The View from the Office.

I caught up with Toby Barlow at the Crosby Hotel over tea. Toby is based in Detroit where he founded an award-winning advertising agency called Lafayette American.

Toby is a Mad Man. He worked at WPP for many years leading the Ford account. He has also helped create ads for Absolut Vodka, Barnes & Noble, The Sundance Channel, De Beers Diamonds, Kleenex, and Doctors Without Borders.

He’s also a Renaissance Man. He’s managed to find the time to write two books, Sharp Teeth, a horror thriller, and Babayaga, which blends Russian folklore with Cold War intrigue.

The day we met up he flew in from Detroit and headed straight to MoMa to catch Christian Markley’s exhibit, “The Clock,” a 24-hour video art installation composed of thousands of film and television clips where timepieces or references to time are mentioned.

Toby said Lafayette American had a great year, winning a Small Agency of the Year award from Ad Age. One standout project for the firm was rebranding the Toledo Museum of Art to tackle the challenge of getting people back to institutions post-COVID. The approach doubled neighborhood visitors.

Toby’s a big advocate for Detroit. Recently, his agency did some work with Michigan Central’s renovation efforts. Toby served on an advisory committee, helping the project manager.

One of my favorite things about Toby is that new projects are always percolating.

Currently, he is working on building a “Butterfly Superhighway” across America. As part of that, he’s trying to get people to plant more milkweed, the Monarch Butterfly’s only food. And to do that, he’s trying to change the name of milkweed so it sounds less terrible!

I’ve known Toby since the 1980s when we both attended St. John’s College in Santa Fe. We reconnected in recent years, bonding over shared interests in business, writing and communications. Those kinds of friendships are one of the pleasant surprises of getting older.

Toby’s headed to Mexico City in January if you happen to find yourself in CDMX and want to talk advertising, literature or Monarch butterflies, hit him up via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.