Stroll With Me (& Dawn Chambers) Down My Long-ish MAD(WO)MAN Memory Lane…
…I’m still mad about the “MIA” money part. But ultimately grateful for the experiences, for the opportunity to continue to shine in wine & spirits world as I leverage some of the transferrable strategic (&. sipping ;) skills and talents I acquired back in the day …
[pic i took of the sidecar i had a few wks ago (Summer 2023) feeling nostalgic at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn NY]
The Sidecar was my signature drink once upon a time — the ‘Hennessy Sidecar’ to be precise — back when that category-leading cognac was instrumental in helping revitalize trendy Americans interest in rediscovering (and more importantly consuming) “classic cocktails”. Hennessy was also the main account I was assigned to at the then-called Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners / KB&P (advertising agency) in the late 90’s early 2000’s. Which in hindsight had a lot of Mad Men era energy (just imagine real-life Don Draper and Roger Sterling types — but with cell phones). Not only at KB&P but an entire industry that somehow stayed, for decades well into the early 2000’s, scarily similar to what you might see on an episode of that time capsuled, award-winning AMC show Mad Men (especially with regards to the casual — yet condoned — sexism, racism, etc. Oh and the DAILY drinking. Yes, often multiple times per day / eve).
All of that then real-life condoned stuff + daily / “evely” drinking would be served up in a (fictionalized?) version on any given Sunday night in the mid 2000’s when new MM episodes aired — all set in and taking place from 1960 to 1970. It’s probably not a big surprise that I could relate to the character of Dawn Chambers (played by Teyonah Parris) a fella sista who comes onto the scene in season five (the late 60’s on the show’s timeline) and plays the recurring role of Don Draper’s secretary at Sterling Cooper & Partners / SC&P and is that agency’s first (and for a while ONLY) Black employee). However, there were at least two key distinctions between me and Dawn at our respective all (or mostly all in my case) white ad agencies:
A) There were approx 3 other Black employees at KB&P when i came on board in late 1998 — two ran the mailroom and the third (who became a great friend to this day) was the film/video editor in an offshoot of the production department. All were important positions at any creative company (especially if receiving & sending mail and editing stuff is relevant). BUT they are not jobs that are at all specific to an advertising agency context…
B) On the other hand and unlike those of the mail clerks’, my editor friend’s (and Dawn’s!), the job I held had emerged some years prior from within the advertising industry itself — not only a role specific and critical to the creation of good ads across various mediums but also regarded as critical to the development of CUTTING EDGE creative work intended to crush the competition. My role was that of a Strategic Brand Planner: liaison between “the” Consumer and Creatives, a relied-upon-player for Account Management and Clients ; the one charged to cull strategic insights that positively impacted the bottom lines of a range of businesses entrusting ad agencies on the regular. It was a relatively new role (in an American advertising context vs. that of the British where this new role is said to have originated at least a decade or more earlier) and one that was put onto my radar (and I onto ITS path) by the late great and all around amazing Mr. Jo Melvin Muse of then Muse Cordero Chen who saw my strategic and creative talents and tracked me down to recruit and tell me all about it [at that point I’d left advertising after a 2 year stint at the then-called La Agencia de Orci y Asociados (now it’s simply Orci ) through whom I’d originally met Mr. Muse at an agency-wide meeting for the Honda (and/or perhaps it was PEPSI…) account ) and had just started working in Licensing & Merchandising at Paramount Pictures studios in Hollywood, CA when he went out of his way to reel me back into the (m)Ad biz. I didn’t even know what an advertising Strategic Brand Planner was. Nor that I would later land in London, UK to train and learn all about becoming one — at Jo’s behest. (At this stage of the story I will resist the urge to go off on a surprisingly tasty ‘training in London’ tangent. But you can — and should — click here to see/hear a convo I’m so happy to have had a wonderful catch up convo with Jo on my show just one year prior to the heartbreak of his passing to be with the ancestors in April of this year — 2023).
