When Mike first came to the agency, with his scraggly beard, you see he was a true creative.
We were looking for an art director.
I had a bad experience with a previous art director who couldn't draw.
So I asked Mike, can you draw?
He got upset. He said, what the hell kind of question is that?
Of course I can draw. I'm an art director.
When I got my interview schedule and I found out I was going to have to be interviewed
and show my work to Mike Laser. I remember being, wow, this is so cool.
He's on the cover of magazines.
He's a great creative mind. It was always great to bounce ideas off of.
Winning new business and supervising the work of teams on launch and launch and launch and launch.
The SDN at the time was kind of the launch agency.
A pretty risky move for a SDN to bring a writer 10,000 miles away from Australia to work with Mike.
But truth be told, they had no choice because no one else wanted to work with Laser over there, so I had to come.
He invested a lot in finding just the right people and making sure there was just the right chemistry.
Mike really kind of always looked at the creative department as his kind of close family.
He nurtured that environment.
We were able to get the best creative people in the business because of Mike's atmosphere
and of course a little bit of money helped too.
He let me as a junior handle the entire retouching process with this company
and I never had any background experience at all and he just let me do it.
I remember going to a client with Mike asking me again, what's your title?
I said, I'm assistant art director, Mike. So he harded me as.
He was like, nah, nah, nah, I'm not going to introduce you as an assistant art director. You're an art director.
Mike was the kind of leader who could kind of take a step back and let you do your thing.
We presented our ideas and they were horrible.
But then at the same time he'd come in at the right point.
He never told you they were horrible. He didn't have to tell you they were horrible. You could see it in his face.
And always make whatever you did better.
But at the same end he saw something there and he allowed you to push further.
Mike knew that the best way to grow a client relationship was to grow their business by providing great creative ideas.
He would attack things creatively by trying to commit things from unexpected angles.
He was always asking and kind of wanting to know how you would of course resolve a problem.
Instead of everybody getting into a room to figure out an idea, we'd go out to lunch, go visit museums.
Mike held a very high standard in creative.
Mike designed a fold out banana file card in the sales force as well as doctors had a lot of fun with it.
That little fold out file card also garnered a silver award at the Rx Club awards that year.
The only time that Mike was a disappointment to me was when at an annual creative awards ceremony,
the Tory laser agency beat out client Davidson Mann.
Mike was a very good entrepreneur. He kept things on the straight.
Mike is a perfect dresser. Nothing out of place.
He's been a friendly competition.
Who was the best dressed guy at the agency?
And I think he won that battle when he noticed one day that I missed a loop on my belt.
He would encourage you to read different things and listen to different kinds of music.
You could find him in his office playing his guitar.
It was very often that you would walk past and you'd hear him strumming.
If you went to him with an issue or a problem and you started talking to him about it,
he would just reach behind him, grab his guitar.
Mike was pretty good. He was giving it a good shot.
As you're talking to him, he would just start strumming the guitar
and playing it over what you're saying to him.
What's going on in there? It's like a little jam session going on.
And that was kind of Mike's way of saying, I don't want to hear this shit.
Boy, this guy has a sweet gig.
Mike was all about the kind of work hard, play hard mentality.
There was this time where we called it the bus of silence.
We went up to Palisades Mall where's Dave and Buster's there.
And Mike was in there just as much as anybody else jumping in. And I think Marcia has pictures.
That one I can't show.
So you should ask her.
That one I can't show.
To see those.
That one I really can't show.
This is me beating you in arm wrestling.
So don't forget, I can still get you.
