How to drink a few bottles of Listerine, scare your clients, and ultimately see your clients repeat your prank.

I told this story to Penn years ago and he decided it was worthy of a place in their book. There are some great stories in there and I’m proud to have been part of it.

TL;DR – We were making commercials for Listerine, Pete Docter and I gaffed up a ‘hero’ bottle before a client visit. I drank it on a bet, during the meeting, egged on by Pete, JL, Andrew and Craig. I run out of room, feigning I’m about to throw up. Client rep follows and actually gets sick. Client goes back to Listerine and pulls same prank on assembly line to colleagues there.

Note that Pete’s role was minimized in Penn’s writeup and we didn’t really catch it. He was quite instrumental. The film is also “Luxo Jr.” not “Luxor” – a pretty common mistake. Finally, Pixar president Ed Catmull wandered into the restroom where we were mixing up the special bottle, just gave us a nod to say “I didn’t see this.” Copy editing is boring. A lesson for the future.

If you want the book https://amzn.to/3SxU9DX. Here’s a PDF of the story.

You know that thing where you go back and read something really fun from your past, and all those great feelings, memories, and stuff come rushing back making you really happy for a few minutes? Yeah – this is that.