From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor Part 1

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.

Femina, Jerry Della.

'The first day they had a meeting on the j.a.panese 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 h.e.l.l, 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.

'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 'att.i.tude' 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, s.e.x was a forbidden subject everyone did it and no one talked about it. But by 1965 the s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual adventure.

In 1967, when I opened my ad agency, Jerry Della Femina & Partners, a group of us started an Agency s.e.x 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x they would consider going to bed with. And, of course, there was the menage 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 s.e.xy 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 menage 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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed 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, 'Senor, it's too late. My waiters are all stoned and they are in the middle of the party.'

Was it soph.o.m.oric? 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, d.i.c.kson & 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 G.o.d. 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.

n.a.z.iS.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 fas.h.i.+on 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 h.e.l.l 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 skysc.r.a.per 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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.

Clark Gable. A beautiful guy. Played the hero in The Hucksters, the guy who bails out the tough soap account although the book was modeled after George Was.h.i.+ngton Hill of the American Tobacco Company.

The Hucksters must have pulled in a lot of guys off the street into advertising. There was the image. Gable's main concern was getting laid every hour on the Super Chief between Chicago and the Coast. The movie had something going for it.

Then the image changed to Randall. He's slick and suave. Underneath, he's like a sh.e.l.l. He's terrible. Down deep Randall is really a very shallow guy. The real business is much closer to Wally c.o.x because c.o.x, unlike Randall, shows fear. c.o.x is real; you see him. I've dealt with guys like c.o.x.

I know a guy at a very large agency I'll call him Jim who's got courage. Pilot, World War II. He couldn't fly in America in 1940 because he was only seventeen years old so he went and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Bright, and a lot of courage. He flew in the Battle of Britain, the whole thing. Gets out of the service and doesn't know what to do. He's still a kid because he enlisted when he was eighteen. Anyhow, Jim goes to work for a small advertising agency because it seems like a glamorous thing to do. He's still courageous and bright, then. And as he grows older he gets scared that he might lose his salary, his expense account. The higher he goes, the more frightened he gets. The guy now is a frightened little man, and today he's only someplace in his forties.

I once asked him what happened between the time that he was shooting down planes and now, when he is a terrified account executive. He looked at me and said, 'Well, for one thing, the n.a.z.is never tried to take away one of my accounts.'

The average person who sits and watches Tony Randall perform ought to be around a large, bad agency when the big account is pulled out. n.o.body cries the first day. What happens is an announcement comes around that says, 'We regret to announce ...' The next thing that happens is that the president of the agency says, 'Screw them. They were never any good in the first place.' That's the unofficial att.i.tude. They might even break out the drinks and everybody is talking: 'We're better off without them. We never needed them and now we're really going to pull in the new business.' It's a very interesting thing to watch. As the account guys are talking they start to break off into little groups. Immediate bravado. 'Hey, we got rid of those sons of b.i.t.c.hes. I'll never have to put up with that b.a.s.t.a.r.d again. And his wife is a drunk.' Then they break off into even smaller groups. On that first day, excitement. 'We lost it!' And the next day, death. The calls go out, guys get out their address books and start calling anyone they ever met in business. The second day they start calling Judy Wald, the lady who runs one of the largest personnel agencies in the business. 'Judy,' they say, 'I'd like to bring my book over.' Guys start leaving the office with suspicious-looking big packages under their arms. Those packages, it's their portfolio, their work, anything that they could put together that is going to get them a job. Everybody immediately a.s.sumes he's going to lose his job.

The top, the very top management very wisely stakes out a claim on an account not already in the house. Let's take a hypothetical example let's say your agency loses Texaco Gas. Suddenly an executive vice-president says, 'I went to school with a guy from Sinclair, and they must be tired of those folks over at Cunningham and Walsh. I'm going to give old Jack a call. Maybe we can have a few drinks. I think I can line up something with Sinclair.'

Not to be outdone, another vice-president says, 'I have a cat over at Esso. Forget about your guy at Sinclair. My guy at Esso, like we not only went to school together, we fought in the Army together. Esso is unhappy with their agency. My friend has told me so many times. I think we really could work out something with Esso.'

