J. Walter Thompson very aggressively went after the massive Burger King account one year. Burt Manning led the charge. I’ll spare you the gory details, but we won the business—which was always invigorating until we remembered, Now we actually have to do the work and deliver on our ridiculous promises.
The fast-food company was a Pillsbury subsidiary and the billing was almost as large as the rest of the New York office’s put together. Frank Nicolo was picked to run creative on the account. I supervised the adult business, while wordsmith Hal Friedman and a very bright writer named Linda Kaplan were in charge of Burger King’s large kids’ program. (Linda went on to start her own billion-dollar ad agency. Good for Linda. She’s one of my heroes.)
It was Nicolo who must take most of the blame for creating the very creepy Magic Burger King, a red-bearded Tudor-costumed character who, for a brief shining moment, became more popular than Ronald McDonald. That was probably a mistake on our part. We were starting to get under Old McDonald’s skin. More on that soon.
“Aren’t you hungry for Burger King now?” was a campaign that I created. My bad. I called this style of advertising “hard sell that people love to watch.” I know, it makes no sense. But clients seemed to buy it.
The Battle of the Burgers was also one of my creations. In those ads, many of which were penned by Friedman, Burger King got aggressive with Old McDonald’s. Burger King broiled its meat; Old McDonald’s fried theirs. Burger King’s regular hamburger was bigger than Old McDonald’s regular hamburger. Most of the spots were charming and funny, which they needed to be. We were going up against an American icon, a very rich and powerful icon.
For some reason, the whole country took note of these ads. Almost every night, the campaign was featured on the TV evening news. Dan Rather would comment on the latest ads in “the Burger Wars.” He’d show one of our TV spots as part of the newscast. It was even better than free advertising. The story was covered in newspapers and magazines like Time and Newsweek. Of course, this was back in the day when some people actually watched the nightly news on TV and read newspapers and magazines made of paper.
Maybe it was the baseball-themed spots that ran during the Cardinals versus Brewers World Series, but the loftier-than-thou McDonald’s Corporation got so irritated, they filed a lawsuit in federal court. All of the suspect Thompsonites were deposed, but nothing much came of the claims against the taste-test research. I couldn’t help feeling that the whole thing was unnecessary and kind of hilarious. The Battle of the Burgers! C’mon. But I loved goosing Old McDonald’s. To be fair, I enjoy an occasional Quarter Pounder, and I’m a fan of Ronald McDonald House and all the good it does.
Meanwhile, I continued to work on my novels. I’d write early in the morning, every morning. I’d lock my office door at lunchtime and write for half an hour. I’d write on the plane during every business trip. I’d write pages at four in the morning, and I’d write again until midnight. I refused to give up on myself. Though maybe I should have. I finished See How They Run and Black Friday, and both novels were pretty bad. Then I wrote The Midnight Club, which I thought was decent. I hoped I was finally learning from my mistakes.
Then one day I came up with a character I really liked—she was called Alexis Cross. That’s right; when I started writing Along Came a Spider, Alex was a woman.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. My brain works a lot faster than my pencil.