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I had been at Bates for five or six months when the word got out that I was going to be the first guy reviewed by their new creative review board. And that bugged me. After they told me that I was it, I said, ‘O.K. Here are my golden rules. I will not defend anything that I have done. All I will do is show you what I have done and answer your questions. I’m not here to defend myself.’

I did have stuff to show. I had the Panasonic, I had Royal Globe Insurance, which was doing pretty well, and I had some other things that my group had produced. The Royal Globe television commercial we had done was very dramatic. The viewer was put in the driver’s seat – at night – and for sixty seconds all you saw were blinding headlights. We were a group. They used us like a special squad to be brought in whenever something went wrong. Whenever somebody was about to lose an account, whenever there was a new business pitch, my group – Ron Travisano, Frank Siebke, Ned Tolmach and I – would be called in. But Bates was getting a little uptight about the group and they were looking forward to their creative review board session.

The night before the meeting I really didn’t know what to do. I was sitting at home saying to myself, ‘I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to find a way to show them exactly what I think of the meeting.’ And then it hit me. I’d walk in there with a tape recorder and tape the entire proceedings.

I showed up the next day to face the board, which was made up of about seven guys, whose average salary was maybe $80,000 a year. One guy there, the Creative Director of the World – that was his title and it meant Creative Director of the Bates World – was making maybe $120,000. The other guys weighed in at $80,000 and $90,000, and there were a couple of lower-echelon guys able to grab off only $70,000 a year. I was by far the lowest-paid guy in the place. I mean, there must have been close to a half-million dollars a year in salary there.

As I walked in, one guy had to be a wise guy and throw a line: ‘Well, have you got the crown of thorns ready for him?’ And they all laughed. Then I put the little tape recorder down on the table. They quit laughing and immediately all eyes just went to the thing. I said, ‘I’ve got my ads pinned up and like I said before if you have any questions about the quality or type of advertising I’ll be happy to answer anything you want. But before we do that I would like to turn on the tape recorder and record this session.’ Before I turned it on I said, ‘If there’s anyone in this room who objects to being taped I’ll be very happy to leave it off.’ And everyone just kind of shuffled and said nothing. So I turned it on and said, ‘O. K., let’s have some questions.’

Nothing. One guy cleared his throat and hemmed and hawed, and said, ‘Well, I notice you use a black background on that ad for Royal Globe.’ All the while he’s watching that Concord tape recorder work. It wasn’t even a Panasonic recorder. I said, ‘That’s right, we felt a black background would be better.’ More nothing. And then babble, pure babble, all babble. Two solid hours of babbling. They were terrified, and I know it, and it’s beautiful, and I’m sitting there and talking and just answering any question they want, but they’re not asking any questions. One guy talks about pro football. Guys start talking about anything they could think of and all the while they’re staring at the machine, they couldn’t keep their eyes off that machine. Ned Tolmach, who was sitting next to me during the entire meeting, was watching this whole beautiful scene with amazement.

And finally, after two hours of nonsense, I said, ‘You know, gentlemen, I don’t think there is anything else that you want to ask me, is there?’ They’re still looking and one of them says, ‘No.’ So I shut the tape recorder off and I say, ‘Well, thank you,’ and we walk out. As Ned and I walked out of the room I turned to him and said, ‘Ned, do you think it worked?’ Ned said, ‘I