Is This For Real?

“Come right over to the Pan Am Building, Frank! We've got a new account, and we need a writer with your kind of experience,” Mary Van said.

Five years earlier, I had advised Mary to leave the Schenectady ad agency where we worked together, to take a job as Account Supervisor in New York. Now, she was working on new business at Kenyon & Eckhardt, and she had brought in a national travel agency franchise that was just in the planning stages.

That meant they needed a copywriter with retail experience -- someone who could write fast and write well, for retail advertisers -- not the usual kind of portfolio that gets you a job at a major ad agency with headquarters in New York. She knew I was right for it, and could get a great campaign up and running in a hurry.

I had my portfolio with me at the Helmsley Building next door, because I was putting it together in preparation for the demeaning task of begging for work.

But I didn't have to beg. Mary had pre-sold them on me. And it's a good thing, too. Because it was a fast-moving, frenetic agency I walked into with my portfolio at 3 PM on that Friday afternoon.

John, the wild-eyed Associate Creative Director met me at the front desk, hurried me into his 18th floor office (with a spectacular view looking right over the top of Grand Central at the Empire State Building), and asked me to wait for him there. He had something urgent to discuss in the print production department.

As I sat there, I noticed two ad proofs for the Savings Bank Association, and with nothing better to do, I read them and critiqued them for myself. Fifteen minutes later, he was back. He told me that the agency had just gotten a new account, an association of travel agencies, and that Mary assured him I was the right person for the account.

As I opened my book, he asked what I thought of the two ads he had left on his desk. This is where attitude came in handy. I didn't have time to worry about this interview, plan it out – hell, I didn't even think this was real. I looked at it as a kind of rehearsal for job hunting, so I was completely candid, and told him what I thought.

“This ad is fine,” I said, and told him why. “The other ad is okay, but it would have a positive, double meaning with just a comma added right here in the headline.”

He jumped up.

“You're right! I woke up thinking about that last night! Let me go see if I can change it before it goes out.”
And away he went again, pleading with me not to disappear. When he came back, he said it was too late to change the ad, but, as he paged quickly through my portfolio, he said he was hiring me. “Actually, my boss does the hiring, but it's just a formality. Let me go see if he's available.”

His boss, the creative director, was busy, but he had obviously gotten the word that the right candidate was there. They just didn't want me to get away.

At about 4:30 I was brought into the creative director's office, with an even more spectacular view than the previous one. He was a tough-looking, gruff little man, of Italian descent, named Bob Fiore. (He later went on to have his name on the door of another agency.)

He said that Mary had told him I was working for Governor Carey.

“Do you know the governor?,” he asked.

“No. Never met him, he doesn't show up at our meetings or our functions.” '

“I know him.”

Was he testing the honesty of a copywriter?

“Well, they tell me you're what we're looking for. Let me see your book.”

He looked. He asked for a resume. To my surprise, I didn't have one in the portfolio. I explained that I hadn't had time to put a new one together, and had thrown out my outdated resumes. “Well, you can have the job. It pays $35,000 a year. But you have to be here in two weeks, and you have to bring a resume.”

''Thirty-five? Is that all? I can make that free-lancing.” It was a substantial amount back then, and a hell of a lot more than I was making.

I was bluffing, trying to see if there was more money in his budget. I had done one free lance job in the last year and a half, and made a couple of hundred dollars. I guess I still didn't believe this was real. “That's all I have for this job. But if you work out, I'll take care of you.”

I believed him. We shook hands. I had the job. I went back to the office of the Year of the Child Commission, where Fran and Nancy, my two co-workers were waiting for news. I told them I had the job, and that weekend, wrote my letter of resignation, updated my resume, and made plans to find my own Manhattan apartment.

But when I showed up for work two weeks later, something important was missing.

Next time: The client that wasn't there.

Party Time

You wouldn't think that something as universal as a year to celebrate children and to insure that the weakest members of the human race should be loved, protected and nurtured would be reviled by anyone, but it was.

There was a very vocal minority that feared that the plan was that children would be able to divorce their parents, and other nonsensical fears about a United Nations' hidden agenda for the International Year of the Child. I'm afraid the same lunatic fringe is still active 31 years later, although I'm not naming names.

