From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [37]
There must have been a good two hundred people – account executives, copywriters, art directors, and so forth – walking very quietly around this guy. Right down the line, one after the other, we knew we must not screw around with this guy. Not only was he making big bucks, he put in a big expense account each year. He did everything he wanted, had people hired, had people fired, did the whole thing. Well, it lasted a year and a half or so. But while he lasted he was class all the way.
They finally said to themselves, ‘His expense account is going to put us out of business.’ That’s how far he was going – he was literally taking money out of their pockets to the point where the account was no longer going to be profitable if they didn’t put a stop to it. So they took a calculated risk, fear and all, and they decided they were going to fire the guy.
The day they fired him they found out something – the whole thing was a myth. He had no control over the account, had no lock on the business. The guy had gotten his job based on the rumor that they were going to lose the account but if they hired this guy they’d save the account. In fact, the rumor was all over town. So they hired him – and then they fired him. It’s a beautiful story because if the guy hadn’t run up such a big expense account he’d still be there. They still have the account, by the way. The guy walked out of there and started his own agency, and for weeks the rumor around Bates was that he was going to take the Fleischmann business with him. It never happened.
What’s sad about the advertising business is that I could take anyone with the proper number of ears, eyes, arms, and so forth, and land him a job at any agency in the city on the theory of pocket business. I would say that your grandmother is a relative of someone who controls a lot of business and then you’re in for at least a year, maybe more.
When Bates lost Mobil Gas to Doyle, Dane, Bernbach, their first line was, ‘We got to keep the top guys who used to be on this account simply because we’re going to attract another gas company. We can land another gasoline if we have these people around. But the other guys [the little people] have to go because they don’t mean anything – we can’t parade them out.’
One of the gas guys was moved over and put on the Wink business. The gag around the agency was that maybe Wink doesn’t taste that much different from gasoline. They had still another guy who was their real gas maven. No one really quite figured out what he was doing until he quit. For years they kept this guy in his office, and he was always full of great plans. He was always pitching an account that he was very close to because he went to school with somebody. If I wanted to start all over again and people didn’t know what I looked like, I could go into practically any agency and hint that I’m very tight and close to a lot of business and live there for two or three years. They don’t fire you once they think you’re close to business.
Once, many years ago, I went looking for work at Sullivan, Stauffer, Colwell & Bayles. In those days it was a very, very nervous agency. I asked to do an assignment and met a copy group chief. The conversation went something like this: ‘I’d like to do an assignment just to show you that I can work for you. I obviously haven’t got any samples in my portfolio.’ He said, ‘Well, I like the rough samples you have, and I’m going to give you an assignment. I want you to do something