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You Want Us To Do What??

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Do What?

It was now December, 1971.  The top television shows were All in the Family and Marcus Welby, MD.  I managed to do my time in Traffic, Print Production, and Art Buying without pissing anyone off.  I was finding that this training program was an invaluable way to learn the business.  That’s why so many other Detroit agencies didn’t have management training programs.  They’d let Campbell-Ewald go to the time and expense of training us, then, when we were done, they’d pick us off the vine.  Still, I got the feeling that when there was a dirty job to do, the first thought was “have the trainees do it.”

I was called to report to the VP of  Personnel’s office right away.  Oh no!  What now? On the way there, I ran into Chuck Seibert, another of the trainees.  He was on his way to the same meeting.  He was as clueless as I was. We entered the Director’s office and were asked to be seated across from his desk.  Standing behind him was a woman who, as far as any of us knew, was the Assistant Director of Personnel for Female Stuff.  This was not a good sign.  The Director began, “Gentlemen, as you know, tomorrow night is the Campbell-Ewald Christmas Party.  The entire agency will be there…including the secretaries.  There will be open bars, and probably a lot of drinking going on.”  Where was he going with this?  “Tom and Chuck, you are both single account men (back then were there any account women?) and we are asking you to, um, err, uh….  Marge, why don’t you take over here?”  The ADOPFFS stepped from behind her desk, uncrossed her arms, and began.  “Gentlemen, the women at this agency are not used to nice things.  Even now they are discussing with each other what they are going to wear.  As soon as it’s 5:00 tomorrow, they will all race to Femen prostitutes protest Kievthe ladies’ rooms to change and spend an hour or so doing their hair and applying make-up.”  Now I was completely bewildered.  “These women,” she continued, “are not used to nice parties and this may be the only open bar they will experience all year.  Many of them will get extremely drunk…and amourous. Many of them are only in advertising to find a rich husband (who also gets free cars!) and live off of him.  We cannot have them ruining any of our married men’s lives because the man was seduced in a moment of weakness. That’s where you two come in.  If you any see behaviours that appear to be headed for sex, we want one of you to step in.”  

“And do what?” I asked.  I wasn’t going to carry a bucket of cold water around all night.  “You are to remind the gentleman that he is married, and escort the lady away.”  “What if she’s still hot to trot?” Chuck asked delicately.  Marge flinched for a second, then dropped the bomb.  You two aren’t married.  We don’t care what you do with the secretaries.”  My open mouth was rapidly filling with dust and cigarette smoke.  “You want us to do what?” I asked.  The Director jumped back in.  “Tom, you’ll be doing everyone a great favor by defusing any volatile sexual situations.  We can’t afford to have any of our men hurt by a slight indiscretion with someone from the office.”  Ahh, I thought.  I get it. It’s OK for these guys to have off-campus affairs, just not one with a co-worker.  Hmmm, I think someone’s been sued before.  We were dismissed.  On the way back to our offices, Chuck turned to me with a huge grin and said, “Man, do you know what this means?  Personnel has just given us Get Out Of Jail cards for the Christmas Party.  We have company issued licenses to shag the secretaries!”  He really didn’t say shag.  I just used it because it was nicer than the word he actually used.

