From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [105]
Everybody is doing freelance. My people are doing it. I walked into an art director’s office the other day and saw something for Schaefer Beer. I said to myself, son of a gun, I didn’t realize we got the account. I was all set to have a drink on it until I realized the guy was doing something for Schaefer on a freelance basis.
I’ve been very lucky in this business. My first job was my best job. Daniel & Charles was great and is great. It was crazy, sheer lunacy but it was fun. Working for Shep at Delehanty was fun, too, although sometimes people thought we were going to kill each other. I really began thinking about having my own place when I was working for Shep.
When I left Shep to go to Bates my mind was made up, and like Bates was the clincher. I knew after a while at Bates that if I wanted to stay in the advertising business and make a living and be able to hold my head up about my work, I knew that I had to have my own place. When Bates hired me they were trying to buy some of that alleged magic, some of that Doyle, Dane touch. What Bates and a lot of other agencies haven’t caught on to is that it doesn’t hurt to be born Italian or Jewish in the streets of the City of New York. You can’t buy the experience. The copywriter is in disgrace today if he was born in a suburb of Boston, of a fairly well-to-do family.
A guy I’ll call Churchill convinced me that if I wanted to keep my sanity I had to have my own place. This guy Churchill was famed throughout Bates for having written the headline for some stuff called Certs – ‘Two mints in one.’ Certs is a minty breath thing and Churchill wrote this famous commercial: There are two girls arguing and one girl says Certs is a breath mint and the other girl says it’s a candy mint. The announcer comes on and says, ‘Girls, girls, don’t argue. It’s two mints, two mints, two mints in one.’ Oh, it’s a fantastic commercial, it is some claim to fame in the history of man. Two mints in one.
Churchill also did the head cutaway and put hammers inside it for Anacin. Churchill produced the famous nose test where you’re told to send your sinuses to Arizona and if you can’t get your simuses on a plane try Dristan. Great stuff. I once wrote a memo up at Bates about Certs: ‘Listening to the meeting today I’ve come up with the theme that “Certs Cures Cancer.” I’d like to proceed with some storyboards on this theme.’ That memo almost caused a fistfight at Bates.
A terrific business, the advertising business. Young kids pounding on doors trying to get in. Agencies starting, folding. The new agencies are getting hot, the older ones are getting hardening of the arteries. I make a good living from advertising. I like to think the work I do is good – I know damn well it sells the product because my clients wouldn’t have anything to do with me if I didn’t move the product. I don’t have to resort to ‘two mints in one,’ or ‘fights headaches three ways,’ or ‘builds strong bodies twelve ways.’ I don’t get too much sleep but I don’t cry myself to sleep either, the way a lot of guys do. I don’t kid anybody, least of all myself. I really love the business. There are some bad scenes you read about in this book. The things that are wrong in advertising would be wrong in any business. But don’t get the impression that I don’t dig the business. I really do. I could only write about the advertising game this way because I really do love it. Most people say, ‘This is a terrible business.’ They throw up their hands and go home to Rye at night and forget about it. There are ugly people in advertising, real charlatans, but there are good people, too. And good advertising. And I honestly believe that advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
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