Each biggie in the agency picks a major company that he's going to shoot for. This is the way they express their fear. They all talk about a big piece of business that they could bring into the house. Nothing ever happens, but that doesn't matter. They try. They honestly believe that they can do it. What beautiful calls they make. The executive vice-president calls his pal Jack, who may or may not remember who this guy is, and he says, 'Hi, Jack, you see we've just been screwed by Texaco. What do you say we get together and have a drink?' He has his drink with pal Jack, and then he goes back to his agency and at a management meeting he says, 'When I said to Jack that we lost the account, he smiled at me. I know that smile. I know the way he smiled at me he was trying to tell me, "I can't give it to you now, baby, but in six months it's yours." I have heard those exact words. There's a slight variation on it. 'When he said no, he said no in such a way that he was opening a door for us he really was saying that in six months it's ours. We've got it.' That's how top management lies to itself and how these guys lie to each other. After a while they forget about it. They're out pitching new business, holding meetings, fooling around with the creative departments, and they forget all about pal Jack and how old school buddy Jack was going to give them Esso, or Sinclair, or Sh.e.l.l, or whatever the h.e.l.l it was they were pitching. The biggies keep occupied. They must keep busy. As for the little people, they've already been screwed by the biggies. They haven't got a chance. They've been fired.

The image of advertising still hangs in. The movie Blow-Up is a good example. Here's this scrawny English photographer a fas.h.i.+on 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 h.e.l.l they were doing and they've made up their minds to get into advertising.

Those who don't go into the business talk about it. You meet them at c.o.c.ktail parties and they say to you, 'Do you put the captions under the pictures or do you take the pictures?' That's the difference to them between an art director and a copywriter. A copywriter puts the captions under the pictures. As far as these people are concerned, you're only playing around. They think you walk around during the day freaked out on acid or hash, and in between trips you're carrying on with the women.

A friend I grew up with in Brooklyn he's a fireman today once said to me, 'Boy, day in day out models coming out of your ears. You must be killing yourself. I've been up to your office and I've seen the girls with the miniskirts. I mean, there really must be a lot of fooling around in that business. Can I come up and see? I just want to walk around and see.' He wants to be part of it. He figures the models must be making it with everyone, and then, of course, you're doing commercials, and that means actresses. As far as he's concerned, I'm in Hollywood and the whole world is one big casting couch.

This rumored playing around is so exaggerated. The average model is, first of all, so dumb that n.o.body even wants to approach her. And neurotic! This is the most neurotic group of people that you could ever want to be with. The average model is so uptight that she's impossible. You have to remember one thing about models: they live on their looks, and their only job is to look beautiful. Yet, five times a day, they go to an agency like Ted Bates or J. Walter Thompson and sit around in a room with fifteen other girls who look just as beautiful. It's like a meat market. The art director stands there and says, 'O.K., girls, stand up. Turn around. Say "Duz does it," with a French accent.' So the girls walk around, mumble 'Duz does it' with a French accent or without a French accent, it doesn't matter and at the end of the session the art director says, 'O.K.You, over there, you can stay. Thanks for coming by, everybody.'

I once interviewed fifteen models for a feminine-hygiene spray which we handle, and one model got the job. Fourteen were rejected. Those models go from our rejection to another rejection to another rejection to a point where they're going out of their skulls. How many times can you be rejected a day?

So the average model is so crazy that most guys wouldn't want to go near her. Besides, the only person in an agency who comes in contact with models is the art director, or maybe the account executive. The models are really not concerned with the art directors anyway, because it's a one-shot job and there just can't be a casting-couch situation. The art director hires the model for one commercial and he may never see her again.

The only people who wind up sleeping with models are photographers. And photographers are monkeys. I mean, they're really monkeys. You know, most photographers are very short and have very long arms. I guess the long arms come from carrying those bags around that's a lot of equipment they haul around. Some photographers' arms sc.r.a.pe the ground, they're so long. The funny bit is that they make out as far as models are concerned. I may be projecting now, which is what my fireman friend is doing. The fireman's decided that I'm making it with every model in town and I've decided that the photographers are the ones who are really making it with the models.

If there's little glamour in advertising with adult models, there's even less for kid models. You ought to see kid models. Kid models practically eat the rug, they're so crazy. They're out of their minds. And the mothers are insane, too.

