Ace of Admen

John Lahr, The New Yorker’s principal drama critic, wrote a long article last year about a brilliant young actress, Nina Arianda, who, at the time, was electrifying audiences in the off-Broadway production of Venus in Fur, a sexy, funny, deep, even disturbing play written by David Ives.

When the play moved to Broadway, it didn’t lose a bit of its sizzle.

In the play, Vanda (Arianda), late, frazzled, looking like a cheap hooker, arrives in a rehearsal hall to audition for a part in a play written by Thomas (Hugh Dancy), a modern-day, presumably second-rate playwright who’s had no luck whatsoever finding a leading lady for his play,

The play Thomas has written, based on the novella Venus in Furs by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, is likely one he doesn’t fully understand, even though he’s the playwright.

As the audition unfolds, line by line through Thomas’ script, as well as in the sparkling “off script” conversation and sexual fireworks between Vanda and Thomas, Vanda not only reveals its meaning, she emerges triumphant.

Telling you more about Venus in Fur would be telling you too much.

It’s worth noting, I think, that during casting for the original off-Broadway production, according to Lahr’s article, one of the people involved in the show wrote a note after Arianda’s name: “DTW” (direct to wardrobe).

Just a few hours ago, the Tony Award nominees were announced.

Behind Arianda’s name on my scorecard would be “DITS/APWTIH” (direct to Tony stage/after-party with Tony in hand).

I haven’t seen the performances of the other nominees—Tracie Bennett (End of the Rainbow), Stockard Channing (Other Desert Cities), Linda Lavin (The Lyons) and Cynthia Nixon (Wit)—but I absolutely can’t imagine Arianda not winning.

I was riveted by her performance when I saw the show. So were critics when it opened in November.

Go see the show. Here’s a video that’ll give you a taste of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtiyqU21Gvs

A number of years ago, I attended the NY Summer Writers Workshop at Skidmore College, a very good liberal arts school just up the road from my current home in Saratoga Springs, NY.

I met and had the chance to talk with some terrific writers during the two weeks I was there: William Kennedy, Francine Prose, Amy Hempel, Rick Moody, Nicholas Delbanco, Mary Gaitskill, possibly a few other authors whose names I’ve forgotten.

The daily routine at the workshop was what I thought it might be. Morning and early afternoon sessions with my group of 12 or so people, with the group’s leader, Amy Hempel, giving us writing assignments to be reviewed the following day. Every evening, occasionally every afternoon, an author would show up for a reading and Q&A.

The most grueling part of the workshop, to be honest, was reading and critiquing the stories of some of the would-be writers in my group. That is, reading the stories and trying to be positive with the comments I made.

When the group got to my story, “On the Edge of Wisdom,” an admittedly experimental piece of fiction written in English and Boontling, an American folk lingo from the turn of the 20^th century, the group skewered me.

Some thought the story and style was too dense, too difficult to read, too… well, too Joycean. Others said it was “interesting.” Amy was on the fence, which I thought she would be since she’s one of the literary world’s most acclaimed minimalists.

All in all, even though I’d been roughed up a little, going to the workshop was a good experience. While it wasn’t Yaddos, an elite summer artistic encampment in Saratoga Springs, it got me thinking about writing and nothing but writing for two straight weeks.

Interestingly, however, when I got back to New York City and walked down East 78th Street, where I lived at the time, I saw something that inspired the only piece of free verse poetry I’ve ever written.

“Post-Workshop Tristesse”
by Curvin O’Rielly

A man comes home from his writer’s workshop.
Jazzed, juiced, eager to begin anew.
First thing he sees as he walks down his street is a book.
Fiction, thick, blue cover.
Holding up a window.
Suddenly everything snaps back into perspective.

It’s unlikely that I’ll write a book any time soon. But if I do and if you happen to buy it, please use it as a book, not as a tool to prop open a window or level a table.

On the upper right hand corner of page 138 of Amil Gargano’s book, “Ally & Gargano: The Life and Death of the Agency that Created Perhaps the Most Successful Advertising of the Last Half of the 20^th Century,” there are three quotes. Two of them are almost certainly original. The third may well be stolen.

The first, by Howard Gossage, the legendary copywriter and so-called “Socrates of San Francisco advertising,” is an accurate reflection of his well known iconoclastic personality: “Advertising is no business for a grown man.”

