Chapter Two – Plan. Design. Execute.
In hindsight, I’d gotten that first job with such relative
ease. I just figured I’d waltz into another agency and I’d be back on the
Madison Avenue payroll. Hell, now I actually had some experience (albeit, less
than a year’s worth). It took some doing.
My in-laws helped bankroll another job-search. (God bless ‘em,
they never tried to talk me out of the advertising business even though they
suspected it was going to be a rocky road ahead for their son-in-law, daughter
and grandchildren if I continued to pursue this death-wish of a career.) I was
offered and accepted an assistant account executive position at Marsteller,
Inc. I was assigned to the JVC Consumer Electronics account. I was petrified. I
already failed miserably (I thought) on the Heineken account but I understood
beer (I thought). I knew nothing about the technology that makes High Fidelity
and Video equipment work. I learned pretty fast, though, and I realized that
product innovation was ongoing and moving quickly. So, in fact, by reading all
the trade magazines and consumer “buff” books I could be smart enough to get
by. Just smart enough. I recruited internal agency allies early this time. I
played on the agency Volleyball team and found ways to get people more interested
in helping me. Gone forever was “ASAP” from my vocabulary.
Accountability
Part of any account executive’s job is this little business
of accountability. After all, you are expected to be a good steward of the client’s money. I arrived at
the agency in time to get fully immersed in “accountability.” It seems the agency had not
been very
careful about routine estimates and client approvals. This situation can happen anywhere. If the
symptoms aren’t treated it can grow into an ugly problem. Nothing justifies a client launching a
search for a new agency better than poor management of the money. (The client’s money.) There’s really nothing
subjective about it. But the severing of agency-client relationships are rarely about
only one
thing. Like some marriages you just reach a point where there are “irreconcilable differences” and nothing you do
or say will fix things. There was a little more to this particular bad marriage.
Oh my God, Art Directors who can’t draw?
Most advertising agencies are pretty much the same. But it’s the nuances of the people that make it
interesting. Marsteller, Inc. had art directors who liked to rely heavily on swipe
art and found
pictures to communicate a layout idea/concept. This is an interesting way to show ideas. One
reason for this approach which is not uncommon: not all art directors can draw. This is even truer now because of computer
illustration and design technology. I had experience as graphic designer and part time employee of my Father’s design
studio when I was in High School but it did not prepare me for artists who couldn’t
at least roughly
sketch an idea. It surprises me to this day. Technology is making it easier and easier to use
computers and borrowed images
to show concepts. The artist who is a great freehand illustrator/artist is pretty rare. If I could offer one piece of advice
to the next generation of art directors it would be this: LEARN TO DRAW. You can save a lot of time, money and aggravation for everyone if
you do.
The $40,000 print ad
I worked as a Graphic Designer while I was still in
college. I managed mostly small printing projects (i.e. brochures, business cards).
However, print production in the big time caught me by surprise on the JVC
account. JVC was a heavy print advertiser. The creative team at the agency had
convinced the client that they should have an “umbrella” theme for all their
products. The idea was to build the brand name recognition with a cumulative effect
of a lot of smaller product oriented campaigns. The idea was for JVC to be able
to compete with SONY.
I hadn’t counted on the run-away train that some creative development
can become. This campaignable idea manifested itself in the form of We take you there. The
campaign thematic treatment could be applied to High Fidelity, Audio, and Video
products by suggesting that the sight and sound experience with JVC products
was just like being there, live. For example, an ad for a new model of VCR from
JVC resulted in a proposed concept showing a scene from Sci-Fi movie. Simple
enough concept, right? Wrong, our art director and writer wanted to create the ultimate
print ad. The ad would show a generic space battle on a rocket ship with laser
guns. The client was sold but the client also expected an ad around $7,000 in
production costs. Well, the cost of building a rocket ship, photography,
retouching, and color correction of a movie scene, (we actually built the equivalent
of a movie set for this ad), resulted in a $40,000 ad. The client, after this
debacle, insisted on written and approved estimates in advance. This is a
dramatic example of the gap that needs to be bridged between concept and
execution. Needless to say, this was the beginning of the end of We take you there.
Japanese Management Style (Consensus)
Ultimately, I was accountable for a lot of the runaway production
costs caused by art directors who couldn’t draw or imagine a solution other
than building an original movie set for a print ad. Hindsight again is 20/20
but when I think of the meetings I attended while on that account, I kind of laugh.
You see, JVC was a Japanese company and I would find myself in meetings with
very agreeable Japanese gentlemen nodding what I thought was approval to
proceed. What I learned later, was a fundamental difference in management style
between American and Japanese business cultures. You see, Japanese culture
encourages consensus while American prize decisiveness. Here these people were
nodding to show understanding, while I thought they were approving $40,000
print ads. The next time these gentlemen were nodding, they were nodding at the
idea of looking for a new agency. JVC fired Marsteller and the Marsteller fired
me. Okay, technically I was laid-off. But in advertising agencies, you never
get your job back. It’s not like the aerospace industry where you hire the mechanics
to come back to work the next time you land a big defense contract.
So, where do I end up next? I landed a new job at J. Walter
Thompson on a bona fide defense contract. I was the JWT rep for the First
Marine Corps District, an area that included New York, New Jersey and all of
New England.
