Alex Bogusky used to race motorcycles, now he's helping Americans motor, MINI style. He's also telling people it's okay to get rid of their crap furniture and that, really, the tobacco companies are lying to you. In short, he and Miami agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, where he's the creative director and partner, are busy making a mark on popular culture.

For 39-year-old Bogusky, born, raised and still living in Miami, advertising is the family business. Both his parents were graphic designers, yet he never intended on becoming an adman. He got into the game, working at Miami agency Ryder&Scheild and then in his own design shop, after his mother advised him that if he learned to do mechanicals (paste ups), he'd always have a job.

While mechanicals are obsolete, Bogusky and his role in the industry are anything but. Schooled more through astute observations of trends than in the classic tenets of advertising (his formal education ended with Miami Senior High), he's used his gut instinct to apply American culture to the agency's work since chairman and partner Chuck Porter brought him on board in 1988 as senior art director.

The results have been tremendous. The agency's guerrilla work for Florida Truth in 1999 made headlines and collected the agency joint ownership with Boston's Arnold Worldwide over the American Legacy Foundation's national Truth Campaign. Its North American work for Ikea has helped vault the once-flailing brand to near-iconic status. And with the North American launch of MINI in 2002, well, Bogusky and crew are pretty much responsible for getting Americans to drive small cars. Go figure. Add to that a recent Grand Prix at Cannes for Ikea and the Best of Show and Advertiser of the Year at the One Show for MINI, and CP+B is the agency on the tip of everyone's lips.

But for Bogusky, who was named CD in 1993 and made partner alongside Porter, president Jeff Hicks and director of account services Jeff Steinhour in 1997, it's not the awards that are important; it's the people he works with. On the good ship CP+B, impressing each other holds more stock than outward appearances.

Bogusky says work at the agency is fun - if hard - but that's not on account of creative shop mainstays such as pool tables and slushie machines. "People see skateboards and think that has something to do with how our agency is run. It has nothing to do with it," says Bogusky. "We don't have things like a pool table because what we do is fun. How could you take a break from what we do to play?"

Part of the fun comes from what employees have called a 'democratic' work environment, which Bogusky works hard at fostering. "It's like we're one team that works on everything instead of separate teams doing their own thing." In fact, there's even a section of the New Employee Handbook entitled Jumping On Hand Grenades that explains, "Our unwritten policy has always been to drop what we are doing when someone needs our help. The person you help today may be the person you need to help you the day a hand grenade rolls into your office."