Nobody's Perfect

by Doris Willens

  * * *

  Frequently, Bernbach would include a quotation from Sir Kenneth Clark, “I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings by satisfying our own egos.” It always seemed a bit shoe-horned into The Speech, not quite merging with its surrounding components.

  Now, one supposes it was a reflection of something he felt about the old scenes from his life with, and rejection by, his parents.

  * * *

  A segment of The Speech in the early ’70s relates to the departure from the agency of a number of DDB creatives to join other agencies.

  He tells of a Big Five agency head who hires, and soon fires, a “copy star.” The agency head, a friend, tells Bernbach, “Those bright creative types sure need an editor, don’t they? You just can’t take them out of their environment and expect them to perform the same way. They’re too volatile and sensitive and human not to be affected by the things and people that surround them.”

  Bernbach pauses to let the comment sink in. Then:

  “This is one of the soundest lessons that management can learn. You can’t transplant the flower from one soil to another and expect it to grow the same way.”

  Attention, DDB creative people! You are foolish to think you will go on creating great advertising anywhere else.

  Attention, other agencies! You are foolish to lure my children with big money, because they need us to guide them to greatness.

  “You’re not going to do it by having a man without great creative skills himself as their editor. Unless the man doing the editing has a great creative record himself, two things will happen. He will 1) not be accepted by the writer or art director as their teacher, and 2) they will not learn and grow, because their editor is not one of them and therefore not sensitive to the problems of style and creative technique with which they are coping.”

  My children need me.

  Of course, like children and parents everywhere, the more the father insists on his importance to the progress of his children, the more the latter need to prove they can cross the road themselves.

  Moreover, like children everywhere, Bernbach’s creatives knew that if they left him, Bernbach would always take them back, and celebrate their return.

  * * *

  Audiences around the country, and later around the world, flocked to Bernbach speeches, eager to learn how to make their own ads better. They hung on his words, for he was the man who was changing the face of advertising. But they didn’t always get the connections he made between advertising and men such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Artur Rubinstein, Thelonius Monk.

  Intuition, not mathematics, led Einstein and Newton to the great theories named for them. Artistry, not the plots he stole, made Shakespeare the world’s greatest playwright. Daring, not cautious perfection, put the brilliance into Rubinstein’s unequalled performances. And a final word from jazz pianist Thelonius Monk: “The only cats worth anything are the cats who take chances. Sometimes I play things I never heard myself.”

  Facts are not enough. Information uncovered by research is not enough. It takes artistry and insight and intuitive leaps to clothe the facts in a message that people will pick out, and remember, and be moved by, and act upon.

  “Even among the scientists, men who are regarded as worshippers of facts, the real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.”

  First-time listeners were dazzled. Advertising was being elevated to an awesome plane. The words implied a parallel between the genius required for great advertising and the genius that produced great art and science. This was hardly the usual advertising conference stuff. The speech concluded in the obligatory way, with a reel of the agency’s unmatchable commercials. Now the audience could see how Bernbach’s philosophy bore fruit.

  To copy and art people working for more prosaic agencies, a Bernbach speech could be incredibly inspiring. Managers of those same agencies, hoping for instruction on improving their product, instead left the auditorium a little miffed at all this talk about giants and geniuses, and the implication that only Doyle Dane Bernbach had the magic.

  Over time, the speeches did nothing to dispel a growing industry perception that the Cinderella agency was becoming infected by the potentially fatal flaw of arrogance.

  * * *

  Fragments of The Speech appear in other chapters throughout this book, meshing with events and undercurrents in Bernbach’s life, most affectingly with his illness and his own, unwritten book.

  Although it always seemed to be the same speech to his colleagues, it was in fact a work in progress. And any future Bernbach biographer will have to sift through its stages, seeking clues to the life of an exceedingly private legend.

  Account Gains and Losses in the key year of 1974

  In:

  Borg-Warner

  Out:

  Burlington

  Ralston Purina

  Terminix

  Tropicana

  Uniroyal

  13

  The Guy from Ogilvy

  “It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.”—John Henry Cardinal Newman

  Attend now to the short, unhappy history of Jim Heekin’s reign—from March to August 1974—as president of Doyle Dane Bernbach.

  Its end was foreshadowed in a conversation between Joe Daly and his American Airlines client, Bob Crandall. “Joe, I want to give you some advice,” Daly remembered Crandall telling him, “It’s from Machiavelli. ‘When you conquer a country, you cut off the leader’s head, you don’t give him a room in the castle.’ I’m telling you what to do with Mr. Heekin.”

  And that’s what Daly did. But in all fairness, that’s what Heekin was trying to do to Daly.

  * * *

  It started as so many Doyle Dane Bernbach stories do, with an impetuous hiring. Heekin, looking for a new job, wrote to Bernbach, describing how he would handle the agency’s vexed Uniroyal account. Bernbach, eager not to lose another account, took the bait. Soon after, Heekin “appeared out of the blue,” in the words of then-personnel head Dick Kane. His arrival and his title, executive vice president, were announced in December, 1972.

