Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

[babylonsister]

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-gore.html

Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

Not long ago, he was the butt of jokes--lockbox, earth tones, a postelection beard. Then he dusted off an old slide show and jumped with both feet into the private sector. The untold story of how an epic loser engineered what may be the greatest brand makeover of our time.
From: Issue 117 | July 2007 | Page 70 | By: Ellen McGirt

Al Gore is a funny guy. And, for his $175,000 speaking fee, he tells this story: after leaving the White House and heading back to Tennessee sans motorcade--"in a rented Ford Taurus," he sniffs--he and Tipper stop to get a bite to eat at a Shoney's, "which, as you may know, is a low-cost family restaurant." The people in the restaurant "made a huge fuss...over Tipper." Then, a man spies Gore and stage-whispers, "Didn't he used to be the Vice President? He's fallen so low." Peals of delight from the audience. Gore smiles back. It's a nice moment.

But wait, there's more. Later, he goes on, he attempts the same story in Nigeria. Punch line, laughter, applause--no problem. The next day, an official at the airport yells out to him, "Call Washington!" Hmmm. "What could be wrong in Washington?" he muses, scratching his chin. "That's when I remembered it could be a lot of things." The crowd goes wild.

Come to find out, Gore explains, a reporter in Nigeria had lost a bit of the story in translation. "Vice President Al Gore announced yesterday that he and his wife, Tipper, have opened a low-cost family restaurant called Shoney's and will be running it themselves," Gore intones. By the time he landed in the United States, the story had hit the wires, and he was--again--the butt of jokes on Leno and Letterman. Three days later, he received a handwritten note from Bill Clinton, congratulating him on the Shoney's deal. "We like to celebrate each other's successes in life," Gore deadpans to uproarious laughter.

Funny guy, indeed. In one well-delivered anecdote, Gore manages to make fun of himself, the election, his relationship with his former boss, the Bush administration, and the media--and still come out on top. Gone is the robo-candidate who provided fodder for conservative bile and late-night merrymaking. (For a good time, google "SNL" and "lockbox.") After the 2000 election, Gore might have slunk away to a loser's life: a memoir here, a visiting professorship there, the occasional keynote speech or celebrity golf tournament. Instead, in what may be the greatest brand makeover in history, Gore is being hailed as a visionary who was right about everything from global warming to Iraq. At 59, he's an Academy Award winner, a bestselling author, a front-runner for the Nobel Prize, and a concert promoter who turned out to be a bigger rock star at this year's Grammys than the rock stars themselves.

What no one is talking about is that he has also become a stunningly successful businessman--and that has fueled his comeback. Since his nonelection, Gore has become a millionaire many times over, bringing him, in financial terms, shoulder to shoulder with the C-suite denizens he used to hit up for campaign cash. In addition to the steady flow of six-figure speaking gigs, he has become an insider at two of the hottest companies on the planet: at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), where he signed on as an adviser in 2001, pre-IPO (and received stock options now reportedly worth north of $30 million), and at Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), where he joined the board in 2003 (and got stock options now valued at about $6 million). He enjoyed a big payday as vice chairman of an investment firm in L.A., and, more recently, started a cable-television company and an asset-management firm, both of which are becoming quiet forces in their fields.

more...

[Gabi Hayes]

1. very interesting, if snark-toned, article

especially the part about his TV channel doing so well, so quickly

I assumed it was going to go belly up, but it's already profitable!

and, possibly changing the cable landscape

if only.....

[trumad]

2. It was a good piece even though the writer was a bit factually challenged,,,

Gore did not win the Academy Award and the dude kept mentioning earth tones like that really occurred. It did not.....

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Good point, trumad

A lot of people are confused by the whole Oscar thing.
Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar, for example, even though he directed "Rebecca," which won Best Picture.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Overall a good column,

however I've never thought of Al as an epic loser, to me it was the American People who lost. I also believe the biggest transformation wasn't Al Gore so much as it was the truth finally seeping through to the American People's consciousness regarding who he was without the MCM's constant spin and B.S.

