Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [35]
Within three years, and completely unrelated to my departure, America’s first and oldest agency would no longer exist.
*1 Actually the agency was founded by Son only. But since Francis Wayland Ayer was only nineteen years old when he decided to invest $250 and open an advertising agency and he was smart enough to realize that no one would take him seriously, his first brilliant piece of branding was to name the agency after his father, Nathan Wheeler Ayer, and relegate himself to the title of Son.
*2 Ironically, the seemingly stable Wells, Rich, Green turned out to be more volatile than Ayer. It, too, went out of business, four years before N. W. Ayer, in 1998.
*3 More irony. Quinlan would soon stop to smell the roses herself, as evidenced by her 2005 book from this very publisher: Time Off for Good Behavior: How Hardworking Women [NOT MEN!] Can Take a Break and Change Their Lives.
A Tale of Two Chickens
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
—Chuck Palahniuk
The Bucket, About to Be Kicked
September 2000
When in the Greater Louisville area, joking about the late Colonel Harland Sanders, let alone expressing a mock desire to break into the corporate vault and steal his secret “original recipe” of eleven herbs and spices,*1 is akin to joking about yellow-cake uranium on the security line at LaGuardia Airport. And having any kind of fun at the expense of the Colonel at Yum! Brands headquarters, home of the iconic global quick-service restaurants (QSRs) Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, and A&W restaurants, is the ideological equivalent of handing out wacky caricatures of Muhammad in downtown Riyadh during Ramadan.
I speak from experience.
Not only was I the infidel who made the mistake of saying the unthinkable inside KFC’s global base of operations; I had done it within the hallowed halls of the in-house KFC museum, in front of a life-size statue of the Colonel himself.*2
The head of the account at my agency shot me a look, as if to say, “What the hell are you thinking?” He had been in the business long enough to have met (and, I imagine, crisply saluted) the Colonel, and he was not pleased. The $175 million account, which our agency had serviced for twenty-three years, was on life support. Sales were down, and the franchisees, dozens of whom were gathering in a conference room on the other side of the building to see the rough cuts of our latest and probably last chance (but my first) at retaining their business, were not happy.
The chief marketing officer looked at the head of the account and shook his head: “That cynical shit won’t fly with the franchisees. Mind your smart-mouthed new creative boy.”
I held up my hand, a gesture of guilt and apology. “My bad.” I assured the account guy that once I got in front of the franchisees, it would be nothing but Kentucky Fried respect and positivity. If necessary, I would prostrate myself before a sarcophagus of the Colonel, the recipe, the franchisees, and the iconic chicken bucket. Plus, fresh off the huge loss of mega-bank, it was in everyone’s best interest that I dial down the cynicism.
If necessary, I would even eat and claim to enjoy the taste of their product. This is because, as I’d been briefed, the franchisees controlled everything. The advertising, the meal combos, and, no matter how much the chief marketing officer or the CEO liked our commercials, the fate of the account.
With fifteen minutes to go before the screening of the new work, I hung my head and moved on to the museum’s not-to-be-missed pressure-cooking exhibit.
The Chicken That Changes Everything
April 2004
The chicken that changes everything exists in the living room of a generic, sparsely furnished apartment. Technically, it is a person in a chicken suit rumored to be inspired by the markings of a Rhode Island Red. It stands waiting for your command, flanked by two red easy chairs and a red