Danielle Sacks

In the weeks after Color’s belly flop last spring, friends and colleagues were concerned that Nguyen might be humiliated, or devastated, or at least very stressed out by the $41 million of venture money invested in his failed product. But Nguyen understands the arithmetic of Silicon Valley, and anyway he isn’t one to reflect. “I never get emotional,” says Nguyen, who hasn’t spoken to his parents in six years. “I can have the biggest argument with someone, and five minutes later, I won’t even remember that it happened.” He’s not even particularly attached to his name. In third grade, he had a crush on a classmate whose mother asked him his name. “I go, ‘Vu.’ She goes, ‘Bill,’ and I go, ‘Aha!’ And all my friends have called me Bill since then,” recalls Nguyen. “My whole point was, I don’t care what people call me. It’s like, whatever’s easier for people, I’m totally cool with it.” He adds, “There is no Vietnamese person in the history of the world born with the name Bill. It’s a total facade.”

In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962. “Here we go again,” moans Andy Nibley, the former CEO of ad agency Marsteller who, over the past decade, has also been the CEO of the digital arms of both Reuters and Universal Music. “First the news business, then the music business, then advertising. Is there any industry I get involved in that doesn’t get destroyed by digital technology?”

Alex Bogusky, advertising Dadaist, postmodern media manipulator, pop-culture Houdini, daddy of 21st-century advertising, and now a seeker of meaning on the dirt path of life, invites me and his monk into the FearLess Cottage. … “So, I have to ask,” I start. “Is there any notion of a midlife crisis in this? You do happen to be 46.” Cradling a cup of chamomile tea, Bogusky releases a quiet laugh. “Yeah, just happen to be,” he smiles. “You know, I’m not completely unaware that that’s what this could be.”