From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor

by Jerry Della Femina

  ‘The first day they had a meeting on the Japanese electronics company, Panasonic, and there must have been six or seven guys there: the account supervisor, the account executive, the executive art director, and a couple of others. I figured I’d keep my mouth shut for a few minutes, like it was my first morning in the place.

  One guy said, “Well, what are we going to do about Panasonic?” And everybody sat around, frowning and thinking about Panasonic.

  Finally, I decided, what the hell, I’ll throw a line to loosen them up – I mean, they were paying me $50,000 a year plus a $5,000-a-year expense account, and I thought they deserved something for all this bread. So I said, “Hey, I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” Everybody jumped. Then I got very dramatic, really setting them up.

  “I see a headline, yes, I see this headline.”

  “What is it?” they yelled.

  “I see it all now,” I said, “I see an entire campaign built around this headline.” They all were looking at me now. “The headline is, the headline is: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.”

  Complete silence. Dead silence …’

  This book is dedicated to the dedicated: Ally, Bernbach, Burnett, Calet, Case, Dunst, Durfee, Frankfurt, Gage, Goldschmidt, Harper, Hirsch, Karsch, Kurnit, Lois, McCabe, Moss, Paccione, Raboy, Rosenfeld, Travisano, Wells and all the others.

  Author’s Note

  The advertising business is, if nothing else, highly volatile. Factual references, billings, account affiliations at agencies and other similar details are accurate, to the best of our knowledge, as of October 1, 1969. Undoubtedly, accounts will move and billings will change between the time this book goes into production and publication day. If there are any such errors, the author and editor regret them. One final note: To protect the innocent and guilty alike, a few pseudonyms have been used in the book, but 9944/100 per cent of the names, agencies and situations described are real.

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  One Nazis Don’t Take Away Accounts

  Two Who Killed Speedy Alka-Seltzer?

  Three Fear, Son of Fear, and Fear Meets Abbott and Costello

  Four Give Me Your Drunks, Your Weirdos …

  Five Dancing in the Dark

  Six The Creative Life

  Seven The Jolly Green Giant and Other Stories

  Eight Fights Headaches Three Ways

  Nine Fights Headaches Four Ways

  Ten Censorship

  Eleven Rumors and Pitches

  Twelve Profiles in Warm and Humane Courage

  Thirteen The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On

  Copyright

  ‘The original Mad Men are all dead. Ironically, they died from consuming the products they sold with such gusto. Their lungs went from the cigarettes they advertised – and smoked by the carton. Their livers melted from all the scotch, gin and vodka they made famous – and the three-martini lunches they enjoyed in the process …’

  The original Mad Men are all dead.

  Ironically, they died from consuming the products they sold with such gusto. Their lungs went from the cigarettes they advertised – and smoked by the carton. Their livers melted from all the scotch, gin and vodka they made famous – and the three-martini lunches they enjoyed in the process.

  I wrote From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor in 1970. What you are about to read is a candid, inside look at a wild period in business, a new era of Mad Men that we will never again see.

  I came into the advertising business in 1952 at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthrauff & Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the Mad Men television series without moving a desk. Needless to say, it was a difficult business to break into, especially for a teenager with a limited education.

  In 1956, I took my portfolio of sample creative work to J. Walter Thompson, the world’s largest advertising agency. They had a position open for a junior writer of sales promotion on the Ford Truck account. At that time Ford was J. Walter Thompson’s largest account.

  The copy chief on the account looked at my work and said, ’This is very good, but I can’t suggest you for the job.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  His answer was delivered with a nervous smile. ‘Because this is Ford and they don’t want your kind working on their business.’

  It took me years to figure out what ‘your kind’ meant.

  Advertising agencies in those days were broken down among ethnic lines. The Mad Men flourished in large Protestant ad agencies like J. Walter Thompson and N. W. Ayer, BBDO and Ted Bates. These agencies monopolized all the large advertising accounts (cars, food, cigarettes, soft drinks, beer). The other, smaller accounts (dress manufacturers, shoes, underwear, small retail stores) were regulated to tiny, ‘Jewish’ ad agencies. By 1950 only one agency whose founders were Jewish had managed to win packaged goods, cigarette, liquor and car accounts. They did so by naming their agency after the color of the walls in their office, and by not using their Jewish names on their masthead – thus Grey Advertising was born.

  Then, in the mid-1950s, a ‘Jewish’ advertising agency broke through the ethnic barrier. Doyle Dane Bernbach’s campaign for advertisers like Volkswagen (‘Think Small’, ‘Lemon’) and Levy’s Bread (‘You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s’) changed the advertising business. Doyle Dane Bernbach made distinctive advertising that had ‘attitude’ and respected the consumer’s intelligence. They sold products with ads that had humor, bold language and layouts with sharp, clean and stylish design. It opened the door for a totally new kind of Mad Man.

  By 1961, when I got my first copywriting job, ‘my kind’ were suddenly in demand. The creative revolution had begun. Advertising had turned into a business dominated by young, funny, Jewish copywriters and tough, sometimes violent, Greek and Italian art directors.