The next day dawned crisp and cold.  I was hoping that the cold air would quell any misplaced ardor that evening.  Just to be on the safe side, I wore my best underwear. The clock ticked inexorably toward 5:00 PM.  And, as Marge had predicted, at 5:01 there was a small stampede toward the ladies rooms.  The party was scheduled to begin at 6:30 PM across the street in the Grand Ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel.  By 6:31 it was standing room only at each of the five bar stations.  By 7:15, romansthe first person has passed out after getting sick on a statue of Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.  By 8:05, I saw my first challenge.  Tom Turner, another trainee, was pinned against the wall by a secretary in his group. She was leaning into him so hard that her drink was spilling on the front of his suit.  Tom and his wife, Carol, were from North Carolina and as nice, and charming as could be.  The terrified look on Tom’s face told me that he was trapped. The young lady was wearing a fetching crushed velour, forest green mini dress.  I knew she was wearing underpants because the dress didn’t go down far enough to cover them.  Tom had been a Navy pilot in Vietnam.  And, as military people are want to do, Tom quickly fell into the argot of acronyms and euphemisms for what he did.  “What did you do in Vietnam, Mr. Turner?” she cooed.  “Well, Lindy Lou, I was a tail hooker (a pilot who lands jet planes on carrier decks) in the Navy.”  “Ooooooh,”she squealed, “would you hook my tail tonight?”  True to his gentlemanly constitution, Tom said, “Oh no, a tail hooker is a guy who drops the hook down on the back of his jet fighter, hoping it grabs one of the cables on the carrierSafety deck in order to keep his 31 ton aircraft, that’s moving at about 250 MPH, from plummeting off the end of the deck.”  Her face went blank, but she was relentless.  “Do you want to get out of here and go see my apartment?”  “Hey Tom,” I called out.  “There’s someone over here I want you to meet.” I explained to him what I was doing, then went back to find Lindy Lou.  She had already been picked up by a guy from Research, who had heard the entire tail hooker story.  The two of them were making tracks for the door and a sweaty assignation somewhere in a small apartment in Troy.  Oh well, the research guy was single, so it was OK.

The party rolled downhill from here.  When one secretary from media decided it was time for a Southern Comfort fueled striptease, she climbed up on a table and started her routine, ironically, to the stirring lyrics of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again, Naturally.  There was no way, literally or figuratively, I was going to touch this one.  “Marge, we’ve got a problem over at Table 8.”  There were no more major problems.  Probably because our married “account men” knew that they were being watched.  Not by me, but by executive management.  I had been put in charge of keeping the expendable ones at bay.  As this party was winding down, another one was taking on a life of its own.  One of the Associate Media Directors was a part-owner in a seedy bar on the Detroit Riverfront called The Sewer.  The party was moving there!  If The Sewer sounds familiar, it should, as the original venue for singer/writer Rodriguez, the subject of the award-winning movie Searching for Sugar Man.

At The Sewer, the party got weirder, the pheromones were flying, the drinks were flowing, reverse peristalsis was sent outside, the bar regulars were upset, one of the secretaries had passed out on the pool table, so we just played eight ball around her. I was OFF DUTY!

Next: I Am Plucked From The Slough Of Despond  

   

“Get out! Get out, now!”

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Torch DriveHaving survived the ” Attack of Smokey the Bear,” I was more than happy to return to normalcy.  My 10-week media tour of duty was ending when the Media Director asked if I’d like to stay in media.  “Everyone up here likes you, and we’d like to bring you out of the training program and on the staff here.”  I told him that I was honored, but my dream had always been to be in account management. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken him up on the offer. In any case, account management was where they gave you the free cars.

My next assignment was something called broadcast administration. I had no idea what that was.  My friend Ed Pietila had just finished his term there.  He told me that the department head sat him down and told him everything there was to know in a three-hour chat.  There had to be more to it than that!  On my first morning in my new assignment I was called into the manager’s office.  “Have a seat,” he said, as he closed the office door. “Tom, I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years. I still have trouble staying on top of it.  I’m going to talk to you for three hours and tell you everything that you’ll EVER need to know about this.”  He did, and it was. “Bring in a magazine or book tomorrow, you’ll need something to do.”

Nuts!  This was going to be boring.  On the third day of doing nothing, I got a call to come down to the CEO’s office!!!  Tom Adams was an imposing, charismatic guy. Football star, War hero, hair slicked back.  I had only met him on my first day when, as a member of The Little Princes, we were presented to him.  Why did he want to see me?  On the way to his office I ran into Ed, who had been similarly summoned. What was up?

“Gentlemen,” Tom began, “I am going to ask you both to help Campbell-Ewald.  I can think of nobody better to represent the future of our agency than you two.” Hmmmm.  “For the next two weeks you will both be on loan to the Torch Drive, helping them provide the needy with a better tomorrow.  We’ve already talked to your managers and told them not to expect you in for two weeks.  The Torch Drive will use you in their business-to-business fund-raising efforts. You’ll be calling on some of the most important corporations on the city.”  With that, he got up, shook our hands and gave each of us little Torch Drive lapel pins.  “There is an organizing meeting tomorrow at 10:00 AM at the Sheraton-Cadillac.  Good luck, and thank you.” Fired with company pride, we promised to not let him down.

