Jon Kamen

Jon Kamen, 57, is chairman and CEO of @radical.media, a transmedia company producing everything from TV spots to award-winning series such as Mad Men. Kamen chaired Cannes’ inaugural Film Craft jury in 2010. He tells Diana Goodman about being an explorer in the sea change of the media landscape.

How would I describe myself? As ‘Little Jonny Kamen’. That’s what I was called when I was a kid, as the youngest of four brothers, and when I look in the mirror I see essentially the same person – only old, grey and balding.

It’s a Peter Pan thing, I guess – I don’t want to grow up – and it’s partly who we are as a company. When we first hung a sign over our offices on Hudson Street I was asked what date should be inscribed on it. I said, “I don’t want a date, I want it to say ‘never established’.” And that’s a mantra for me and the company: constantly curious and never totally satisfied.

I grew up in Jamaica, Queens (not the estates), three blocks from the 169th Street subway stop and Jamaica High. We had a postage stamp of a lawn and the most eclectic bunch of ethnically diverse kids you could imagine.

At school they started bussing to force racial integration. It was contested by some, but not in my household. My parents were intent on raising us in an environment of tolerance and equality. But I can still remember the day the first kids were bussed in. It seemed the strangest idea.

We had milk in glass bottles delivered on Tuesdays, chickens delivered Friday and an account with Harry the Dairy Crest ice cream guy (but just one a day).

Bigotry and anti-Semitism were rampant at that time. Today, New York is a relatively homogenous society (who am I kidding?), which almost couldn’t have been imagined in my lifetime. Obama is a shining example of how far we’ve come and how much further we have to go.

Dad was a paediatric dentist who specialised in treating mentally impaired and handicapped kids. Mom was an elementary school teacher of various grades.

They were the most caring, loving parents on earth. Dad never raised his voice and my mother only whooped me once – and I deserved it. I was going through a slight pyromaniac phase and I nearly set the house on fire by pouring kerosene on the barbecue. When my mother realised that I could have blown us all up, it wasn’t pretty.

We had it all: a new Oldsmobile every five years; Schwinn bikes of varying sizes with tanks; Radio Flyer sleds. And my grandmother, who lived with us, even had a DuMont Television. While my brothers were busy becoming accomplished musicians, I somehow got to hang out with Grandma and watch Divorce Court, Perry Mason or Eliot Ness and became extremely proficient with the rabbit ears.

Dad used to say, “Paul plays the guitar” (he’s now a dentist); “Michael plays the piano” (sadly, he’s now deceased, but he became a seriously accomplished musician and composer); “Lenny plays the trumpet” (he’s a doctor); and “Jonny plays the TV!” (I guess I still do).

I get on great with my family, but life sucks. Six years ago we lost my mother, my brother Michael (way too early) and my dad all in about a year and a half. Three down, three to go. I don’t know how I survived, but you just do.

Was I happy as a child? Most of the time. Let me put it in perspective. It was America in the late 50s and early 60s, before things got ugly. It was before the Vietnam War, before we started to have a lot of political strife in the country, and before the rash of assassinations and the anti-war movement.

My family originally came from Russia and Prussia. My grandfather was a dentist in Moscow who left just before the Russian revolution. He became a house painter in America but then went on to get his US dental degree in America and eventually had an office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where my mother’s father was a street peddler. It’s amazing that Williamsburg is now such a chichi neighbourhood.

At one point in time, between my father and my uncles and cousins, there were no fewer than nine dentists in the family. I opted out but often feel as though I’m pulling teeth every day.

I travel almost every week; it’s become second nature. I’m not going to tell you that I love the whole experience of airports and airlines but I do like the face-to-face interaction with people that travelling affords me – and of course the occasional airline security pat-down.

My wife and I have been married for 32 years but my standard joke is that with my travel schedule we’ve only been together for two. Maybe that’s the secret of our marriage. She is a very independent woman and she realised early on that the success of our relationship was not going to be dependent on my presence.

We have two wonderful, well-adjusted children. My daughter, Lisa, is actually a trained chef but she works for a very cool restaurant group (the Bromberg Brothers) here in New York, in new business development. My son, Zack, studied industrial design and has a fantastic job working for Apple. I’ll never know what he does – it’s like having a son in the CIA.