‘Boozy businesses’ were just some of the industries i worked in during my ad agency days. [If my blog content wasn’t focused primarily on food and drink I might brag about the time after my stretch at KB& P (and in collaboration with another brilliant Black strategic colleague) how I came up with a strategy for the Mercedes Benz company that they and the ‘mainstream’ (read: white) ad agency took and used in a long-running TV campaign for 9 years. Oh but I CAN boast (and, brace yourself, rant a bit) about that time a jaw-dropped Heineken client told me they’d never gotten goosebumps from a qualitative research top line until they heard me deliver mine. For sure an indication that I had knocked it out the park — thankfully so after endless weeks (months!) of intense working around the clock (literally) to arrive at the ground breaking consumer insights I uncovered. Sadly though I was stiffed (as in NEVER PAID in entirety) for that wonderfully inspiring work because a dishonest independent project manager / middle man named Alex from some company he’d cooked up called “Drawbridge” pocketed my $14K portion of the months long total project fee (which is equivalent in purchasing power to about $24,119.29 today) .Yup I swiftly sued (the time that took amounted to an unpaid part time job in and of itself), went to court and “won” but still never ever received a penny of that owed money. What a painful , time-draining and poverty inducing wake up call that was to learn that freelancers (I was part of the gig economy post KB&P) were not then and still are not protected the same as salaried employees. But i digress — and actually feel like having a side car right about now… ]
But instead, back to my original Side Car etc. story : So there I was — the only Black person (with the double whammy of also being a woman) in the role as KB & P’s only Black advertising executive professional on the scene*. Working on an account who’s success at the time and still is almost entirely due to it’s predominantly African American consumer base. Which meant that I was the strat planner who served up her strategic insights with interpretive sides, mains, and chasers of culturally rich intelligence too. To an entirely white “team” including the ad agency (account people, creatives, the media department), the in-house PR firm (that footed the bill for most of our nightly bar research (YES it was valid research) and at least two tiers on the client side (the Americans with an office in Manhattan and “The French” whose offices were somewhere in Cognac, France I suppose. (never had any meetings at that location so 🤷🏽♀️…).
Frequently though (ok, every single day…) I was “asked” (read: TAXED) to also “weigh in” with my high cultural intel IQ on a range of race-related consumer issues that would come up across various accounts , product categories, and prospective creative campaigns throughout the agency. Keep in mind “Google” had just been invented like two years earlier and people didn’t have the smart phones glued to their palms to seek instant answers or at least get some inkling of guidance or reading lists, hyperlinks to articles, anything. And ad people are quite the curious bunch. Regardless of whatever paid for research they might or might not conduct, my colleagues (as well as agency management / higher ups) came to me with expectations that I’d have top of mind all the “Black answers” about Black People everywhere (here, abroad…). Answers to all their questions and debates that would come up in their millions of daily meetings. Inquiries about driving cars (while Black?), or whether Black banking customers might be offended by this that or the other ad or if they would in fact relate to it. A bottomless pit of consumption related q’s or seeking my one (yes, Black but sole) opinion with regards to what would or wouldn’t work well in all of Black World — I.e. 35 million+ ppl ? (Wakanda wasn’t part of our collective consciousness yet then, otherwise i woulda used that as a synonym for Black World 😆).
You may or may not be surprised to learn that no matter how much obviously valuable intel I dished out, that particular recurring role was not included in MY compensation. Despite failed attempts to negotiate otherwise, all a that time and energy exertion was taken for granted. In hindsight I crudely view it as some of them having a sense of entitlement to know whatever it was “their” smart ‘House Negress’ knew. And at the time the person playing that (un-auditioned for) role happened to be me. I suppose the powers that be there figured all the “free” booze (spoiler alert — more on that below) made up for it? Now some years later as a seasoned food & drink historian, that does raise all kindsa red (brown, yellow, black, etc.) flags for me. And while I do love and appreciate wines & spirits, etc. (+ have a knack for creating culturally-relevant cocktail expressions of the latter), I don’t and really never did drink THAT much (volume-wise ;). To this day I’m much more the ever so subtly influential party girl type which meant that any and all free bottles and extra cocktails i ever received were shared with countless others.
So yeah, I couldn’t even watch Mad Men until I’d had a few years of distance from the real life boozy, bigoted biz (some time after diving in deeply to the also time-warped hospitality world — mere moments before Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” became the sensation it was, providing up close and personal insight into that wacky wonderful food & wine-filled world). Before then it too oft felt like upon tuning into MadMen I was transported back to the ad world workplace, hours after 5pm (which was the norm to work ridiculously late nights, weekends, holidays…) as I watched onscreen complexly portrayed, class conscious, sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, retro (yet attitudinally timeless) fictional ad industry characters who reminded me of my real-life contemporary co-workers...
In one of the season 6 episodes Dawn vents to her friend Nikki about what it’s like to work at the now-called SCDP (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) agency : "Everybody's scared there! Women crying in the ladies room... Men crying in the elevator... and every day it sounds like New Years Eve when they're emptying the garbage, there's so many bottles!”. [I’d say hat’s a timeless observation I (and a lot of people regardless of race or hue who’s ever worked in advertising in decades past) can completely relate to].
