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There comes a time when all agencies are created equal and that time is when Jerry Della Femina & Partners, which maybe is billing $20 million, has a four-color ad in Life magazine next to a four-color ad from J. Walter Thompson, which bills maybe $640 million a year and has thousands of employees. No consumer sitting in the barber shop is going to know the difference in the two agencies behind those ads. Media are the great equalizers.

We’re as good as anybody in Life or on NBC. We’ve got it made. We’re right up against them and nobody knows it. Nobody ever said, ‘I won’t buy a Corum watch because Della Femina isn’t billing what J. Walter Thompson is.’ They really can’t beat us – except in the quality of the ad or commercial. And that’s what the game is all about. They might have more research and more bodies and more media guys, but when we print an ad and they print an ad, we’re equal. They can’t use one dime more of their money to look any better than we do in Life. They can’t buy better supplies because we all buy the same supplies. They can’t buy better photography because we know and use these same guys with long arms that they do. They can’t buy better typography because we all buy the same typography. They can’t buy a better page because the media has to give you the page next to anyone else’s.

They can’t buy anything that we can’t buy and that’s what’s been the revolution in the business: People have suddenly discovered, ‘If I give it to Thompson or if I give it to Della Femina, the difference is what winds up on the page.’ It doesn’t matter how many people the account met, or how much agency basketball is involved, or how many guys show up at a meeting. Bodies. You can always call Central Casting for bodies. We can deliver a hundred bodies if that’s what’s wanted by the account. But bodies aren’t and never will be advertising.

CHAPTER

NINE

FIGHTS

HEADACHES

FOUR

WAYS

‘It really doesn’t matter what you did before you got into advertising. David Ogilvy worked in a restaurant kitchen and he’s done quite nicely since. The key thing is, how much do you learn after you get into the business and then how well do you tell the consumer what you’ve learned? This is what it’s all about …’

You can get into advertising in many different ways. I got into advertising because once, many years ago when I was a kid, I was a messenger for the advertising department of The New York Times and I used to deliver proofs of ads to department stores on Fifth Avenue. Wherever I went – Bonwit, Saks Fifth Avenue – in any of the stores I used to see guys sitting around with their feet propped up on desks. I liked that and I used to ask people who these cats were with their feet up. They were the department-store copywriters. That’s when I made up my mind that copywriting was for me. My father, Mike, was and still is a paper cutter for The Times, working in the press room. My brother Joe works at The Times in classified ads. I have an Uncle Tony working as a compositor there and four cousins there too. The Della Femina family has been supported by The Times for many years. In my family the natural thing to do was to go to work for The Times. I had a choice. In our neighbourhood you could work for The Times or become a longshoreman. When I decided to become a copywriter, the neighborhood wrote me off as some kind of freak. The Gravesend section of Brooklyn is not what you might call strong on producing copywriters.

I got into advertising in a pretty straightforward way. But I know a beautiful guy at Bates who, before he got into the agency business, used to sell holy water by mail. It must have been fantastic. You know, you send in a buck and you get your bottle of holy water from Lourdes. Authentic holy water, too. When the holy-water associations used to get together they used to talk about this guy – like one of their gods. In the holy-water field, anyhow. He sold a lot of it. He went from selling holy water and making miracles with holy water to selling Anacin. Not too far apart. He went into