about this hour: it is a little bit on the deliberate side. Neither of those songs was ever a single. Neither of them. McDonald’s album went top 10, and that track never got released off it. And k.d. lang — probably one of my favorite artists of all time — the record went gold, but that song did not.

That’s the whole playlist. “Should Have Been a Hit?” Question mark. Thank you to Kyle O’Brien for coming up with that. These are great songs that maybe never charted, maybe on records that sold. Felt appropriate. I don’t know — we just wanted to kind of give it a go.

Anywho. Good Day Advertising. Let’s get to it, we’ve got some real news.

Let’s start in Sausalito. Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners, new chief creative officer: Sinan Dagli. He joined the agency — and I love this, I love this story — he joined the agency 17 years ago as a junior interactive designer.

And so that’s the thing. If a CCO leaves, they usually don’t hand over the creative reins, and when they do, it’s usually when the shop gets sold, or something like that. But our good friend John Butler — that’s the B in BSSP, co-founder, name on the door — he’s stepping aside.

And I got a chance to run down to San Francisco and go over to Sausalito. I love, I absolutely love going to that agency, because it’s a little breath of fresh air, the breeze coming off the bay, and outstanding work. And listen — half a billion dollars, California Lottery. Congratulations, Butler Shine. Doing big things.

We’re going to stay with people. AdExchanger put out its 2026 Top Women in Media and Ad Tech, and one of ours, one of our members, is on it. Wendy Emerson, senior vice president of marketing science at Butler/Till. And here’s the category: Inspirational Mentors. That’s one of those categories you really can’t game. You can’t fake it.

And when you look at the write-up, it was all about the how. Humility. Empathy. A hackathon she started, to turn a dry technical project into something the whole team learned on. November 3 is the gala. Congratulations.

Let’s talk a little bit more — a couple more awards nights, both went the IndieHQ member way. London, the 10th: Klick Health named World’s Most Awarded Agency at The Creative Floor Awards. This is not a category. The whole night. Then Monday in Philadelphia, the Fierce Pharma Marketing Awards. McKinney took Charitable or Philanthropic Campaign for Voices of Alzheimer’s, a piece called “Check, Mate.”

So: two nights, two weeks, top of both rooms. Independent, and Indie Agency News members.

Little reminder here. If you do want to join the show — if you’re on the player, all you’ve got to do is fill in that box. Just tick that box and we’ll get you on the air.

Outstanding stuff to start. Cheeseball DJ alert for our next song. It’s The Gap Band, “Outstanding.” It’s Good Day Advertising.

Zanger: Michael Jackson, “Baby Be Mine.” How was that not a hit? Oh, how on earth was that not a hit? Seven singles came off that record — it was Thriller — every single one of them made the top 10, and weirdly, that song was not one of them. Biggest-selling album in history, and that one gets a B-side.

Before that, Brenda Russell, “Lucky.” You might remember her from “Piano in the Dark,” but I like that song a lot. And then we started with The Gap Band, “Outstanding.”

What’s going on? It’s Good Day Advertising. I’m Zanger, out here in Portland.

Let’s talk a little bit about new work. Erich & Kallman — we talked about the Bay Area a little bit earlier. Carl’s Jr. relaunching around cook-to-order burgers. They’re calling it a Burger Revolution. The hero’s a $5.99 double called the Angus Maximus. Angus Maximus. So in the work, the agency builds a Colosseum, puts a gladiator in it, fighting a clown. You understand the clown. You know who the clown is. Nobody has to say the name. So there you go.

And here is one that maybe got a little away from people, but in the best possible way. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and Innocean USA built something for Hyundai Hope on Wheels with Strava. And Hope on Wheels has been going for a minute, so it’s fantastic.

Simple setup: log your miles, hit 400,000 collectively, and Hyundai donates a million dollars. People beat that in 24 hours. So Hyundai doubled it — 2 million at 800,000 miles — beaten in two days. So kudos, kudos.

[to the guest line] Make sure you’ve got your headphones on, Veronica. Turn down the speaker, I hear myself. Get your mix-minus going.

Final count: 3.3 million miles. Strangers running and walking and riding for kids. And that is fantastic. It’s under The Mark of a Warrior, where five pediatric cancer survivors — real kids, Hope on Wheels ambassadors — are the centre of the photography, and the hero film is narrated by Scarlett Johansson. They’ve done this handprint thing for years, and this year they handed it to the kids.

Veronica St. Cyr joining us. You used to be on the radio, I understand.

Veronica St. Cyr: I am — and I’m actually trying to connect to my headphones right now. You’d think that because I worked in radio, I would have joined a little more prepared.

Zanger: I was futzing with this a lot. Let’s just say I was messing with this a lot. So get yourself set up, send me a Slack, let me know, and if we don’t get you on this break, we’ll get you on the next break. I’m not gonna disconnect you though.

