Adland Lore

The creative director who put my kid through college

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‘RIP, dear Bob Neuman’

“What’s she doing writing a blog post on a Saturday?” you might be thinking. Though no doubt you have better things to think about.

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. And besides, Dude Man and I are heading off on our fifth Brazilian Birding Adventure (Oldest Younger Brother Scott calls us the “Brazil Nuts.”) Our airport car is picking us up in a few short hours (!) so it’s good for an antsy traveler like me to have something to do besides pace.

Me, pacing the balcony on the last day of our last trip to Brazil — which was just a month ago (!)

So. Bob Neuman. Bob left us for the Great Creative Department in the Sky just a few days ago. When I found out (Thank you, Richard E!), all kinds of memories popped into my head. Like how Bob collected wine corks and kept them in the most humongous glass beaker I ever saw. How he smoked big ole cigars. How he was droll and witty and had a sense of humor drier than the driest martini. (He liked those almost as much as cigars.)

Me, back in my Ogilvy Days

I worked for a lot of creative directors back in my Ogilvy Days, and Bob was one of my faves. One day he stepped into my office — and shut the door. Well, in advertising (or in any kind of business, I imagine) your boss closing your door is not a harbinger of good news. I was definitely wary.

No, this isn’t Bob. This is another late lamented CD. Read about him in “Harvey and the Grilled Half Goat Head”

Then Bob says, “I understand your husband is an ophthalmologist.” “Yes, he is,” I replied. Then Bob — who was in his late forties or early fifties at the time and wore thick thick glasses — tells me that he’s been to two eye doctors about his cataracts. One told him to have them removed; the other told him to wait. “I need a tie-breaker,” he said.

So I gave him Dr. Dude’s info, and the next thing I know he’s not only seen The Dude, but he’s having his cataracts removed by none other than The Dude. “You’re still a young man,” His Dudeness had told him. “You deserve to be able to see.”

Me, at an Ogilvy reunion, clutching a martini and looking alarmed while hearing about how I almost died on a shoot. (The speaker had mistaken me for some other Ogilvy alum)

Needless to say, the night before Bob’s surgery, I made sure Dr. Dude got plenty of rest. “You don’t want to mess up,” I needlessly reminded him. “That’s my boss you’re operating on.”

Also, needless to say, the surgery went beautifully.

One of my favorite shots of those golden Ogilvy Days (again not featuring Bob; I, alas, have no photos of Bob)

After a few weeks, when both his eyes had been successfully rid of their vision-clouding cataracts, Bob again stepped into my office. And again — shut the door. What now?

Well, Bob just wanted to thank me. And while doing so, I see tears in his newly clearly-seeing eyes. He was that overcome with emotion at having his vision back.

And that’s not the end to this lovely Bob Tale. Bob was so pleased with how his surgery turned out — and so pleased with Dr. Dude in general — that he told all his friends and all his colleagues to go to Dr. Dude. Pretty soon, Dude Man was seeing everyone in advertising: not only creative directors (Hi, Tom R.!), but writers (Hi, John G.!)  and art directors (Hi, Grant P.!) and producers (Hi, Nancy V. and Annie L.!). They all told their friends and colleagues and soon we got directors and editors and actors and even clients. Basically, everyone who is anyone in the Ad World now goes to Dr. Dude.

My Ogilvy sample reel. I’m pretty sure at least one of the editors there started going to Dr. Dude

And we owe it all to Bob. So yes, you could say that Bob Neuman put our kid through college.

Thank you, Bob. I hope the angels don’t mind cigar smoke.

New York City. March 2024

 

Everybody’s got to start somewhere

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‘My humble Ad Biz beginnings in Kansas City’

Last night at dinner I sat next to the only other graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism in New York City. Or at least the only one I know about. (Hi, Kim!) Incidentally, that’s me at graduation from the U of Mo in the photo at the top of this post. I don’t know where Kim was. Actually, I didn’t know Kim at the time; it was a big school.

