There’s a wonderful story about an elderly couple swaying in rockers in their shady, sleepy nursing home. Suddenly, the man leans over and slaps the woman.
“What’s that for?” she shouts.
“That’s for all the bad sex we’ve had,” he says. They resume rocking. Moments later, the woman leans over and smacks him in return.
“And what’s that for?” he yells.
“That’s for knowing the difference!”
There was a time I should have known the difference and, in a way, my face was slapped.
Looking at the show at the Ryder Gallery made me realize our TV creative lagged behind our excelling work in print. In the past, I thought about adding big agency talent, but never really pursued the idea. When I heard that two of Doyle Dane Bernbach’s heaviest hitters were considering a change, I played George Steinbrenner going after star free agents.
Roy Grace and Evan Stark had sterling reputations. I knew Evan from earlier days when we were both working on Senator Eugene McCarthy’s campaign and he was freelancing. The Wall Street Journal did a recent feature on the team that showed how they created a winning new commercial for Schick blades. The article also mentioned their prize-winning, museum-honored work for Alka Seltzer (“Mamma mia, thatsa some spicy meatball”) and Mobil’s famous “Mr. Dirt.” There were rumors they were thinking of starting an agency. I invited them to lunch.
The logistical fit was quickly apparent. They could never start an agency that had my client base and authority, and Gilbert Advertising could benefit from their award-winning TV. If Gilbert Advertising was going to break that $10 million benchmark, TV would have to lead the way.
We discussed a partnership based on growth and accomplishment and reviewed new areas of business potential. At first, I was reluctant to consider a name change when so much had gone into building that personally titled calling. Evan said, “Richard, there’s no sense hiding us. There are solid prospects out there waiting for our names to go on the door. We should pursue them from day one.”
After additional discussions, we formed Gilbert, Grace & Stark and ran page announcements in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. We headlined, “Can a small agency do advertising like this?” and pictured six TV screens with familiar still life photos.
They included Mr. Dirt, the greasy enemy of Mobil’s new detergent gasoline; the suffering Italian actor in the famous Alka Seltzer “spicy meatball” ad; a suitcase-throwing gorilla for American Tourister luggage; a starchy Marco Buitoni and his popup pizza; a frame from a Whirlpool commercial; and excerpted copy from the classic Volkswagen funeral spot, “I, Maxwell E. Snaberly, being of sound mind and body, do hereby leave my entire fortune to my nephew Harold, who oft-times said, ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’ and ‘it sure pays to own a Volkswagen.’“
Many said the announcements brought “instant credibility,” but the veiled content and visual confusion warned me that I should have “known the difference.” The facts were true, but we stretched the ethics. Intuition has always been a hidden persuader, and in this case, it stayed hidden. For the moment, I forgot who I was in the search for who I wanted to be.
Roy and Evan had indeed created those commercials, but not when they were with “a small agency.” Although the copy fully credited DDB for the work and covered Roy and Evan’s nine-year stint at the agency, there was a deceptive twist to the ad.
“Those were our ads,” Roy said, “and we’re giving full credit to Doyle Dane Bernbach. We’re just showing our work.”
And that was the problem. It’s not just the work, but everything an agency does and stands for that make great performances possible. In no sense did those ads belong to us, even though Roy and Evan could claim authorship. The visuals were terrific, but I couldn’t hide a feeling that we cheated.
Reactions ran the gamut. Strong comment. Stinging criticism. Among the latter, a call from Josh Levine, DDB’s counsel and a leading authority on advertising practices. Also, brother of Harold, an agency friend.
We met at P.J. Clarke and Josh expressed surprise and disappointment. He said Bill Bernbach originally wanted to sue, but relented, and only ordered that the ad never run again. It didn’t, not in its original or any emended form.
The Bill Bernbach incident hurt. Gilbert Advertising had been called a vest pocket edition of DDB and that was a winning citation. When his son John wanted to enter advertising, Bill called to ask if we would train him as a junior account executive. Bill recommended us to Georg Jensen. I’d swung at a bad pitch.
The ad did bring new business calls. The strangest came from a fast-talking Peter C.L. Hodgson in New Haven who asked—and this is verbatim —”How would you like to handle a product that bounces higher than a ball, picks up comics in color, stretches, forms into all kinds of shapes, and sells and sells?” When I wanted to know what he was talking about, he answered, “My friend, you never heard of Silly Putty?”