That kind of insanity kept commissions all over the country from getting the support we really needed to make important social changes.

What we could do was celebrate childhood, and we did. With the help of Governor Hugh Carey's office, virtually every New York state and city agency and the city's parks department, we threw a huge party in lower Manhattan, at Battery Park, in mid-September of 1979 – “The Great New York State Children's Party.”

Posters, designed one of my soon-to-be ex-stepsons, appeared all over the city. All of New York's newspapers, radio and TV stations were alerted, and we had some great publicity. The weather was perfect, thousands of families showed up and the day was a success.

We put together one more event, celebrating families, in early December in the concourse under the Empire State Plaza in Albany, once again with the cooperation of many state agencies, who donated time and talent. We featured family counselors, family movies and family events.

Since we started late in 1979, the commission lasted into early 1980, but the only work left to do was prepare a report and wind down. Not being politically savvy, I felt uncomfortable writing that report, so it was farmed out to a writer who knew the proper legislative language. Personally, there wasn't much for the three employees of the commission to do except to start thinking about our next jobs.

With a sort of a Mr. Micawber attitude of “something will turn up,” I decided to take an earned vacation, and on the spur of the moment I accompanied my friend, Rich Capparela, as he drove across the country in his tiny Honda Civic, making his professional leap from announcing on Schenectady's classical music radio station to the same position in a major market – Los Angeles. The plan was to drive out together, and for me to fly back.

We saw a lot of the country, shared the driving and a lot of laughs, and became good friends. We noted a lot of strange place names, experienced some unusual incidents, ate well and stayed in some beautiful hotels. I'll probably write about that trip someday, but for now, its purpose was to ease my mind and prepare me for whatever the future would hold in 1980. And, as John Lennon sang back then in “Beautiful Boy,” “life is just what happens to you while you're making other plans.”

And when I got back, life happened in a way I could never have planned, even though I had inadvertently set it up years earlier. Sitting in my office in the Helmsley Building early one afternoon, starting to put my portfolio together in preparation for looking for work, I got a call from my friend Mary Van, who was now an Account Supervisor at Kenyon & Eckhardt – a big, international agency with headquarters right next door, in the Pan Am Building.

She told me to come over right away. There was a job with my name on it.

Next time: Fate takes a hand.

Year of Surprises

When I took the job with Governor Carey's New York State Commission on the Year of the Child, I assumed that the commission's headquarters would be in Albany, near the Governor's office in the Capitol. My first surprise was that the main office of would be in Manhattan, and in one of the most beautiful and iconic buildings in the city – the Helmsley Building, formerly the NY Central building. Sevan called it “the wedding cake building.”

That was another surprise: Sevan was back in my life, now that I had a job, and one that sounded important. And I would be making regular trips to Manhattan – to an office in a standout building. You see it in all those great photos and movie shots looking south on Park Avenue from the 50's and above – it's the one in front of the MetLife, formerly PanAm, Building. There are only three buildings that sit literally on Park Avenue – the third one is Grand Central Terminal.

The International Year of the Child was a United Nations project, and they had their logo. New York State was known for its logo/slogan, I ♥ NY. We hired a friend of mine, Tom Swimm, who at the time was an Art Director from upstate New York, to combine the two into a logo that said “NY ♥ ME,” which we put onto buttons, balloons, banners, posters – anything we could get sponsors to pay for. Tom also designed some big felt banners to use as backdrops for publicity shots.

I lived in the Albany area, so the commission gave me an office there, too – in the Empire State Plaza, across from the Capitol. Other perquisites included free vouchers for rail travel between Albany and New York City, and a prime parking space under the Plaza.

Because he didn't have a wife at the time, Governor Carey appointed his Attorney General's wife to chair the commission – so I found myself in meetings with NY's future First Lady Matilda Raffa Cuomo, and shepherding her through whatever interviews we could get from the media.

It was a fascinating way to get reacquainted with New York City, and I managed to write and produce a few very nice radio and TV public service announcements, which played throughout the state.