  The original Mad Men did not give up without a fight.

  I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising. Ogilvy knew his audience was mostly made up of desperate men who were trapped in agencies that were losing accounts to young, upstart, ethnic agencies. Ogilvy lashed out and declared, ‘I say the lunatics have taken over the asylum!’

  The audience rose and gave that fighting line a standing ovation. I stood up and was clapping as loudly as the next man when I suddenly thought to myself, What are you clapping about – he’s talking about you.

  It was a wonderful asylum. We were wild. We made the antics depicted on every episode of Mad Men look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Our little agency was permanently filled with the sweet smell of burning cannabis. Life was easy was back in the days before human resource departments controlled business and someone decided we all should be politically correct. Everyone smoked (I had a four-pack-a-day habit). Everyone drank martinis (I had many a three-martini lunch), and everyone screwed around.

  In the business world of the 1950s and early 60s, sex was a forbidden subject – everyone did it and no one talked about it. But by 1965 the sexual revolution was on, and the advertising business went wild. I encouraged it at my agency because nothing got creative people to come in early and leave late better than the prospect of sexual adventure.

  In 1967, when I opened my ad agency, Jerry Della Femina & Partners, a group of us started an Agency Sex Contest. For more than twenty-five years, one week at the end of every year was devoted
to Animal House-like antics. This was, until today, the best-kept secret in advertising. Thousands of people took part in the Agency Sex Contest.

  The contest had everyone in the agency voting anonymously on paper ballots for the three people they most wanted to go to bed with. They were also asked to vote on the person of the same sex they would consider going to bed with. And, of course, there was the ménage a trois category, in which they selected the two other people they wanted to go to bed with. Sometimes as many as 300 votes were cast.

  For one week the walls of the agency were covered with posters made by people who were campaigning for themselves. One very shy girl in Accounting got into the spirit of the contest, Xeroxed her breasts and hung pictures of them on the walls. Another young account executive had as her slogan: VOTE FOR AMANDA [not her real name]. LIKE BLOOMINGDALE’S, I’M OPEN AFTER 9 EVERY NIGHT.

  One very attractive female executive had a sexy picture of herself that she sneaked into the agency’s men’s room, and put up on the wall that a man would be facing. The caption under her provocative photo read, CAN I HELP YOU WITH THAT? This almost caused a disaster when a rather priggish client called and said he was on his way to visit the agency. In the hour before he arrived, we feverishly took down every campaign ad. Then, in the course of the meeting, the man excused himself to go to the men’s room. After a few minutes I let out a scream. We had forgotten to take the campaign posters off men’s bathroom wall. The client returned ashen-faced. He never said a word about the signs but he kept shaking his head. I would walk out of the meeting every five minutes just to giggle and then come back looking like the proper head of a major advertising agency.

  Voting was on the up and up. One year I had our accounting firm tally up the ballots. You never saw so many accountants looking so amused and animated in your life.

  First prize for the winning couple (even if they hadn’t voted for each other) was a weekend at the Plaza Hotel, paid for by my agency. Second prize was a night at the Plaza. Third prize was a night uninterrupted on the couch in my office. Winners of the ménage a trois got dinner for three at the Four Seasons Restaurant. Winners of the gay and lesbian part of the contest won a $100 gift certificate to The Pleasure Chest – a store in Greenwich Village that sold sex toys.

  The results were announced at a party where as many as 300 of us would lock ourselves in a giant Mexican restaurant. At one party, I was concerned that the entire agency had imbibed too much cannabis and too many margaritas, and that the party was getting dangerously out of hand. When one older executive passed out, his head went into the plate of food in front of him. The woman next to him shouted, ‘He’s OK, the guacamole broke his fall.’ A pretty, young, Asian woman, whom I’d never heard say a single word, jumped up on a table and started stripping and dancing with wild abandon, and accidentally kicked one of my art directors in the head. I rushed to the restaurant’s manager and asked him to tell his waiters to cut down on the drinks. He smiled at me and said, ‘Señor, it’s too late. My waiters are all stoned and they are in the middle of the party.’

  Was it sophomoric? You bet.

  Was it politically incorrect? You bet.

  Will you be seeing it in future shows of Mad Men? You bet.

  By 1972 we were one of the fastest growing advertising agencies in the world. That’s the year I decided to buy a smallish British agency called Saatchi & Saatchi. Why not? My book had been a best-seller, I was riding high and I decided I had to do something to tone down my image. Too many people saw me as being a wild man, and the larger, packaged-goods advertising accounts like Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers would not deal with a wild man. I’d opened an office in Los Angeles – but no one ever changed his or her image at the Beverly Hills Hotel. So I looked to the UK for respectability.

  I sent the president of my advertising agency, Jim Travis, to scout agencies in London. He came back and said the picking were slim. There was one agency – Collett, Dickson & Pearce – that was turning out great work, but they gave no indication that they wanted to be purchased. Our best chance was Saatchi & Saatchi, and they had expressed some interest in being acquired. I confess I had never heard of Saatchi & Saatchi, but I jumped onto a plane and went to London to make the deal.