  Perhaps the idea of a personnel check on Heekin struck Bernbach as unseemly. Heekin, after all, had been president of Ogilvy & Mather from 1966 to 1970. And Ogilvy had a fine image of being well managed, by well-bred, well-schooled, well-mannered men. Nice. Heekin was one of them. Well-connected—from the Cincinnati family that owned the Drackett company—monied, stylish. His striped shirts with stiff white collars and cuffs became his signature at DDB; account men copied the style, until Heekin fell from grace, after which such shirts were never again seen at the agency.

  “Bill was looking for a rabbit,” Heekin said later. “He thought perhaps that I was a rabbit.” A piece of magic to pull out of a hat and save the day. Heekin felt Bernbach always looked for a rabbit, rather than facing the hard problems.

  Bernbach saw Ogilvy & Mather as an agency full of rabbits, and it was with pride that he initially referred to Heekin as “the new guy from Ogilvy.” Daly hadn’t turned out to be a rabbit. Clients kept on leaving. They were not, as in Doyle’s day, rapidly replaced. Uniroyal was a deeply troubled account. American Airlines was halfway out the door. The agency looked bad to Wall Street after a series of rash acquisitions of so-called “under-marketed properties.” That galled Bernbach more than anything. Possibly excepting Daly’s lunchtime drinking.

  “If you have to see Daly, do it before noon.” Any description of Daly, whether by agency or client people, came to include that phrase. The words were often spoken with tolerance and amusement. Daly was a character, our character. DDBers adored Daly stories.

  Account man Arie Kopelman recalled being in Daly’s office, asking for help on a problem.

  “Joe puts his hand to his forehead, looks up through his fingers, says ‘Oh, shit,’ and limps out of the office. Twenty minutes
later, I ask Jeanette [Daly’s secretary] where Joe is, assuming he’s gone to the men’s room. Says Jeanette, ‘He left for lunch.’”

  While Daly headed for lunch and Tanqueray gin martinis at Le Mistral or La Cote Basque, Heekin took his lunch with the plebes, in the 19th floor Eatery. He never pulled rank to cut into the queue. In his stiff and formal way, he would make jokes about how trying to “cut into the queue” had cost him his job at Ogilvy.

  He used another image in explaining his end at Ogilvy to Bernbach and Daly. O&Mers were constantly encouraged to “grasp the nettle,” said Heekin, “I thought that meant Go for It, and I did.” He’d made an ill-timed run at the top job, and wound up on the street.

  So that was it. Heekin played for power, hard and fast. King of the mountain. No sharing. Daly got the picture quickly, and warmed up for the game. Soon one heard reports of a call from an Ogilvy executive to DDB about Heekin—”Don’t touch him with a 10-foot pole.” Years later, I learned the origin of that report was Daly.

  Here is Daly calling to let me know another account is leaving DDB.

  “Jesus!” I gasp.

  “Don’t Jesus me. It wasn’t my account,” responds Daly, triumphantly. He’s happy! The agency he’s president of has just lost a big piece of business, and he’s happy because it’s a black eye for his challenger.

  * * *

  Through 1973 Heekin supervised a group of accounts, spending much of his time trying to identify the sources of the agency’s problems. Daly heard from a couple of client contacts that Heekin had said to them, “We know you’ve had problems with the agency, but we’re working to fix them.” Daly’s version was that these clients had assured Heekin they had no problems with the agency, and “What’s with this guy, Joe?” they’d asked him.

  Since Daly operated on an “everything is great” wavelength, these reports gave him more ammunition to undermine confidence in Heekin. He began to send up small balloons of doubt about Heekin’s stability.

  * * *

  Bernbach heard reports about Daly’s drunken behavior at an international meeting of Polaroid people in Paris. The last straw. Daly had to be fired. Or, if not that, Daly would have to agree to naming Heekin president of the agency. Doyle, back on the scene as a sounding board to the increasingly-worried Bernbach, prodded both Bernbach and Daly to take that route.

  Daly stepped up his covert aspersions on Heekin. Heekin, growingly confident of Bernbach’s support, stepped up his research on who did what at the agency, and how well or how badly. He soon identified the reason DDB was failing in its new business efforts.

  “It’s the ‘asshole syndrome,’” said Heekin. “In the hallways, you constantly hear DDBers referring to other DDBers as assholes. That contempt for one another is palpable in our new business presentations. Why would an advertiser give his account to a place where everyone thinks everyone else is an asshole?

  “We went through a period like that at Ogilvy. And we were getting no new business. We did some soul searching and changed our ways. When our presentations came alive with the fun of working together, of admiring and liking and respecting one another, advertisers wanted to share the magic. The new business rolled in.”

