My friend
Dick Clark, erstwhile art director and TV director who's seen it all, writes: " We didn’t know we were working in "The Golden Age of
Advertising". We just wanted to do "good", and most of us
knew it when we saw it.
But we were
also aware of the “ritual dance”.
One I remember was painfully illustrative of what became known as the “creative clusterf**k”. It was one of those urgent, work-through-lunch exercises making print “roughs” for the truck division of a major automotive account. I was “partnered” with a very bright copywriter named Charlie, a soft-spoken southerner with the self-mocking sense of humor that comes with confidence. I recollect being pleasantly surprised at how quickly we established a rhythm. We were cranking out “roughs” like a giant letter-sorter at the post office. A constant flow of full page magazine layouts began to paper the floor-to-ceiling cork board of my office.
We were really humpin’ when the phone rang. Charlie answered it. The caller was a junior account executive, a prototypical young New York ad man right out of a casting call for Mad Men. (They’ve gotten that part consistently right.) This kid had one of those voices which require the recipient of the call to hold the phone 6 to 8 inches from the ear. I heard the whole conversation.
Charlie: “Clark’s office . . . Charlie here.”
Junior: “ Charlie! This is Brad! How you guys doin’?”
Charlie:
“Well . . . we’re gainin’ on it. Got some stuff.”
Junior:
“Terrific! More fuel for the fire, huh?
Got some world-beaters in
there? Some break-throughs? Award winners?”
Charlie: “No. Mostly they’re pretty dull. Actually, a few are flat-out awful but one or two might be headed the right direction. We figure to hit ‘mediocre’ just about dead center.”
Junior: “ .
. . (very long pause) . . . Okay-y-y. See you at three.” Click.
In fact, some of what we did that day became the theme of became a fairly durable campaign.
I don’t
think the constant fight to raise creative standards we were continually waging
has ever been the plot line for an episode of Mad Men.
Charlie and I said “Hi” a lot and had lunch a couple of times, but he moved on shortlyafter our “clusterf**k”. To Doyle, Dane, Bernbach as I recall.