But just before I took the state job, I had one pending free lance TV project which I was really proud of, and I wanted to get it approved and produced before New York demanded all my time.

And the obstacle to accomplishing that was my next big surprise. Here's the story.

Don't Take No For An Answer.

Take It For An Opportunity.

In the late seventies, a woman with the unique name of Zenie Gladieux was the marketing director for the charming little Schenectady Museum, and her job was to try to increase attendance. She came to me with a request for a creative public service ad campaign -- radio and television.

Public service spots are easy to do, but hard to get placed. TV and radio stations have just so much time unsold that they can devote to local Public Service Announcements (PSA's). They like to run the slick, national spots, like the old “This (egg) is your brain. This (frying egg) is your brain on drugs,'” because the production values make the stations look and sound better.

That was my pitch to Zenie. The Schenectady Museum campaign had to stand out -- it had to be well-produced, but it had to be more -- it had to grab attention and make people want to see it. The more it did that, the more air time public service directors would give it.

I created a teaser campaign that would feature people looking at a display (an empty box in which was the video camera) and being intrigued by what was “on exhibition”. As we panned across the line of people, each person would express some strong emotion about what they were “seeing.”

The TV audience would just see each person staring through the box at them, and the viewer would have to imagine what was on display. Luckily, there was a new professional theater group trying to establish itself in the area, and they agreed to participate on camera for the free exposure.

And one of the great voices of commercial and Public Broadcasting fame, Peter Thomas, agreed to record the voice-over tag for the spots. It was a line that was intended to get attention, sounding shocking but, when coming at the end of the spot, was the just right punch line that would help make the spots even more memorable. The end line was (and I don't think we could get away with it in the twenty-first century as we did in the twentieth): “The Schenectady Museum. We're Exhibitionists.”

Zenie and her staff loved the campaign. But it had to be sold to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, a local bigwig who had a upstanding reputation in the community.

The time and date were set for me to present the campaign to him. But, they all showed up early, and instead of waiting for me to sell the campaign -- explaining it pretty much as I just did to you -- someone, thinking they were doing me a favor, gave away the ending.

When I walked into the meeting room and sat down, the bigwig looked at me and said, “No.''

“Excuse me?''

“No. The Schenectady Museum will not be a part of anything that makes light of exhibitionism. Not on my watch.”

I've actually learned to love it when somebody says no. It gives me the adrenaline to come up with every reason I can think of why no is exactly the wrong answer. This experience was one of the best lessons in how to do that.

I asked if he would be so kind as to listen to my presentation. He was kind enough to say yes to that, but made it clear that nothing would change his mind. I made my pitch. He thought it was creative, but his answer was still NO. I knew that his term as Chairman of the Board would be up in a year or so, so I offered a proposition. (I wanted to get paid for this work, and I wanted this spot on my reel.)

I proposed that we go ahead and produce the spot, since it wasn't going to cost that much more than they were already indebted to me for the time spent, and if he still didn't like it, keep it in the can, and let the next Chairman of the Board decide whether to use it or not.

He agreed to this, and we went ahead and produced it. It came out every bit as good as I had hoped.

Now came the real moment of truth -- presenting the campaign to the board of directors. We ran the sixty second version, the thirty, the twenty, the ten. (All we had to do was tape one long version, and then cut it up to fit each length.) Everybody loved it. There was nothing prurient or suggestive about it. (In fact, Peter Thomas is such a sweet, innocent man, that he didn't even know what an exhibitionist was!)

You could see that the Chairman wanted to be associated with it, but he had already pretty much vowed that the campaign would not be seen during his tenure. He needed a way to save face.

He said, “Well, that's different from the way you described it. You said the exhibitionist line would come first, and here it's the last thing.”

Everybody looked at me. They all knew I never described the campaign the way he just said. They were all wondering: “Will he win the battle and lose the war?”

I let him save his face. I said that once we had videotaped it and were putting the spot together, we realized that it would be better to “revise” our thinking and put the end line at the end.

He had his dignity, Zenie had her campaign, and I had a great PSA for my reel. The local stations loved the spots, and ran them as often as they could. The campaign did its job -- created a buzz, and increased museum attendance.

