From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [83]
We in advertising really would be kidding ourselves if we didn’t admit that the rumor business existed. Agency presidents use it: they put in a call to Gallagher and they drop whatever news they want to drop. It’s not unlike Hollywood around the time when the Oscars are given out. ‘Joe Whateverhisname is a sure bet to get an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.’ That’s Joe’s agent at work, planting rumors.
The trade papers check out rumors. They’re not innocent victims and you just can’t get them to spread anything that they can’t check out. You can’t buy them because they’re not buyable. They’re extremely careful to protect their sources. No one ever gets to know where a rumor comes from. You only can guess. You read a story about yourself in ANNY and you can’t find out who fed it to them for love or money.
When we first went into business and we were having a hell of a time just staying afloat, a story appeared in Ad Age saying that two of our partners were unhappy with their setup and thinking of leaving and going to another agency. At the time, I just didn’t want a story like that printed – even though it had a basis in fact – and obviously the rumor had been fed to Ad Age by somebody. I called them up and said, ‘What’s this all about? It’s not so. Who said it?’ And they said, ‘Just as we would protect you if you were to talk to us, we have to protect our source on a story about you.’ A rumor about our agency got into Ad Daily last year and all it said was, ‘Jerry Della Femina successful. Will no longer talk to small accounts.’
Now that’s not so. Ed Buxton of Ad Daily is a very good friend of mine so I called him up and said, ‘Hi, how’s everything? What’s this I hear about me not talking to small accounts? You know, some of them pay a lot of money to come see an agency like this. You’re going to turn off a couple.’
He said, ‘Jerry, I’ve got to protect my sources. We heard that you’ve established a limit now on the size of an account you’ll take, and that’s it for a small account. We heard that nobody gets in unless they’re billing such and such.’
What a beautiful rumor somebody fed Ed. Do I now come out and say, ‘Jerry Della Femina & Partners announce that they’ll take any small account they can get?’ I mean, any kind of rebuttal that I issue is deadly for me – anything short of silence is no good. If I come out and say, Yes, I want small accounts, that will be read by people to mean that Jerry Della Femina is in trouble and he wants all the small accounts he can grab. The guy who fed that rumor was very bright–and I know exactly who it was–because he zapped me out of maybe ten accounts that might be able to bill say $150,000, $200,000 or even $300,000. Who knows what ‘small’ means? A guy billing maybe $1 million might say to himself, ‘Gee, I’m not big enough for them any more. I might not have a chance.’
It’s a very tricky business. Let’s say that a new agency has opened up and they have assurances that the account which is loose over at the Joe Doakes agency is going to go to them. No papers have been signed, but everyone has agreed to the thing. The account is making this move partly to take advantage of the big publicity that comes when a new shop opens with a big new account. Now ANNY calls guys every Wednesday, they’ve got a list of sources all over town, and they get on the telephone and say, ‘What’s new around town?’
They might call a guy who is familiar with the situation of the new agency opening and getting the loose account at Joe Doakes. And this guy they call might decide to zap the new agency and take a shot at the Doakes account himself. What he does is to tell ANNY that the big Widget account over at Doakes is going to leave and go to the new agency. ‘It’s too bad,’ says the guy to ANNY, ‘but that’s what I heard. Why don’t you check it out?’ ANNY calls the new agency and asks if it’s true that they’re going to pick up the Widget account. The guy who is forming the new agency