  Heekin hoped the syndrome would stop at Doyle Dane Bernbach. If anything, it accelerated.

  * * *

  Something about Heekin’s immaculate Waspiness—the way his skin pulled tight over his fine-boned face, the tightness of his persona, the perfectly-rolled umbrella look—left many DDBers feeling far less comfortable than they did in Daly’s rumpled presence. But he saw with fresh eyes, and he saw deadwood, and old-time department heads who hadn’t grown with the agency, and downhill creative work, and he said so.

  “What did you do that I didn’t, Jim?” asked Bob Levenson, who had badly wanted the presidency of the agency, after Heekin got the appointment.

  “I had the guts to say what was wrong,” responded Heekin.

  Just about everything was, in his opinion. Media, research, marketing—all needed new department heads. So did the creative department. So did international. The general manager should go. A strategy review board should be set up, to keep the advertising on track for every client.

  He pushed for the chance to implement these changes. Bernbach and Doyle pushed Daly.

  An agency lawyer remembered a meeting, in the second week of March, 1974, called to name Heekin president and to fire Daly. “To this day, I can’t figure out what happened,” said he, “but when it was over, Heekin was president, and Daly was chairman of the board.”

  Daly later reconstructed a piece of the meeting like this:

  Bernbach: “I’ve got to talk to you, Joe.”

  Daly: “What’s the problem? There ain’t no problem around here.”

  Bernbach: “There is a problem.”

  Daly: “What is it?”

  Bernbach: “You drink too much.”

  Daly: “What do you mean, I drink too much? You know how much I drink and how much I don’t drink, and I’ve always done that, and it’s never caused a problem.”

  Bernbach: “I understand you made a fool of yourself at the Polaroid party in Paris.”

  Daly: “Who told you that?”

  Bernbach: “I’m not going to tell you.”

  Daly: “Well, I’m going to tell you something. I remember that night very distinctly and specifically. I never put on a better performance in my life.”

  Instead of a mea culpa, Daly defended himself so vigorously that Bernbach’s resolve withered. “I just can’t do that to Joe,” said Bernbach, then, and on several other crucial occasions.

  * * *

  On March 15, a press release announced Heekin’s ascension to President, Domestic Operations. Daly moved up to Chairman and CEO, Domestic Operations. Bernbach took the title of Chairman and CEO Worldwide.

  Heekin came to rue the meeting as a “grave mistake.” He’d had enough clout then, thanks to Bernbach’s dissatisfaction with Daly, to insist that Daly be removed from power altogether. “It’s very, very difficult when you have two men on top,” said he.

  Three days after Heekin’s appointment as president, Uniroyal announced it was moving its account from Doyle Dane Bernbach to Ogilvy & Mather. Heekin lost credibility as a rabbit. Bernbach lost heart. Daly was jubilant.

  Doyle wondered if it was time to have lunch with his old friend Mary Wells.

  * * *

  Heekin, meanwhile, demonstrated his ability to upgrade service departments by bringing the highly-regarded Mike Drexler from Ogilvy as media head.

  Drexler was stunned by the differences between the two agencies. “When we did new business at Ogilvy, we all got together and worked for days on end,” he recalled later. “We would each do our own part, then meet as a group, then we would discuss, and rehearse. We’d rehearse with scripts. There was never anything extemporaneous in a presentation because we had fixed timings and it was important to keep to them. We’d rehearse for hours. We listened to one another and made suggestions and corrections.”

  He’d been at DDB for a few months when Daly called him and said they’d be doing a new business presentation for Scott Paper.

  “Great,” said Drexler. “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow,” said Daly.

  “Tomorrow? When do we rehearse?”

  “We don’t need to rehearse. Just get up there and tell them something about media.”

  Scott Paper didn’t move its account to Doyle Dane Bernbach. Maybe it had to do with the unrehearsed presentation. Or with the asshole syndrome. Or with the growing impression in the industry that, as Ted Factor told Bernbach in June, 1974, DDB was “the worst managed agency in the business.”

  Management’s inability or unwillingness to deal with hard problems was exemplified in a comment by Daly to Doyle, in the early ‘70s. “This place is going to go down the drain, but I’ll be out of here before it does.”

  * * *

  Machiavelli would have enjoyed the Daly-Heekin contest. Deadly seriou
s stuff it was for the participants, and who knew what this would mean for the rest of us. Still, it had its funny moments. One of the funniest came in a musical we produced for the agency’s 25th anniversary. The Joe Daly character is portrayed looking bewildered on entering the company cafeteria. He sings, to the music of “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”:

  “I’ve never been in here before

  On other days by noon

  I’m out the goddamn door,

  I’ll tell you, since you didn’t ask

  I far prefer the food

  And drinks at La Cote Basque,

  But since I learned that Heekin eats inside

  I got myself a guide

  To lead me to this floor,

  So please forgive the puzzled state I’m in