Interviewing for a job as a stripper, streaking across a golf course and playing Twister with a trucker were just a few of the homework assignments given to students in my recent journalism seminar.
More than a week ago, I participated in the Wieden workshop, a two-day class instructed by Dan Wieden himself, the creator of the famous slogan “Just do it” and president of international advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. The course was enjoyable last year, so I decided to sign up again.
We introduced ourselves at the beginning of the workshop, and each named something we feared. But I knew it was no ordinary introduction, especially when Dan Wieden and the three men with him from the agency were taking notes on each response.

After we finished listing our fears, which ranged from being scared of monkeys to turning out like our parents, we learned the workshop’s theme was confronting our fears and capturing the act on video. Because some of our fears were intangible, I was curious to see what they would have us do, but I figured they had some sort of plan.
As it turned out, they didn’t have much of a plan at all. They had only planned about six tasks and had students help come up with the rest. My first assigned task was to approach a stranger in the airport, acting as if I knew him or her, and convince the person to get coffee with me. I couldn’t figure out where the fear confrontation was in this one; it seemed more like a study in
manipulating strangers.
After asking the instructor how that task forced me to address a fear, I was assigned an alternate task: Go to a wedding, and when the minister asks if anyone objects, stand up and say something. I couldn’t help but think that I should make three copies of that video: One for Mr. Wieden, one for my mother and one for Satan to tell him I’m on my way!
There was no way I could go through with the assignment, but for a minute I actually pondered the idea. Dan Wieden didn’t have a problem with it, so why did I? It didn’t take long before I realized there was no moral justification for ruining someone’s wedding; doing it because someone else thought it would be funny certainly wasn’t reason enough.
Again I felt the need to question and asked the men how they would feel if someone did this at their wedding. I said I had no problem facing my own fears, but I would not ruin someone’s special day in the process. Most of them agreed, so I prepared myself for yet another task.
New suggestions for my assignment included kissing the groom at the reception or stealing a wedding present. Eventually they told me I had to do a stand-up routine at a comedy club. I could handle that.
I felt so relieved to have homework that didn’t involve sacrificing my personal ethics that I almost forgot about the absurdity of the workshop. But that night, as I edited my Honors College thesis on advertising and ethics, my concerns came rushing back. Here I sat with a paper where I was trying to combat the “sleazy” image of the advertising industry an hour after I had been slapped in the face with it. Although my paper addresses the ethical implications advertising has on society, the topic of personal ethics came up often in my research. In fact, in one of my focus groups of five advertising students, three of them said they would sacrifice their personal ethics because they would be afraid of losing their job. Lose your job? What about failing a class and disappointing one of the biggest names in advertising? This situation was the one every workshop student unfairly faced.
I met with the dean of the journalism school to express my concerns. He suggested that maybe the real fear to be faced in the workshop was Dan Wieden. Didn’t I already do that? And what kind of workshop is that? I want a workshop where I tell people who idolize me to do things such as “Go out on a date with a blow-up doll” in order to teach the person a lesson. Actually, I think I’ll leave that up to the creators of reality television. I also don’t remember signing a waiver saying I would participate in an experiment on the psychology of unethical class assignments.
I’d love to believe Mr. Wieden’s intention was to teach us to stand up to authority, but I honestly don’t. And if it is, well, his strategy is very dangerous, because if I had gone ahead and objected to a marriage, I would have not only failed at the “hypothetical” lesson of the workshop, but also ruined someone’s wedding in the process. I’m sure that wouldn’t sit on my conscience for long. I mean, it was just a joke.
The problem is that this is a classroom environment, with Dan Wieden serving as a mentor. George Cox, a professor of public affairs at Georgia Southern University, addresses the issue students face interacting in an “artisan/apprentice” relationship. He states, “Those of us who are far enough along in life to discern the moral competence of others will avoid collaboration with questionable colleagues. Nevertheless, we cannot expect student apprentices to be experienced and discerning in such matters.” While Mr. Wieden might not be aware of the principles surrounding teaching ethics, the journalism school should have realized the situation students faced. Instead, the school said it does not condone illegal or unethical behavior, yet neither did it provide students with a manner by which to make ethical judgments. The school’s reply to concerns about the class was that it was not about the task, but the chance to show how creative you are to Dan Wieden.
The workshop, which was advertised as “an extraordinary opportunity for any advertising student,” required an application and selection process. The students enter the workshop feeling privileged just to be there. So when one of the biggest names in advertising tells them to do something moronic and record it on video, they don’t question it, but say, “Should I bring popcorn?” Sometimes when we idolize people we laugh at everything that comes out their mouth and do anything they ask us to do, whether it’s get them coffee or, as was assigned to one student in this class, convince your parents that you’re gay.
Someone suggested this issue was ultimately one I needed to work out with Mr. Wieden myself, but I’m not sure the student’s role is to regulate the behavior of her teachers. That’s where I expect the school to step in and stand up not only for me, but for all my peers. I do not know if Mr. Wieden’s intentions were different from the ones he stated at the workshop, but intentions aside, the effects of these assignments could have been very emotionally damaging or even punishable by law.
We were told to continue to face our fears on the second day of the workshop by singing and dancing in front of the agency’s employees. I guess I’m the fool for paying $400 for a workshop that treats me like a puppet, but I trusted that the journalism school wouldn’t offer a class in which the instructors took advantage of their authority in such a way.
Well, I’ve faced my fear of speaking up against Dan Wieden, talking to faculty and making my concerns known to the dean. Maybe I didn’t need a workshop on fear after all.
I know I should never have been asked to do something ethically wrong for a class assignment. I should never have been exposed to a learning environment where the instructor seemingly took advantage of his authority for his own amusement at the expense of the students. I may only be 22 years old with a monthly income that barely covers my rent and the utopian vision that I can make the world a be
tter place, but don’t sell my intelligence and integrity short.
“Jump,” you say? Mr. Wieden, I’ll pass.