Well spotted.

If Wayne Gretzky, the hockey GOAT, had been mad enough to trade in his skates for a slap shot through advertising, he might have put it thusly: "you miss 100% of the creative opportunities you don't see."

That, at least, was my first reaction to an improbably funny sidewalk sign for a DC neighborhood pot dispensary reading, "King Weedy for the Needy."

My second was sparked by the $250/ounce price point: Who knew cannabis had to be shipped through the Strait of Hormuz? 

Putting that aside, the fact that an uber-local retailer not only understood the sales value of tickle-bone funny, but saw how to turn that observation into action is kind of encouraging.

Makes we wish the advertising industry could follow suit and abandon its current obsessive-depressive fixation on AI and the “how” of making things; instead, devoting all that useful focus to the creative "why, what, and where" of the things we make. 

The remarkable Bob Brihn tells me it all jogs his memories of the way Fallon McElligott Rice (now Fallon) got famous on the strength of early work for no-name brands.

This, he says, presented opportunities they “exploited to the max,” growing an advertising whale on the strength of work for minnows.

Literally.

As in their ads for Elmer’s bait shop with the fav headline: "My minnows will catch fish or die trying."

As in their campaign for the local Episcopal Church, one featuring a photo of the bible headlined. "Spoiler alert: the hero gets killed in the end."

As in myth-busting ads for the city of Omaha that challenged, “Are you living in the right country, but the wrong city?"

And, as in the ad they ran for their own damn selves: "A new advertising agency for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them."

Pretty much nails it to the ground, doesn't it?  Or, is that the ceiling?

And not simply because Tom McGillgott and Nancy Rice were brilliant ad makers with generational copy and visual talents.

But because they somehow saw opportunities that everyone else missed. Both in the work they did and for the global center of gravity they were building.

Makes me wonder if the good people at Washington Hydro, proud home of “King Weedy,” might be open to some pro help in spotting their next creative main chance.

Be fun to ask.