DDB's Lee Garfinkel Assailed by Critics

Lee Garfinkel, DDB’s chief creative officer, has inspired a comments thread on Adweek.com that has reached 253 items, a majority of them dedicated to celebrating his apparently imminent departure from the agency. (DDB is in talks with BBDO’s Eric Silver to take over the job.)

While Garfinkel has his defenders, dozens of his underlings seem desperate to see him leave. Even his assistant comes in for a bashing.

A selection of the more amusing comments follows, but first, a personal note. Twelve years ago, I interviewed Garfinkel for Adweek for a feature about the trend of “anti-advertising,” that is, advertising which knowingly pokes fun at itself. (1997! Crazy, right?) The interview was one of the shortest and least-productive encounters I’ve ever had.

Garfinkel’s “Jooky” spot for Sprite’s “Obey Your Thirst” campaign was one of the best examples of the genre (see video below). The ad starts with a set of cliched images of teens frollicking on the beach with “Jooky” soda, the “party in a can.” It cuts to two bored teens lounging on a sofa in the real world. One pops open his Jooky soda, and realizes that the “party in a can” isn’t going to materialize. “Oh man, mine’s busted,” he says.

So I called Garfinkel, then at Lowe & Partners/SMS, to interview him for the feature. After much negotiation with his pr person, he agreed to come to the phone. I asked him if it was difficult to sell Coke (Sprite’s corporate parent) on an “anti-advertising” campaign.

Silence.

Garfinkel eventually responded that he didn’t think Coke was in any way against advertising. He seemed annoyed.

I tried explaining it again: Even though it’s a parody, do big clients have any qualms about poking fun at the medium they’re using?

More silence.

Garfinkel gave me one usable quote: “Consumers are jaded by advertising … In order to reach certain people, advertising that doesn’t take advertising too seriously is appreciated by the consumer.”

And then he slammed the phone down.

I was baffled. I was doing a story that suggested his work was at the cutting edge of one of the more interesting trends in the business — and he walked out!

That was my one and only encounter with Garfinkel, and I discounted it, thinking there had been some misunderstanding or that I had inadvertently insulted him. But according to the folks on Adweek’s comments board, it was actually a typical Garfinkel moment. Here are some of their comments:

• No one even knows who Lee is unless they’ve been verbally abused by him over the last five years.
• Lee’s larger than life ego & baffling narcissism caused his path to end here & now. His team, with the exception of one or two people, strongly disliked him, were never inspired by him, and were discouraged to say the least.
• I used to think Lee’s mustache and early 70’s haircut was the unstoppable source of his power. How he kept his stranglehold on DDB. I’m glad to see Silver come to the rescue. A lot of good people and good ideas did not survive his reign of power at DDB. Silver is just what that place needs. A breath of fresh air. Maybe they’ll finally take the damn Bernbach quotes off the wall and start thinking about the future.
• About time they called Garfinkel what he is: a woefully underachieving CCO who hasn’t produced anything noteworthy since his BBDO days.
• Lee’s terrible attitude, spoiled bratt mentality and inability to inspire a team has ultimately caught up with him. We haven’t seen decent work out of Lee for years. He’s been getting by on contract, & being ridiculously over paid.
• Have you not FELT the negativity that Lee brings to DDB? Well, if not, most people have.
• WE have had enough of you and your spying on creatives, forcing us to sign omplaint letters and your holding up that Horrific Lotto shrimp up GREAT work! Take your 1985 Haircut and Mustache Back to Levine Huntley in your Delorean!
• Lee had a knack for killing the best ideas and destroying the spirit of his creative teams.
• Yes he has an almighty ego which eventually gets him into trouble (losing Mercedes at Lowe for example). But lets face it - you don’t get anywhere in the New York ad business by being a shrinking violet. The real truth about Lee however is that there will always be one thing bigger than his ego. His contract. And whatever has been said on this blog, negative or otherwise - he’ll be laughing all the way to Marthas Vinyard.
• Adweek should be ashamed they allow this to be anonymous. This is the internet at its worst. A bathroom stall in a gas station with graffiti all over the walls has more integrity.
• I worked with Lee at two different agencies during what you could call the height of his popularity. I never liked him much and he knew it. But he still hired me twice.
• I heard the reason why Lee is in Antarctic is so that he can head up the DDB Antarctica office. He is building an igloo castle and is buying the most expensive dog sled money can buy

• Related:
• DDB’s Garfinkel Hits Back at Critics; Defends His Moustache