For one of the few times in my life, I could not think of a polite lie or any answer but the truth.
“Yes,” I said without thinking, “I would like a job.”
I’d never had to seek a job before. After commencement at Yale in 1963, I’d gotten a call from James Henry Brewster, IV, a friend of mine in Skull & Bones.
“Gates,” he said assertively, “I’m setting you up at J. Walter Thompson.”
Jim was working for Pan Am Airways, the largest airline in the world at the time, and a major client of J. Walter Thompson’s, the advertising firm known as JWT in the business. The two of us had a good time together at college—wouldn’t it be a gas to work together now!
Jim set up the interview. When I went in to meet the people at JWT, I was confident of my chances. Not only did I have the “in” through Jim, but the owner of JWT, Stanley Resor, was another Yale man. His son, Stanley Resor, Jr., had roomed with an uncle of mine at Yale. I had visited the Resor family at their two-thousand-acre ranch out at Jackson Hole just the summer before.
These connections proved invaluable. Advertising was regarded as a glamorous profession. Television commercials had just taken off, and become humorous and interesting. Lots of people wanted to get into a business in which you could make plenty of money but also have a creative edge. JWT’s training program was regarded as the best in the business, and it hired only one or two copywriters a year.
I was one of those hires.
It had been love at first sight. All I had to do was talk and write—skills that came naturally to me—and they paid me amazingly well for it. I was good at my job, and the clients appreciated my creative ideas.
I also found that I enjoyed making presentations, and doing them in original ways to bring some life and laughter into what could be really boring meetings. For example, because we had created the line “The Marines are looking for a few good men,” we were asked to pitch for the Department of Defense’s multimillion-dollar recruiting account. The presentation was held in a war room at the Pentagon. As I walked in, I saw a row of bemedaled men sitting behind a high table. These were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They sat like stone statues, clearly unhappy that they had been dragged into such a frivolous marketing meeting.
I walked up to the front of the room, carrying my portfolio case. I reached inside and pulled out a bow and arrow. Someone else from my team walked to the opposite end of the room with a target I had drawn with Magic Marker on a piece of Styrofoam. I wanted to dramatize the fact that we believed in targeted advertising. I wanted to speak with a tool to which these military men would relate: a weapon. I also wanted to make sure that since we were the first of thirteen agencies these men would be seeing, they would remember us.
I pulled back the arrow, and let it go. By the grace of God, it hit the bull’s-eye. For a minute there was dead silence in that room. No one moved. No one spoke. Then all four military leaders broke into applause, and there were a few cheers, and laughter. We won the account.
In addition to liking the work, I worked extremely hard. There was a sign-in sheet in the lobby of the JWT office building in New York, and I always tried to be one of the first to sign in and one of the last to sign out. I received promotions early and often, moving from copywriter to creative director and executive vice president on a host of major accounts, including Ford, Burger King, Christian Dior, the United States Marine Corps, and IBM.
I was willing to go anywhere to help our clients. JWT was an international company that expected you to be willing to travel nationally and internationally. I had no hesitation in uprooting my growing family—somehow between ads I had found time to marry, have a two-week honeymoon and, in due course, four children—moving to work in offices in Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. I looked at work as a big part of my role of being a good provider for them. When it came to family, no sacrifice was too much. As such, JWT became my top priority.
Yet, in a terrible irony, I flew many hundreds of thousands of miles to spend time with clients, and hardly saw my children. My clients became my children, and my children grew up without me. Was that really my pudgy baby, Annie, now a beautiful young woman graduating from high school? It brought tears to my eyes to see her accept her diploma, looking so grown-up and so ready to leave home, and leave me. I realized with a pained clarity that I had missed so many precious moments with her, and with all my children.
And yet I convinced myself—even then—that the sacrifice was worth it, because JWT had supported me. My salary was high and my benefits were excellent, so now that the kids were moving on to college and the bills were about to become even more insane, I didn’t need to be terribly concerned. In the back of my mind, I even congratulated myself: This is why you were smart to dedicate yourself to one company—the stability and the pay. Like many men of my generation accepting of the role of “breadwinner,” I rationalized my devotion to work and trust in JWT.
Loyal to a fault, I worked even longer hours, always ready to adjust my personal schedule for my clients’ needs. I remember getting a phone call from the Ford client one Christmas Day when my kids were little. I had just been getting ready to spend a rare day at home, having a chance to play with Elizabeth, Annie, Laura, and Charles and enjoy a few relaxed moments of being a real family, and being a real family man. The client wanted to do a New Year’s sale event, and could I shoot some commercials? Ford loved beating up on the agency, and since they spent millions of dollars on ads, they never made you an offer you could safely refuse if you valued your job.
“Sure,” I answered. “When?”
“Now,” he said.
I heard those emphatic words and knew I had to go, leaving my children in tears. Their presents were just unwrapped, spread out on the living room floor, and everyone was still in their pj’s. But I was a loyal JWT man. I got a taxi to the airport and flew to Detroit.
I was full of pride that I had never refused any effort JWT ever asked of me. It was a true shock, then, when twenty-five years into my career, I received a call from young Linda White, a senior JWT executive.
“Let’s have breakfast tomorrow,” came her directive.
Those aren’t good words to hear from a colleague. I liked Linda. A few years earlier, I had convinced the old boy network that we needed an intelligent young woman. Linda had done well, and I had helped get her on the Board of Directors. The only woman on the board. In fact, Linda was now president, having passed me in the corporate hierarchy.
She was a favorite of the new owner of JWT, a Brit named Martin Sorrell whose bookkeeper background made him particularly attentive to the bottom line. Before Martin arrived, JWT was almost like a nonprofit organization, dedicated to doing the best communications for our clients and not worrying about the bottom line. Martin had a different idea. He told the stockholders he was more interested in boosting their profits than in spending to achieve the highest caliber work. He made a hostile bid for our company. We fought him, but Martin had the Wall Street bean counters on his side, and he easily prevailed.
I had been in a meeting when Martin said bluntly, “I like young people around me.” I really should have listened to him and seen what was coming.
Martin himself was only in his early forties. Linda was in her early thirties. No wonder they got along. Young, smart people, they were eager to get rid of whom they probably felt were “the old farts.”
On the morning of our breakfast, Linda showed up late. Another bad sign. In corporate America, the higher your status, the tardier you are. Consciously or unconsciously, Linda had adopted the style.
She had red eyes. It looked like she had been crying. Yet another