Is Crispin Porter + Bogusky a small source of profit for MDC, or a large one? After reading my article from yesterday (Why MDC Will Never Love an Ad Man Like It Loved Alex Bogusky), MDC CEO Miles Nadal e-mailed to dispute figures I’d been given by Deutsche Bank analyst Matt Chesler.

Earlier today MDC Partners, the parent company of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (“ad agency of the decade,” according to Advertising Age), announced that Alex Bogusky, perhaps the most influential figure in American advertising today, has resigned from MDC. The announcement, in the form of an innocuous press release, shocked the ad world. Indeed, Bogusky told me this morning, "I have severed all ties with MDC and Crispin." Elvis has left the ad business.

It's become a classic business mantra: you learn more from your failures than from your successes. But what if that idea is all wrong? Alex Bogusky, co-chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, believes it is--and recent MIT research showing that we learn more from success backs him up. "You create a fearful culture where you spend a lot of time looking at where you screwed up," he says. Instead, his company has bred a culture in which success is celebrated, and failure is forgotten.