The second, something the late Roy Grace, a Hall of Fame art director and former creative director at Doyle Dane Bernbach, said about the role of a creative director sounds accurate, too: “I throw out the garbage.”

The third quote is something I said, specifically that “Advertising is the toy department of business.” Actually, I think I said “Advertising is the toy department of the business world,” but accuracy isn’t important because, just to fess up, I probably borrowed the line from someone else.

That’s the thing about advertising. There are petty thieves everywhere, sometimes in the office or cubicle next to yours, sometimes down the hall, sometimes in places far, far away. And there’s not much you can do about them, either.

Many, many years ago, for example, when I landed a big job at an agency in LA, my name appeared in local trade magazines and I began getting phone calls from various people, including one from a former New York ad guy who’d been on the beach for a couple of years, literally so in his case since he lived in one of LA’s beach communities. He told me he was eager to get back into the business.

I asked him where he had worked in New York. He said Ted Bates. Bates wasn’t a good agency, not by a long shot, but I thought the least I could do was look at his portfolio.

When he showed up in my office and I opened his portfolio, my jaw dropped. Because inside was the best collection of Doyle Dane Bernbach ads I’d ever seen. VW, Avis, Chivas. Each of the ads carefully cut from the pages of the magazines in which they’d originally appeared.

He told me, confidently but brazenly, that it was the kind of work he could do if he worked at a good agency. I threw him out of my office. Immediately but politely.

The ad biz is a cousin of show biz. Which makes a Hunter S. Thompson quote that a friend of mine recently posted on Facebook totally appropriate. Said the creator of Gonzo journalism, “The entertainment industry is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also the negative side.”

Yet another larcenous, lift-an-ad kerfuffle recently popped up on the Internet.

As I understand the story, Work Labs, an ad agency in Richmond, VA, created a new beer brand in 1998. Called Work Beer, with ads that said “For a job well done” and “Clock out and pop a top,” it was brewed by Richmond’s Main Street Beer Co.

A couple nights ago, Apple started running two new commercials for the iPhone.

They aren’t the best Apple commercials ever. Neither are they the worst.

What struck me when I read the Adweek article featuring the commercials  http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-apple-iphone-139642 was how many people were involved.

Years ago, you’d see just a couple names attached to commercials in trade magazines or awards annuals: Copywriter, art director, director, maybe the editor. It was a simpler time, I suppose

‘Tis that time of the year when advertising agencies and advertising creative people around the world go all-out bonkers, every single one of them hoping their work will win a One Show pencil, an Addy, even a Cannes Lion.

The first award you win is important. It sends a message that you hear loud and clear: “You’re okay, kid.”

In time, though, awards become meaningless hunks of metal or plastic, all the more so when the award you win is your second, third, fourth, etc., etc.

Once, right outside the New York Hilton, where Patrick Kelly and Mike Tesch had won five or six, possibly even more, One Show gold pencils for the FedEx commercials they did at Ally & Gargano, I saw Patrick toss armloads of the awards into the first trash receptacle he saw. His producer, a nice, respectable lady, dove in after them and brought them to the agency the next day.

Awards, you decide after you’ve won many of them, just clutter up your office and your home. Instead of displaying them in a trophy case or on a bookshelf, you store them in a box in your basement. Eventually, maybe after stumbling over the box once or twice, you decide to toss the awards out.

The One Show pencils shown here, most of them gold, I think, belong to Tom Lichtenheld, a very talented, even amazing art director who used to work at Cramer-Krasselt Chicago and Fallon Minneapolis.

On my Kindle, among other books, you’ll find the complete works of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Joyce and Karp.

Karp is Marshall Karp, a man who made his bones on Madison Avenue by doing a lot of good creative work in the 60′s and 70′s, including the memorable “Thank You, Paine Webber” campaign, before turning to a life of crime.

Well, not actually crime. What he’s done is what a lot of former copywriters dream of. He’s written a series of fast-paced, plot-rich murder mysteries in which a couple of everyday, extremely likable LA cops, Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, solve heinous crimes, along the way making each other laugh with quick volleys of amusing dialogue.

Humor is Marshall’s gift. I knew about it from his career in advertising, but I got to know it up close and personal, in a strange sort of way, by reading the Karpisms he’s posted on his Facebook homepage over time.