The history is fascinating. During World War II, scientists at General Electric seeking a rubber substitute for tank treads and G.I. boots came up with a strong, pink, taffy-like dough that never made it to war but became a wildly popular object of fun and ridicule.
People joked about the G.E. product and played with it at cocktail parties. Hodgson, then a Connecticut marketing man, thought it showed great potential as a toy, bought the inventory, and put pictures of the product in the catalogue of a local store. He cleverly named it, packaged it, and Silly Putty was born. Credit for development of the product is still disputed, however. Dr. Earl L. Warrick of Dow Chemical claimed that he was granted a patent before the one given to James Wright, a research assistant at General Electric. What is not in dispute is that Ruth Fallgater, the owner of a toy store in New Haven, immediately saw the marketing potential of the product.
It was a runaway hit and helped make Hodgson a millionaire. He started his company in 1950 and those bouncing blobs became a national craze. Millions of the half-ounce measures of putty in plastic, egg-shaped containers were sold. It bounced, stretched, blotted, and blew apart like glass when hit with a hammer. A windfall of publicity followed. Steve Allen puttered with it on the Tonight show and a leading TV detective series, The Big Story, built a murder mystery around it.
In the late fifties, Silly Putty tested television ads and the product’s ability to pick up and transfer comics, became an updated decalcomania. It immediately achieved popular recognition on Captain Kangaroo and The Shari Lewis Show, leading children’s shows at the time.
Hodgson, now seeking new growth and promotional opportunities, arrived at Gilbert Grace & Stark with shipping cartons and chipboard boxes. He was a buoyant seventy-year-old and that putty was obviously a youth potion.
He reviewed our work, seemed pleased with what he saw. The budget was small, so we suggested working on a fee rather than the standard 15% commission arrangement. He said he’d call back. For months, notes arrived saying how much he enjoyed the visit. There were more samples. He had a pleasant, absent-minded quality and we wondered whether he would ever make a decision. At year’s end, we got a final letter with brief regrets and comic overtones.
“We have run into a corporate family snag and will not be able to pass on our billings to your good company. I am very happy to have met you, Ray and Evans. (He never did get the names right.) Good luck.”
He left all those free-firing samples and for weeks a walk in the art department put you smack in the middle of a Western shoot-out.
In 1977, Binney & Smith, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of children’s art supplies including Crayola, bought the rights to Silly Putty. It quickly took sales to two million dabs of putty a year.
Its legacy was incredible. The product grew as people used it in new and unintended ways. It went under tables to right wobbling legs, lifted lint from clothing, cleaned typewriter keys, and plugged holes. In 1981, the Columbus, Ohio zoo used it to take hand and footprints of its gorilla population; receivers on the New England Patriots football team used it to strengthen their hands. Silly Putty also went into space when the Apollo 8 astronauts carried it to secure tools. Ron Howard used it in his big hit movie Cocoon to repair a shipboard engine taking the senior human cargo to an unknown destination. It became part of the language.
Peter Hodgson died in 1976, leaving a not-so-silly estate of close to $150 million. In 2001, that wry-high blob made the nation’s bestseller list with the publication of George Carlin’s topically witty Napalm and Silly Putty. The bounce goes on.
New creative assignments arrived from Fedders Air Conditioning and Brown & Williamson tobacco, then testing a low tar and nicotine “safe” cigarette. We had early reservations about the latter and soon bowed out because there were just too many questions about “safe.”
Among our regular clients, S.O.S. Dishwasher Detergent from the Household Products Division of Miles Laboratories was especially pleased with the agency’s new additions.
S.O.S., a leader in soap pads (today it’s Brillo), came to us earlier with a new product for the automatic dishwasher. Miles was concerned that the growing popularity of Teflon might reduce the need for scouring pads and wanted to protect its brand position. Ari Kopelman, then a management supervisor at DDB and later head of Chanel, recommended us to Miles.
Proctor & Gamble’s Cascade, Economics Lab’s Electrosol and All headed the category. Research confirmed that Miles’s strength in pads presented an opportunity in the detergent area. It produced a new, remarkably effective powder with “unique, low alkaline, blue granules,” and we put it into test.
Most household products use hyperbolic, slice-of-life, TV story telling. The repetition of the all-perfect, all-American casting along with the artificial situations can, at times, make a sane man or woman scream. However, few major package goods advertisers were ready to break from standard selling stereotype.
Roy and Evan felt humor would provide a winning, and welcome change. They developed a series of hilarious commercials under the theme “With dishwasher S.O.S., there’s nothing to hide.” Doting couples in dimly lit dining rooms were featured.
