1963 - 2009
From my first job
selling The Ladies Home Journal and Time Magazine door to door when I was seven
through my executive coaching career I've had clients who looked to me for
advice and service. Is that service as in servant. I don't know. Maybe.
Here are four
memorable vignettes.
I was naive when I
went to work for Follick Leader in 1962 at his souvenir store on the Venice
Beach boardwalk. He taught me skills like helping customers, engraving
medallions and taking care of cash.
For July 4th, a week
into my tenure, Follick asked me to man his small souvenir booth inside a nearby
amusement park, Pacific Ocean Park.
Around 5 o'clock I
heard something that could have been "say whaddya get fo these
shayes?"
A young black man was
asking. I didn't quite understand. The word 'shayes' was foreign to me as was
his accent. Follick had told me the park would be crowded with kids from the
ghetto that day. Not the usual clientele. I was momentarily a stranger in a
strange land. Strange to me, that is.
As I worked through
the sale, including some unexpected, uncomfortable bargaining, I grew up a
little bit. Maturity that prepared me to deal outside another ghetto. The
ghetto I had grown up in.
Fifteen years later I
was an Account Supervisor at the Ogilvy & Mather ad agency office in
Toronto. We had just won the NCR account and I got assigned to manage the
client relationship.
We had won the beauty
contest because of our strategy recommendations. Client liked another agency's
creative idea but gave us the business while telling us to use the loser's ad
concept. Oy vey. Ominous.
My direct client was
Les Friedman. A bit of a tyrant. I soon learned that was inevitable since his
boss, Paul Lappetito, was a lot of a tyrant, or shall we say a hard charger, who
knew what he wanted, visibly impatient while people around him adopted his point
of view. An American assigned to Canada whose prime directive was
"just tell them what to do".
But I won. The
product was NCR's entry in the new minicomputer segment. The ad idea we were
directed to use didn't work and I had to stage manage the war between our
brilliant creative team and our never wrong client. People used to joke about
whether I carried a gun to meetings. Me against the tyrants.
One wonderful lesson
I learned was when Lappetito told me that his computers were not invented to
save people money. Their purpose was to help make people more money. Wisdom
that I still convey to clients.
Around the same time
American Express was also a client. I managed their direct mail credit card
acquisition program. I pulled the strings to research, design, print, computer
customize and mail about 3,000,000 invitations to get the American Express Card
each year.
My client was the
director of marketing, Bob McConachie, who also ran their large TV advertising
budget. I learned something special from Bob. The American Express Card was
expensive compared to its competitor Visa. Not good for business. One day Bob
led an incredible discussion during which every product disadvantage the Amex
Card suffered was reframed as an advantage. A building block for strategy
development I still use.
My direct mail
venture ran well. And I was constantly selling Bob on new programs which led to
extra spending and more profit for the agency. Bonus time eh!
One cold Saturday in
February 1979 I was awakened dark and early and summoned to an extraordinary
meeting in Mike Sugarman's office. He was the president of American Express
Canada. Hmmm
When I arrived the
president of my agency, Graham Phillips, was there. Bob McConachie was not .
Hmmm
Mike explained to us
that McConachie had been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars without
authorization. All our invoices would be paid. McConachie had been let go.
As Graham and I
walked out to the parking lot he turned to me and said "I'll not be
surprised to see you drive off in a Ferrari." I think he was joking.
Sobeys became a big
client of my current company, The Coaching Clinic, in 1996. Our work for them
has included soft skill workshops, elearning and executive coaching.
One particularly
interesting coaching assignment was to sort out a disturbing conflict between
two senior managers.
During my initial
meetings with each man it was obvious they were battling in part because of the
differences in their ages. One was a traditionalist, the generation before baby
boomers, and the other generation x. It was a testosterone battle. I had to
gently convince each man that they were just fine but they had to recognize the
other was different and could be brought around with more respect for their age
and ideas. That simple idea worked.
Soon after the
meetings I received a handwritten note from the HR manager who had hired me.
His short handwritten note read
'Jerome, you gently
laid hands on their shoulders and each thought the other had been
healed.'
December 2019