“I’ve been off the grid for a few weeks. Sometimes writing for People Who Pay Me Real Money takes priority over writing for People Who Can Only Pay Me With Pretend Sheep. I hope you and your livestock managed well during my absence. I’m sort of back. How long, I don’t know. I’m starting to feel that Facebook is more invasive than my proctologist, and it’s getting creepy.”

“My latest mystery: Man goes to market, buys 2 lbs of fresh chicken for dinner. Man unloads car, carrying heavy bags in first. Man goes back to garage, then returns to kitchen. Chicken is gone. Man eats fish for dinner. What happened? Hint: Man has smart dog. Dog has dumb owner.”

“For Jews everywhere Rosh Hashanah is a time for reflection, remembrance, and gratitude. But in New York City, it is that special time when Jews and non-Jews alike celebrate two blessed days when alternate side of the street parking is suspended. Shana tova.”

“I’m really busy for the next few days. Here’s all you need to write your own funny status update. A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z. Knock yourselves out.”

“Today’s Reality Check — NEW FAN: ‘Wow…you’re a #1 bestselling author… awesome.’ WIFE OF 40 YEARS: ‘Hey, #1 bestselling author…take out the garbage.’”

All of Marshall’s books, including “Kill Me If You Can,” the bestseller he co-authored last summer with James Patterson, a friend of his from advertising, are filled with humor that’s as crisp as his Facebook Karpisms, as well as stories that suck you in and keep you engaged. Go to http://www.lomaxandbiggs.com/ for a sample.

Let me see if I can put Marshall’s writing in perspective.

According to literary lore, James and Nora Joyce lived a penurious life. So much so that Nora, finally fed up with her family’s struggles and her husband’s slow, tedious writing, supposedly said something to James along the lines of “How about writing something people will read?”

All in all, it’s difficult to find fault with “Ulysses,” not to mention “War and Peace,” “Anna Karenina,” “Crime and Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov.” They’re good, deep, serious books that stretch your mind.

Still, I think Marshall’s work may well be what Nora Joyce had in mind.

Years ago, when I was Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather in Chicago, David Ogilvy came to town for one of his rare, always welcome “state visits.”

During his time at the agency, he walked around the office greeting people he’d known and worked with for years. He also poked his head into the offices of people who were new to the agency, engaging them in lively conversation. His presence in the agency, as you can well imagine, was electrifying.

When he got to my office for a talk about the agency’s creative work, he wasn’t particularly amused. On the wall facing my desk was a blowup of an amusing photo of him from People magazine. In the photo, taken while he was swimming in the pool at Chateau Toufou, his home in France, the legend was shown sticking his tongue out in a charming, child-like way.

At a small, intimate dinner during his visit, a dinner intended to bring the agency’s management group closer to the legend, he sat at the head of the table and asked that I be given the seat directly on his right. During the dinner, he leaned over to me from time to time, asking questions sotto voce. I leaned over to him, quietly whispering my answers. A few of my answers made him chortle with delight.

Dinner proceeded uneventfully until D.O. (that’s how he signed his missives from Chateau Toufou) roundly criticized the banality of Chicago’s architecture.

For some reason, I began defending it, reminding D.O. of the great architects who, over the years, had made such an enormous impact on the architectural feel of the city. Men like William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and others.

I was loud and probably obnoxious, perhaps even disrespectful, as I spoke.

On one hand, it was just another night in my career at the agency, certainly one I would have erased if I had been given a chance for a “do-over.”

On the other hand, however, it gave me a true measure of David Ogilvy’s greatness. Because several weeks after the dinner I received a package from Chateau Toufou wrapped in the kind of paper one sees in France.

Inside the package was a 400-page, handsomely illustrated art book—“150 Ans D’Architecture De Chicago/150 Years of Chicago Architecture”—extolling the virtues of Chicago’s architecture in great detail.

When I opened the book, I looked for one of D.O.’s famous handwritten notes on Chateau Toufou stationery. A verbal concession, if you will, that I’d had a good point when I spoke up at the dinner.

As I thought about it, though, I realized that a note was unnecessary. In a small way, the volume I held in my hands quietly spoke volumes about David Ogilvy’s grace and greatness.