Kim and I traded a few stories about some of the professors there — Hi, Mr. Dobbins, if you’re still smoking your pipe and pontificating! — which reminded us of the old saying “Those that can, do; those who can’t, teach” and got me to thinking about my start in advertising way back when.

This is me at my Actual First Job, which was at my hometown newspaper, the Carlyle Union Banner. You can read about this in “Those Were Banner Days Indeed,” if so inclined

I touched on my first ad job last week when I wrote about the contortions some men go through to disguise their balding little noggins. (See “Hair Hacks of the Follicly-Challenged” for some crazy examples.) One of the guys I mentioned was a KC adman named Bud Bouton, who sported a style we Youngins at the agency dubbed “hair topiary.”

Bud was just one of many colorful characters I remember fondly from Barickman Advertising, where I snagged my first agency job. There was also Cleota Dack (who I called “Miss Tadack,” since I’d never heard the name “Cleota” before) and Doris with the bad wig and the art director who drove a Karmann Ghia and painted a picture of a window for my first (windowless) office. And, of course, Mr. Hoffman, my boss.

Mr. Hoffman was a Lou Grant type who kept a bottle of something brown in his desk drawer and who, when I told him I was accepting another, bigger, job in Kansas City, said not to waste my time but to go to New York. (He had been a New York City copywriter at one time.) Eventually, I took his advice. (See “Take a Letter, Miss Henry” for the story.)

Me looking all creative-directorish at the job Mr. Hoffman told me not to take

But back to my first ad job. There is something very heady about first jobs. The whole idea of putting in the work and getting paid for it. Hanging around with a bunch of equally fresh-at-their-jobs twenty-somethings is, of course, pretty heady stuff too.

Sadly, the only photographic evidence I have from my first job is this shot, taken after a promotion that scored me a real window

We Youngins hung out together. There was Larry, a Black guy who started in the mail room and graduated to copywriter. There was Tory, who lived with an ex-Radio City Rockette who could kick so high she could knock herself in the forehead. Tory’s dad worked for a paint company and named a shade after him: Tory Blue. Oh, and there was a rather scandalous girl, Dana, who wore a cape so she could bestow sexual favors in the car on the way to lunch.

Speaking of lunch, we Youngins ate together almost every day. At the health food place where the servers all lived in a yoga commune — and where Mike the Art Director liked to refer to the dessert as “monkey c*m” — or the Greek place where they served the fish with the head still on or at Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue, where the guy who made your sandwich left four fingerprints in the bread because he was missing one. A finger, that is.

We also goofed around and pulled pranks. (See “Pranks for the Memories” on the joys of prank-pulling.) At Barickman, we liked to tease this one girl whose name I cannot recall — perhaps because she didn’t use her own name, but referred to herself as “BK” (“Boss’s Kid”), which she was. She was also as annoying as you probably think she was.

Oh yes, we worked too. I started by writing “donuts” for Safeway radio commercials. “Donuts” are the “holes” in the middle of an otherwise canned spot where the copy says, “Chicken breasts 89 cents a pound” or some such. I worked on Philips Petroleum, writing ads for the stuff they put in natural gas to make it smell like “gas.” And I wrote for Fleischmann’s Yeast, which is the job that took me to New York for the very first — and fateful — time.

But enough. Going down Memory Lane can be a long winding road indeed. If you’re still out there, Larry and Tory and Mike and Dana, I hope you’re enjoying lunch. And Dana? I sure hope you wisened up and ditched the cape.

New York City. May 2022

 

 

Remembering Betty White

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‘She was a real softie in a couple of Q-Tips commercials’

Okay. So maybe her work as Sue Ann or Rose is more memorable, but I will always treasure the experience of working with Betty White.

Q-Tips — along with Shake ‘n Bake, another brand blast from the past — was one of my first writerly assignments when I came to Ogilvy in 1979. (Read all about how I got there in “Take A Letter, Miss Henry.”)

