From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [47]
Most writers and art directors become impatient when they’ve got a tough problem, and that’s where they get into trouble. They play, they dance, they do everything in their power to look as though they’re producing advertising. And the minute they come in your office you know they’re pretending. They’re cold and they’re dry and they know it and you know it and they know you know it.
I’ve seen guys who couldn’t produce an ad for six or eight months, they’d be so tied up in knots. During that time, these guys would have to dance. Charlie Goldschmidt was a guy who started out as a copywriter and became a brilliant agency president. He’s a fantastic guy who could walk into a room, shake your hand, and tell you what your hang-ups were as he was shaking your hand. He always amazed me that way. He always knew everyone’s weak points, their panic buttons, and he knew just how to push them to get you started.
When I was working for Charlie I went through a bad dry spell where I did zip for three or four months. Nothing. I would sit in the room and nothing would happen. And you know when you’re coming up with ads and you know when you’re not. I would fake it. I would come up with mediocre solutions to problems. And you start to think about it, and it starts to bug you and you don’t know quite what to do. So to get by you start to dance a little bit.
But Charlie caught it. He knew it. And he would walk into your room and say, ‘Did you ever stop to think that that’s it? You might have just dried up? You haven’t got another idea in you. Well, kid, stay loose.’
Those were always his exact words. First a slap on the back and then, ‘Well, kid, stay loose.’ You didn’t stay exactly loose after he left you, but sooner or later – usually sooner – you shaped up.
Another problem with copywriters and art directors is the problem of recognition. There are a lot of copywriters who get mixed up and think they’re Faulkner or Hemingway. They sit there and they work and they mold and they play and when it’s over they’ve written something that’s absolutely beautiful but they forget one thing. It’s within the confines of a page that’s bought by a media director. What kills most copywriters is that people don’t buy Life magazine to read their ads. People don’t buy Gourmet to read their ad for Bombay Gin. People are buying Gourmet to read the recipes, and the ads are just an intrusion on people’s time. That is why it is our job to get more attention than anything else. Nobody buys any magazine to read an ad. But a lot of guys act as though this is what is happening. This guy sat there, he’s written this thing, and as far as he’s concerned, this is it. Then he meets someone at a party and is explaining with a great deal of pride that he is a copywriter and the person says, ‘Oh, you put the captions on the bottom of the pictures.’
I’ve had account executives who sit down and practically cry, asking me to change something because the client’s going to yell. ‘We’re going to lose the account.’ That’s the big word all the time from the account executives to the copywriters and the art directors.
Once a year the New York copywriters hold a party. Last year it was held in a photographer’s studio with maybe five hundred people jammed into a room that can really only hold about two hundred. With a rock-and-roll band that’s blasting so you can’t hear yourself think. Copywriters aren’t the kind of people who usually go to parties. But this is the party they all go to, this is where they’re going to get that job or they’re going to meet that guy or they’re going to do something that is going to change their lives.
They try to make their contacts. Any creative director who walked from one end of the room to the other had at least eight people tell him, ‘Can I bring my portfolio up and see you on Monday?’ One after another. ‘Hi,