The history of agency names is interesting.

In 1868, for example, a young man by the name of James Walter Thompson joined an agency by the name of Carlton and Smith as its bookkeeper. Nine years later, for the grand sum of $500—a little over $10,000 in today’s dollars—he bought the agency and renamed it J. Walter Thompson.

For years, J. Walter Thompson Inc. had an abbreviated nickname on Madison Avenue. “Where do you work?” one might ask a fellow passenger in the bar car of the New Haven train line heading to Greenwich or Westport. “J. Walter,” a J. Walter Thompson employee would reply,

In 2005, however, for reasons never made entirely clear, the agency changed its official corporate name to “JWT.”

Years ago, Batten Barton Durstine & Osborne changed its name to BBDO, possibly because, as Fred Allen joked, “Batten Barton Durstine & Osborne sounds like a trunk falling down a flight of stairs.”

In conversation, Young & Rubicam, another one of Madison Avenue’s honorable names, was always “Y&R.” A couple of years ago, Y&R became the agency’s official name, consigning, in a small way, the names John Orr Young and Raymond Rubicam to the dustbin of history.

In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, the name Doyle Dane Bernbach was rarely used in conversation. It was always reduced to “Doyle Dane,” as if Bill Bernbach, the guiding light and motive power behind the agency’s great creative success, didn’t exist.

Similarly, Carl Ally Inc. was always known as “Ally” even after the agency became “Ally & Gargano.” The same applied to Scali McCabe Sloves (“Scali,” sometimes “Scali McCabe”) and Ammirati & Puris (“Ammirati”).

In 1986, a new agency arrived on Madison Avenue: Messner Vetere Berger Carey, which became Messner Vetere Berger Carey Schmetterer, which then became Messner Vetere Berger McName Schmetterer Euro RSCG. In short, “Messner Vetere.”

In San Francisco, Hal Riney & Partners was always “Riney,” though in a rare spirit of comity at a company meeting in 1990 Hal handed out t-shirts that read, for example, “Hal Riney & Smith,” “Hal Riney & Jones,” etc. Not many people were fooled.

So what’s in a name?

The question is a good one, especially when you consider that an excellent agency in Minneapolis by the name of Barrie D’Rozario Murphy (BD’M) is celebrating its fifth anniversary by changing its name.

As they say in their news release (http://www.bdm.net/bdm_logo_change.pdf), they’re honoring key agency personnel and clients from the past five years by adding their first initials to the company’s name.

The new name? BD’MHSRLCZNUKGWQUPDEFJVOTHWICYSTEFMGLPBAH.

Even if it’s only a PR stunt meant to draw attention to the agency’s web site (http://www.bdm.net/), give them credit for acknowledging the people and clients who’ve put them on the map. Even if they eventually revert back to BD’M.

Virtually every advertising blog this past week has said one thing or another about the two-hour episode of “Mad Men” that launched the show’s fifth season last Sunday.

Red-blooded men, as you might expect, have commented on the “gift” Megan Draper gave her husband, Don, at his surprise 40th birthday party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyy8roNU060 (During Megan’s performance, Roger Sterling asks his wife, “Why don’t you sing like that?” She says, rightly so, “Why don’t you look like him?”)

Barbara Lippert, an astute observer of advertising and contemporary culture, called one scene “a form of S&M.” It’s the scene in which Megan, wearing only a black lace bra and panties, gets down on her hands and knees to clean up the Draper apartment. The scene leads to sex on the living room floor. For what it’s worth, I predict that Megan will begin controlling Don, much as Nina Arianda’s character controls the character played by Hugh Dancy in “Venus in Fur,” the sexy, funny, powerful play by David Ives currently on Broadway.

The episode started with an event that actually occurred in 1966. That is, a group of young, rambunctious executives at Young & Rubicam tossing bags filled with water on people picketing the Office of Economic Opportunity. It was an event that made the front page of the New York Times. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/on-mad-men-an-opening-scene-straight-from-page-1/

A couple years after this incident, Y&R and several of its key creative executives (Tony Isidore, Bob Elgort and Marv Lefkowitz) began atoning for the agency’s indifference by creating an advertising campaign for the New York Urban Coalition. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuDBcpmiipI

In hindsight, it’s easy to see the greatness in the campaign’s tagline—“Give jobs. Give money. Give a damn.”—and also understand how the campaign marked Y&R as one of Madison Avenue’s forward thinking,  public advocates for racial equality. But getting the advertising on the air wasn’t easy.

