Professor Lehrer has left the building.

 

After 17 years of living under an alias, I have decided to retire from teaching. 

 

I won't pretend that I'm not terrified.  Reinventing yourself is never easy.  And none of my previous transitions have gone smoothly so I don't expect this one to be any different.  In fact, it will probably be harder.

 

My ego is more closely tied to being a professor at NYU than it ever was to my previous roles in advertising.  I even got a new name.  Now I wonder how many years it will take before I stop reacting when someone yells out "Professor."

 

But beyond this, Bette Davis had it right when she said: "Old age ain't no place for sissies."  And I think all those silly catchphrases like "60 is the new 40" must have been written by people in their 20's.  Because that is not my reality.

 

I'll miss the promise of a new semester.  And working with smart young people who want to change the world.  I'll probably miss them even more when I need someone to explain the next "NFT" to me.

 

But the call of things undone is getting louder.  And I realize that time is no longer infinite.  So I need to move on.  I have books I want to read and art I need to create. And hopefully many more years of joy ahead.

 

School's out forever...

 

Best of luck!

Prof. Lehrer

 

That's not why you bought the Rolex.

 

According to Rolex, their new Oyster Perpetual 41 watch offers fundamental gains in precision and resistance to shocks and magnetic fields.  It has a 70 hour power reserve and is waterproof as deep as 100 metres.

 

Well that certainly explains why it sells for $5,990.00 and up.

 

But if it's all about product performance, then how do we account for the counterfeit versions that line the streets of Chinatown along with designer bags, sunglasses and now - sneakers?

 

The answer is that all decisions are emotional.

 

I never intended to write books.  But when I began teaching advertising 17 years ago I discovered that the available textbooks were written by academics rather than practitioners.  And not surprisingly they missed most of the important stuff.

 

So I created slides based on my work experiences and shared those with my students.  But that wasn't much help for the ones who missed class.  Eventually I took pity on them and  pulled all the slides together and put them in a book. 

 

Since then, I have written several others as my area of interest morphed from marketing to consumer behavior. 

 

This book is a twofer.  It provides a curated selection of consumer behavior research that is directly applicable to marketing.  Endnotes provide links to the original research for those looking for more detail. 

 

It also explains and demonstrates how to use classic strategic formats - Target Recommendations, Positioning Statements, Creative Briefs and Obs & Strats.

 

Before now, I declined to release my books in digital formats because people learn better from books than screens.  But links aren't very helpful in a print book.

 

So, I am pleased to announce that you can find a link to the ebook here...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Thats-not-why-bought-Rolex-ebook/dp/B0B2KWPQC4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E3TE362K46K&keywords=pj+lehrer+ebook&qid=1653936305&sprefix=%2Caps%2C38&sr=8-1

 

And for those of you who still prefer real books, you can find the paperback here...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Thats-not-why-bought-Rolex/dp/0989742253/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ECSM84E2U8X8&keywords=pj+lehrer&qid=1653936390&sprefix=pj+lehrer+%2Caps%2C38&sr=8-1

 

Finally a big shout out to all those professionals who shared their knowledge with me over the past 40 years.  I am proud to pass it along.

 

Dare to try.

 

At the end of each semester I give my students a pep talk.  I thought I'd share it now because we could all use a pep talk these days.  Bear in mind that I teach Consumer Behavior.

 

"We've spent a fair amount of time in this course discussing loss aversion and the fact that we hate to lose more than we like to win.  Because of this we are hard wired to be risk adverse.

 

But if we don't take risks we can't succeed.  And based on my observations, people my age don't regret their failures as much as they regret the times they were too afraid to try.  So my advice is -  if something scares the heck out of you, as long as it won't physically harm you - you should do it. 

 

People ask me how I ended up being a professor at NYU.  I tell them that I had mono when I accepted the job. 

 

I was just past the contagious stage when I interviewed.  But my head was still so fuzzy that I never had the chance to second guess myself and wonder if I would be able to do it.  Later on when my head cleared, I did start to worry about what I had said yes to.

 

But, I was committed and I keep my commitments so I completed my syllabus and lesson plans and headed off to my first class.  I was so nervous that I misread the clock in the back of the classroom and accidentally let everyone leave an hour early.  I didn't realize my mistake until I got on the subway to go home.

 

Even so, I remember thinking - "I could be really good at this someday."  So I stuck with it until I was.

Making better people.

 

I was attending a tech training event when someone asked me what my goal as a professor was.  Since he was probably expecting me to say something like - I want to teach them how to develop creative briefs, he was shocked when I said that my goal was to make my students better people.

 

When I began teaching 17 years ago I realized that I was lucky if I remembered one thing from any of the classes I had taken in college.  So I asked myself - if I want students to remember one thing what would it be?  Since I was teaching advertising the answer was - Does it make me want to buy something?  Given the tendency to evaluate advertising as entertainment, just this simple reframing opened the door to new observations.

 

I'm not sure at what point I began to realize that my students were in fact children.  Perhaps it was after a few years of fielding their creative excuses for not doing their assignments.  My favorite: "The cruise ship didn't have Word." 

 

Therefore, I wasn't totally surprised when I learned that the human brain is not fully formed until age 25.  I adjusted accordingly.

 

I realized that simple things like explaining that deadlines don't change because you are having trouble meeting them, matter

 

Likewise, making them understand that granting exceptions for one student is unfair to all the others may be one of the most important concepts I teach. 

 

More recently my emphasis has shifted to helping them to recognize fake news and distinguish facts from opinions.  (Hint: Don't ask Siri.)

 

I hope that  I have created enough ripples at this point for my goals to have had impact not only on my students, but also on their friends, families and colleagues.

 

Time management, fairness and being able to recognize what's true and what isn't are all far more important in the long run than writing a terrific creative brief is.

 

And who knows?  Maybe they will remember the rule of threes too.