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Tom Farmer |
25 Random Things about Tom Farmer
1. I worked fifteen years in broadcast news before turning to corporate media and communications strategy. My Solid State work is a cousin of journalism; I nail down facts and weave accurate stories that win notice. Brands, products and services are really stories with embedded invitations.
2. As an agency creative director I did a VIP visitors’ gallery at the AT&T Network Operations Center with big interactive digital displays dramatizing network design principles.
3. I’m good at moderating focus groups and almost always tease out some fresh insight, but I don’t like seeing organizations base big strategic calls solely on the results.
4. I’ve written for the Harvard Business Review.
5. I’m a former executive producer of Larry King Live at CNN, which won two CableACEs and a Peabody Award during my stint.
6. One of my favorite jobs at Solid State is developing corporate or product names. They should mean something. Too many are mellifluous but meaningless.
7. I broke into television reporting in 1981 at WCAX-TV in Burlington, Vermont, amid a crippling recession. In a gig like that you have to keep generating great stories on deadline, or you’re gone. You can’t fail to have an idea. Nothing after that scared me.
8. I am undecided about this Twitter thing.
9. After getting “walked” by a rude Houston hotel clerk, I drafted a “graphic complaint” called Yours is a Very Bad Hotel. A friend’s wife let it loose on the web and I got 6000 attaboy emails. The hotel changed its name, though not because of me.
10. Interviewing smart people is a great high, especially when I can set up questions new to them. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing the inventors of the microprocessor, politicians, CEOs, film stars… it never gets old.
11. I love transit maps and how they recast complex spatial data in clean, stark terms. Some of the best information design is on subway walls.
12. I have at least much fun advising a small company on its way up as I do working with big names.
13. I once had a French car. Youthful indiscretion. It had a choke knob. Like a lawn mower. Accelerated like one too.
14. I line-produced the 1993 NAFTA debate between Vice President Al Gore and Ross Perot. At the time it was the most-viewed cable TV program ever, a title since swiped by World Championship Wrestling.
15. When I was a local news guy I’d walk into restaurants and people recognized me, which was nice, but I wasn’t making enough to buy dinner. There is this myth that there’s money in TV.
16. On Larry King we loved it when Don Rickles was the sole guest, because it was essentially a night off. Nobody had to pre-interview or prepare questions. We just stood around laughing helplessly. I have some great Don Rickles stories.
17. My corporate videos for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and The Walt Disney Company won “Telly” awards at the New York Film Festival.
18. While producing a live CNN telecast I once got to tell the president of the United States he had two minutes to go to the bathroom. Two minutes, strict, sir.
19. In grade school, my son was taught PowerPoint design before grammar or punctuation. I think that sums up some of what’s wrong with our little ball of wax, right there.
20. I wrote a keynote for Intel’s Andy Grove that he delivered at a gigantic global telecom conference in Geneva with Nelson Mandela in the crowd. Under pressure like that a CEO can mangle the speech, and the writer’s heart quietly breaks. But Andy did great. One of my proudest moments.
21. I had wanted to anchor a newscast since boyhood, but three months after starting I was thinking about what came next. As 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt said, it’s not really a job for grown-ups.
22. I traveled a lot as a producer for CNN’s Special Events Unit. People think I saw the world. I saw the insides of a lot of airliners, shuttle vans and Sheratons.
23. One of my best copywriting projects at Solid State was direct mail for a family-owned funeral home in Tacoma. The client wanted to connect with people about death unblinkingly without offending them.
24. My first network news job was to come in at 300am and organize early-morning cut-ins. That was my zombie year. I’d rather stay awake until 800am than get up at 200am.
25. I’m good at helping people make hay from frequent-flyer programs. Retain Solid State and I’ll throw some of that in.