From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [104]
What I did that bad day in December was decide that we needed something like Todd did. Ron said, ‘What are we going to do?’ I said, ‘We’re going to have a party.’ Ron said, ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have the biggest Christmas party on Madison Avenue. We’re going to invite every potential client we know. We are going to load this place up so with people that we will have to get two bartenders. We’re going to have a photographer come down from ANNY and Ad Age to cover it. We are going to look so affluent that it’s going to hurt.’
We must have sent out a thousand invitations. The place was so packed you couldn’t move. We had the press, we had friends, we had enemies, we had potential new business, we had everybody. The party cost us like $3,000 and we knew that if this didn’t work we were really sunk. But we pulled it off. People kept coming up to me that night saying, ‘You know, I heard that things weren’t going along so good but boy, you’ve got a place here, haven’t you?’ And we said, ‘Things are going great, man.’ Barbara was watching the bartender very carefully and I kept thinking we might end up eating the leftover food ourselves. We had guys who had come in from New Jersey for the party. We had all of our ads hanging up. You could hear it beginning to start. One guy would say, ‘What are you here for?’ And the other guy, ‘Oh, I’ve been interested in this agency for quite a while and we’re considering them.’ All of us were almost high at the party and we didn’t touch a drop of booze. My job was to walk around radiating confidence, you know, ‘Hi, how’s everything with you, how’s your account doing?’
And the next day we got a call from an insurance company, the guy decided he’s going to give us his business. The Moxie Company called the day after that and there we were: in business. The pictures started appearing in the trade papers and people around town were talking about Della Femina’s Christmas party. It was a big thing and it made us. People began calling us, saying, ‘You know, you people must be doing all right after all.’ The party was the turning point for us. If we hadn’t thrown the party and just tried to stretch the money out, we would have died. Guys would have been too suspicious. We had too many empty walls to convince anyone we were a going concern. Part of this business – a big part of it – is illusion. Illusion is very important; it makes the potential clients aware of who the hell you are.
The big problem with the new agencies is that you need an accountant and a lawyer – two of the most important people in the world. When people start agencies they forget about that and they think in terms of, Well, I can write and this other guy can draw. Not so. It’s a business of an accountant who has some clout at a bank and a lawyer who is willing to go along with you. If you make it with a lawyer and an accountant you’re in business.
You can make money right from the word go in advertising. I know of an agency that doesn’t have a single account and they’re making money. They do special projects. Ten thousand here on a project, twenty thousand a year there. Two guys and a girl – no overhead, no production headaches. They do special projects because nobody will trust them with a full account. When Ron and I were at Bates we made a lot of money for ourselves farming out our talent on special projects. It was written in my contract that I could do freelance work. It was at Bates where I learned that I never wanted to do political advertising.
I had a special project to do a campaign for a Philadelphia politician named Arlen Spector. ‘When do I get to see Arlen Spector?’ I asked. ‘You don’t.’ Spector was a district attorney in Philadelphia, running for mayor. He wanted New York advertising but he had placed through a Philadelphia agency. I complained about not