Next: Party time!

Independence

Another marriage on the rocks, another job that went sour. Just when I thought nobody loved me, New York State proved me wrong.

Here was the situation: Once my steady but unsatisfying employment qualified us to get a mortgage and move into a beautiful old house in the proper school district for her sons, my new wife told me she didn't want to be married anymore. As if we really had been!

I thought of myself, if I thought at all, as a lamb led willingly to the slaughter. I should have known something was wrong, when, out of all the big, spacious rooms in the house, she chose the smallest cubicle for our bedroom. She obviously considered the conjugal bed the least important aspect of her new life.

So, reluctantly, I moved into a small, no-lease-required studio apartment in Schenectady and tried to figure out what to do next.

My soon-to-be ex got a job offer she didn't want, and suggested me for it. It was a one-year-only job with a new New York State Commission on the International Year of The Child. I interviewed and, to my surprise, was hired!

I gladly gave my notice at Communication and Design, letting the head of the agency think that I had more influence with the state than I actually did, leading him to believe he wouldn't get any more lucrative state jobs, which were some of the most profitable pieces of business ad agencies could have back in 1979.

There are many stories to tell about that year, but today I'll share just one.

Explaining The Year Of The Child To A Child

When you listen, be sure you can hear.

He would be in his mid-thirties now, and I don't remember his name, but the day I tried to explain The Year of the Child to him has stayed with me for thirty-one years.

Back then, in 1979, I had just begun a new job that would last for just one year. I left the business world to be the Communications Director for the New York State Governor's Commission on the International Year of the Child.

It sounds impressive, but as government commissions go, it was pretty small potatoes. Not a lot of money to do anything, except pay for a staff of three: a commissioner, an administrative assistant, and me. Our time would be spent begging – for corporate gifts, for underwriting of our activities, for free newspaper space and air time for public service messages that I would write and produce.

I was given an office in Albany's impressive Empire State Plaza, built during Nelson A. Rockefeller's tenure as governor. It's a complex of seven massive buildings, connected by an underground concourse that features a permanent exhibit of some of the finest examples of modern art and sculpture.

State agencies that occupy the buildings above also use the long, marble-lined concourse for weatherproof exhibits and fairs, promoting their services to the public. As I was strolling through one of these, trying to familiarize myself with the workings of New York State agencies, I met some friends of friends – New York State employees – who were setting up a booth.

They had their young son with them. He was about four or five, and he needed attention that they just couldn't supply at the moment. I asked them if it would be all right to take him for a walk down the concourse and back, giving them a break and giving me a chance to do some research with one of the people I'd be representing for the year.

They were more than pleased, and he wasn't shy, so with his parents approval, we took our stroll. He was interested in the activities around us, and thoughtfully considered what I was telling him. I explained to him what my new job was about.

“I'll be talking to a lot of people about children like you and your friends -- all the children in all the cities in the state. And I want to tell them what you think is important to you.”

He said he understood, and I could see in his large eyes that he was thinking seriously. As we sat down on a bench at the far end of the concourse, I asked him directly, “So, what's the most important thing you'd like me to tell all those people about children?”

He sat quietly for about the length of a commercial. Then, he said just three words, and the simplicity and directness of his message surprised me. I complimented him, and thanked him profusely. But somehow, I knew I wouldn't – or couldn't – use his advice. It seemed too, well... childlike.

As we walked back to rejoin his parents, he obviously considered me a new friend, because he invited me to his family's lakeside camp, in precisely the way a child would ask a contemporary. He said I should ask my mother if I could go.

That was my opportunity to repay the advice he had given to me. I said, “I'm going to tell you something important, too. When you get older, you don't have to ask.”

His eyes grew even larger, and as we approached his parents, he ran to them, proclaiming his new discovery – “When I grow up, I won't have to ask!”

They smiled and confirmed that what I told him was true. And when they learned what he told me, they said it was too bad I couldn't use what he said in a public service ad campaign. And I agreed.

