Carrie Bickner

I moved back to the Detroit area recently, and my work brought me to Warren, Michigan. It’s a route I’ve come to know well—a drive my father once took every day during his decades at Campbell-Ewald, where he worked as a copywriter in the 1970s and 1980s and a creative director in the 1980s and 1990s. Retracing his path has become a meditation on who he was, how he worked, and how the Detroit area shaped us both.

Detroit has an accent. It’s inflected by industry and ingenuity, by the rhythms of machines and the precision of hands that build. It’s a voice that balances engineering with creativity, speaking to both what you make and how you make it. My father was fluent, even though he was a Bronx boy. He lived at the intersection of storytelling and technology. The work in his later career offers evidence of his ability to navigate both worlds.

In 1998, my father was freelancing for Rourke after leaving Campbell-Ewald. Cadillac had just launched the Escalade, its first foray into the luxury SUV market. The vehicle guide for this launch was a striking departure from the problem-solution ads of his earlier career. Instead of dramatizing high-stakes moments, like a tree about to fall on a car saved by an AC/Delco battery, the Escalade guide was a work of precision and layers. Literally.

I remember when he picked me up from Ann Arbor at the end of my first semester of graduate school at the University of Michigan. I was pursuing an MILS, and I had just finished my final exam for a “history of the book” class. The timing was perfect. As I climbed into his Silverado, I noticed the Escalade guide on the passenger seat. He was excited to show it to me, though he played it cool. I flipped through the guide’s vellum pages, marveling at how it presented the car in layers—exterior, interior, and mechanics revealed one by one. It was innovative, tactile, and deeply considered.

My father wasn’t into luxury. The Escalade wouldn’t have suited him personally, but the project gave him something he rarely had in his years at Campbell-Ewald: freedom. The budget and creative license at Rourke allowed him to let it rip, creating something that honored Cadillac’s legacy while pushing boundaries. He wasn’t the only writer on the project, but his meticulous fingerprints were everywhere in its craftsmanship.

My father approached every project with technical rigor. He’d spend hours reviewing my early attempts at writing, ensuring every sentence was accurate and clear. He’d say, “This is all very accurate, but now your tone is flatter than piss on a plate.” He had no patience for unnecessary flair, but he prized elegance in the execution. The Escalade guide was proof of that balance.

While the Escalade guide was a triumph of his later career, it wasn’t his greatest accomplishment. That distinction belongs to the manuscript of his unpublished book, now available on Amazon. The book captures the full scope of his intellectual and creative depth, but the Escalade guide, in its own way, reflects his ability to distill complex ideas into a beautifully layered narrative.

The Escalade itself became a cultural touchstone, thanks in part to its association with hip-hop. It wasn’t just a vehicle; it was a statement. Jennifer Lopez’s “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” released in 2000, comes to mind—a song that captured the era’s fixation on luxury as identity. The Escalade was the “it car” of that moment, much like Louis Vuitton bags were the “it bag.” My father, who had no patience for “art bunnies” (his term for creatives who prioritized aesthetics over substance), somehow found a way to balance Cadillac’s ethos of prestige with his own commitment to integrity.

Driving through Warren now, I think about how he balanced his Bronx roots with the Detroit area’s Midwestern sensibilities, much like I’ve balanced 20 years in New York City with my recent return to Michigan. Neither of us ever fully belonged in one world, but maybe that’s why we both became storytellers, finding meaning in the gaps.

My father’s work on the Escalade guide is a reflection of him: meticulous, thoughtful, and deeply rooted in the idea that storytelling isn’t just about what you say—it’s about what you show and how you layer the message. As I trace his path, I see how much of him I carry, and how the Detroit area’s creative and technological heartbeat ties us both to the stories we built.