Both children went to independent schools; I was a public school [state school in UK] boy. It’s possible that I never graduated from high school (seems like I didn’t pick up the diploma and I haven’t actually bothered to find out).

I then went on to a short stint at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The professors were cool (Diane Arbus, Elliott Erwitt, Duane Michals) but conveniently I didn’t need a diploma to get in. It became an accredited college which would have required it right after I dropped out. Seems like ‘I don’t need no education’ (which was, ironically, orchestrated 10 years later by my late brother Michael Kamen) was an early theme song.

I occasionally wish I’d attended school more formally, but you tend to compensate for what you’ve missed and, intellectually, I can hold my own in most conversations.

I got into advertising because a photographer, Jerry Abramowitz, who was a friend of my parents’ friends, took me in – apparently because (I’ve only learned recently) I was a problem child. Who knew?!

I became his assistant at age 17. He showed me the world and taught me how to drive a [shift] stick. I went on to work for some of New York’s legends and ended up at the Mecca of studios (there were only a few): Horn/Griner.

As Steve Horn’s and Norman Griner’s assistant, I learned how to produce. They were photographers who were seriously getting into the television directing thing, because print was dying. Look magazine closed, Life was struggling, but television was just celebrating 20 years of success and looked as though it was going to stick. Any photographer worth his salt was migrating into TV.

Horn/Griner was my school. Half the ads I loved were produced by those guys, and the legends of Doyle Dane Bernbach and Wells Rich Greene were regular customers. Guys like Roy Grace (a god) roamed the halls. Why do you think I had to do Mad Men? I lived the tail end of it.

In 1975, Henry Sandbank (a legendary still-life photographer) asked if I would come to work for him. He, too, was making the migration and figured he could hire me for cheap and transform his print studio into a film company. The rest is history. I became his producer and we did so well that he shortly made me his partner.

By 1993, so much was happening (not unlike today) that it didn’t seem possible we could sit still. Sandbank himself was nearing retirement and didn’t want to take the risk, so he asked me to buy him out and gave me the freedom to screw it up all by myself! I may be stupid, but I’m no fool; I made Frank Scherma my partner and we rechristened the company @radical.media. With a name like that you have to do something…

Today, I define @radical.media as a “transmedia company” that creates, develops, produces and distributes content for all platforms of media. We’ve come a long way and have had the opportunity to produce countless television series, documentaries, web/digital initiatives and naturally (and, hopefully, still great) commercials.

Actually, I feel that everything we do is under the auspices of advertising and marketing. You always have to sell something, even if it’s just a pure entertainment project.

Projects I have a tremendous passion for are the ones that present the biggest challenges. We develop from the ground up and projects like 19.20.21 – about cities and mass urbanisation – represent that in spades. They’re as multidimensional as they get, ambitious as hell and may get the better of us, but I’m determined.

When I told my dad that I was quitting school and going off to join the circus called advertising, he didn’t flinch and didn’t even stop shaving. All he said was, “Why?” I said, “Dad, it’s an incredibly exciting business . . . you learn something new every day.” That’s never changed.

The possibilities are endless and it’s exhausting, but we’re having serious fun. It’s almost as if we’re a bunch of explorers in the sea change of the media landscape.

It’s a difficult time in our industry but in my career I have worked through at least four recessions. It can be a rollercoaster ride but life is cyclical. We look back at Mad Men and think it was a golden era, but the really good times have probably not even happened yet. The potential and opportunities that lie ahead are absolutely inspiring, even though they’re unknown.

It was a childhood dream of mine to live in the country and work in the city and I live on a dirt road an hour north of New York. I’m a bit of a gardener and I like waking up smelling the roses. Also, I love ploughing snow; a snowstorm makes me feel like Shackleton fighting the elements. Maybe it goes back to my Russian heritage.

As told to me by my Uncle Sasha in Moscow, my grandfather, Max, and his brother, Yasha, disagreed about the need to leave Russia. Max was a dentist working in Moscow and Yasha was an economics student studying in Germany. Things were getting a bit topsy turvy and my grandfather said, “Yasha, we’ve got to get out of here. It’s not going to be the friendliest place for Jews, whether religious or not.” But Yasha said, “No, Max. I’ve been studying Karl Marx and it sounds like an interesting experiment. I’d like to see how it works out.” Thankfully, he survived.