During that year I wrote clever theme lines, had beautiful logos and banners created, produced TV spots that said “New York ♥ Children” and helped organize events for children and their parents in Battery Park and in that very same concourse in Albany.

But I have always regretted that I didn't re-create the moment with that serious, thoughtful and insightful little boy, and put his advice on radio and TV stations and in newspapers throughout the state.

His simple, straight from the heart message might have made a difference for many children. Because he understood the purpose of The Year Of The Child better than I did.

And he got it down to just three words: “Don't hurt us.”

Next time: I'm back!

Leavings

Not long after leaving the Catholic Communications Department, the pastor of a local Dutch Reformed Church decided to use advertising to attract more parishioners. My priest recruitment ad drew him to me, and, since he fashioned his protestant service to make ex-catholics comfortable, I created the theme that would appeal to that target audience: The kind of church you don't have to go to, you just want to.” Once again, a religious ad of mine got publicity. And this one actually increased Sunday service attendance for the local church.

But other parts of life weren't as successful.

Friday night, during the first act of Shakespeare & Co.'s “Women of Will,” the creator and star of the show, Tina Packer, was making a point about how people keep making the same mistakes throughout their lives, and that change comes through an encounter with another person. To illustrate her point, and to involve the audience, she asked if anyone present had been married three times.

I was the only one who raised his hand.

She looked up at me, as I sat in the stage right box seats, and asked if the second marriage was the same mistake as the first. I admitted it was. Then she asked about the third marriage.

I said, truthfully, “That was the one.”

She repeated that, and asked why.

I said I didn't remember who I was quoting, but that it had been said before, “It was the triumph of hope over experience.”

I think I helped Ms. Packer make her point about Shakespeare, and if Eileen was watching, as I suspect she was, there was a familiar hearty laugh in heaven.

(The quote, I subsequently discovered, was from Samuel Johnson, and was uttered about a man who had remarried soon after his first unhappy marriage had ended.)

And that brings me back to Madison North in the mid to late 1970's, where I met the woman who consented to join me in what turned out to be a most unhappy union. Blessedly, it was over in a year.

The agency, however, began falling apart much sooner. Madison North's fault lines began appearing before I showed up in 1976. Seems it wasn't enough for creative people to do good work – they have to be appreciated, and it has to be demonstrable.

It wasn't.

Last time, I talked about some of the creative work we did there. This time, the theme is departures.

First to Go

Jack Graber, a talented, good-looking artist, art director and illustrator was probably the nicest guy I knew.

He still is all of that, and I'm proud to say that we're still friends, and get together for lunch occasionally.

Jack was in his first marriage at the time, and was producing children regularly. In fact, his wife was quite pregnant when he left the agency.

We've never spoken about his reasons for leaving Madison North, but I suspect it was for what looked like a greater opportunity, with a more stable employer, for a man with a growing family. He was leaving to become the art director of the Albany Times Union, a newspaper in the Hearst chain.

The agency threw him a farewell picnic, so it wasn't a rancorous parting. The art department prepared a bogus newspaper, with all the stories featuring Jack, and I contributed a limerick. Writing a limerick is a challenge on many levels – it has a definite rhyme scheme, and it should also have something of a bawdy cast to it. I think the one I wrote for Jack is one of the best I've written, and I'm happy to share it with you here:

A handsome young artist named Graber,

is prolific with pen and with “saber.”

His wife's ready to burst,

He's working for Hearst,

Now they'll both know the meaning of labor.

The Great Leap

Mary Van is what we always called her. And as a lot of people in life do, she weaves in and out of mine, and makes a difference in the look, the feel and the heft of it.

Her thread entered the loom about ten years into my working life, when she was hired as one of my replacements at the upstate advertising agency that everyone wanted to work at in the sixties. I had been there about four years, learning the craft of ad writing from some excellent practitioners.

But it was time to run my own show, and a competing agency was looking for a Copy Chief. I was ready, and I went.

Mary Van moved in, recently college-degreed and eager. I didn't know her then, and it would be eight years before we'd work together, at the upstate advertising agency that everyone wanted to work at in the seventies.

