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 is dead. He has his head between his hands because part of the big mystique in his talking to the Widget people was, ‘Well, we want you to be our first account and we expect it to make a big splash.’ If ANNY prints a story which says that Jim So-and-So, one of the partners of the new agency, said there is no news to report at this time concerning the Widget account, the issue is dead. It’s now a dead story as far as the business trade is concerned. With a dead story, the Widget people just lost the one big reason why they want to go to the new agency. Everyone had been saying to each other, ‘Well, we would be their first account and we would get the full treatment, the whole splash, like, “They opened today and they opened with this particular account.”’ With the news out it’s not going to happen that way. What may happen is that the Widget people will say, ‘Gee, this new agency must have blabbed it around about our leaving the Doakes people. What do we need with a bunch of bigmouths?’
The clients all read the trade papers, but very few of them realize the infighting that is going on all the time. All they know is whenever their name is mentioned in the wrong way they get upset. They don’t know of the blood being shed behind the lines. I saw a story recently about an agency–and the agency was named–saying that they were doing some work for Carter-Wallace, Inc. The story said that the project ‘is under wraps. No details available.’ I don’t know anything more about this story but I do know that somebody just got zapped out. An executive at Carter-Wallace must have seen the story and then called the agency which was doing the project— ‘We thought that this was very confidential, and if it’s not confidential why didn’t you tell us that you couldn’t keep a secret?’ Somebody bombed the agency. Who knows why?
There are some agencies that just are not aware of what’s going on. Day in, day out, these agencies constantly take it on the chin. Some agencies’ guys are nice, sweet, warm guys who want to go home to Rye at night and they don’t want to know from rumors. They no more know how to handle rumors than the man in the moon.
Very few people go around telling out-and-out lies in the rumor game – this is where you tend to draw the line. But if there’s a piece of news, some guys use it to their best advantage. That’s all it really is. People also draw the line at taking unfair advantage of a guy. They would not call up a trade paper and say outright that somebody’s about to lose an account. They don’t call up a paper and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a tip for you, baby.’ Like that’s bad news. They let the press call them. I once got a phone call from one of the trade papers:
‘What do you hear?’
‘I haven’t heard anything.’
‘Well, let me see if I can refresh your memory. I hear you’re pitching National Airlines?’
‘National? They’re at Papert, Koenig, Lois. There’s always talk about National Airlines. But I’m not doing anything.’
‘Well, we hear they’re really talking to somebody.’
I say, ‘Is your source a good source?’
‘My source is a pretty good source.’
I say, ‘Fine. Why don’t you call up PKL? They’re going to deny it. Why don’t you call up National? They’ll admit it because National always admits these things. They always say, “We talk to agencies all the time.”’
During that call I really knew nothing about National and PKL so I really couldn’t help the guy from the trade paper. If I was pitching National I would have told him. But I don’t think anyone with class ever picks up the phone to say, ‘Hey, did you hear that …?’ I think that’s tipping, and it’s wrong.
People use rumors to zap out other people. An example of this terrible practice is the case of Mary Wells. According to The Gallagher Report, Mary Wells used to have only a thirty-day contract with her own agency. But people began to use this report against her and it was affecting her new business. How did the word that she had only a short contract ever get out? Who knows? But I’ll bet she didn’t run around town screaming it. Somebody leaked it from Wells, Rich & Greene to somebody else where it got to The Gallagher Report where Gallagher did a whole series of columns on it. Wells, Rich might be pitching an account and another agency also pitching the account might say to the prospective client, ‘What do you want to go to Wells, Rich for? Mary W
ells has only a thirty-day contract. She can walk out any time she wants to.’ To combat this kind of thing she just signed a ten-year contract with her own company. Now, nobody can zap Wells, Rich with the line about Mary Wells leaving any more. A client can say to himself, ‘For the next ten years I have Mary.’ So she’s set and she’s going to do very well. But figure how nasty the business is when she had to sign such a longterm contract to combat the rumors. And of course, when she did sign, it made big news with all the trade papers.
Guys in an agency try to knock off other guys in the same agency by using rumors. I once worked for a place where the executive vice-president – a guy I’ll call Hunter – was trying to zap the president of the agency, whom I’ll call Duffy. Week in, week out, Hunter spread rumors that he was going to become president. Duffy was slowly getting zapped all over the place. The rumors were of the kind with the intimate, quiet business details that only the two guys knew about. Whenever anyone questioned Hunter about these terrible rumors he would shrug his shoulders and say, ‘Who, me? I don’t even know how that started.’
Hunter hasn’t got the job yet. But he’s going to get it eventually. Day in, day out, another rumor. You’d open up The Gallagher Report and you’d read, ‘Hunter is going to get Duffy’s job.’ Or, ‘Hunter is a good replacement for Duffy.’ Or, ‘Duffy is getting along in years and must be concerned about the National Clambake business, which isn’t as solid as it used to be.’ The average person reading this must wonder, ‘Why doesn’t Duffy walk into Hunter’s office one day and punch him in the mouth?’ That’s not the way they play the game. Duffy will see Hunter and say, ‘Hunter, how are you?’ Hunter says, ‘Fine, but I’m very upset by all these rumors about you. I can’t imagine how they’re starting.’ Duffy simply cannot fire Hunter. Hunter has a contract and is well set up at the agency. He can’t be fired without a meeting of the entire board of directors.
