CHAPTER
ONE
NAZIS DON'T TAKE AWAY ACCOUNTS
‘The image of advertising still hangs in. The movie Blow-Up is a good example. Here’s this scrawny English photographer – a fashion photographer – and in one scene these two chicks literally attack him on his purple no-seam backdrop. Thousands of people watch this photographer jumping from one chick to the next and they think, Wow! Imagine what goes on in advertising if this is what happens to a photographer. So another whole batch of people decides to quit delivering milk or whatever the hell they were doing and they’ve made up their minds to get into advertising …’
Most people think advertising is Tony Randall. In fact, they think this business is made up of 90,000 Tony Randalls. Guys all very suave, all very Tony Randall. They’ve been fed the idea from Hollywood that an advertising man is a slick, sharp guy. The people know zip about advertising.
In the 1930s, everybody figured Adolphe Menjou was your typical advertising man. They dumped Adolphe Menjou by 1940 and then we had Melvyn Douglas. Remember him? There was a difference between Menjou and Douglas. Menjou was superficial; he knew nothing about it. Douglas knew nothing about it, and didn’t care either. Sometimes Menjou looked like he might be worried about losing a big account. But Douglas, like he spent most of his time in those movies screwing Rosalind Russell. So he couldn’t care less about losing the account. All of those movies were the same. Scene one, you pan up a New York skyscraper with some of that hokey New York music, then the camera moves into the elevator of the building. Douglas walks into the building, the elevator starter says, ‘Good morning, Mr. Suave,’ and the elevator door slams shut. Next shot you see the elevator floor dial moving up to 18. Douglas gets off the elevator, walks through the office, and the next thing you know he’s screwing somebody. It’s strange, really crazy. That’s what advertising was like in the movies. And Douglas never had real problems, but he was in advertising – he was the symbol of the guy who was in advertising.
Clark Gable. A beautiful guy. Played the hero in The Hucksters, the guy who bails out the tough soap account – although the book was modeled after George Washington Hill of the American Tobacco Company.
The Hucksters must have pulled in a lot of guys off the street into advertising. There was the image. Gable’s main concern was getting laid every hour on the Super Chief between Chicago and the Coast. The movie had something going for it.
Then the image changed to Randall. He’s slick and suave. Underneath, he’s like a shell. He’s terrible. Down deep Randall is really a very shallow guy. The real business is much closer to Wally Cox because Cox, unlike Randall, shows fear. Cox is real; you see him. I’ve dealt with guys like Cox.
I know a guy at a very large agency – I’ll call him Jim – who’s got courage. Pilot, World War II. He couldn’t fly in America in 1940 because he was only seventeen years old so he went and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Bright, and a lot of courage. He flew in the Battle of Britain, the whole thing. Gets out of the service and doesn’t know what to do. He’s still a kid because he enlisted when he was eighteen. Anyhow, Jim goes to work for a small advertising agency because it seems like a glamorous thing to do. He’s still courageous and bright, then. And as he grows older he gets scared that he might lose his salary, his expense account. The higher he goes, the more frightened he gets. The guy now is a frightened little man, and today he’s only someplace in his forties.
I once asked him what happened between the time that he was shooting down planes and now, when he is a terrified account executive. He looked at me and said, ‘Well, for one thing, the Nazis never tried to take away one of my accounts.’
The average person who sits and watches Tony Randall perform ought to be around a large, bad agency when the big account is pulled out. Nobody cries the first day. What happens is an announcement comes around that says, ‘We regret to announce …’ The next thing that happens is that the president of the agency says, ‘Screw them. They were never any good in the first place.’ That’s the unofficial attitude. They might even break out the drinks and everybody is talking: ‘We’re better off without them. We never needed them and now we’re really going to pull in the new business.’ It’s a very interesting thing to watch. As the account guys are talking they start to break off into little groups. Immediate bravado. ‘Hey, we got rid of those sons of bitches. I’ll never have to put up with that bastard again. And his wife is a drunk.’ Then they break off into even smaller groups. On that first day, excitement. ‘We lost it!’ And the next day, death. The calls go out, guys get out their address books and start calling anyone they ever met in business. The second day they start calling Judy Wald, the lady who runs one of the largest personnel agencies in the business. ‘Judy,’ they say, ‘I’d like to bring my book over.’ Guys start leaving the office with suspicious-looking big packages under their arms. Those packages, it’s their portfolio, their work, anything that they could put together that is going to get them a job. Everybody immediately assumes he’s going to lose his job.
The top, the very top management very wisely stakes out a claim on an account not already in the house. Let’s take a hypothetical example – let’s say your agency loses Texaco Gas. Suddenly an executive vice-president says, ‘I went to school with a guy from Sinclair, and they must be tired of those folks over at Cunningham and Walsh. I’m going to give old Jack a call. Maybe we can have a few drinks. I think I can line up something with Sinclair.’
Not to be outdone, another vice-president says, ‘I have a cat over at Esso. Forget about your guy at Sinclair. My guy at Esso, like we not only went to school together, we fought in the Army together. Esso is unhappy with their agency. My friend has told me so many times. I think we really could work out something with Esso.’
Each biggie in the agency picks a major company that he’s going to shoot for. This is the way they express their fear. They all talk about a big piece of business that they could bring into the house. Nothing ever happens, but that doesn’t matter. They try. They honestly believe that they can do it. What beautiful calls they make. The executive vice-president calls his pal Jack, who may or may not remember who this guy is, and he says, ‘Hi, Jack, you see we’ve just been screwed by Texaco. What do you say we get together and have a drink?’ He has his drink with pal Jack, and then he goes back to his agency and at a management meeting he says, ‘When I said to Jack that we lost the account, he smiled at me. I know that smile. I know the way he smiled at me – he was trying to tell me, “I can’t give it to you now, baby, but in six months it’s yours.” I have heard those exact words. There’s a slight variation on it. ‘When he said no, he said no in such a way that he was opening a door for us – he really was saying that in six months it’s ours. We’ve got it.’ That’s how top management lies to itself and how these guys lie to each other. After a while they forget about it. They’re out pitching new business, holding meetings, fooling around with the creative departments, and they forget all about pal Jack and how old school buddy Jack was going to give them Esso, or Sinclair, or Shell, or whatever the hell it was they were pitching. The biggies keep occupied. They must keep busy. As for the little people, they’ve already been screwed by the biggies. They haven’t got a chance. They’ve been fired.
The image of advertising still hangs in. The movie Blow-Up is a good example. Here’s this scrawny English photographer – a fashion photographer – and in one scene these two chicks literally attack him on his purple no-seam backdrop. Thousands of people watch this photographer jumping from one chick to the next and they think, Wow! Imagine what goes on in advertising if this is what happens to a photographer. So another whole batch of people decides to quit delivering milk or whatever the hell they were doing and they’ve made up their minds to get into advertising.
Those who don’t go into the business talk about it. You meet them at cocktail parties and they say to you, ‘Do you put the captions under