Every agency has to live with the awful possibility that, for one reason or another, a large client will leave, causing headlines and redundancies and, worst of all, public doubts about the agency’s stability and prospects of survival. Is it going through one of those periods of internecine warfare known as a management shake-up? Is there a plot afoot to start a breakaway agency? Does the departing client know something we don’t know? These and other fascinating and damaging speculations are energetically promoted by those with axes to grind and advantage to be gained. Hearsay and wishful thinking are retailed as fact, and sometimes they will have the desired effect: The agency’s remaining clients will become unsettled. Indeed, some of them may be so sensitive about being associated with what they are repeatedly told is a sinking ship that they will scuttle off in the appropriate fashion.
The only way to avoid this nightmare is to ensure that new clients come in faster than old ones leave. Any losses can then be airily dismissed as unfortunate casualties of the agency’s dynamic expansion. Consequently, all agencies have a more or less organized program designed to pull in new accounts. (At one time, this was called soliciting new business, which was thought to have a respectable ring about it until it was pointed out that the only other trade commonly known to solicit for a living was prostitution, and so alternative terminology had to be found.)
Some of the larger agencies maintain a small squad of corporate poachers whose sole job it is to cultivate contacts and tickle them into a sufficiently receptive mood for a presentation. In other agencies, the principals have to assume these duties in addition to working for the clients they already have, and this is their excuse for the out-of-office diversions we shall come to later.
In the new business budget, a certain amount will be put aside for speculative pitches, which can cost anything from a few thousand dollars for rough layouts to $100,000 or more for a full-blown campaign with commercials. There will also be provision for the occasional advertisement (but only occasional; agencies tend not to spend too much on advertising) placed in the business press to commemorate some particularly impressive achievement, such as a clutch of new accounts or a demonstrably effective campaign. And there will be the mailing shots, aimed at everyone within postal range who might conceivably be influenced by developments within the agency: a new appointment to the board, an addition to the range of services on offer, an award here, a research breakthrough there, the acquisition of another agency—triumph piling upon triumph to foster the image of growth and success.
But of all the techniques used to convert someone else’s client into your own, perhaps none is so enthusiastically employed as that mysterious and fattening process that appears with such regularity on expense accounts and that is optimistically described as “entertaining a prospective client.” This covers practically every social and sporting activity known to man, and much else besides, but it starts with simple refreshment.
Nothing of any significance in the advertising business is discussed without a glass or a knife and fork close at hand, and it was probably an advertising man who was guilty of inventing the hideously uncivilized custom of the business breakfast. That, however, is not generally forced upon clients until they are safely in the bag. In any case, breakfast does not allow enough time for the delicate probing and maneuvering that is the purpose of the first rendezvous. Dinner, at this early stage of the relationship, is too intimate. But lunch is perfect.
The choice of restaurant requires very careful thought, not because of an interest in good food, which is of little or no importance on these occasions, but because of psychological and practical factors. First, does the restaurant reflect the way in which the agency would like to be regarded? The image of a young and irreverent agency doesn’t sit comfortably with ties and solemn conversation at the Plaza, any more than a pinstriped executive from a conservative agency would feel at home in one of those frisky Italian establishments where the waiters are prone to kiss you on both cheeks and pinch your bottom. And then there are the prospective client’s feelings to be considered. One wants him to be relaxed and comfortable and, at the same time, stimulated by his surroundings (which include you) so that he can appreciate how dull his existing agency is. It’s a question of matching what little you so far know of your guest’s personality with any one of dozens of possibilities. When in doubt, the instinct is to take the most expensive option rather than risk leaving the prospective client with the feeling that he has been underlunched.
To add to the complications, the choice is limited to restaurants where the host has clout. To be treated as just another customer and consigned to a murky little table by the kitchen is an appalling blow to the image and could ruin the mood of the entire lunch. The agency executive must be seen to be in control—with a good but discreet table and no small measure of deference from the staff. Obviously, this can be guaranteed only by frequent visits and consistent overtipping, and so time and money need to be invested in becoming a familiar and well-loved figure in maybe half a dozen restaurants. To the uninformed observer, the sight of an advertising executive having lunch with his secretary might indicate a liaison that goes beyond work. In fact, he is merely doing his duty, preparing the ground and building up credit in the restaurant against the day when he will bring the prospective client to the table.
And when he does, to the accompaniment of bowing and scraping and solicitous inquiries after his health and confidential disclosures about a specialty that is not on the menu but is available to privileged clients, then he is able to concentrate on his poacher’s work, secure in the knowledge that he is in charge. Settling back amid a flurry of waiters, he can devote himself to stage one: purposeful small talk.
