“Gilbert’s unexpected detour was full of light-hearted messaging: always make the best of a situation; adjust, relax, don’t panic.”
When my public relations business was starting out and I was young and enthusiastic and didn’t think about things like dangerous weather events, I was hired to plan a holiday celebration in which major donors of a non-profit organization would be invited to a field transformed to look and feel like the inside of someone’s house, including a lovely living room with beautiful furniture and holiday decorations, fancy food, pretty lights and talented children playing violins. It would symbolize a place of warmth where people gathered to be together in joy and harmony and giving. And it was a fantastic idea because this large, open lot would be developed into a home one day that would bring people together to create all these good things, and we wanted to offer a vision of this wonderful place.
But, very late the night before the late-morning, invitation-only affair, I sat in my car at the field, frozen in horror and disbelief as gusting, howling Arctic winds tore and punched and battered and whipped and shredded and lifted and dropped the giant tent we had rented, over and over and over again.
So, even later that night, I called the tent company owner to report the scene and he promised to be there early the next day with a new tent and everything would work out in time to bring in the over-stuffed sofas and the strings of tiny lights and the children playing holiday music and the photographer and the fake trees and the hors d‘oeuvres and the dignitaries.
But early the next morning, I sat in my car at the field, frozen in horror and disbelief as the replacement tent was being ripped and pitched and pounded and pummeled and bounced over and over and over again. The obvious answer was to move the event indoors. Turns out, trying to find a large indoor space at the very last minute during the height of the holiday season is not easy. In fact, that morning, it proved impossible.
Some of those involved in the event, my clients, suggested we simply cancel. But I would not give up. People had traveled great distances for this occasion and there had to be a way, even though the winds had whipped the snowy field into a ridiculously slippery glacier. Meanwhile, the event itself was self-destructing – the children couldn’t perform for fear of ruining their instruments in the bitter cold, the photographer’s camera froze, the fake trees were slammed by the winds and lying sidewise all over the ground and the people carrying in the furniture could not walk across the ice slick. There were also some electrical concerns and other safety issues, but the biggest problem that I could see was the ice keeping us from the now sad “house” with the tattered walls.
Fortunately, I had college students interning for me who were also young and enthusiastic. I sent them out to buy every bag of kitty litter they could find and haul back in 30 minutes. We’d spread kitty litter all over the icy ground in a tasteful gravel-like pathway and then we could carry in the furniture and the food and no one would slip! Brilliant!
What we didn’t consider was that kitty litter comes in all different colors and really weird odors.
Moments before the event was supposed to begin, I gave a good look at the ginormous smelly, frozen mess we had made all over this field. And that’s when the major donors and dignitaries arrived, looking cold and confused as they gingerly set out across the pink, green and gray pastel kitty litter path. And that’s also when I lost it. I couldn’t worry, panic or problem solve any more. All I could do was laugh, the uncontrollable doubled-over, crying-so-hard your mascara is all over your face kind of laughter that comes from complete surrender.
I was reading a book by Marc Guss, “Instincts of a Talent Agent,” in which he shared a story about losing his client, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, in New York City. Gottfried, the former voice of the Aflac Duck, was to be in the Advertising Hall of Fame Parade on a float with a giant stuffed duck handing out miniature stuffed ducks to spectators. Later, Guss learned that Gottfried’s driver took a wrong turn. Gottfried’s response was, “One minute, Mr. Peanut was in front of me, the next, we were stuck in traffic behind a city bus somewhere on the West Side.”
Guss writes, “Gilbert ended up handing out his stuffed ducks to random pedestrians in Manhattan.” As we read on, there’s a lesson here. “Gilbert’s unexpected detour was full of light-hearted messaging: always make the best of a situation; adjust, relax, don’t panic.”
In the business world, life can deliver a frozen field of kitty litter or a float-load of stuffed ducks. Adjust, relax, don’t panic, and in memory of Gilbert Gottfried, his family suggests we
“…keep laughing as loud as possible.” FBN
By Bonnie Stevens, FBN
Bonnie Stevens is a public relations consultant. She can be reached at bonnie.stevens@gmail.com.