When I was working at the Daniel & Charles agency, we had to do a commercial for a children's toy called Colorforms. Because we couldn't afford to go and do the commercial on location, we had to settle for Central Park in the dead of winter. We got the kids into polo s.h.i.+rts and short pants and went out to the park. It must have been like maybe ten or fifteen degrees above zero and there was snow all over the place. We managed to shovel off one patch where the kids were going to play with the toy. The kids were turning blue and screaming; the mothers were screaming at the kids because they didn't want the kids to blow the job. It was terrible.

Once an agency was shooting a commercial on Fire Island, and there was the usual pack of people at the shooting the kid model, the kid model's mother who was hanging on to the agency producer's ear, the director, the a.s.sistant director, prop men, grips, cameramen, script people, agency people, account people, the usual tremendous mob. Anyhow, they shoot the commercial, and it comes off okay and everybody packs up and starts walking to the dock to get the next ferry back to New York. The mother is still putting on the producer, telling him what a great actor her kid is; the cameraman is telling the director what a terrific job of camera work the commercial is; the copywriter is telling the account man what a great script he wrote the usual nonsense from everyone concerned. Everybody gets to the ferry and they're starting to get on when somebody turns around and it wasn't the mother, either and says, 'Hey, where's the kid?' Well, everyone starts looking high and low for the kid and it turns out they had left the kid back on the beach. Just left him there, playing in the sand.

When I was working at Bates, I happened to be walking through the reception area one day when suddenly I found myself surrounded by little Chinese boys. I mean, the place was jammed with them. There must have been at least fifty Chinese mothers there too. Now the Chinese are a very stable group; they're probably the sanest group of people in New York. Yet there were enough crazy Chinese mothers to fill up the halls of Bates with these little Chinese kids, all looking for their job. Again, one Chinese kid is needed and think of the rejections. Fifty Chinese kids could start a revolution if they got rejected enough.

You've got to go crazy to be a model. During one of the periods when I was out of work I shot a commercial on spec using my own kid because I couldn't afford to hire a kid model. As we walked out, I noticed my kid was high. She was up. She was so s.p.a.ced out that she wasn't a kid any more. She was way out of it almost as if she was on pot. She couldn't talk, she was breathing heavily. It's a crazy experience for a kid to have to do this. It gives them the idea that they're better than normal people because they're in an ad.

When I was working for Fuller & Smith & Ross, I happened to be on the agency basketball team. One night our team had a game scheduled with a group of male models. Invariably the word is out that all male models are f.a.gs. It's not true that all of them are, but quite a few of them are a little too cute for words.

Anyhow, here come the male models, and five of the most beautiful guys in the world come out and run across the floor. We were staring at them, that's how beautiful they were. And, like we figured, you know male models we're going to kill them. We forgot one thing: quite a few of the male models are ex-jocks out of colleges. It was a great scene. The game gets started and pretty soon I get a break and start dribbling toward their basket. I'm all alone, or I thought I was alone. I'm going up for a lay-up, and as I go up one of these guys he was six foot four, so help me one of these beautiful, beautiful guys comes down on me with his elbow and catches me across the top of the nose. I fell to the floor and I couldn't see for a second, the pain was so unbelievable. Blood was gus.h.i.+ng out of my nose, all over me, the floor, everything. As I was bouncing around on the floor I remember I was shouting, 'My nose, my nose!' And this beautiful guy just looks down at me and says, 'You call that a nose?' It was so funny that I was laughing and bleeding at the same time.

I could give you all the disclaimers in the world, but people are still going to look enviously at the advertising business. I just don't understand it. In the average insurance office there must be a lot of fooling around going on, and yet the average insurance office isn't as glamorous as the advertising business supposedly is. Many years ago when I was flat broke and selling toys in Macy's and then bathrobes in Gimbel's bas.e.m.e.nt, I used to think about all the jazz in the advertising business. Just recently I heard about a book called Seventh Avenue, in which everybody in the garment business was chasing to beat the band. I tell you, when I was sitting there in Gimbel's bas.e.m.e.nt, it didn't seem so glamorous to me. There are guys who are s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in every business. I'm sure there are plenty of carpenters doing things besides putting up bookshelves. And milkmen too. There's just this crazy glamor to advertising, and we can't shake it.