Husband: “Helen, this is very romantic, but I can’t find my glass.”
Wife: “It’s right next to your plate, honey.”
Husband: “Helen, I can’t find my plate.”
Wife: “It’s to the right of the fork.”
Husband: “I think I ate your salad.”
Wife: “What about the fish? Who ate the fish?”
Husband: “Helen, I found my glass.”
Voiceover comes on as the scene shifts to a final beauty shot of the product resting on spotless dishes. “Eating in the dark can hide dull dishes and dingy, spotted glasses that may come out of the dishwasher. But, there’s a better way. Dishwasher S.O.S. with ‘unique, low-alkaline, blue granules’ to give you sparkling dishes and glasses, even in hard water. With dishwasher S.O.S., there’s nothing to hide.”
And another vignette, this by flickering candlelight.
Husband: “Mmm, honey, this meat is delicious.”
Wife: “I didn’t make meat.”
Husband: “Well, then you certainly have a way with potatoes.”
Wife: “It’s not potato.”
Husband: “Then it’s fruit. Right? Fruit.”
Wife: “Fruit doesn’t have legs.”
Husband: “How about a head? Does it have a head?”
Wife: “It doesn’t have a head.”
Husband: “I got it. It’s duck. Duck with a rubber band stuffing.”
Same wrap-up copy, same final product shot.
Although the commercials tested well and scored high on the laugh meter, we never reached the brand penetration goal. Cascade and All, with their dishwasher strengths, distribution power, and companion household items, were impregnable. Leaders can also hobble new entries with special deals and price breaks. S.O.S. was reluctantly forced to withdraw from the market, sending our dreams of a multimillion TV budget down the drain.
Miles Laboratories licked its wounds and joined a growing list of overreaching marketing casualties. Clairol, the leader in hair color, unwisely and unprofitably challenged Revlon in cosmetics with its Miss California line. Revlon, quid pro quo, took costly aim at Clairol in hair care. AT&T made the wrong choice battling IBM in computers. And IBM dropped countless millions with its cyberspace Satellite Business Systems pursuing AT&T in telecommunications. The list goes on.
Miles’s decision proved a real downer. The absence of prestigious, new business was also a disappointment. The prospects waiting in the wings stayed there, and the economic downturn of the early seventies slowed advertising.
There was an added problem. Evan, a gifted writer, had maddening work habits that would never be tolerated in an employee. How do you in a partner? You don’t.
He lived in Pound Ridge, NY, an hour’s drive to the city. He was always late, always in a holding pattern north of the city. I spoke to him. It didn’t help. We needed a traffic controller on staff.
“He gives me migraines,” Roy said. (Now, he tells me.)
Roy, meanwhile had been trained at DDB where top creative talent held dictatorial reign. It was first choice, or no choice. Such independence is foreign to the small agency. Here, clients require attentive handholding, generous supporting ideas, and collateral assistance. Gilbert Advertising might have been stubborn but we were flexible. Roy and Evan had been coddled and cuddled in a different world. The partnership was shaky.
I knew we were on borrowed time, but there were still some bright, concluding efforts for Club Med, Renault, and Standard Milling. The latter produced Heckers flour, Wheatena, and Maypo cereals. Maypo’s previous agency, with its well-known, pugilistic creative heavyweight, George Lois, featured leading athletes sobbing, “I want my Maypo.” Research showed us kids were turned off by sniffling heroes. We substituted light-hearted animation.
For Heckers, we brought its famous “boy-on-the-bag” purple trademark to life. He came jumping off the package and began singing “On the Banks of the Wabash” ending with a throaty, Louis Armstrong, “Oh, yeahh.” We made market inroads, but the entrenched Pillsbury product was too powerful to be moved. Heckers and others remained the perennial challengers.
One upbeat moment was an assignment to represent Charles of the Ritz cosmetics. I had always wanted to work with Richard Avedon and, by coincidence, a former agency writer, Norma Bodine Stevens (she married Martin Stevens, creative director of Revlon) had recently become Avedon’s rep. Avedon was far more than a fashion photographer and his provocative portraits provided an unmatched photo record for our time. It was hard to forget the faces as Avedon captured them—Chaplin, Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marian Anderson, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, Bert Lahr, Truman Capote. No one saw the human condition quite like Avedon.