Ed and I were both 20 minutes late for the meeting.  When we got into the room, we saw gaggles of suits going over information packets and high-fiving each other.  The moderator approached us.  “Are you the Campbell-Ewald gentlemen?”  We put on our best obsequious masks.  “Yes, we are.  We are soooo sorry for being late.” “No problem,” he said, “everything you need to know is in the packets, including the names of the businesses, the owner, and how much they contributed in the past. Your team goal is also in there.  Yours was the last packet chosen.”  We soon found out why.

The United Foundation’s Torch Drive was started in Detroit in 1949.  It grew into the United Way.  “Give once for all,” was their motto.  Ed and I were ready to give it our all.  We knew that our collection area was bounded by E. Warren on the north, Mack Ave. on the south, John R on the west, and Beaubien on the east.  What we didn’t know was that most of it had been leveled almost a year earlier to make way for the new Wayne State University Medical Complex.  We hopped into my brand new 1972 Camaro RS ($2225!) and went to check it out.  I had come to the conclusion that it might be a few months before I started getting free cars, and I couldn’t keep showing up for work in The Flying Coffin.  So I bought one.

We were shocked and dismayed as we drove into the neighborhood.  Over 90% of it was gone or boarded up, waiting for demolition!  How were we going to collect any Storesmoney for the needy? We couldn’t let Tom Adams and Campbell-Ewald down.  We devised a plan.  We couldn’t admit failure.  Perhaps this was a test of our ingenuity. On the first day we’d call on the four or five buildings still standing. For the next thirteen days we would each contribute $5 in the name of a non-existent business.  This was cheaper than paying for parking at the GM building.  We couldn’t show up for work.  That would be admitting failure.  What would we do with our days?

We were definitely ingenious, and 25 years old. We spent our days discussing Nietzsche and Kierkegaard at local fine dining establishments such as Edjo’s, The Tender Trap, the 52nd Street Show Bar, La Chambre, The Landing Strip Lounge (near the airport), Cricket’s, and BT’s.  We heard that the Canadian National Ballet was appearing in Windsor. We went over and saw them.  Each day we put $10 into our collection envelope. Toward the end of the second week, we decided to make a run through the area again.  We found two businesses that had not been as yet abandoned.  One was a small tailor shop run by an elderly Jewish man.  “I’ve been here for over 40 years.  They start demolition next week,  I’m too old to start over.”  He opened the cash register and handed me a crisp $20 bill.  “I hope this helps,” he said.  Wow!

The last building was about four hundred yards away.  As I drove up, I saw the sign: Chez Antwan’s.  It was a bar!  We could collect from the owner, and any patrons who might be there.  I parked my Camaro by the front door, and Ed and I strode in.  Big mistake!!!  Not only were we the only white guys in there, I realized that in our cheesy suits we looked like narcs.  The “fight or flee” portion of my brainstem kicked in.  In a millisecond I realized that if I turned and ran, we’d be confirming everyone’s worst suspicions about us.  And we’d never make it to the car.  I walked up to the bartender, and in a loud voice, said, “Good afternoon my good man.  My friend and I work for the United Foundation and today we’re in the neighborhood seeing if any of the local businessmen would like to make a contribution for the needy.”  My brain told me to shut up.  Even though it was very smoky in the bar, I could see that every face was looking at us.  “Well, if not, we’ll just be on our way.” The bartender motioned me closer.  “You two are too dumb to be narcs.  I believe your United Foundation story.  I’m not going to give you any money, but I will give you some advice.  Get out! Get out now!”  Ed and I did a sideways crab shuffle toward the door, and got into my car.  We rode back in silence.  At least we hadn’t let the agency down. We had collected $120 for the Torch Drive during these tough economic times.  So this was advertising.

Next:  They Want Us To Do What?  