One day Hunter and I had to take a cab together on an appointment. He started, ‘Jesus, I don’t know how these rumors about Duffy and me are starting. Did you see the one today in The Gallagher Report?’ I said, ‘Hunter, cut the crap. I know where the rumors come from. You’re sending them in.’ He sighed and said, ‘Ah, let’s change the subject.’ That was it, just change the subject.
The outsider who reads about this kind of infighting might be horrified, but strangely enough I enjoy it. I think it’s a lot of fun. I like it when somebody zaps me. The guy who said we weren’t taking small accounts did a beautiful job – he really got me. He put me in a position where I couldn’t fight back and I can admire the job he did. The thing to remember about the entire rumor game is that you can’t touch a solid account and you can’t bother a solid advertising man. A rumor will start, the trade paper will call the advertising manager of the account, and the advertising manager will say, ‘Shove it.’ Take Talon Zippers at Delehanty, Kurnit & Geller. Talon is very happy; they’re getting good advertising and they’re content. They could start a million rumors but those people are not going to move. Rumors only occur when there is something wrong with the advertising being done for the account.
Rumors are especially heavy nowadays with the revolution going on in the business. The older agencies are slipping and they’re getting desperate. Therefore, plenty of rumors. The younger agencies are aggressive and really pretty tough. Therefore, plenty of rumors. The guy in the older agency who is trying to hold on is vulnerable to rumors. He fights back by sending out a lot of rumors. All of this is followed by the young guy trying to build an agency who is going to make it if he has to stomp over the first ten people he sees. He’s putting out rumors too, and some nasty ones at that.
A lot of people watch all of this carrying on and wonder what would happen if guys would quit screwing around with rumors and spend their time on advertising. The truth is, there’s plenty of time to do both. I get a kick out of the rumor business because I look at it as part of the total warfare of the advertising game. Remember, there are all kinds of warfare. Suppose someone said, ‘Why don’t they just go in there with their guns and wipe out that town? What’s this bit about psychological warfare? What’s this bit about spies and everything else? You take your tanks and you go in and you take the town.’ Well, maybe somewhere along the line someone discovered that there are fifty different ways to capture this town. You need the tanks and you need the guns, but then maybe you’ll also need a lot of other little things that people don’t even consider. It’s part of the game, it’s part of the mix. Publicity is also part of the mix.
I don’t want to get too far away from rumors, but if you look at Doyle, Dane for a minute, you have to agree that in their own quiet, reserved, wonderful way they’ve done a fantastic public-relations job. There is no doubt about it, they’re very public-relations conscious. Nobody ever gets the feeling that they get publicity. It just seems that they win things and they do things, and isn’t it nice? They have a very good girl in charge of their publicity and they are very well buttoned up about what they do and how they do it. Mary Wells hired a girl to handle public relations for them. There is no such thing as an agency which steadily turns out such good work that everybody automatically looks up and says, ‘Yeah, aren’t they good?’ It’s public relations and a lot of other things.
Part of the rumor business is the way you make yourself accessible to people who are looking for a job. Let’s call the getting and losing of an account a war. Let’s also say that in a war the first thing you need for the fight is ammunition, and ammunition in advertising is good ads. Second, all the ammunition in the world won’t help you if you haven’t got information. Intelligence. Intelligence is knowing what’s going on, knowing what the people are doing down the block. As far as I’m concerned, you just can’t operate out of a vacuum. You just can’t say, ‘Well, I know what I’m doing so I don’t have to worry about what they’re doing down the block.’ You’ll never get an account that way; you’ll never be able to pick an account.
I interview people – always – with an eye toward hiring them, but also I regard these people who come in for a job as the greatest source of information as to what’s going on in the business. Some of the people who walk in are unhappy with their job or their agency. Others are trying to impress you with their knowledge of what’s going on in their agency. They’re ready to tell you anything – some of them just spill out at the mouth. I saw a girl not long ago – a kid in a media job at a good agency in town. In the course of one little interview she told me that the people at a very good account with her agency were very unhappy because they felt they were not getting the kind of service that they would like. The word she used was ‘pampered.’ ‘What do you mean by “pampered”?’ I asked. She said, ‘Well, it’s not that they want to be pampered. But they’d like to see the agency president come in at least once every two weeks to show them the ads and talk to them. They want to deal president to president.’
All right, now here’s a piece of loose intelligence that has been handed to me. What do you do with it? Well, tomorrow maybe I can put in a call to the account saying it’s about time that we talked – that we sat down and had some lunch together since I feel that one of the things which is making our agency grow is the fact that we’re at the size where we can get together – president to president – and talk about advertising. Maybe I won’t ever get that account but I do have a lead on $1.5 million worth of business and I know exactly what’s wrong up there.
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 on
e 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.’
From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor Page 19