70s KC Me, dreaming of a job in the New York Ad Biz

In those days (and probably now, too) you couldn’t write a commercial for Q-Tips that mentioned cleaning your ears — even though that’s what most people did with Q-Tips — without including a rather harshly-worded warning:

An actual Q-Tips Box with the actual warning. Only it’s too small to read, so I’m putting it here, too:

So we did these rather namby-pamby spots with mothers and babies that talked vaguely about “softness” and included cloying scenes of an adoring mother tapping the Q-Tip on, say, a little girl’s nose. I was responsible for at least one of these, called “Still My Baby.” Forgive me; here it is:

Well. After my co-workers and I got through cracking ourselves up with parodies like “Not My Baby,” “No More Baby” and the lovely “It’s Not Really A Baby,” my partner and I decided to break out of the Baby Box and try something new. Continue reading

Stage Mother for a Day

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‘The Child was a Star. Just not a Child Star.’

I must miss the Ad World. Or maybe I just like writing about it.

Just last week I wrote about how the client hated a brilliant idea for a bra commercial so much that I was yanked off the Playtex account. Which wasn’t really so disappointing — except that I was put on the Kimberly-Clark account.

Kimberly-Clark (or KC, as we called it informally, if not fondly) is a paper products company based in Neenah, Wisconsin. I’ve written about KC before, most notably in “HooHah Time is Story Time,” but, trust me, when it comes to tales from the Paper Valley, I’ve got reams and reams of them.

Over my years at Ogilvy, I worked on Hershey and the British Tourist Authority, Q-Tips and Swanson, General Foods and American Express (See “Karl Malden’s Nose”), among others. I even “helped” on Shake ‘N Bake.

I don’t have many shoot photos, but this is one of my faves. I don’t remember what the shoot was for — except that it wasn’t for KC

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Whatever you do, don’t stare at the birthmark

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‘Our presentation to the CEO of Playtex’

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my Golden Olden Days in Advertising. But this weekend, as I was devouring the Sunday Times, I happened upon one of those paid obits that you can only see in the printed edition of the paper. (Yet another reason — besides starting fires in winter — to subscribe to an actual newspaper.)

It caught my eye — a phrase, incidentally, used waaaay too much by consumers in focus groups, as in “I don’t know if I’d buy that. Maybe if the ad caught my eye. And I don’t think this one would.” Well, this particular obit caught my eye because the deceased fellow pictured had not only a birthmark on his forehead, but a name that is quite uncommon. (Of course you know me well enough by now to know that I will not mention that name, out of respect for the dead, if not my own reputation.)

What I do these days instead of creating ads. Though I did knit quite a bit while on commercial shoots

Aha! That birthmark, plus that uncommon moniker, unleashed a whole-package-of-madeleines-worth of memories. Mainly centered around my experiences working with the late, great Mark Shap. (Mark’s name I will mention because I plan to say absolutely nothing negative about him.) Oh — a quick note here: If you think you will be offended by a story involving a person’s birthmark, please stop now and read one of my other Ad Biz Tales instead. I have a whole slew of them listed in the sidebar. Continue reading

Pranks for the memories

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‘Stuff you miss when working from home’

So I read in the New York Times today that there are some twenty-and thirty-somethings out there who are resisting going back to the office. “Is this mandatory?” was one Young Whippersnapper’s querulous query.

Some are even quitting their jobs when told to pull up their socks (make that put on some socks) and report to work in person.

Just because you can work remotely doesn’t mean it’s easy to work remotely

Now, I have heard the arguments for working remotely: no commuting time (or expense), the opportunity to prepare a healthy lunch, fewer dry cleaning bills. (That last one is a no-brainer, especially if you’re talking about pants).