 

Into The Belly Of The Beast

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Golddiggers

June 26, 1971, started as any other day except for one thing.  I was now an Ad Guy!!  I had relocated from Lansing to my grandmother’s house in Detroit several days earlier to be close to work.  I was to report to Personnel at 9:oo AM.  As I entered the lobby of the GM Building and made my way to the elevators, I noticed that I was now part of a sea of suits that was about to infest every corner of the building, making heavy decisions, determining the course of the U.S. economy, and just generally being brilliant.  After dropping my paperwork off, I was escorted to the main conference room.  Soon, the other four chosen ones came in.  My MSU college buddy, Ed Pietila, had made the cut. Tom Turner and Greg Stein, Vietnam vets, and Chuck Seibert, who had been a caddy at Oakland Hills C. C..

We had all been assigned to different departments to begin our instruction into the art, craft, science, and lifestyle choice that was advertising.  I grabbed my briefcase, that had nothing in it, and was taken to the Media Department.  The Media Department was not in the GM Building.  It was behind it on the 11th floor of the Argonaut Building.  To get there, you had to take a GM Bldg elevator to the 10th floor where a hallway led you to a skyway concourse that took you directly into the Media Department.  To this day I haven’t been able to figure out how one gained a floor by crossing Milwaukee Avenue a hundred feet in the air.

Bill Kennedy, VP – Media Director, greeted me and took me around to meet the group.  I’m sure that they had all been told to be nice to the “bag smasher” they were getting stuck with.  I was to be assigned to the Broadcast Group.  They were the ones who planned and bought the time for TV and radio commercials.  I instantly learned about “glom.”  Glom was the free tchotchkes you got from networks, stations, and reps.  I was immediately given a Mutual Broadcasting coffee mug, a CBS Spot Radio Sales notepad, and an NBC Sports ballpoint pen.  I was ready to start making a difference.

I was turned over to Mary George. Mary was the head of the Spot Buying Unit.  A very petite lady, she gave meaning to the adage “Hell hath no fury like a spot buyer scorned.”  On many occasions, I would hear Mary’s voice rise when a rep would tell her that he couldn’t deliver the ratings he had promised.  The walls would shake as she told the rep was about to happen to his career.  It was the only time in my career that I would see men run out of an office.  I crunched rating numbers for her.  One day I was standing behind her at her desk, going over a buy.  I noticed that she had a milk crate under her desk, upon which she had placed her feet.  I asked about it. Mary smiled.  “Tom, I’m so short that my feet don’t touch the ground when I sit in my desk chair.  If I didn’t have something to anchor my feet when I went to throw something at a rep, I would just spin in my chair.  That’s not a good image for engendering fear.”  That advice went into Tom’s Book of Advice to Never Forget.

A few weeks after I’d started, the FCC did something that almost caused me to reconsider my chosen vocation.  They came out with PTAR…the Prime Time Access Rule. It wasn’t so much the rule that almost sank me, it was what the rule brought about.  TV stations now were able to run their own local programming.  The hour from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM would no longer carry network programming.  The race was on!!!  Syndicators and advertisers went crazy coming up with shows to fill this vast wasteland…of time.  Chevy was no different.  The General Manager of Chevy was John Delorean.  John Z. had many Hollywood connections.  The agency was told that Chevy had purchased three barter syndication shows. Barter meant that Chevy would slug two commercials into the show, the station could run the program at no charge and sell the other two spots for their own profit.  They were:

  1. The Tom Brookshier Sports Illustrated Show – Ahead of it’s time.  Think of a kinder, gentler Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports 
  2. Johnny Mann’s Stand Up and Cheer – Wholesome, clean-cut, mostly young, singers and dancers who always seemed to be wearing red, white, and blue spandex. Notable about the show were two of the singers.  Thurl Ravenscroft, who was 57 at the time.  He gave voice to many of the animatronics at Disneyland, but was most famous as the voice of Tony the Tiger.  The other was Ken Prymus. One of two African Americans in the group, Kennie is probably most famous for his role as PFC. Seidman in the movie version of MASH.  During the “Last Supper” scene, he sings the now iconic theme “Suicide is Painless.”  These were cool people to be around.
  3. Chevrolet Presents the Golddiggers – This was a dog’s breakfast of skits, unintentional bloopers, and going through the motions dance numbers.  For those of you who weren’t around, the Golddiggers were a group of lovely young women who were featured on the Dean Martin Show in the 70’s.  They would lounge around on couches, supporting Dean’s naughty boy image, while he delivered the opening monologue.  Someone had the brilliant idea to package the routines that weren’t good enough to air on NBC, and sell them to Chevy as a syndicated show.

