Features July 29, 2010, 5:00PM EST

Mad Man

(page 3 of 3)

His idea was: 'We have obligations to our clients, but we can be active agents in the world. Some things we do for a living, and some things have to be challenged.' " In a 2008 interview with BusinessWeek, Bogusky called the disconnect between his book and his Burger King work "maybe a bit of creative tension." Fry, who worked closely with him, says Bogusky "had to do some damage control." Burger King declined to comment.

Bogusky continued to move further away from the corporate hand that had been feeding him. He became interested in climate change. He read about the industrialization of food, the politicization of education. He invested in a Boulder company, Justin's Nut Butter, that makes organic peanut butter sold in jars and single-serve packs. The first time he met Bogusky, founder Justin Gold recalls the adman asking him, "Doesn't it suck that you have this amazing organic product in this totally unsustainable package?" Says Gold: "It was the thing you don't want to talk about. He went right for it."

By the end of 2009, Bogusky was ready to leave CP+B, but Nadal wasn't ready to let him go. According to a person familiar with the matter, Nadal offered him a three-year contract potentially worth $20 million. Bogusky wasn't interested. Eventually they worked out an agreement: Bogusky would take one step further back from the agency and become the part-time chief creative insurgent at MDC. Nadal declined to comment.

On Jan. 7, Bogusky called Colin Drummond, then head of account planning at CP+B, into his office to tell him the news. "I was shocked," recalls Drummond. "Alex was pretty matter-of-fact. He wasn't emotional. I knew of his desire to look beyond advertising. He thinks about something for a long time, but he keeps quiet. Then when he makes a decision, he acts very swiftly." They talked about what Bogusky might do next, which seemed wide open and didn't have much to do with MDC. Except in this way, says Drummond: "He said that he told Miles to fire him if he said anything that would potentially upset any MDC clients."

The next morning the seven CP+B partners held a town hall meeting in Boulder. "Alex didn't say he was leaving the agency quite as directly as he did with me," recalls Drummond. "He smoothed it over, saying that he would still have an office at CP+B. He wanted the clients and employees to feel that it wasn't a big deal, and the industry too."

Bogusky continued to influence life at CP+B, though not necessarily in commercial ways. He got the agency involved in a bike-sharing program in Denver and brought in a Buddhist to lead mindfulness sessions. The dissonance between his avocation and his vocation was increasing. When he spoke at a gathering of environmentalists in California in April, Bogusky opened: "Many of us are in this imperfect situation where we make decisions within corporations and then we go outside and have to deal with it." That month he also received at least $10 million for his remaining stake in CP+B.

By June it was clear Bogusky wasn't just leaving the industry, he was turning on it. While most of his peers were at the annual Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, he was advocating on his blog for a ban on advertising to kids. He named names, citing McDonald's (MCD) and Burger King, still a CP+B client. Then he sent the post by e-mail to Porter in Cannes. Porter has spoken about Bogusky and the piece just once, to Advertising Age: "I told him it was well written and made some great points, but I also said he needs to make a choice because [it's not compatible with the business we're in]. And the next morning he sent me a note saying, 'I resigned like you recommended.' "

In the days after his resignation, there was among his colleagues a sometimes uneasy recognition of the dilemma Bogusky had found himself in. "He was definitely aware that there would be a conflict when he expressed these thoughts," says Drummond. "He wants to see systems change. Who wouldn't?"

Bogusky's decision leaves CP+B without its Jobs, and the first big test of its ability to cope is likely to be with Bogusky's signature client. Burger King recently appointed a new head of marketing and is fighting with its franchisees, in part over the direction of its advertising. "Miles says the relationship with Burger King is solid, but I don't believe it is completely stable," says Jim Edwards, the former managing editor of Adweek who now writes about the ad world for BNET Industries. "If CP+B can stabilize it and sales go up, then all is well. If they lose Burger King, then they've lost their biggest client and their spiritual father. And that's a lot of trouble to be in."

From FearLess Cottage, Bogusky sends out periodic messages to the world, offering glimpses of his future ambitions in sometimes cryptic blog posts and homemade videos. In mid-July he interviewed Robyn O'Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick—and What We Can Do About It, and focused on genetically modified soybeans. "God created all these seeds but never got around to monetizing that s—t. God's a bad capitalist. So we said, let us show you how it's done," he said, to the bemusement of his guest. "We have a right to critique a food system created by a corporation....What if things don't turn out well and your kids come to you and ask: 'What did you do to try to stop this?' "

Berfield is an associate editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.

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