Not everyone in the universe likes Zoom. Though it seems everyone skips the pants

And I’ve also heard the other side. As a pro-office guy in the Times piece said, “As a manager, it’s really hard to get cohesion and collegiality without being together on a regular basis, and it’s difficult to mentor without being in the same place.”

Hmmm. “Cohesion?” “Collegiality?” Using “mentor” as a verb? Sorry, fella. I think I’d stay home too.

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My Almost Arkansas Commute

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‘How I narrowly escaped working at WalMart’

It’s hot here. So hot my brain is mush and my funnybone has rickets. I’m so filled with Summertime Lassitude that I tried to republish a post from a couple of summers ago called “Who Wants To Go On A WalMart Run?”

It’s a zillion degrees out. So glad I just finished this sweater

This is the first time I’ve tried to do a sort of “rerun,” and, since it didn’t work and I hate to disappoint, I’m gonna compromise. Instead of dreaming up an entirely new story, I’ll tell you another one about WalMart.

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Location location location

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‘When “zooming” meant jetting off to a shoot in Paris.’

I cheated a little with the photo at the top of this post. Oh, it’s Actual Paris, all right. But this shot of Dude Man strolling oh-so-Gallicly along the Seine was taken on a long-ago vacation, not on a shoot. He did accompany me once on a shoot; it was for Hershey, and it was in London. I looked for photographic evidence, but the envelope labeled “London with Alice for shoot” in our old-fashioned photo stash was, alas, empty.

Here’s London, with The Child this time. Nope, no shoot then either. Tho we did visit some Ad Biz Buddies

But back to zooming around the world on somebody else’s dime to have a simply fabulous time while making a television commercial.

I’ve written previously about how incredibly cool it was to work in advertising back when I was working in advertising. See pretty much any entry under the “Adland Lore” tab, or jump right to “The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On,” to name just one. Of course, the Biz did have its downside. See “The Naked Boss and the Pussycat Lounge” for a darker view.

Here I am in Africa. I’m “working” on a Huggies commercial

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The time I stole the Vice Presidential couch

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‘From way back when people had actual offices. With actual furniture.’

It’s been ages since most of us have seen the inside of an office. And not just because the Pandemic has had many working folks working virtually.

See, even before The Great Scourge sent office workers scrambling for work-from-home kitchen counter space, actual offices were on the wane.

The Child, complete with laptop and lapdog, at work a couple of years ago in her modern open-plan Boston office. True, she was such a Big Cheese that she had her own space with a door that shut. But the door was glass

I’m talking here about “offices” as not just places where people work, as in “the New York office,” but your very own space at work. A place with four walls and an actual door—where you could shut said door and adjust your slip in complete privacy before settling down at your desk to tackle that Huggies copy.

The Child getting some work done, pandemic-style

Yes, there was a time when even the lowliest copywriter, wet behind the ears and fresh from the Midwest, had an office. The only people who didn’t were the secretaries, who sat outside in the hall. I know this because I was mistaken for a secretary on my first day at Ogilvy. Seated in the hall and handed a sheaf of letters to write, too. (You can read more about this in “Take a Letter, Miss Henry.“) Incidentally, they were indeed called “secretaries;” they even had a “Day” when you brought them flowers.

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“I’ve got belts older than you.”

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‘Freelance was such fun. Until it wasn’t’

As you may recall, last week I was all set to share a crabby/funny story about when I was a freelance writer — when, all of a sudden, this happened:

Needless to say, I’m still plenty excited. In fact, so excited I just can’t help treating you to another shot of the Happy Couple.

No one should be allowed to look this all-fired gorgeous on a plane, for heavens’ sakes

All in all, it was a darned exciting week, what with my umpteenth birthday, the afore-mentioned engagement, and the firing of President You-Know-Who (name rhymes with “dump”). There was some sad news, too — the death of Alex Trebeck, the beloved Jeopardy! host. Who was, of course, Canadian. (I say “of course” because I’m convinced, since The Engagement, that all the very best and very nicest men come from Canada.)

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