Either because everyone else was too busy, or nobody wanted to be connected with this deal and get career-ending schmutz on them,  I was given the project.  My instructions were simple:

  • Clear the top 25 markets at all costs!
  • There are no demo tapes, “so they’ll just have to trust you that these are great shows.”
  • The MOST important thing was to clear a Detroit station.  There would be a lot of televisions in Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, and Grosse Pointe looking for them.
  • All of this had to be done in two weeks.

Armed with a station directory and my NBC Sports pen, I started cold calling station managers.  There were a few hurdles.  They had never heard of the shows (except they could name all of the Goldiggers), they wanted to see a demo before they committed to a program, and, of course, they had no idea who I was.  Within two weeks I had cleared 24 markets with at least one of the shows.  I couldn’t crack Detroit.  The folks in media told me to remind the local station managers that there was a huge Chevy Spot TV buy coming up.  Wink, Wink.  WWJ-TV, the Detroit NBC outlet relented.  They signed up for The Golddiggers.  The first show was to air the following Monday at 7:00 PM!  I told my co-workers, I told the client. I also told my friends and my family.  I wanted them all to see that I was now a powerful ad guy.

Monday arrived.  It was 4:30 PM.  My phone rang.  It was the Channel 4 station manager.  I couldn’t really tell what he was saying because of all the cursing and gagging. I finally got the gist of his call.  They had just received the tape for that evening’s show.  Not only was it a terribly edited piece of crap, the program, INCLUDING commercial slugs, was only seventeen minutes long.  Oooops!  I naively suggested that he pull the show and run a George Pierrott Travel Show repeat. Silence.  Then he said, “Don’t worry , Tom.  I’ll get even.”  Hmmmmmm. Something was going to happen tonight that might delay my getting my free car.

7:00 PM.  Judgement half-hour. The program came on.  Everything seemed to be OK. Sure, the production values were crappy, the lip synch was off, and the lighting was bad.  Big deal.  The PTAR was bound to cause a few hiccups.  Then, about ten minutes into the program, while the Golddiggers were singing “Let Me entertain You,” it happened.  The tape slowly ground to a halt.  …”let me make you smmmmm… The station then ran twelve minutes of the same Smokey the Bear commercial.  No big deal for WWJ.  They completed their monthly FCC mandated public service advertising duty in one night.  As Smokey faded out, they started the tape back up. “…smmmmmile. Let me do a few tricks, some old and some new tricks…”  My phone rang.  It was the Media Director.  “Tom, what happened?  Three clients have already called me at home!”  I told him what had happened.  How the syndicator had sent a bad show.  How sorry I was.  He simply and calmly said, “See me first thing tomorrow morning.”  I immediately showered and shaved. Put on my best suit, and sat in my car until the sun came up.

I walked into his office that morning looking like a whipped dog.  I was surprised to see him smiling.  “Thanks, Tom.  You did us all a great favor.  You’re going to go far in this business.”  Huh?  What was going on?  He explained to me that the agency had fought tooth and nail to distance themselves from the Golddiggers.  Since John Delorean had blessed the project, nobody could say No.”  Only by broadcasting one of the shows on a Detroit station could the voices of reason be heard.

I guess I took one for the team.  I learned that most good deeds never go unpunished.

Next:  “Get Out!  Get Out Now!

A Manchild In The Promised Land

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GM Bldg

The “call” came four days later.  I was being summoned to “meet some people” at the Campbell-Ewald offices in the General Motors Building in Detroit.  The building, designed by Alfred Kahn, and opened in 1923, was at that time the largest office building in the world. I had been to the GM building before as a child. Where children in New York City might go with their parents to see the Statue of Liberty, we would go to the GM Building’s incredible lobby to see the new models, and visit the “Technology of Tomorrow” exhibit.  Two of the displays would entrance me for hours.  One was a rapidly spinning machine that looked something like a camshaft.  You could flick a switch and a strobe light would go on, seemingly freezing the spinning device.  You could see how high rpm’s took its toll on metal parts.  That sure made me want to drive fast.  My other favorite display was very simple.  There were two holes in a wall about twenty-four inchesGM Interior from each other.  A ball bearing would roll out of the hole on the left, drop about eighteen inches to where it hit a beveled block of metal that bounced the ball into a 45 degree arc back toward a spinning hoop.  The ball would arc toward the hoop, timed to pass through it perfectly, arc back down to another beveled block of metal that would bounce the ball straight back up, where it would disappear into the second hole.At any given time, there were four balls in the air.  I would stand there watching in dumbstruck amazement until I would realized that my drool was starting to pool on the floor!

