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Mar 23, 2011

The Father of Invention

I had a lovely surprise today.  

Let me start with a little personal history.  I was born into the Marketing Agency business.  Literally.  My father, Irving Woolf, was one of the pioneers of promotional marketing services in the US, part of the so-called Chicago School of Promotion, alongside greats such as William Robinson and Bud Frankel.  I literally grew up surrounded by Jim Beam motion POS, Miller Brewing concept boards, Keebler promotions, and Encyclopedia Britannica display racks.  My first ‘paid’ job was preparing a promotional mailer for FW Means Services, who did industrial dry cleaning.  The mailer was intended to show how they can clean any sort of garment, and was illustrated with a small bag containing items which would typically appear in a businessman’s shirt pocket.  Sign of the times:  businessman.  Other sign of the times:  the items included a paper clip, and tobacco filaments.  The fact that I went on to not only work with Dad, but then head overseas (and back again) to work in the agency business is testimony to the marketing brainwashing I had from an early age.

To cut a long and glorious life story short, my father left this world in December 2009.  His loss left a huge gap in my life – prior to December of that year, we spoke daily.  He advised and counseled me in good times and bad.  If you’ve got a close relationship with a parent, and actually worked alongside them, you’ll know what I mean – you benefit from both personal and professional advice.  And usually it’s appreciated.

But today, in a moment of quiet, I remembered something:  he’d mentioned in one of our conversations years ago about having filed a patent.

And sure enough, within 10 seconds today, courtesy of Google, I had a copy of his patent application for a display unit from 1967.  Pretty amazing, not only that I could so easily get the drawings and write up, but that in that decade, much of promotional marketing relied on finding new ways to do things.  It was the Gold Rush era of promotional marketing and merchandising, when literally having knowledge of materials and construction techniques could make a savvy agency a small fortune.

Have things changed?  I think not.  With social media, mobile apps, experiential marketing, sophisticated data management, and other techniques and tools at our disposal, the opportunity to create new (patentable?) ideas and apply them to help our clients solve business problems has never been greater.  Imagination is the only limit … well, imagination and budget …

Like I said, a lovely surprise.

6 comments:

  1. Hart felt and so true, you brought back thoughts of dad and out time together, that a good thing.

    "Constant change is here to stay."
    Francois VI Duc de La Rochefoucauld

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  2. This post made me smile :)

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  3. "To have a great idea, have a lot of them."
    — Thomas Edison

    Alan

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  4. Great blog Paul and how true, I think there's a saying...the more things change the more they stay the same.

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  5. Thanks for the great memories and I tip my hat to your dad Irving! He was way out front of most of us in the biz. Regards billr

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  6. Working with one's father is an amazing experience. Here's a film I made with mine...It's based on a poem he wrote which won the Studs Terkel Award. The film has won 9 awards and played in hundreds of fests and venues worldwide: http://www.bigstar.tv/movie/a-life-of-death-2011
    Sorry about your loss, Paul.

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