Nothing as crass as the true purpose of lunch will be mentioned during the first two courses. Instead, like a doctor examining a new patient to see if he can find any interesting deformities, the agency executive will gently interrogate his guest to determine his areas of general interest. Does he like tennis, golf, sailing, the opera, nightclubs? Where does he spend his vacations? Does he watch films, read books, go to art exhibitions? What are his politics? Little by little, it comes out and is stored for future reference while the agency executive waits for the right moment to broach, with infinite tact and finesse, the two most important questions of all.
First, is the client secure in his job and in control of his business? If he isn’t, and is honest enough to admit it, he might find that lunch ends early; it is, after all, his account we’re after, not his conversation, and if there are doubts about his ability to deliver, he is not a man to waste time cultivating. There are many ways to clarify this fundamental point, the most flattering of which is also the most risky. It is to ask the client whether he had ever thought of putting his immense skills at the disposal of an agency, where men of his caliber are always in demand. This sometimes backfires. Instead of the client being highly complimented but not interested, he may very easily jump at the hint and start asking awkward questions about company cars and a seat on the board.
But let’s assume that he is a serious prospect, dedicated to his brand and with the power to move the account. Once this has been established, the agency executive can move on to the second crucial point: How strong are the client’s ties with his existing agency? The fact that he is breaking bread with a competitor is not necessarily significant. Some clients see it as part of their job to keep in touch with a number of agencies on an informal basis. Others are just gluttons with a fondness for free lunches (they can usually be spotted by their choice of food and drink, and by the glazed and unseeing eye that ignores the arrival of the bill).
The time to bring up the subject of the client’s relationship with his agency is traditionally at the end of the meal, over coffee. Why this should be, when both parties know perfectly well why they are sitting down together, is somewhat of a mystery, but it is a carefully observed part of the ritual. If things have gone particularly well and a rapport is in the making, brandy and cigars may be summoned as a means of prolonging the conversation, and then the agency executive will roll up his sleeves and start chipping away.
This is an exercise in heroic restraint, wonderful to watch. The agency executive may feel that the client’s current advertising stinks. He may know, because he is an avid gatherer of gossip, that the people who produce it loathe one another and drink too much, or that they subcontract the work out to freelance moonlighters. None of this will be mentioned—not in so many words, anyway. The agency executive will be quite happy to sow a seed or two of doubt while appearing to be scrupulously fair. He may even be generous with faint praise, because the true purpose of lunch is not to make an unseemly grab at the business there and then. It is to offer himself—wise, sympathetic, and highly professional—as a potential port in an advertising storm if anything should cast a blight on the client’s existing arrangements. If he has achieved this, and if in addition he has picked up some valuable information about his guest’s leisure interests, then the lunch can be counted as worthwhile.
Depending on the time of the year and the proclivities of the client, lunch will be followed by an invitation to the U.S. Open, a concert at the Met, a day of golf, a private screening of a feature film, or some other appropriate event. Many of these invitations will include the client’s wife, so that there can be no doubt that this is a purely social occasion. Other members of the agency will be present, of course, but not in any official capacity, and there will be no mention of business; this is merely a group of congenial people enjoying themselves.
Weeks or months, sometimes years, will go by, but contact will be maintained and the invitations will continue in the hope that patience will be rewarded. Often, it is. Sooner or later, the client will have some reason to be discontented with his existing agency. It might be the departure of a key executive, disagreements about a new campaign, or simply a gradual realization that the magic has gone out of the marriage. For whatever reason, the client feels that it’s time for someone to take a fresh and enthusiastic look at his advertising problems. And whom does he turn to? Who else but those congenial people with whom he has already spent so many happy hours.
Agencies may dispute the importance of entertaining, because it smacks of buying business rather than winning it on merit. (And, in fairness, most accounts are won through abilities other than proficiency at lunch.) Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for a diligent seeker after new business to eat and drink his way through several hundred dollars a week, and there are one or two legends in their own lunchtime whose only notable business assets are their extraordinary social stamina, their seemingly indestructible livers, and their thick skins. These men follow the advertising version of the philanderer’s golden rule: If you ask a hundred women to go to bed with you, then one of them probably will.
Eating and drinking as part of the job is not confined to the senior members of agencies. Everybody does it, in surroundings of diminishing luxury and elegance according to rank and salary and there is at every level a clear understanding of who picks up the bill. Account executives buy lunch for copywriters as an inducement to further creative effort. Copywriters buy lunch for art directors, who claim they never have any money. Television production companies buy lunch for agency producers. Media sellers buy lunch for agency media buyers, and so it goes. There are probably a hundred restaurants in New York whose prosperity is due almost entirely to the appetites and thirst of the advertising business, and if there was ever to be a single slogan representative of the industry, it would surely be those three irresistible words, “Let’s have lunch.”