The St. Louis Egotist Interviews: TOKY Branding + Design

Great write up on Toky. They do wonderful work. Eric, I think you owe $16 to the "I" jar from this article. Kidding. Kudos, pal!

"We are brutal about choosing clients who are good for us." YES! There it is in the very first sentence. I almost don't need to read the rest. Thanks for lighting the way, TOKY.

Kick asses, shit, eyes in flames... like it.
Salud y desenvolvimiento!
Z

We couldn't have said it better ourselves, Carlos.

I feel like I read this article a few years ago...

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/content/printVersion/118352

We needed to delete a comment.

Just a heads up, if you plan on partaking in blatantly offensive verbal diarrhea, we'll probably end up deleting your comment.

We have no desire to censor conversations, but if you wouldn't say something to someone's face (and are claiming your name is "Candy Cane"), you probably shouldn't say it.

Yes, doing pro-bono work is valuable and admirable, but let's not lose sight of how these cultural institutions are actually funded. Enterprise Rent-A-Car contributes millions to both the St. Louis Symphony (Jack Taylor arguably saved that organization in the 1990s) and St. Louis Art Museum (the beneficiary of over $10 million), Anheuser-Busch InBev has donated $450 million to charitable organizations over the past 13 years (including active involvement with the Contemporary Art Museum), and Emerson Electric and May Department Stores (when it existed) give plenty as well. These "Big, Dumb Companies" derive their income from selling their products and services, which requires advertising and marketing. We live in a capitalist society; debate the morality of it as much as you want, but until there's a better system, this will continue. Does much of the creative work done for these purposes suck? Yes, of course it does. Does it make the world a "worse" place in the way that pollution, starvation, warfare, disease, lack of access to safe drinking water (which, by the way, Anheuser-Busch helped to remedy in Haiti), or even arrogant, caustic, elitist attitudes? Hardly.

As for being "stupid fearless," I'd wager that the courage needed to propose a bold design pales in comparison to the courage necessary for rushing into a burning building or doing humanitarian volunteer work in the Congo, Haiti, Sudan, and other corners of the world that live in poverty that far exceeds the imagination of those of us pushing pixels in Photoshop behind a desk in trendy office spaces. As far as value to the world, rarely do I hear the sort of tone evident in this interview from Nobel Prize winning physicists or scientists working furiously to cure some god-awful illness. Does much of this sound like tired, cliched hyperbole? Probably. But consider this: My older brother is a pediatrician, and I remember a copywriter friend of mine genuflecting before him about the "pointlessness of advertising," to which my brother echoed the sentiments of artist Jenny Holzer: "Everyone's work is equally important." Doing gutsy design work doesn't make you a saint--be proud of it, for sure, but don't denigrate the work thousands of others do. Why do that? What's the point?

I understand that this web site is largely a closed-community, intended for those in the creative industry. That's fine, but closed-communities have a tendency to believe their own bullshit after awhile, and that benefits precisely no one. Other artists and agencies do not pay the bills. This is why Ralph Caplan once described graphic designers as "exotic menials." We talk to ourselves too much and engage in pointless mutual-admiration. For a city to earn a creative reputation, it needs to have a sufficient economic base to support the people who do the work in the first place. That requires a huge variety of clients, most of whom will expect results for their investment in advertising and design. That means the work has to perform. Stan Richards and Tom McElligot built agencies that did (and continue to do) magnificent creative that inspires, provokes, and sells. I believe St. Louis has the talent to forge a similar path.

We're all in this together, and we have more to learn from one another than we have to proclaim and decry.

"We needed to delete a comment. Just a heads up, if you plan on partaking in blatantly offensive verbal diarrhea"

Instead of top-level arbiter of diarrhea, what say we let the community decide which comments remain visible?

--
The world's top discussion moderators have developed successful tools for keeping online miscreants from disrupting conversation. All are rooted in one psychological insight: If you simply ban trolls—kicking them off your board—you nurture their curdled sense of being an oppressed truth-speaker. Instead, the moderators rely on making the comments less prominent.

Patient Zero here is Slashdot, the tech site that pioneered one elegant way to police trolls: crowdsourcing. Slashdot has an automated system that randomly picks a handful of readers and gives them, for a day or so, the power to describe others' comments with terms like "funny" or "off topic." Those descriptions are translated into a score from -1 to 5. Readers can set their filters so they see only comments with high ratings—and trollery effectively vanishes. One academic study found that the majority of Slashdot readers filter out comments rated 2 or lower. Indeed, the concept of crowd-voting has worked so well that sites as high-traffic as the The New York Times now use it.
--

via Wired

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Skye.

