From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [87]
Agency presidents should keep their people happy. People have big mouths and they go out and blab, and an angry person has an even bigger mouth. The girl I was talking to also mentioned something about the president of her agency – the fact that he might be retiring. She told me enough about what’s going on in that shop that I know right now that there are two or three accounts that are worth shooting for there, and I know what their problems are. This girl talked about one of their electronics accounts. And she pinpointed the specific problems on the account.
Now this is one girl. One job. Multiply her three or four times a day and you get to know exactly what accounts are loose or in trouble around town. I believe all of the newer and smaller agencies work this way when they’re talking to people about jobs. But it doesn’t work like that at the larger agencies. If somebody goes to ask for a job at J. Walter Thompson, forget it. The lines of communication must be so screwed up there because of Thompson’s size that any valuable word from an interview will never get its way back up to the guys who pitch. Thompson is so big that if there was a fire there, a guy couldn’t get the word to enough people to prevent a major tragedy. At a small agency, the relationship is one to one. Agency president talking to media girl, media girl spills her guts out, agency president makes the call tomorrow and possibly gets the account.
A Doyle, Dane is past the stage that they have to go digging for information. They’re at the point where people call them on possible new business and they’re not fighting hard. I get calls too, a lot of them. But I’m also fighting hard. Also, there’s a Machiavellian thing to this whole business that I love, and no matter how we grow I don’t think I’ll ever sit back and say to myself, ‘Well, that’s it. I don’t want to hustle any more.’ I enjoy this part of it; I enjoy it almost as much as I enjoy doing ads and commercials. I get a charge out of finding information and then putting it to use.
Corum Watches is one of our oldest accounts and truly one of the best. Good success story for us. One of their watches is an old American gold piece split in half, with a watch movement inserted in it. We sell that thing very big in Texas. We heard about Corum originally from a guy at Look magazine who said they were looking for an agency and we ought to pitch it. After I got the call I got out the phone book and couldn’t even find Corum Watches. I got back to the guy on Look magazine who knew the account. ‘Sure, Corum, know them well. Guy by the name of Jerry Greenberg is in charge of the whole business. He really is a great guy.’ I asked him about Greenberg. ‘Well, Jerry is a Cuban refugee, and he speaks with a heavy Spanish accent. He’s a very gentle guy, very nice guy, but he likes ballsy things.’
I picked up the phone, got Corum, and said, ‘Hello, Jerry Greenberg, I hear your account is loose. I’d like to come in and talk to you about it.’ At that point there’s no sense saying we should get together and have a little talk. He’s already talking to other agencies and I might have been too late. He had never heard of me. We had been in business for three months and things were bad. We were running out of bread, two of our partners had decided to pull out and things were very tight. I went to see him, showed him the stuff and got the account, just like that. I practically got it while I was there. When we took over the account Corum was advertising in the Times Magazine and spending something like $65,000. The account now bills close to a half million dollars with us. It’s a major account with us – and pretty soon he’s going to be all over the lot. His sales are fantastic – on that watch made out of a gold piece he’s backed up with orders, two or three months’ worth. The guy has a watch company now. When you’re able to spend close to $500,000 in promotion and advertising, you’ve got to be making a lot of bread.
Let’s say you track down a rumor and you’re asked to make a pitch.