ARVO to bed, ARVO to rise, makes Mona healthy, wealthy and (unfortunately) saying goodbye

FROM THE VAULT: November 20, 2015

Lots of you new folks probably don’t know this, but back in the day, ARVO didn’t start off as a happy hour. Originally it was an sunrise breakfast club hosted by Mona. A morning person by nature, Mona would show up with a Mary Poppins basket full of scones, baked beans, runny eggs and bread pudding. Quae was there with her. Ditto Henri, Scott, John…let’s face it, the whole damn office minus Felix, Philine and Tina would arrive with the roosters. Because everyone knows that Germans don’t like pudding. And they’re notoriously tardy, late to work every morning.

Mona’s thinking was strategic: If I show up first maybe I’ll get to work on a consumer project. Something grown. Bottled. Baked. Or sewn. Something people can actually buy in a store, see on a shelf. Poor, poor wide-eyed Mona. Little did she know all the cool stuff went to folks who strolled in at the stroke of eleven, an army of Amazon, Zappos and Gilt delivery men in their wake. Early birds got stuck with the mergers. Manufacturers. And the heavy-duty industrialists. 

Axalta. Baxalta. Avintiv. Exelon. Johnson Controls. If it belched fumes into the air, coated some obscure part deep inside carburetor, or was only seen on TV next to a skull & crossbones symbol and a directive to RUN!, Mona was on the project.

Fellow FutureBranders, tonight we hoist another OG’s jersey to the rafters. When she wasn’t jet-setting off to some exotic vacation or teaching Mark how to use a fork, Mona was here in the trenches for the past five years, a FutureBrand gamer through and through. She was everything you wanted in a teammate. Quiet, demure, un-opinionated. 

It’s not going to be same without you, Mona. But before we go getting all teary-eyed, Mona’s crashing our holiday party in a few weeks. So save your hankies for when we’re all drunk at 3 am.

Speaking of potent potables, ARVO at Hudson Malone. Like now.