Features July 29, 2010, 5:00PM EST

Mad Man

Why did Alex Bogusky, the most celebrated adman of his era, turn his back on the business?

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Illustration by Jiro Bevis

By Susan Berfield

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On June 30, Alex Bogusky went for a bike ride in the hills outside Boulder, Colo., then made his way downtown to the century-old house-cum-studio he had renovated and dubbed FearLess Cottage. Once inside, he called Miles Nadal, his boss in Toronto, and resigned. Bogusky was 46. Adweek had named him creative director of the decade, and the agency he helped build, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, was bringing in more than a billion dollars in billings. He had a dream title of his own making, chief creative insurgent, and a salary close to $2 million.

Bogusky's conversation with Nadal, the owner of CP+B's parent company, MDC Partners (MDCA), was followed by an e-mail. Bogusky hoped Nadal saw him "as a friend who wants to try something new." He signed it, "Love, Alex." Then Bogusky and his wife, Ana, spent much of the afternoon sitting on their porch contemplating what he had just done.

MDC relied on CP+B for at least one-quarter of its $546 million in revenues last year, and Nadal often referred to Bogusky as the Steve Jobs of the industry. In a lengthy statement to Bloomberg Businessweek, MDC concluded: "Our future has never looked brighter and neither has Alex's." MDC would not grant an interview to discuss exactly how bright its future would be without the most famous name in advertising.

Bogusky declined to comment for this story, too, though he left plenty of clues about his state of mind, as revealed in interviews with industry peers, co-workers, and family members. There are also hints about why clients, such as Best Buy (BBY), Burger King (BKC), Domino's (DPZ), Microsoft (MSFT), and Kraft (KFT), which had just awarded its Macaroni & Cheese account to CP+B, did not want to say much about him. Perhaps the most telling of Bogusky's statements before resigning was a blog post calling for a ban on advertising to kids. In it, he pointed to the child-friendly marketing at Burger King, one of CP+B's biggest accounts. Bogusky had a reputation for pushing clients, employees, and even consumers right to the edge. This time he went over.

Bogusky spent his entire career at one agency, one he had known since he was a child. His father, Bill, was a graphic designer in Miami whose main client was a local firm, Crispin Porter. Bill Bogusky says that at age three Alex drew "an incredibly perfect caricature" of him, which Bill still has in his home studio. As a teenager, though, Alex devoted himself to dirt bike racing and motocross. "I thought the racing was outrageously stupid," says Bill, who nonetheless served as Alex's crew and sponsor. "Then one day he said he wanted to be a graphic artist like me. He sent off his bikes and went to art school in Atlanta." After a semester, Alex returned to Miami and joined the Bogusky studio, where he soon caught Chuck Porter's attention. In 1989, when he was 26, he was invited to join the agency. He was Employee 16. Five years later he became creative director; by 1997, he was a partner.

Crispin Porter was small and unknown to Madison Avenue, but Bogusky and Porter were ambitious, methodical, and ferocious advocates and defenders of their work. (Sam Crispin retired in 1991.) The agency's first big break came in the late 1990s when it put together a series of antismoking ads for teens in Florida funded by the cigarette companies' settlement with the U.S. government. The campaign, called Truth, told kids they were being played by tobacco executives, and the number of young smokers dropped dramatically.