  I was greeted at the door of Saatchi & Saatchi like a conquering hero. ‘We’ve all read your book,’ someone said. ‘We loved it,’ someone else said. This was followed by fifteen minutes of small talk that frankly turned my incredibly swollen head. Compliment after compliment after compliment. They’re very nice, I thought. I still remember admiring the large poster on their wall for Great Britain’s Health Education Council (HEC) that featured a distinctly large-bellied man with the caption, ‘Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’ A great ad. This, I thought, will be a good deal for both of our companies.

  Fifteen minutes later, with the small talk out of the way, I remember thinking, They’re smart. More talk, more talk on how we might get together. I remember thinking, They’re very smart.

  Another fifteen minutes went by, as they told me how I might buy them and proposed a complicated reverse takeover. That’s when it hit me. Oh my God. They’re smarter than I am. I’ve got to get out of here while I still have an ad agency. I remember backing out the door, and heaving a sigh of relief as I stumbled out into the daylight. It was a close call – a street-smart Mad Man from America had just escaped the clutches of a couple of even smarter Mad Men from the UK.

  A few months after my meeting with Saatchi & Saatchi, John O’Conner, a reporter friend from Advertising Age, called and said, ‘Got some news for you. Compton Advertising just bought Saatchi & Saatchi.’

  Now if there was an advertising agency that would have epitomized Mad Men it was Compton Advertising. Their former copy chief/president, Milton Gossett, could have been a double for Don Draper. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Saatchi owns Compton.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘You didn’t hear me. Compton owns Saatchi.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Saatchi will eventually own Compton.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind’ was O’Conner’s answer. I hung up the phone after making a small bet with O’Conner that the minnow from the UK would swallow the whale from the US. A few months later, in a reverse takeover, Saatchi & Saatchi owned Compton and proceeded to take over the advertising world.

  In 1986 I bowed to the British buying spree and sold my agency, Della Femina McNamee, to a British company called White Collins Rutherford & Scott. It was sort of a mini reverse takeover on my part, because my agency took over all the agencies that White Collins Rutherford & Scott had acquired in the US.

  Everyone who watches Mad Men asks me the same question: Has the advertising business changed?

  Yes, dramatically.

  To paraphrase Mr. Ogilvy’s comment in 1968, the lunatics are back in their cells, dead or retired. The internet is king. Newspapers are dead or dying. Magazines are shrinking every day. Ad budgets are being cut. The bottom line is now the only line in advertising. Copy has taken a back seat to design, and television advertising is shrinking because every client is looking for digital solutions. They want more and more, and want it to cost less and less. A few nineteen-year-old students from the School of Visual Arts in New York can design and produce a brilliant campaign in a few hours that once would have taken weeks of late-night creative work by fifty people to produce.

  Me? I’m still in the business, running an ad agency called Della Femina Rothschild Jeary & Partners. I’m as in love with the business as when I was a sixteen-year-old mail boy at Ruthrauff & Ryan.

  Once a Mad Man, always a Mad Man.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  NAZIS

  DON'T

  TAKE

  AWAY

  ACCOUNTS

  ‘The image of advertising still hangs in. The movie Blow-Up is a good example. Here’s this scrawny English photographer – a fashion photographer – and in one scene these two chicks literally attack him on his purple
no-seam backdrop. Thousands of people watch this photographer jumping from one chick to the next and they think, Wow! Imagine what goes on in advertising if this is what happens to a photographer. So another whole batch of people decides to quit delivering milk or whatever the hell they were doing and they’ve made up their minds to get into advertising …’

  Most people think advertising is Tony Randall. In fact, they think this business is made up of 90,000 Tony Randalls. Guys all very suave, all very Tony Randall. They’ve been fed the idea from Hollywood that an advertising man is a slick, sharp guy. The people know zip about advertising.

  In the 1930s, everybody figured Adolphe Menjou was your typical advertising man. They dumped Adolphe Menjou by 1940 and then we had Melvyn Douglas. Remember him? There was a difference between Menjou and Douglas. Menjou was superficial; he knew nothing about it. Douglas knew nothing about it, and didn’t care either. Sometimes Menjou looked like he might be worried about losing a big account. But Douglas, like he spent most of his time in those movies screwing Rosalind Russell. So he couldn’t care less about losing the account. All of those movies were the same. Scene one, you pan up a New York skyscraper with some of that hokey New York music, then the camera moves into the elevator of the building. Douglas walks into the building, the elevator starter says, ‘Good morning, Mr. Suave,’ and the elevator door slams shut. Next shot you see the elevator floor dial moving up to 18. Douglas gets off the elevator, walks through the office, and the next thing you know he’s screwing somebody. It’s strange, really crazy. That’s what advertising was like in the movies. And Douglas never had real problems, but he was in advertising – he was the symbol of the guy who was in advertising.