I judge a person slowly, but always with enthusiasm. The quality I most admire is the willingness to work hard.

I definitely care what others think of me and I hope it’s positive. I don’t have too many enemies, but where I do, I suspect they’re jealous.

The worst thing anyone could say to me is that they’re disappointed in me. Those are harsh words. As I mentioned earlier, my dad never raised his voice but he only had to say he was disappointed and it felt like quite a spanking. So I try not to disappoint people, while fully acknowledging that it sometimes happens.

My only vice is work; everything else has been in moderation. I had too many friends at an early stage who got screwed up by drugs, but somehow I avoided that. And I’m not a big drinker.

I’ve never had therapy. Only with amateurs – friends and family.

My greatest regret is not having enough time.

What makes me really angry is . . . disrespectful people.

My worst experiences in advertising have been when someone I’ve loved has left us: when a director or producer has decided to move on and there’s nothing I can do to encourage them to stay. That’s always a somewhat depressing moment for me because it’s clearly a failure of one sort or another.

The best moments are when someone new has done something brilliant.

I don’t think it’s necessary to believe in the product you’re working on, but to comprehend or appreciate it is essential.

Recently I’ve had the wonderful benefit of partnering with an old man, Richard Saul Wurman (he’s proud he’s getting old), who created and founded the TED Conference. He has been a wealth of information and inspiration for me and many on my team.

How important is money to me? I don’t love the stuff, I just like having enough to do what I want to do. Unfortunately, that’s too much.

The ‘We Love New York’ campaign after September 11 was developed because there were a bunch of us in a meeting with the Mayor’s office. We were all scared shitless that it was the beginning of the end. That’s when it’s important to have a slogan. I blurted it out and then got the job to ask Milton Glaser [I Love New York designer] for permission. He’s a very nice man.

Some days it’s tough to be an American, but when we get it right, I’m really proud. I hope that someday we’ll make doing the right thing our business and purpose in this world. Could you imagine a Department of Peace? Somebody suggested it at a TED Conference; that would be brilliant!

Politically, I’m an old lefty. My attitude to the War on Terror is that we completely screwed up. It’s sad.

I’m not quite sure why there are no anti-war protests today. Perhaps it’s partly due to apathy and partly because there’s no draft – sadly the latter’s the most likely reason. I suspect that a lot of the tensions over Vietnam were over the draft, because serving by lottery didn’t seem fair or right. The shift to a volunteer army has changed the passion of protest.

The greatest human inventions are Liquid Prell or Saran Wrap (according to the 1,000-year-old man. Who could argue?).

Supposedly I’m on my eighth Kindle (is that possible?), but I’m an iPad guy now. Basically, I’m a visual storyteller.

I collect photography, mostly from the last century. I worked with Dick Avedon so I have a very strong connection to him and I own a significant body of his work. I also have a large collection of Irving Penn’s work. Both of those masters inspired me early on in my own career. I have a wonderful portrait of Avedon that was taken by Penn and the expression on Dick’s face says everything about the famous rivalry between the two of them.

My mother was brought up in a very religious household and she was regarded as a black sheep for going out with, and then marrying, my dad, who was not that big on religion. Sometimes when I use the expression “Thank god”, I feel a bit apologetic, but for me god is just another guy.

I’m a fairly committed atheist. Although I was brought up with a religious education, my record in Hebrew school was even more dismal than my academic career. Also, being the fourth child, I tended to be able to get away with letting my religion slide more than my brothers did.

The worst thing that has ever happened to me? Losing a family member or a friend is right up there.

The last time I cried was when I heard some of my brother’s music. I miss him. He was a pretty special guy and anyone who came in contact with him wouldn’t disagree.

I’m not really afraid of dying. I only hope I get to say goodbye.

I want to be cremated and have my ashes strewn everywhere they can be – co-mingled with the planet.

If I could change the world, I would ... wish others could be devoid of pain and suffering.

If I could relive my life, I would ... probably go to school and study something.

What gives me real pleasure is ... sharing with friends and family.

What children need most is constant, undying love and affection. Surround them with it. (Trust me, it works!)

What, in the end, really matters? All you need is love, health and happiness.