But today, I was to put away the things of a child. The Flying Coffin flew me to Detroit, I found a nearby parking lot, and was entering the building when I realized that I had locked my keys in the car!  I ran back to the attendant who assured me that I had nothing to worry about.  I returned to the Cathedral of Capitalism.

Campbell-Ewald, most of it, was located on the fourth floor. When I got off of the elevator, my senses were immediately struck by three things: my nose sensed the mustiness of gravitas, my eyes saw a lot of marble, my ears could detect no noise. Were they closed today? I followed the signs that led to the Personnel Department. Dear reader, you’ll have to remember that this was 1971 BHR…Before Human Resources. I entered, introduced myself, and was asked to have a seat. Several minutes later the receptionist’s intercom buzzed, instructing me to enter the Sanctum Sanctorum. It would be almost another thirteen years before John Williams would introduce his Olympic fanfare, but I could already hear the kettle drums and heraldic trumpets playing in my head.  The office, the size of a racquetball court, was panelled in dark wood.  Harry Parker, Vice President of Personnel rose from his desk to greet me.  “Good morning, Tom, would you like some coffee?”  He could have been asking me if I wanted some heroin, or vodka, or a sharp stick rammed up my nose. I didn’t care.  I gushed, “Yes, thank you!”

We started the Dance of Ennui. I had a hunch this guy’s dad didn’t own a bar.  Harry explained to me how the the training program would work.  The five pauci electi would be cycled through the different departments of the agency, spending a month or two in each.  If, after a year, no department expressed an interest in retaining one of the trainees, that person would be bound and gagged and drop kicked into the Detroit River.  Harry explained that the salaries for all of the trainees were coming out of his budget.  After this pep talk, the recruiter was called in to give me a tour of the agency.  I said “Hello” to approximately 287 people.  After the tour I was dropped back at Personnel reception and asked to wait.  About ten minutes later I was summoned back into Harry Parker’s office.  Mr. Pink Pony was also there.

“Tom, ” Harry began, “we’d like to thank you for taking the time to see us today.”  Nooooooooooooo! They don’t like me.  “As you know, there are 25 men trying to get only five jobs.”  Nooooooooo!  Maybe I can my Sears repo job back.  “We really enjoyed meeting you today.”  Noooooooo! I think I saw a bar around the corner.  “That’s why we’d like to welcome you to the Campbell-Ewald Training Program.”   Nooo…Wait!!! Yessssssssssss!!  Right then, I was very happy that I was wearing a dark blue suit.

“We’re prepared to offer you an annual salary of $9400.”  Be still my heart.  That was an obscene amount of money!!  “If you work out after 90 days, we’ll bump you up to $11,200.”  The room started to spin.  Sphincter don’t fail me now.  “Is that acceptable, Tom?”  By the puzzled looks on their faces I think my answer came out of my mouth as, “Yerrrg.”  We all shook hands.  A secretary magically appeared with a Campbell-Ewald New Employee Handbook full of paperwork for me to complete.  “Can you start next week?” Mr. Pink Pony asked.  “I can start right now, if you want me to,” I blurted.  They both laughed.  “Ha-ha.  What a kidder.”

I attempted to maintain some sense of composure as I was escorted back to the elevators. The composure broke as the elevator doors opened in the lobby.  I ran to the nearest lobby payphone to call my parents. They were almost as excited as I was. I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hear my dad in the background say, “Well, that’s one launched.”  I called my girlfriend.  Her happiness for me was tempered by her concern that I was now going to be living almost 90 miles away.

Oh no!! My keys were still locked in my car.  I ran back to the parking lot, where I was met by the attendant who handed me my keys.  “How did you get them out of my locked car?”  “It’s my job,” he cryptically smiled and said.  Claude Brown wrote a novel in the 60’s, and even though I was light years from his experience, I felt like “A Manchild In the Promised Land.”