And when I say boozy, I mean BOOZY. I was / we were working on major big time spirits accounts after all. Beyond the cognac I / we also worked on a cordials/liqueur account (Grand Mariner) — and a wine one (Rioja Wines from Spain) — oh and there was a champagne or two (i.e., Moët, Dom Perignon) in the line up. In fact, that KB&P gig marked my official (professional) foray into liquid luxuries work. (Not including when I used to pretend to bartend — circa age 10 — at my grandfather’s beautiful basement bar that he’d actually built ...). Anyway, nightly bar (plural) visits were my norm the minute I stepped off the plane, having relocated myself from the much less boozy LA ad life to that in the ‘always imbibing’ big apple (although not quite as ‘always imbibing’ as when I’d worked in the ad world in LONDON. But I’ll save that for another story. Maybe do a TFG retro boozy series. Who knows.). Anyways, to be clear, I am absolutely not complaining about the drinking for free “at a bar(s) every night” part. AT ALL. In fact that was some of the best qualitative research i’d ever done in my life. And having just moved to NYC, it was wonderful to not to have to pick up my own bar tab for a few years. I had no idea how expensive it was to drink well in this city til some years later once that gig was up. And, of course, getting stiffed as a freelancer didn’t make it easy at all for me to continue my ‘always out on the town’ modus operandi. So I switched gears and got my home mixology game on point. Premium alcohol is expensive whether you buy it in a retail store or an on-premise account (i.e. bar or restaurant) so if you know what you’re doing the price point per drink is way more affordable at your or your friends & family’s home bar than the the public ones I frequent much less … frequently.
And for even more on the bright side, I have to acknowledge that it was there (at KB & P) where my formal wine & spirits education began. They (as in KB & P — using client coffers ) even sent me to study at the then prestigious Windows on the World Wine Classes taught by Kevin Zraly on the top floor (107th) of the North Tower (Building One) of the original World Trade Center in lower Manhattan in 1999 and in 2000. Yes I count my blessings that my classes did not continue into September of 2001. But later after ongoing study and such I advanced to the WSET program which includes the study of both wine and spirits (basically all the beverages containing alcohol) …
The cocktail picture in this post is from present day (Summer 2023). I was feeling nostalgic I suppose — no doubt sparked by the special, semi-spooky yet spectacular setting of the historically significant Montauk Club (est 1889) here in Brooklyn.
What I (still) love about a Side Car is its simplicity (just 3 main ingredients) and the juicy citrusy tartness that comes from the FRESH SQUEEZED lemon juice to balance out the sweetness (the ones I remember always had sugar rims). Oh and its retro “classic cocktail’ status too of course. C’mon, I am a culinary historian now after all.
Want my slight twist on a simple “Hennessy Side Car” recipe I found? Ok, here are the INGREDIENTS For 1 cocktail(s) — do the math to make more servings in one swoop…
1.75 oz Hennessy V.S.O.P (unless/until Hennessy becomes a generously PAYING Patron of mine (https://www.patreon.com/thefoodgriot) feel free to use WHATEVER cognac (or brandy ! ) you want…. & who am i kidding, as someone who actually loves the taste and flavor of cognac, I’d just round up to 2 oz. how you supposed to accurately measure 1.75 oz anyway?….
0.5 oz Grand Marnier* (recipe version in hyper link below calls for Cointreau. Your choice!)
0.5 oz Lemon juice
1 Orange zest
HENNESSY SIDECAR COCKTAIL RECIPE /instructions":
Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker and fill with ice cubes.
Shake vigorously until well mixed and well chilled.
Strain into a glass and garnish with orange (or lemon) zest.
Want more food & drink recipes on the regular? 🍸🍹🧑🏽🍳🥘🔥…
Join my Patreon community : In support of this still woefully under-compensated work that I do. But it’s not just about being supportive b/c you get a lot out of the exchange too! For one, there are myriad ways to interact with me directly including asking q’s about your fave food (& drinks) throughout history and one-on-one tutorials (which can be applied to your classrooms, boardrooms…)… Countless culinary (and cocktail or mocktail) related ways to expand your minds AND your hearts as you gain understanding, foster greater appreciation and gratitude for your and “other” cultures and peoples who brought and continue to bring so much to this vast American table. … AND like I said, you’ll be supporting me and this work that i do that I know ya’ll love and appreciate as I continue along my path towards empowerment (vs. the days when my creative ideas were extracted and felt entitled to by the powers that be and literally not valued — as elements within the above story showed…). I’ll look forward to sharing more with you and to continuing the convo there!
Here’s the Patreon hyperlink again, out in the open vs. embedded in a hyperlink, for anybody who’s old-school (no judgement!) : https://www.patreon.com/thefoodgriot/membership