Waitin’ on a Sunny Day

Tempur-Pedic®

By OOH TODAY believes all voices, not just the loudest, must be heard Last updated May 3, 2026

OOH…Here’s One Thing

by Jim Johnsen,
Managing Director, Johnsen, Fretty & Company

I finally decided to sit down and read Roy Park’s father/son biography, Sons in the Shadow. I first met Roy on a cold day in January 1994, after having almost died in someone’s single-engine prop plane. I learned what pneumatic de-icing boots were that day. Halfway to Ithaca, the pilot said, “I will try to bring the plane down to 500 feet to see if I can get the ice to leave the wings, otherwise we are going to have to ditch.” What the f%&k…my life’s dream was not to die performing my lowly investment banking duties. Needless to say I shared in Roy’s sometimes pre-lunch ritual that day.

But I digress, like usual. I am somewhere through 50% of the book so far. John Dos Pasos he is not. But who am I to be throwing stones. And yes the book is a bit clunky and is sometimes hard to figure out who is actually telling the story, but I can say, without reservation, that Roy speaks from the heart and he “hangs it all out there”. The good, the bad and the ugly. His father was a great man. And like all great men, let’s just say he had some shortcomings. Don’t we all. In any event I will not give away the plot. As Oprah says, read the book. Here is a little touching moment:

“Nothing takes as long as growing up. An hour is a hundred minutes, a day is a week, a week a month. And each month, waiting for the seasons to change, seems like two. A small house is huge, the front lawn a football field, a damned-up stream an Olympic swimming pool. Lightning bugs provide eternal fascination. Kick-the-can and hide-and-seek lasts all evening long. Fun goes on forever, but on our few bad days, the suffering does, too. And as the clock turns, we want to grow up faster. The process is far too slow. But the inevitable happens. An hour turns into thirty minutes. The days and weeks grow shorter. The months and years flash by. Things get smaller, nature gets overlooked, our calendars get crowded. Fun comes only in glimpses, no longer a day-long affair. The things we plan or anticipate too quickly come and go. Time rushes by, and we realize those long, long days we had growing up were simply not real. When we are old, the short, short days we know pale in comparison when we remember, in retrospect, that nothing goes by quicker than growing up.”

When we are old, the short, short days we know pale in comparison when we remember,
in retrospect, that nothing goes by quicker than growing up.”

So Johnsen, what’s the point? Well, a certain passage in the book hit me between eyes:

“Utilizing the same art that appeared on the food packages and in advertisements, a distinctive sign was created and offered to restaurants and lodging places recommended by the guidebooks. This “Recommended by Duncan Hines” shingle, hanging in front of a restaurant, resort, or place of lodging, was to become a highly sought-after symbol of prestige. So much so, that Hines had to take one con man to court for selling counterfeit signs. Duncan Hines, and later the cake mix, also became the subject of cartoons in magazines from the New Yorker to Playboy…

There was a second aspect of signage that Underwood recalls.

Aside from supervising the five or so full-time salesmen on the road selling the shingles and guidebooks to listed restaurants, hotels, motels, and resorts, Underwood’s job was to lease and erect billboards all over the country. The five-by-sixteen-foot signs displaying the “Recommended by Duncan Hines” message with the distinctive logo rising above the top of the billboard advertised listed establishments willing to pay the average charge of $85 a month. At the time, the business was able to write off the entire cost of putting up the signs as a tax-deductible expense instead of capitalizing and depreciating the cost over seven years. This combined with the income, Underwood said, led to my father’s realization of just how profitable the outdoor advertising business could be. From this humble beginning, outdoor advertising was later to become an integral part of the relationship between my father and me. After returning from an independent career in 1971 to work for him managing his Outdoor advertising division until buying it in 1988.”

No shite Johnsen, we all know that the billboard business is a great business. You made us read all of that to make that point?

Heck no folks, what I took away from the above is the fact that we hold the power of launching any good product or service, that’s worth launching, in our hands! Can you imagine if Lamar grabbed Lyft when it was just getting started and said “hey, you give us 30% of your business, and we will make you bigger than Uber”. I mean, if we are running at 70-75% occupancy, particularly on digital, we have unused inventory that could make the next Lululemon, right? Anyone ever think… why are we throwing all those ripe bananas away? Let’s go make a deal with Buffet’s dairy queen and sell some banana splits (does anyone still eat those things or are they passe?) And if your philanthropic brain takes your commercial brain over, shouldn’t we at least use every last piece of unused inventory for true charitable endeavors (beyond the stale “pass it on”)? Can you imagine if the OAAA got Lamar, CCO and Outfront together in a true lockstep clearing house? Maybe we would all be sleeping better on a Tempur-Pedic®.

With that said, I will leave you with a couple quotes for the week:

“Experience is what you got when you didn’t get what you wanted” Howard Marks

“Happiness never decreases by being shared” Gautama Buddha

And a reading assignment: Mastering the Long Game | Psychology Today

And a mandatory outtake: Bruce Springsteen “Waitin’ on a sunny day” – Over 200 Belgian musicians play for Bruce Springsteen