From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [26]
All of a sudden this thing snowballed, snowballed right out of sight. Everyone started out by saying, ‘Well, we’ll give them a few sketches, maybe a handful of roughs.’ Then another guy would say, ‘Well, look, you know we’re up against those guys at Bates. You know what sharpies they are. Let’s go for a little more than a sketch. Let’s go look for a shot.’ And the next guy says, ‘Well, look, if we’re taking shots for a print ad, we just can’t walk over there with a storyboard. You know how tough it is to show storyboards.’ And another guy says, ‘I know a guy who would shoot this commercial for twenty thousand dollars.’ Guys suddenly went into business working on the TWA account without having it.
Long about then a skinny kid named Jim Webb with a lot of hair was out on the West Coast starting out as a songwriter. If this kid knew what chaos he caused in New York, he’d break up. One of the songs he wrote was called ‘Up, Up, and Away’ and it’s got lines in it like ‘Wouldn’t you like to fly/in my beautiful balloon?’ and stuff like that. Well, a chase develops for the commercial rights to this song. A group called the Fifth Dimension had recorded it, and it was very big about then. The infighting over that song! Also, the word leaked out that TWA hated their current song and this one seemed ideal. Anyhow, Foote, Cone somehow latched onto it, but as soon as the others heard that Foote, Cone had a song, then everyone else had to have a song.
You can’t believe the Mickey Mouse stuff that went on at Bates during all this. I don’t know what was doing at the other agencies, but at Bates it was crazy all the way. Doors were locked. Delivery boys used to show up with food orders from the delicatessen and couldn’t get in – all Mickey Mouse. I remember one of the biggies running down the hall with a record cover – this guy was making maybe one hundred grand a year – and he’s saying, ‘This is the song, this is the one that’s going to get us the account.’ There was false elation that was almost sick. There was this absolutely positive feeling that we had it locked.
Well, everyone presents. Who knows how much money was spent on everybody’s presentations? Upward of a million dollars would be my rough guess. Anyhow, everyone presents, and here’s Foote, Cone with this beautiful song, which they’ve changed now to ‘Up, Up, and Away – TWA,’ and here’s everyone else with real commercials, real print ads, the works. This kid Webb wrote a hell of a song and after looking at all of these presentations, TWA lets all the Sabine women have it. ‘Nice work,’ they say, and then they say, ‘Foote, Cone, you’ve done such a hell of a job that we’re going to keep the account with you.’
At Bates, when they learned what happened, it was like V-J Day, except that they were like the Japs, falling on swords. Unbelievable.
About six months later there was some kind of shake-up at TWA. A new guy with a lot of clout moved in and he decided that despite ‘Up, Up, and Away – TWA’ the account really didn’t belong at Foote, Cone. So beautiful Mary Wells, who had just finished painting all the Braniff Airline planes fuchsia and colors like that, walks in – and off with the account. No formal presentation, nothing. Maybe she showed them a fuchsia plane, but nothing more. And she got it. To get the account and avoid a conflict of interest, she had to resign the Braniff account. And the president of Braniff is her husband.
George Lois, who used to be at Papert, Koenig and Lois and then started Lois, Holland, Callaway, is minding his own business and pretty soon there comes Braniff, fuchsia planes and all. It’s not that all of advertising business is crazy, but there are times, there are times … And it is the craziness that leads to the nervousness that leads to the real fear on Madison Avenue. The TWA story must have driven twenty guys to drink, and it isn’t all that unique a situation. There will always be nervousness wherever big money is at stake. And above everything