From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [92]
On the street it was murder. A hot, hot day in July, and it must have been like 98 degrees out. When we got downstairs the heat hit us. Now usually whenever an agency finishes a presentation, no matter how bad it is, they usually say, ‘Did you notice that guy over there on the end? He looked pretty impressed. The other two were yawning but …’ They always try to find something to get them through the day. Nobody doesn’t get an account. You always say, ‘Gee, we got a good chance.’ When Bob and I came down the elevator we were still looking back to see if they were chasing us. They were shoving us out the door saying things like ‘Here, take this. This is the top to that thing you’re carrying. You can snap it on later.’
So there we are, 98 degrees out, carrying all this equipment. I start to say something in the usual vein about the presentation and Bob looked at me and said, ‘Shhh. Don’t even talk about it.’ We’re lugging all of this equipment and of course no cabs. We had to walk back from Forty-third and Broadway to Madison Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street. It was like the Bataan Death March. We were sweating, we were dying, the heat was killing us. I felt like people were hitting me with bayonets to get me going.
We got back to the agency and Irwin Engelmore, the president, a very sweet guy, takes a look at the two of us who are soaked through and says, ‘How’d you do?’ And for the first time in the history of advertising someone told the truth after a presentation. Bob said, ‘We bombed.’ Irwin said, ‘Oh, were there things that they didn’t like?’
Bob said, ‘There was everything that they didn’t like. We bombed.’
Now Irwin, who had spent quite a bit of money on this presentation, said, ‘Well, do they want us to come back again?’
Bob said, ‘I don’t think they want us in that neighborhood any more. I don’t think we can go around Broadway and Forty-second Street.’
Irwin said, ‘Uh, is there somebody I can call?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Call a priest, Irwin. Maybe he’ll help.’
Once, also at Ashe & Engelmore, we were going to make a presentation to a fellow named Richard Meltzer, who was the president of Beauknit Mills, a very big textile company. We had come up with some kind of campaign to show them – I don’t even remember what it was, it’s not really important. The thing was we all had instructed Irwin before the presentation, ‘Irwin, when you go out there, when you sit down with this guy, don’t forget he’s going to ask you some questions about what kind of advertising they need. This is new to him. Remember, it’s human advertising. I want you to tell him it’s human advertising.’ I would do this to Irwin all the time, set him up, get him straight. ‘You got it now? It’s human advertising you’re showing. If he says, ‘What is it?’ tell him it’s warm and human.’
Irwin said, ‘Yeah, yeah. It’s warm and human.’
I said, ‘Right, Irwin. It’s warm and human, warm and human, warm and human.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Jerry. We’re going to do well.’
Irwin gets to the presentation and he’s sitting there with his right-hand man, a very bright guy named Lee Barnett. Irwin hands Meltzer the campaign and says, ‘Mr. Meltzer, this is it. This is humane.’ Barnett’s muttering, ‘No, no, no.’ Irwin says, ‘It’s humane, Mr. Meltzer. This is humane advertising, warm and humane.’ Barnett’s whispering, ‘It’s human, it’s human.’ Irwin says, ‘Yeah, human. It’s humane, Mr. Meltzer.’ Finally Barnett kicked Irwin under the table and said, ‘Human! Humane is kind to dogs, you schmuck!’
Irwin was a good man on presentations. He would always start off his presentation by saying, ‘Do you have the courage to run our kind of advertising?’ And the prospective client usually was confused because he couldn’t figure out what kind of advertising he had to have the courage to run. This was Irwin’s standard pitch. Most agency