For several decades Robert Brandegee has been organizing and communicating the thoughts and ideas of others and his own. With his wife Ada, he led the innovative marketing communications firm Brandegee Inc. Now focusing on the design and production of “usuable art”, he employs many of the same methods he used in his business career. Black and White discusses the past and current work with Robert and his wife Ada.

When you were growing up was there something that had a strong influence on you? Something that you can think of as turning point or basis for your current philosophy?
BRANDEGEE: Not really, but I’d say that my persona may have been created before I was born.

I want to talk to you about your youth and then about your business. Where did you grow up?
BRANDEGEE: Chatham, New Jersey, a New York commuter town. And in the summertime I went to a wonderful place on a lake in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Salisbury, Connecticut.

Big family? Small family?
BRANDEGEE: One sister, mother, father, and in later years my grandfather and grandmother moved to Chatham after they retired. My grandfather was a very loving and very positive figure for me, a great influence.

What did your father do?
BRANDEGEE: He was an insurance broker.

And how about your mother?
BRANDEGEE: My mother was a very, very intelligent lady. In the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s she ran everything in sight. She ran the church. She ran the PTA. She jumped in and managed everything. She was hands–on, like somebody else I’ve become acquainted with over the years. My parents talked about how rebellious I was as a kid and a part of me stayed that way throughout my life.

Rebellious against the system?
BRANDEGEE: Against my parental influence. Against authority. Against whatever system. When my parents took me to church, for example, they’d go into church and send me to Sunday school. I’d leave Sunday school and go up and ring the church bell and run out to the car. All the people came after me, and I ’d get in the car, lock it, and waggle my fingers at them. This was a typical sort of thing. My mother talked about me with a psychologist friend who tried to test me. I wouldn’t do anything she asked but I would do something else that would demonstrate that I could do anything on the test if I felt like it. I guess that testifies to kind of an ornery streak.

For some people the authority base around them was not intelligent enough for them and they felt the need to act out. One of the most popular forms is when children are being raised in a religious environment and they just outright rebel. And they go out of their way to rebel and to point out that “I’m not that. I don’t subscribe to that.” Do these resonate with you?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. But I was more subterranean, less obviously rebellious.

You did well in school?
BRANDEGEE: Yes. I did well in most subjects, if I was interested.

Did you get things easily or were you someone who had to study?
BRANDEGEE: I got things fairly easily.

So tell me about something specific in your life that influenced you. What were some of the notable things from youth or business relationships or something political? What would be on the top of your list?
BRANDEGEE: Good question. I’d start with the fact that for quite a while in college I was a philosophy major because big picture thinking always intrigued me. And from the very start of our business, some of that came into play because I was always looking at the context of problems. We tended to always look at projects in terms of what is the bigger context? What are they not covering? What is the client ignoring? Very often, clients would not cover the areas that really gave meaning and punch, the significance to get the project rolling. So we tried to bring that larger sense of the issue up front.

How about some other significant influences?
BRANDEGEE: One significant influence was a consultant who worked for us from the early ’70s into the ’80s. He was extremely difficult and a terrible human being in many ways, but he was brilliant. He had ideas about what he called “transition management,” how you take organizations or individuals beyond their comfort zone, beyond their given framework, and help them become capable of adapting to new ideas and creating new frameworks or mindsets.

So how was this something that influenced you?
BRANDEGEE: He very vividly described how people fail to learn. He described several simple concepts. He taught me a technique that we used in our business ever after that. That remains extremely powerful. One of which we call conceptual mapping. That is fundamentally a process of taking very complex material and organizing it into a visual and verbal presentation, in a very focused and succinct manner. These maps used blocks of verbiage arranged visually to show cause–effect chains or thought sequences. These maps could guide the behavior, strategy, tactics, operations of the organization, and in fact, individuals, too.

This was something that was presented visually when you articulated a complex idea to someone?
BRANDEGEE: Correct. It was simultaneously visual and verbal. As a result, because it was up there in front of people — we often did it with flip charts and with a group — they couldn’t escape from it. They couldn’t go off on all sorts of tangents. They often did, but the map enabled us to take them back to the basic ideas. We could also get them to input to the ideas, and if we were missing something, they could correct it. It was a very powerful participative tool.

Can we talk about the history of your business?
BRANDEGEE: My wife had been doing editing on a freelance basis at home. It got to the point where we couldn’t find a place to eat on the kitchen table for the mounds of paper. So she rented a one room office a block away from home. She sent out an announcement letter and was quickly swamped.

So then you and Ada started this company?
BRANDEGEE: Ada said, while you’re looking — I had been fired from a job selling advertising space just about this moment in time — so Ada said, “While you’re looking for a job, help me get this under control.” Because she knew I could write.

So Brandegee, Inc.’s focus of service was marketing and communication writing?
BRANDEGEE: It was one key piece.