• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 390 0

owned the company zapped us out. He was straight as an arrow, greatlooking guy, big, tall, basketball-playing type. I ran into him about six months later on the ferry to Fire Island. He was with another guy and they had their arms around each other. As I walked by I caught him from the side of my eye and I said to myself, ‘I really didn’t see that.’ So I kept walking, like I didn’t really want to meet him and talk to him on the ferry. My wife was sitting in the front of the ferry and since he saw me alone he figured, Well, golly, here we go. ‘Jerry,’ he said, ‘how are you?’ I couldn’t remember his name, I only remembered that we pitched the account. He’s there, grinning, with his four buddies, and he said, ‘Who are you here with?’ ‘I’m here with my wife,’ I mumbled. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Oh.’ That was that.

Now, if I had known about this guy when I made the presentation, why you can’t tell, I might have done something to get an edge on the account. Like wear a dress. No, of course that’s not true, but it is true that you work like hell to pick up the business.

Before you even get a chance to present, you have to know that the account you’re going to pitch to is loose – that is, you have to be aware that the account wants to listen to you. You hear about possible new business through rumors. Rumors are very important in this business. Whether you start them or whether you’re the victim of them, rumors are crucial to advertising. This is one of the few businesses where people are so rumor-conscious. You’ll almost never find two lawyers sitting around discussing whether Sullivan & Cromwell is going to lose a client.

Rumor, gossip, whatever you want to call it, it’s essential to advertising. People use the advertising trade papers to push their careers, make a pitch for an account, or to zap guys who have an inside track on an account. The most important trade papers for rumors are ANNY (Advertising News of New York), The Gallagher Report, Ad Age and Ad Daily. ANNY also has a counterpart in Chicago and on the West Coast. People sit down and read ANNY and The Gallagher Report to find out if they’re going to lose their accounts. The New York Times is the single most powerful force in the business as far as straight advertising news is concerned. The Times does not go in for rumors, just plain news, when an account finally moves from one agency to another and items like that.

The trade papers print rumors – on purpose – when the rumors come from a reliable source. One of the trades printed a rumor in 1969 that a soap company was thinking of developing an enzyme which would be competitive, really competitive, with another soap. The story said that if the company did bring out this soap they would give the account to a large agency, which then would have to drop their soap account because of a product conflict. I happen to know that the guy who planted that rumor did it because he wanted to be able to say to Soap Company No. 1, ‘What’s with the story? Is it true? And if so, we’d like to be in the running for the account that was to be dropped.’ This was a legitimate rumor that went to the press, and who knows if something will come of it? You can’t tell.

The press is of value to someone in looking for new business or in solidifying his position with an account. As far as I’m concerned the rumor business is not all dirty pool. It’s like a race toward an account and everybody does everything in their power to get it. Agencies hire stars to impress the account, guys do anything to get the account. Part of the race for the account is the rumor. It’s true that there are some bad people who immediately go out and try to kill the other agencies who also are pitching the account. They’ll spread rumors that an agency’s best people are leaving. There are cases when people will sit down and spread lies–not rumors that may have a basis in fact. A good example of this recently was the rumor spread that Doyle, Dane’s best people were leaving for other agencies. Now Doyle, Dane was about to get a big chunk of business, and somebody spread this rumor