After a series of personal disasters in my life, involving divorce, monetary self-punishment for a feeling of worthlessness, a depression that culminated in my walking away from a job, then leaving an apartment and a lover in New York, the ignominy of having to move into my mother's house and take a job with the local Catholic Diocese Communications Office which I managed to put out of business in just one year, when the call came from Madison North. As I've said, it had an incredible roster of talent, but seriously flawed management kept it from becoming the hotshot agency of the Northeast.

Mary Van had moved there, along with most of the talent from the previous hot agency of the sixties, and when I got there, she had morphed into an account executive, of all things!

Not a typical Empty Suit, she was as creative in pitching and servicing accounts as she was in writing ads for them. She called me into her office and showed me a telephone directory index -- the kind where you slid the tab to a letter of the alphabet, pressed the bar and it popped open to the page you wanted.

She handed it to me with a look of great anticipation, and I disappointed her, because I didn't see anything special about it. She was crestfallen. The telephone index had been mine, and she had saved it ever since she had moved into my old office in the sixties, and had taken it with her when she changed jobs.

Mary Van and I worked on accounts together, became good friends, and learned about each other's problems. At that time, hers were: a not so good marriage, and a not so good lover. One day, she asked me to meet her for lunch away from the agency. She said she had a problem she wanted my help with.

“Frank, I've been offered a job as Account Supervisor on Miller Lite at McCann Erickson in New York.”'

“Mary,” I said, “let me see if I have this straight: you want to get away from your husband, and your lover, and you can leap from account exec in Schenectady to Account Supervisor in New York – on a major account?”

“Right,” she answered.

“So what's your problem? This is your answer. Go!”

She took my advice, and became a success on Madison Avenue. This would become very important to me in just a couple of years.

Mass Exodus

Jack was gone. Mary was gone. And now, they started leaving in clumps. Just like the end of season three of “Mad Men,” four people left en masse to start their own agency. An art director, logo master, copywriter and an attractive blond female account executive with whom I was having a romance, gave notice together, and opened up a shop called “Communication & Design.” Having that romance is the important part of that sentence, for me.

Soon after they set up shop, the copywriter, Ellie, who I'm still lucky to count as a friend, left the area. I was recruited. And, feeling like I had been deserted at Madison North, I joined them, based on the promise of sharing equally in the rewards of the company. Soon, the blond AE and I were no longer having a romance, and, in fact, were barely speaking. And once again, promises weren't kept – the other three gave themselves company cars and raises, and left me out.

My relationship with the agency was as bad as with the blond. I couldn't work. They didn't want me there. I didn't want to be there. The head of the agency, the art director, was so tight-fisted that he actually asked me to quit so that he wouldn't have to pay unemployment for firing me!

At the same time, I had entered into that second, flawed marriage, and that wasn't going well either, to put it mildly. The best thing that came out of that marriage was another job I couldn't have dreamed up if I tried.

Next time: Unsettling News

Great Expectations

They can lead to great advertising, as well as great disappointments.

Being invited back into the world of advertising in 1976, at at the hottest shop in the area no less, led me to expect heaven.

We made good, sometimes great advertising, like this one, using a New York City recording engineer to promote a local chain of audio stores.

Here were all the best local writers, art directors, designers, logo-masters and account people that had ever been assembled under one roof. And what a roof – Madison North was in a Victorian showplace in an area of Schenectady – the Stockade – that had existed since the 17^th century!

I think this was when I learned a life lesson that it's better to have zero expectations, hope for the best and expect the worst.

The two women who ran the shop weren't exactly the best business people in the world. For one thing, they didn't have insurance on the building or its contents, and we were robbed. You would think that that lapse in judgment would be corrected after a theft, right? No, we were robbed a second time, and still had no insurance!

Promises were made and broken, and many people were unhappy.

And, eventually they started leaving. I'll tell you about that next time. But while we were all there, we did some of our best work.

Here's how some of it came about.

Back to SPAC

Working for an old friend

I had written and produced radio and print advertising for the first season of the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 1968. And now, 8 years later, I was happy to be working again on the new ad campaign for the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Ballet, and the venue for some of the biggest and best popular music acts in America. (In 1975, Sinatra appeared there, and I made sure I had a great seat as close to the stage as I could afford.)