I hired him for Ritz and he produced a series of superb black-and-white poster shots that treated the female face with stark, editorial intimacy. And intensity. The Ritz campaign was only a moment in fashion history, but now those Avedon renditions of lips, hair, eyes, and skin represent a personal treasure of photographic art. One ad, promoting glossy lips, was unhappily cancelled, because it featured an incredibly beautiful young model who died in Paris of a drug overdose.
In the fall of 2002, the Metropolitan Museum of Art staged an Avedon retrospective that covered 180 images spread over twelve galleries. I congratulated Norma and she wrote, “Memories, memories, and Ritz a highlight.”
At the end of 1973, Evan went back to free-lancing and his patented, dreamy driving. Roy and I stayed together for another six months, then separated. He joined Carl Ally Inc. and subsequently returned to Doyle Dane Bernbach as chairman and executive creative director, U.S.A.
All-star teams don’t always make it to the World Series or the Super Bowl. There are the imponderables of fit, style, taste, and chemistry.
“I’m for you, you’re for me, but we’re not necessarily for each other.”
Shortly after, we went back to being Gilbert Advertising. No matter how I tried to camouflage it, Gilbert, Grace & Stark was a business failure and a personal setback. I also lost my loyal backup, Mike Greenberger, who left to become the beauty advertising manager of Vogue.
In advertising, we wash our linen in public, and I was concerned about how the partnership breakup would be viewed by the industry. I overreacted. What was personal to me was just yesterday’s news in the speedy whir of the ad world. This was apparent when Phil Dougherty asked me to do a guest piece for the business section of Sunday’s New York Times.
“Cover the big changes taking place in marketing and take a look at the future,” he said. Phil frequently turned his Sunday column over to business leaders and this was a timely, satisfying offer. I had to make those eight hundred words meaningful.
It was 1974. I wrote about the saturation growth of TV. Hard to believe that less than twenty years earlier, color sets had been considered bulky, expensive, and unreliable. I also covered the influence of Ralph Nader and the emerging new consumer advocates. His book, Unsafe at Any Speed was first published in 1965. By 1973 millions of cars had been recalled for repair of functional defects. Environment, emissions, pollution, and ozone layer entered our vocabulary.
Other subjects, so commonplace today, included government’s growing intrusion in business, dramatic changes in distribution, concentration of new leadership in major chains, the rise of discount stores and shopping malls, and the advancing, unstoppable role of technology in an exploding age of information.
In one area, however, I was way, way off the mark. I wrote, “The creative superfluity that fashioned a $250,000 commercial by Richard Lester, noted British film maker, for Braniff in ‘68, or a $100,000 plus Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza for Contac pain relief, would not be seen again.” Ten years later, commercials for Pepsi with Michael Jackson cost over a million. If you factored in commercial endorsement contracts, we were talking millions. I had lived in the Neanderthal age of TV production.
I also saw the twin problems of compensation and product conflict affecting agency growth. I predicted an increase in mergers and amalgamations, but no amount of crystal ball gazing could have anticipated the frenzied merger gluttony, unrestricted stock options, and global growth of the eighties and after. The big fish were devouring the little fish, and many of us were struggling as guppies in yuppie waters.
Early 1975, I lunched with Harry Paster, executive vice president of the American Association of Ad Agencies and that New York Times column of a year earlier turned predictive. Harry was a walking warehouse of statistical inventory and I doubt any agency marriage or merger ever took place without his guidance and imprimatur.
“Richard,” he said, “there’s a bright, young agency looking for a president and they’d be better off if you acquired them. The future is no longer made for the single entrepreneur and you’d have a number of compatible good men as partners. Then, you could do what I know you love to do, advertising and writing, and not fret about administration, personnel, or agency housekeeping.”
Shortly afterward Ray Solomon, Nat and Seymour Kameny visited the office. They had started an agency many years before and were specialists in leisure and home entertainment products. They had recently added Lew Sherwood, David Wiseltier, and Marvin Schneider, young, award-winning creative directors, as minority partners. It was a unique package of ability and personality. Although it meant relinquishing autonomy, I could see the wisdom in Harry’s words.
I was nervous about changing the agency personality after my experience with Roy and Evan. I didn’t want to make another mistake, but Ray, Nat, and Seymour were mature professionals. Their eagerness to become part of my creative image and reputation was immediately apparent.
KSW&G Advertising, Inc. was born. The four letters covered the seven stockholders. After twenty-five years, it was setting sail in a new direction.
A captain and six officers on deck, in a stormy sea of change.