According to agency lore, network censors had a real problem with the word “damn” when Y&R presented the campaign’s storyboards for approval.

Unwilling to give up on their big idea, the agency suggested that the censors go talk with a stalwart supporter of the campaign, a fine, upstanding big wig in the hierarchy of New York’s Catholic archdiocese.

When the network censors showed up for their conversation with the big wig, he said he agreed with them about the word “damn.” Not appropriate, he said, not at all. Not for same reasons the censors had in mind, though. Better than “damn,” he suggested, would be something direct and earthy: “Give jobs. Give money. Give a shit.”

The agency’s ploy worked.

A few years later, Y&R began hiring a group of talented African-American copywriters, art directors and producers, all of them young and eager to learn the ins and outs of the agency business.

In 1971, America was given a great gift when one of those young African-American art directors, Harry Webber, working with a Y&R copywriter by the name of Forrest Long, coined the now-iconic “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” slogan for the United Negro College Fund.

Thanks to the UNCF campaign, over 350,000-plus African-American kids have gone to college since the campaign was launched. (Here’s a UNCF commercial from 1972: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh-ailui8ko)

Don’t expect Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to create work nearly as substantive as the stuff Y&R or other agencies did. “Mad Men,” after all, is a TV soap opera centered on a small cast of characters and their petty problems, not the big problems America faced in the 60’s.

From 2006 to 2009, if you were zipping down the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx, the northernmost of New York City’s five boroughs, you could get a quick glimpse of two Yankee Stadiums.

The first of the two, “The House That Ruth Built,” was built in 1923 at a cost of $2.4 million. Over the 83 years of its stadium’s existence, the faithful saw their favorite team win 38 American League championships and 27 World Series titles.

By 2006, though, the stadium had seen better days, so construction of a new Yankee Stadium, dubbed “Yankee Stadium II,” began at a projected cost of $2.3 billion. The design of the new stadium included better seating, improved sight lines, more concession stands (with TV scattered around), more restrooms, more skyboxes for the city’s high rollers and the first instant replay screen in baseball history.

On the field of the new stadium, though, it was the same ol’ same ol’. The distance between the bases was still 90 feet. The pitcher’s mound, 10-and-a-half inches above the height of home plate, was still 60 feet six inches away home plate.

The object of the game was the same ol’ same ol’, too. The pitcher threw the ball. The batter tried to hit it.

As before—say, when Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson and other greats played for the Yankees—a home run lit up the scoreboard with a run, and singles, doubles and triples, if there was a man on base, often added even more runs.

Advertising, to stretch the point, is like the new Yankee Stadium. Everything about it has changed—dramatically so, in fact—yet it’s basically the same ol’ same ol’.

The game, if you want to call advertising a game, still revolves around the categorical imperative of telling an engaging, compelling story filled with truth, clarity and emotion. But how do you go about playing it today while bringing some talented rookies into the game?

The digital brainiacs at Google gave it some thought, and in a new program called Project Re:Brief http://www.projectrebrief.com/, they pay homage to four classic advertising campaigns (representing, if you will, the old Yankee Stadium) by using them as the basis for work that’s completely fresh and different (the new Yankee Stadium).

At the moment, the Project Re:Brief site features a 50-year old commercial for Volvo (http://www.projectrebrief.com/volvo/), along with a 40-year old Coke commercial (http://www.projectrebrief.com/coke/). Others, Alka-Seltzer and Avis, will be along soon.

The old work was great. So is the new work, mostly because it hasn’t abandoned the strategic intent of the original commercials. It merely builds on the old work, memorably demonstrating the long-term value of solid thinking, as well as where a good idea can take you when you have the chops to make things happen.

The old Yankee Stadium was torn down. Some would say that traditional advertising will disappear, too. I kind of doubt it. We’re in the middle of March Madness right now. And soon baseball season will start, along with the football season after that. And then the tsunami of the fall election campaign will hit.

The thing is, every TV channel has commercial breaks to fill and they fill them with commercials. Good, old-fashioned commercials. The same ol’ same ol’.