We totally agree that the best way to effectively manage trolling is to have the community be the police-men and police-women that gently weed out the trolls without giving them attention.

Unfortunately, we don't have functionality like the one you described on our site yet. There are a number of things in development, and we'll certainly look into how difficult it may (or may not) be to implement something like this.

We promise not to delete comments unless it is simply name-calling without any thought behind it. The comment we deleted was exactly that. We realize this adds fuel to the fire on occasion, but we'd prefer to have some level of moderation at this point.

Brad's comment, for example, was critical of many of the stances TOKY spoke of in their interview. The key is that he did it in an intelligent and respectful way that we applaud.

Thanks.

Dialogue doesn't happen when everyone automatically agrees with something, and while I think there's only so much value to talking and writing, I'd love to see a real conversation ensue. Because this is about more than just TOKY's approach (plenty of other agencies and creatives say these exact same things--obviously, they've had varying degrees of business success. TOKY earned theirs, but the oblique insults of other creatives and agencies ranks somewhere between rival cliques squabbling at the homecoming dance and the 8th-grade boys locker room, in terms of relevance and maturity), it's about the way agencies approach the work they do, and how they manage to remain solvent without selling their souls. Most creative folks I know have strong convictions, but they also face the reality of making a living. Certainly, the content of commercial communications warrants close examination in terms of how it "shapes" society, though I think we in this industry overestimate our impact. One of my design teachers talked frequently about not "putting more trash into the world." That goes for the work you do and the words that come out of your mouth.

Glad to see a discussion brewing. I hope that's what this site becomes known for.

As the author of the TOKY piece, and the guy who’s ultimately responsible for the company’s direction, it’s probably not surprising that I disagree with most of Brad’s arguements.

First of all, I'm afraid Brad is conflating his litany of companies with my expression of “Big Dumb Companies” That’s your list, man, not mine.

Not all big companies are dumb, not all small companies are smart. My issue isn't with the big companies, their products, nor their contributions to charitable causes. Some companies may do "brave" things in the world while the making bad judgements when it comes to dealing with their experts in the marketing and design profession.

My point is simply that business owners of shops that want to do good work have to be prepared to relentlessly edit the client list to those clients that are a good fit, and do this despite what it means to their immediate bottom line. The good news is that if you don’t agree with that philosophy you’ll always have lots of business.

His next point: “As for being "stupid fearless," I'd wager that the courage needed to propose a bold design pales in comparison to the courage necessary for rushing into a burning building or doing humanitarian volunteer work in the Congo...”.

So his arguement is that what we all do in the ad/design trade is meaningless beside the accomplishments of folks like firemen and physicians, so we shouldn’t “believe our own bullshit” by being passionate about our work.

Wow, Brad, I don’t agree at all.

Here's the thing. If you get a good physician to really open up and talk about why they do what they do, a lot of them will let you in on something profound: they want to change the world in whatever small way they can. Get a fireman to talk about why they run into a burning building and they might say that they want to help those that can't help themselves, or they just want to help people in times of trouble.

There's a big difference between living by the courage of your convictions and having an inflated sense of self-worth. The most passionate doctors and firemen I've ever known can be humble and self-effacing, but they’re on fire with the conviction that something must be done to improve the human condition -- and they are willing to take it on, often at a great personal cost to themselves.

All of the people that Brad mentioned, all those people that we all look up to ... we look up to them exactly because of the courage of their convictions.

They look beyond themselves for meaning in their professions. Beyond their own ego, beyond increasing their own take, beyond making their own office bigger.

So why do we in the ad/creative business NOT expect that same courage of conviction among people in our profession?

Why don't we demand that those who own and lead our creative shops care about something larger than themselves?

Why don't we expect more than maximizing their paychecks and getting their names on all the awards?

Why don't we have the expectation that people who go into our business must take on bigger issues as a part of their day-to-day purpose?

My frustrations with the owners (not employees) of some of the big, successful, wealthy shops in this town is that they do not give back. They have the money and the tools to make real positive changes in people’s lives. Instead the owners hoard, and don’t give back to the community. And I -- personally -- think that’s reprehensible.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the owners of Rogers Townsend, Kiku Obata & Company, Core, Creativille (RIP) and many other firms that consistently do great work are also the firms that regularly give back to the community in real and meaningful ways.

Look, Brad. I may never save a life, or rush into a burning building. But our work can help get kids interested in archaeology, or opera, or classical music. We may help get companies interested in moving to St. Louis instead of Des Moines or Austin or Palo Alto. We may get a company to relocate to Midtown Alley instead of taking their employees and taxes to Wentzville. That helps all of us who want to stay in this City.

