A Good Lesson Not Easily Learned

1975 - 1980

Possibly the best pro tip I got in the 17 years I worked in advertising is to prefer products from Procter and Gamble. Learning that tidbit came from the most domineering relationship I've ever had.

When I joined Ogilvy and Mather, a top ranked worldwide ad agency on May 5, 1975, I didn't know that it was the watershed day of my working life.

I had been sent to Ogilvy & Mather by a headhunter as cannon fodder. That is, they expected someone with experience in the advertising business would get the job. I had none and was to show what unqualified looked like.

I was interviewed by five executives. It helped that I had traveled in central Asia. That appealed to two who had also traveled but not as far. It helped that I had an MBA and unique experience. That appealed to another, a Dartmouth MBA. It helped that I had lived in Los Angeles. That appealed to one more who had stars in his eyes. And because I was well read I could b.s. on many subjects. That appealed to the ultimate decision maker, the agency Chairman, Roy MacLaren, who just a few years later was elected to parliament and served as a cabinet minister under Pierre Trudeau.

In the ad business your personal brand is based on which firm and who your clients are. So working at Ogilvy was good branding for me as were my initial clients, Unilever and General Foods. They were in the packaged goods business, the most sophisticated area of advertising because they had big budgets, advertised primarily on television, were international and did the most market research. So right from the get go I was at the pinnacle of the business but in an entry level position.

I developed quickly. I worked for smart people who knew what they were doing. I was an Account Executive reporting to an Account Supervisor who reported to an Account Director. That’s the way Josef Stalin would have organized it.

As an account executive my responsibilities included minding a brand book which contained schedules, proposals, strategies, minutes,  media plans, finances, research results, client biographies, the advertising history and more,  all in one place. I was not required to have opinions but I was required to have relevant facts handy. That was the easy part.

The hard part of account management was coordinating, facilitating and optimizing relationships among all the stakeholders which included in order of importance, clients, the four agency service groups [creative development, media planning and buying, market research and advertising production], agency leaders and finally consumers.

It was stressful but I had a fear of death personality and grew rapidly in the job.

And because of that I was promoted to Account Supervisor effective February 9, 1977. It came with new accounts and two new bosses; David Rutherford and Wayne Jordan. They were new to the agency having just been hired away from Procter and Gamble where they were senior marketing managers. They had been clients of ad agencies but had never worked in one. That was ominous for two reasons.

Firstly, having been client side they were more command and control than listen and serve.

Secondly, Procter and Gamble isn't like other companies. They are more disciplined. For example they never cut their advertising budgets when profits are tight. They fire people instead. And they tend not to join industry associations. They think there is nothing to learn from the competition and they don’t want to share their secrets. Not collegial.

It took about two weeks for the agency to realize that assigning me to work for two newbies was probably a bridge too far. I was asked to choose one to bet my career on.

I chose Rutherford because the clients that went with him were more interesting to me.

David and I filled an empty space in each other. I needed a wise disciplinarian father figure to channel my underused brain and he needed someone who would gladly disciple at his knee. He played the role of an English don who thought Captain Bligh was misunderstood. Challenging.

We were a combustible combination. While we did good work together David had to sweat from his teeth teaching me to write his way. That helped me think better and professionally.

Everything about being treated like an empty vessel that needed to be filled with right thinking left me stressed that I could crash and burn. That was a hypothetical horrible that motivated me to work hard to succeed. I was very good from time to time but never good enough for my ersatz dad to let me feel whole.

We lasted four years together. In 1980 David was promoted to Managing Director of the firm and I chased a shiny object moving to McCann Erickson to work on the Coca Cola account for a nice raise in pay.

During most of my time at Ogilvy and Mather I had clients who competed with Procter and Gamble brands. And usually the P&G brand was the market leader. I learned the reason why from David. P&G brands sell more because they are manufactured with better ingredients and more expensive engineering so while they cost more to buy they are worth it.

And that is something worth surviving a life changing boss to find out.