Even though this could be a better column without the snark, I'm kicking and recommending anyway.

Thanks for the thread babylonsister.

[tinrobot]

5. Gore didn't change - America did.

He's always been a great individual. I'm glad the country is finally waking up to that.

[badgerpup]

6. On-topic, but tangentially...

JFK wasn't taken very seriously as a candidate until he wrote the Pulitzer prize winning Profiles in Courage...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiles_in_Courage

Now, if Al can only get himself a Peabody Award as well, he's a shoo-in...
:sarcasm:...but not directed at Al Gore...referring to Billo's ever-increasing # of Peabody's...
that he never won.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_O'Reilly_controversies
Scroll down to where it says Peabody Award

[RestoreGore]

7. He has been restored

Out of politics is where he can truly be who he has always been. I am very happy for him and the world because it will be all the better for it.

[cobalt1999]

8. The guy had the worst "handlers" and campaign ever.

Whenever he was allowed to be himself, he was great. One thing he is not and that is an actor. When he tries he is stiff and unnatural. His campaign staff and image consultants had him all fucked up.

Al is just back to being himself.

[trumad]

9. May I suggest Bob Somerby

If he ran the worst and campaign ever, then why did he win the presidency? Read Bob and it may educate you on the 2000 election.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/

[jpgray]

10. Bob's great, but nothing and no one can excuse Donna Brazille

Lots of Gore's "mishaps" can be explained by media bias, but his team was ridiculously inept in places. Watch Brazille on any program she appears in as a supposed Democratic spokesperson and just try to disagree.

[trumad]

11. The thing I don't get is when folks say his campaign was inept

but yet he came back in the polls from an early deficit and won the popular vote by 500,000 votes. Looks to me that he ran a good campaign to do that?

[jpgray]

12. His policies and his debating skills were vastly superior to Bush's

Attacking a talented politician on image and superfluities can't sink him or her utterly, but it can hurt enough to make things close.

[cobalt1999]

14. because, they never allowed Al to be Al

I'm not debating who actually won 2000. This thread is about his image.

Al is NOT a good actor period. That's why I cringed many times while watching him during that campaign. He was over managed to the point of acting.

A good campaign manager would have seen that and designed a campaign around Al's informal one-on-one style.

I don't think Al has changed, but his image has changed because for the last few years he is being himself, it's a shame that was hidden during the campaign.

[Apollo11]

13. Here's another recent interview with Al

A cover story from the magazine of The Observer - Great Britain's oldest Sunday newspaper (same ownership as The Guardian).

The melting ice man cometh

He believes his support for Kyoto lost him the coal states of Kentucky and West Virginia - and the 2000 race for the presidency. But Hurricane Katrina and his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, changed all that. Now, on the eve of his Live Earth global concerts, climate change could put Al Gore back in the White House

James Traub
The Observer magazine - Sunday June 24, 2007

(...)
Six years after the Supreme Court declared him the loser of a presidential race that seemed his for the taking, Al Gore has attained what you can only call prophetic status; and he has done so by acting as he could not, or would not, as a candidate - saying precisely what he believes, and saying it with clarity, passion, intellectual mastery and even, sometimes, wit. Everywhere he goes, people urge him, almost beg him, to run for the American presidency. He probably won't - though he might. ('It's complicated,' he told me, 'but it's not mysterious.') He says he thinks he'd be better at it this time than he was last time. And he probably would be: Gore really does know how to hold 6,000 people in a room.
(...)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2107484,00.html

Let's all find ways to show our support for Al Gore! :patriot:

Visit Al's site www.algore.com and read his blog http://blog.algore.com

Get ready for Live Earth on 7/7/07: www.liveearth.org

Sign the petitions at www.algore.org and www.draftgore.com

:kick:

[yodermon]

15. key quote:

"What politics has become," Gore explains at one point during our discussion, "is something that requires a kind of tolerance for artifice and manipulative communications strategies that I just find I have in very short supply. I just don't have the patience for things that seem to be greatly rewarded in today's political system."

That's why you have to step up and change the way the game is played, Al.