Next:  Into The Belly Of The Beast

The Pink Pony Strikes Again!

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Pink Pony II

The drive from Birmingham to Lansing is pretty much a straight shot up I-96, much to the dismay of towns like Howell, Fowlerville, and Williamston.  The new Interstate bypassed them all.  The Flying Coffin’s throbbing 6 cylinder, 255 cu. in. engine, mastered by its Powerglide automatic transmission, was ready to be unleashed.  To be on the safe side, I took the small plastic statue of St. Christopher my mother had given me out of the glovebox and placed it on the dash.  

I don’t recall much of the drive up to the MSU ad department.  The green, Mid-Michigan countryside seemed to turn into a blur of green and blue, supported by the thumping of the outside air rushing through my open windows.  I pulled into the parking lot at 4:58 PM.  I had driven 87 miles in 48 minutes!! Running up the stairs, I realized that traveling at almost the speed of light had made the interior temperature of the car go up to about  475 degrees.  I was soaking wet!  If the Campbell-Ewald recruiter mentioned anything about it, I would cleverly tell him that I had gone swimming and happened to wear the wrong “suit.”  I was pretty sure that ad guys appreciated a rapier-sharp wit.

I was ushered into a small conference room where the recruiter greeted me.  He began by telling me something that I already knew.  He had asked our department chairman for the names of five grad students he might like to interview.  Then he told me something I didn’t know.  He was visiting a total of five Big 10 schools and interviewing five at each school.  From this pool of  25 young men (yes, I know…but there weren’t very many women ad majors way back then) Campbell-Ewald was going to choose five to be admitted to their management training program. Hmmmm.  I had a one in five chance.  I knew that I needed something to make him remember me among the sea of eager white faces he would be meeting.  As he looked down to shuffle through his papers, I slowly took out the golden ticket I had just received from Ted Teegarden.  I looked at the contacts he gave me, not recognizing any of them.  We started the usual interview “Dance of Ennui, ” where we talked about our pasts and what brought us into advertising.  I thought this was a good time to use the golden ticket.  I told the recruiter about my buddies, Gail Smith, Bunkie Knudsen, Jack Morrisey, Ted Mecke, amd John Delorean.  Again, hmmmmm.  That didn’t seem to phase him, or else he knew that I was lying.  Then he commented on my last name.  “Are you related to the Mayor of Detroit?”  I told him that, indeed, I was.  He was my dad’s younger brother and my godfather.  His face lit up. “So you’re a Westsider,” he said, referring to the fact that I grew up on the west side of Woodward Ave.  “So am I!”  We found out that we’d grown up only a few miles from each other, gone to the same hamburger joints, went to the same movie theaters, and had endured the agony of buying back-to-school clothes at the same Federals.

He asked on what street I lived.  I told him that it was Prairie, a few houses north of Grand River Ave.  A big smile grew on his face.  My dad used to own a bar on that corner.  “The Pink Pony!” I exclaimed.  He said, ‘Yes!” I said, “I know it well!”  He said, “What a coincidence!”  I said, “I know!”  I did know the Pink Pony very well.  It was only about 200 yards from our front door, and featured the biggest TV I had ever seen.  Most Saturday and Sunday evenings my mom would say, “Tom, can you go get your father?  Dinner’s ready.”  I would trot down the street and timidly stick my head in the door that opened to a dark cavern filled with smoke and the smell of stale beer.  Men’s voices would try to out shout each other as they argued over who was a better Detroit Tiger, the new kid named Al Kaline, or the legendary Charlie Gehringer.  “Dad! You have to come home now.  Dinner’s ready.”  My dad would immediately emerge from the darkness and hold my hand as we walked home.

The Campbell-Ewald recruiter and I talked and reminisced for over 90 minutes…much to the chagrin of his next interview. As I left, he winked and said, “We’ll be in touch.”  I learned something that afternoon.  Sometimes you have to break away from the pro-forma “Dance of Ennui” and engage the schmooze gear to really know someone.

Next:  Manchild In The Promised Land

“Sir, Your Mother Wants You To Call Home.”

