Back in the day, belonging to my local advertising club meant two-hour lunches and hobnobbing with the stars of our industry. Today, nobody has two minutes to participate. After a two-year stint as our local chapter president, I learned that ducking and diving is the new status quo of club leadership today. Ask someone to participate? Ha! Watch them dodge and weave and disappear into thin air.

Ad Club members are apathetic. And ad club board members are even worse. To them, “committee” is now a four-letter word. Even if I could get a board member to sign up to chair a committee, they would go Zero Dark Thirty. Then I thought, “maybe they can co-chair” and share the responsibility. After all, many hands make light work. Nope. The only hands I saw were twiddling their thumbs. I went to ad club district and national conferences that provided handy dandy training on “how to motivate your board.” And “how to retire” non-performing board members in a politically correct way.” But the truth is, you can try every trick in the book and they still won’t engage. About the only thing they do get excited about is putting the title “board member” on their resumes.

I have no desire to participate on an ad club board ever again. I’ll just be content to sit back, twiddle my thumbs and enjoy my retirement.