That’s our contribution. It may not save a life, but it can help to make real positive change for lives, for the City, for the region.

Cowardice can come disguised as greed, and greed as cowardice. I want the TOKY team to stay passionate and forward-looking. Consequentially we do everything we can to encourage them to try new things, and not let the factor of how much money the boss can make come into the equation.

We are dedicated to trying to make St. Louis a better place to live by lifting the one corner of our cultural universe that we care the most about... in our case it's the arts. We put our money where our mouth is every day. Those are my convictions. That's what my wife and I live by, what we build our company on.

Finally, there’s the question nestled within all of Brad’s comments -- about my tone, which he finds offensive. He thinks that I judge too harshly those people who “have strong convictions, but they also face the reality of making a living.”

First of all, my article is about how we choose to run TOKY. Employees at other companies -- who are powerless to overcome their boss’s directives -- may find little to learn until they reach their limits, know there must be a better way, and start their own shop. At that point I hope that our example shows them that they can find another way to make a living, to do well for themselves while doing good for others.

We are a part of a profession that assiduously demures on self-examination. But my heroes have always been the Stan Richards and the Tom McElligotts (and the CORES) who had the courage to say that some companies really do better work than others, and to inspire and to cajole others into trying to do better work.

The conviction to try to make things better -- in a profession, in a city, or just in the next ad or brochure -- is not the same as hubris. It is, in fact, the only consistent way good things get done in the face of cynicism and defeatism.

If cynicism like Brad's -- about the impact our profession can make -- undermines just a single reader’s excitement about attempting to make a difference for some art group or historic site, a church group or emerging neighborhood, then that would be, to me, a real form of “putting more trash into the world.”

So, yeah, I do believe my own bullshit. It may be tired, cliched hyperbole to some, but if so it’s astounding how few firms actually live up to it.

And it’s tired, cliched hyperbole that we at TOKY try like hell to live up to every day.

I'm actually utterly convinced that the work, and the actions and conversations that it sparks, are just more important than the people who create it. I always liked Warhol's desire for as many people as possible to create silkscreens in his style such that "no one could tell the difference." I mean, I don't necessarily agree that's a good thing, but I dig the sentiment, the notion that "the idea is more important than the conceiver." Ideas are free, man. They're just floating there, running through the air and kept afloat by people who give a shit. As far as what makes great work? Well, it doesn't happen without someone having had some "life experiences" (whatever they may be) and then taking their very private, personal interpretation of it all, and expressing themselves. It can materialize in innumerable forms, and if it's in our field, I honestly don't care who the client is, as long as it's not cigarettes. There's no formula for this, it only happens when you give yourself permission to create, but it's an absolute-must. It's what makes the work alive and vibrant, it's what ignites that gasp-for-air connection with another human being. Like, in my own case, I never listen to what anyone says to me about my work, or particularly my personal photography--I just watch them. I know I've managed something if the reaction manifests more in gestures than it does in words.

The thing is, nobody gets to decide what should be important to anyone else. That's all a matter of personal choice. Oddly enough though, it's a decision some never make. Some folks never make a decision about anything and life turns into one continuous stream that "just seems to happen." I find that level of indifference irritating but it's also not my business. Am I cynical though? Hell no. That I take objection to. Sure, I prattle on about "realistic" matters, etc., but I'm also damn sure I can change someone's mind about anything. Additionally, I actually wrote a thoughtful response to this essay rather than just pouting about it, which would be utterly useless. I just don't think anyone ever has the right to say, or worse, imply that they're superior to another because of what they believe or what they do. Also, someone's work being great has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else's work--as in, I don't need to see a Thomas Kincaid first before I can appreciate something by Gary Hume or Roni Horn.

We all have out ideals, and stomping all over the TOKY ideals is as silly as stomping all over anyone else's. Criticizing ideals is like wishing for darkness at noon; what good can come of it?

That said, I see no indications in the article as to whether I should use Bodoni or Helvetica on my masthead design. All those words, and the mystery of design remains as opaque as ever!

The real question is what is "great work?" Take away the awards, and what's left but mercantile rewards or absolute subjectivity? Awards represent consensus, as the constant trendspotting in design magazines will affirm.

I've always been a fan of the work TOKY turns out, and their passion to put great creative forward. It's great to have a inside look from this article.

Love the comments on having the "I" removed from presentations. Really, it should be a conversation, not a pitch.

Thanks for the great interview.

It's strange that someone who talks about bettering St. Louis so much actually lives in Illinois. Is the grass greener on the other side?

Nope. I'm just a Granite City kid from way back.