Veronica: I’ll do that and come back.

Zanger: All right. It’s all in test. I like it. See you in a second.

Let’s talk a little bit more — a lovely bit of craft. Our friends at Gravity Road in London. Oh, Eavesy. Mark Eaves.

Let me just say something real quick. We have a few members in the UK and in Europe, and I got a chance to meet Mark Eaves years ago, back in a former life when I worked at Stillwell Partners. They run the Advertising Week event, and that event is coming up soon — early next month in New York — so make sure you go to advertisingweek.com to learn more about that.

But back to Eavesy. I wouldn’t say fresh-faced — I was substantially older than fresh-faced — but I started going over there in, oh gosh, I want to say 2011, to start prepping for the thing. And Mark Eaves, absolutely a gentleman. The agency, through the roof, fantastic, part of The Brandtech Group. But Eaves has always been a friend to us and to me, and pure gratitude.

So the work is Reuters, and a second wave of “Pure News, Straight From The Source.” They shot lab experiments — clean at the source, and then you watch it travel. A drop of colour here, a bit of muddying there, and by the time it reaches you it looks like something completely different. And that’s what Eavesy said. It’s the news told without a single word about the news.

I mean, listen. We’ve been spending weeks seeing that things can be a drop of water, very pure, and then by the time they land later, it’s a dirty mess. I’m not gonna extend the metaphor. But I am gonna bring Veronica back on. How are you? You figured it out.

Veronica: I think so. How does it sound?

Zanger: I’m gonna move the levels up a little bit. All right. So tell us about the radio experience.

Veronica: So, as many people in small agencies can probably attest to — the wearing of multiple hats. I ended up getting a job working as a promotions director, coming out of being a salesperson. Which is kind of wild, to sell air. You’re selling something that doesn’t really — I mean, it exists, but tangentially.

So, promotions director. People said I had a nice rasp to the voice, because I don’t shut up, so I’m burning out the vocal cords often. We didn’t get to do any Marlboro ads, unfortunately, but I ended up voicing a few spots for Dunkin’, and at the time Orange Coke, R.I.P. Couple of American Heart Association. I did do an AARP ad once, even though it was first person, and I do not sound like I’m in the demographic.

And it transitioned to me having a show on a rock station on the weekend, and sitting in on the weekend on a pop country station. So I did have different voices that I would do. And then I’d sit in on the morning show sometimes. Quite the trip. Getting up at four a.m. to go on the morning show.

Zanger: I did that. I was morning show producer for almost three years.

Veronica: Okay, you get it.

Zanger: Fortunately the station was about five minutes from where we lived. It’s funny, because I started on the air, and then we flipped to hip hop and R&B, and I ran our street team for six months, became morning show producer, then production director, and then I built in-house agencies. So that’s how this whole agency thing really started.

Veronica: Doug, you’re the only person I have met in the agency industry that comes from a radio background. I feel like an outlier.

Zanger: We’re weirdos. We’re the weirdos of the weirdos. Misfits and underdogs, for sure. And here’s what I find funny. You talk to an old head in advertising and you tell them you’re in radio, and they go, “Oh, I love writing radio. We don’t do it anymore. It’s so good.”

Veronica: Well, it was. It’s also wild, the cost to produce radio. Because think about it — if you have to do an ad with a dinosaur, you need a solid CGI budget. But you just use some sound creativity and you can take people there for free.

Zanger: Yes, exactly.

Veronica: You work with the audience’s imagination a little more.

Zanger: Veronica St. Cyr from Stirling Brandworks. You’ve got like 15 seconds to shamelessly plug something.

Veronica: Oh, hell yeah. I’d like to plug letting people go in traffic, because we could all be a little bit nicer to each other. And also — this is like straight morning show stuff — hit me up for a $5 Dunkin’ gift card.

Zanger: Oh my god.

Veronica: Stirling Brandworks. We’re an agency outside Boston. We love to hang out with people, if you’re listening.

Zanger: And also, we have a trivia night happening in Boston at Allen & Gerritsen, November 5.

Veronica: Oh, we love A&G. Okay, I guess I’m here to plug A&G.

Zanger: That’s the trivia night. It’s presented by our friends at Pathlabs. We’re very excited about that. Veronica St. Cyr, thanks so much for joining us. We’re gonna get you back on, maybe a little less frenetically. But we’re gonna move on with Good Day Advertising. It’s The Jayhawks, “Eyes of Sarahjane.”

Zanger: “In the Stone.” Earth, Wind & Fire. I hit the wrong button there. Told you there were going to be a few problems. C’est la vie. C’est la vie. First show — what are you gonna do, right?