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Grad PhotoI was out!! Michigan State University had unleashed another starry-eyed graduate into the world. My graduate advisor had suggested that I might want to stay on and enter the newly-developed doctoral program.  I figured that I already had enough book learnin’ to land a job and start getting free cars.  In any case I knew, in my mind at least, that I had been assured a job from the father of my summer campers. All that was left was to put together something called a resume and buy a suit that didn’t smell of repo man sweat. The time had come to enter the intoxicating world of advertising.  I wanted to set up an appointment to follow my instructions to “look me up when you graduate, Tom.” My mentor’s name was Ted Teegarden, and he worked for McManus, John & Adams in Birmingham, MI.  They handled the Pontiac account.  I wrote requesting an appointment with him.  I also wanted to give the agency time to set up my new office and order my new Pontiac.  Several days later I received a reply.  His secretary wrote, “Mr. Teegarden would be delighted to see you next Wednesday, at 9 AM.”  I was in!!!! I was living in Lansing, MI.  My house was 87.4 miles from Birmingham. The day of the meeting I got up at 5:00 AM, and left an hour later.  I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t late for my first day at work.  It was June of 1971 in Michigan.  The last of the winter snow had melted the day before, and this glorious day now presented us with bad-haircut-689 degrees and 410% humidity.  My college car, which I lovingly referred to as The Flying Coffin, had no a/c.  I made the drive down with the windows open, the wind blowing through the car.  My neatly Aqua Netted hair now made me eerily resemble Phyllis Diller…on a good day.  I pulled into the McManus, John & Adams lot at 7:30 AM.  This gave me time to take care of three things: run across the street to the Sunoco station to use their restroom; while in there, use paper towels to try and dry the raging rapids that used to be my armpits; and to wet my hands and try to mold my hair back into something that at least approximated roadkill.  It was now Showtime!!! I presented myself at the reception desk.  A few minutes later, Ted Teegarden came out to greet me.  We went back to his huge corner office. Yes, I thought, this will be great.  He told me about the agency, what it did for Pontiac.  He asked questions of me.  “What motivates you?” “Why car advertising?” “What are your goals?”  Great questions, but why was he asking them when I should be looking at my new office?  We toured the agency.  We ate lunch in the executive dining room…yes, an executive dining room.  He spent the entire day with me, telling me things I would have never learned from a book.  Then came the cold dose of reality question: “Well, Tom, where else are you interviewing?” What! What? Wait!  I had no answer.  I didn’t know anyone at any other car ad agency.  Ted then opened his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper that was the Holy Grail of heavy-breather agency and car company contacts in Detroit.  “Tom,” he said, “here’s a list of some people I know. I’ve contacted each of them.  Use my name to get in for an interview.” That day he had given me something better than a job, he gave me insight into the career I had chosen, and he had given me a golden ticket to find a job.  Ted Teegarden was a great mentor.  He displayed a kindness and caring attitude toward people that is becoming increasingly difficult to find these days.  He had spent an entire day escorting this gawky ad tyro around.  I thought the day couldn’t get any better.  Just then, Ted’s secretary walked in and looked at me.  “Sir, your mother wants you to call home.”  Ted jumped up and offered me the chair at his desk.  “Here, use my phone.  I’ll leave and give you some privacy.”  It was now 4:00 PM.  I called home. Mom answered.  “I’m glad you called, dear.  A recruiter from some place called Campbell-Ewald asked the ad department chairman for a list of five graduate students he should interview while he’s on campus.  You’re one of the five.”  I almost wept with joy.  Armed with my new contact list, I knew that I’d ace the interview.  “This is great news, Mom.  When is my interview?”  “Well, dear,” she said, “I’m afraid it’s at 5:00 today. That’s only 55 minutes from now and you’re in sr_screenshot_29Birmingham. Should I call and tell them that you can’t make it?”  “Nooooo, Mom.  I’m on my way!”  I ran past Ted and thanked him profusely for taking up an entire day for me.  I sprinted to the parking lot and fired up The Flying Coffin. It was now 4:10 PM and I was 87.4 miles from my chance for a free car. I would not miss this interview. Go Speedracer, Go!!!

 

Next:  The Pink Pony Strikes Again!