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By Root 372 0

an old man next to the eighteen-year-old, who really is far out. These kids are cheaper, they work harder, they’re less problem. It’s a matter of simple economics. And they show: out of schools, off the streets, out of the woodwork. God knows where they come from. It’s the kids who are really revolutionizing the advertising business today. It’s the kids with nothing to lose. The kids are pushing ahead, mainly because they communicate to consumers like we’ve never communicated before. In a couple of years 50 percent of the population is going to be under the age of twenty-five. When we reach this point the kids in advertising are going to take over completely.

CHAPTER

SIX

THE

CREATIVE

LIFE

‘Now advertising is a small business, with a lot of gossip, and there are a lot of guys sitting around in their offices with not too much to do, so when they hear a funny story or a crazy line they sit and call each other up to pass it on. I became known as the Pearl Harbor guy at Panasonic …’

There are talented people all over New York today who are capable of turning out advertising that doesn’t drive people crazy and does sell the product. Problem is whether the people can sell their advertising to their agencies and their accounts. Within every big agency there’s a pocket of good people who for some reason manage to save the situation, make the advertising and do it well. Within every agency. When I went to Bates my team was, I modestly believe, that quality pocket of advertising. We turned out some excellent advertising at Bates. In one year, we literally turned the Panasonic Electronics account around.

It took some doing. My title was Creative Supervisor when I went to Bates. But I was part of the zoo. Bates had to form a zoo so that they could take their clients to it and show me to them: ‘Hey, look, he’s creative, he’s won awards, he dresses funny, he does all those mystical things that you hear about.’ What they were saying was: ‘Like we’re in on it, we know exactly what it’s all about. Don’t worry, baby, you’re going to get the same kind of work that you’ve been reading about other people getting.’ Somebody once described it as Operation Judas Goat. I was supposed to come in there and pull in a lot of people from the outside. The idea was that other writers and art directors would look at me and say, ‘Gee, if Della Femina is going in there, maybe it’s worthwhile. Maybe I ought to take a shot at it and forget all about those crazy hammers inside people’s skulls pushing aspirin.’ I had something of a reputation among creative people in town for doing good work. At that point they might want to try a place like Bates. So the notion was that hiring me was going to upgrade their entire image. This is the way they planned it. It was not the way I planned it. The first thing I decided to do was to make a declaration of my intentions, sort of to say, ‘Look, this is what it’s going to be like and I’m not going to put up with most of the pompous crap that goes through the agency.’

The first day they had a meeting on the Japanese electronics company, Panasonic, and there must have been six or seven guys there: the account supervisor, the account executive, the executive art director, and a couple of others. I figured I’d keep my mouth shut for a few minutes, like it was my first morning in the place. One guy said, ‘Well, what are we going to do about Panasonic?’ And everybody sat around, frowning and thinking about Panasonic. Finally, I decided, what the hell, I’ll throw a line to loosen them up – I mean, they were paying me $50,000 a year plus a $5,000-a-year expense account, and I thought they deserved something for all this bread. So I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.’ Everbody jumped. Then I got very dramatic, really setting them up. ‘I see a headline, yes, I see this headline.’ ‘What is it?’ they yelled. ‘I see it all now,’ I said, ‘I see an entire campaign built around this headline.’ They all were looking at me now. ‘The headline is, the headline is: “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.