What is going on. Good Day Advertising, I’m Zanger. That was “In the Stone,” Earth, Wind & Fire. Before that, “Midnight in Harlem,” Tedeschi Trucks Band. “Eyes of Sarahjane,” The Jayhawks — being a native Minnesotan, you like the Jayhawks. Oh my goodness.

Here’s the thing about “In the Stone.” By the way, there’s a YouTube channel called Drumeo — D R U M E O — just search Drumeo and “In the Stone.” You’ll enjoy.

Anyway. That song stalled at 58 on the Hot 100. Two songs on the album went top 10. And apparently it is now a marching band staple. So 23 years is all it took.

All right, I want to talk a little bit about Left Off Madison. They published a piece yesterday. Here’s the setup: an agency gets invited in to fix an underperforming campaign. They go away and build the whole thing — target, positioning, creative, media. Then, deck in hand, they realise something. Presenting this means handing it over free. Their own master agreement has broad work-for-hire language that might swallow the lot.

So they drafted a one-page addendum. Doesn’t commit the client to hire them. Doesn’t commit them to approve anything. It says the pitch stays ours unless you retain us.

Sharon Toerek, Legal & Creative, can also help you with that. They are our newest Preferred Partner. Sharon Toerek was at our Summit in Chicago. We’re super stoked to have her as our exclusive legal partner. This is the type of stuff that you want to get into.

So anyway, going back to Left Off Madison — the client said no. No explanation. Just no. So the agency didn’t send the deck, and they walked away. Robert, good on you, buddy. That surprises me zero. Surprises me zero. Here’s their line: strategy is not the free sample. Good for them. I like that stuff.

All right, let’s go to Biarritz. Round two of the Ultimate Sevens rugby championship. Pictures are going out to the world, produced by OS Studios, part of Project Worldwide. Very excited.

Round one, Cardiff. I am mostly Italian, but the next one is Welsh. I don’t speak Welsh, but I speak French — and same with Welsh, I can’t roll my Rs though. Bad Welshman. Anyway, round three, west London on the 24th, going out through DAZN and international partners. Kudos to OS Studios.

All right, let’s finish this bad boy up. We’ll call it the Diary. What’s coming up, so you potentially can go.

Monday and Tuesday, the Clios on Culture in New York at Pier Sixty. Day two, quarter to three — McKinney’s co-chief creative officer Omid Amidi on a panel about how creator-led long-form content broke the skip-ad button.

Wednesday the 24th, also New York, House of 434 hosts a session for founders on money and intellectual property mistakes. Davis+Gilbert’s Marc Rachman is on that. Given what we just talked about — founders, maybe go to that one.

Wednesday the 30th, Young & Laramore run their Unreasonable conference at Newfields in Indianapolis. A full day on the irrational side of consumer choice, with people from Yale, Penn, Duke and Harvard Business School. Our own Kyle O’Brien will be there covering it. Very excited. This is a great conference. This is a great conference. So for real — if you have some spare miles lying around, or you’ve got some spare time, head over to this. Young & Laramore have been doing this for quite some time. That’s really the jam on that.

And our members at Crackerjack Communications letting us know that October 22 in Boston, the Greater Boston Food Bank’s Women Fighting Hunger Breakfast honours Catherine D’Amato, who’s run the food bank since 1995 and is stepping down. So 30 years. If you’re in Boston, that is definitely a morning worth spending some time with.

All right. It’s gonna wrap today’s show. Got one more song coming up.

[the close]

Zanger: The theme was — so, I forget what we called it. “So It Wasn’t a Hit.” First show. What are you gonna do, right?

I want to thank all of our Preferred Partners. Go to IndieHQ, learn more about the partners that help our agencies grow, grow, grow.

Now, if you did something this week — hired somebody, maybe some new work. Speaking of new work, if you go to Indie Work, indiework.is, that’s where you want to start. Get us everything, we’ll pop that sucker up there. Tell us what you got. You can also go into IndieHQ, go to the Front Desk, and just let us know. That’s our direct line to me, Kyle, Katie, Holly — the works. It is the works.

We’ll do another show next week. The aforementioned show that I forgot the name of.

So this one was from Kyle, and I appreciate this. “Heart to Heart,” the song from Kenny Loggins. It kind of was a hit — number 15. But I think where we were looking was, you know, 10 and up. So Kyle’s like, that should have been a hit. And I guess technically it might have been. So Kyle, you might have gotten this one wrong. But that’s okay.

But let’s look at who co-wrote it and who’s playing the electric piano underneath the verses. You know who I’m talking about — Michael McDonald. Same man who opened the show. And oh — great sax from David Sanborn. The late, great David Sanborn. David Foster.

So, let’s wrap it up. Everybody, have a great weekend. Go make some awesome. It’s Good Day Advertising. We’ll see you next week.