At Madison North, I found a common theme to capture the excitement of every kind of performance at SPAC – applause!

We made sure that the same wildly enthusiastic audience reaction was heard at the end of every commercial. And our print ads featured the stars of the classical music and ballet world in action, with headlines that expressed an attitude of “this is not to be missed,” combined with a wry little twist that would catch the eye and add a smile.

With a picture of Maestro Eugene Ormandy raising his baton, the headline read “More Great Music Than You Can Shake a Stick At.” And for a photo of beautiful principal dancers in mid-air, the headline was “Buy Leaps and Bounds.”

I struggled with an overall theme line, but it came, as the good ones usually do, after mulling the problem, then relaxing and waiting for inspiration.

The theme line that year was, “SPAC – the Center of Your Summer.”

It was a good campaign, and a good year for the Performing Arts Center.

Dancing Cookies.

My hometown becomes a TV star.

I wrote about our “Chocolate Chip Emergency” last time. Freihofer's, a bakery that started in my hometown of Troy, NY, when women started working in the collar and cuff factories and didn't have time to bake, was one of my favorite accounts at Madison North. The detachable collar idea was the brainstorm of a woman, Hannah Lord Montague, who tired of washing and ironing her husband's shirts just because the collars and cuffs were dirty. She started an industry, and put Troy and Arrow shirts on the map.

Freihofer's wanted to sponsor hour-long family specials on TV, and the agency sold them on the idea of not breaking the programs up with lots of little commercials, but to close up most of the commercial breaks, and just have one break in the middle, with one long-form video.

It was heaven to write and produce what amounted to mini-documentaries. One natural topic was the history of the company, using what has since become known as the “Ken Burns Effect” – archival photos from the history of Troy and the company, using appropriate music as the camera zoomed and panned the sepia-toned photos, and a smooth-voiced announcer related the story. The announcer choice was a natural – in the early, early days of TV broadcasting Freihofer's had created a fifteen-minute children's program with a bunny character, “Freddie Freihofer,” who was drawn by the station's artist, and appeared on camera as the host of the show. Several men had hosted, but the one who was still around and remembered most fondly was “Uncle Jim” Fisk. We brought him back as the on-camera host of the programs, and of course, the parents who had grown up watching him felt a close connection, and watched and listened to him with their kids.

I learned some interesting facts about the early days of the company. The Freihofer brothers who started the company were marketing geniuses – on their first day, they delivered a free loaf of bread to every home in Troy!

The company became noted for door-to-door delivery using horse-drawn wagons, a practice which continued into the 1950's. Where did those horses come from? I discovered that at their headquarters in the northern end of Troy, called Lansingburgh, Freihofer's actually imported wild horses from the west, and “broke” them right there. There were real cowboys in Troy, and they worked for the company that became famous for chocolate chip cookies!

Another fun long-form video involved the entire process of cookie-making. Thanks to the help of WTEN's late, great producer Gene Collins, also a Troy Native, we took a station cameraman to the bakery, filmed every stage of the making of their chocolate cookies, then edited it to a lively piece of music. An early music video, guaranteed to give you the munchies.

The only suggestion of mine that the company didn't accept was the talent of the TV specials. They chose a series of syndicated Julie Andrews shows. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted them to sponsor a contemporary music group, just because the headline would have been so much fun to see: “Freihofer's presents Bread!”

Setting Yourself Up For Success

You don't have to know the reason why you have to do something.

It wasn't easy convincing Richie Peterson, one of New York's best Audio Engineers and Consultants to be the spokesman for a Northeast chain of audio stores. But a lot of his friends and associates were counting on him.

“I never get on that side of the mike or the camera,” Peterson told me early in my association with him. Which, of course, made him even more desirable as a commercial spokesman.

It took three of us, the head of the Schenectady agency, the agency's executive producer and myself to talk him into it. Richie would come up to the Albany area for a day, where we would photograph him at a local recording studio's mix board, film him and record his radio spots for Seiden Sound, whose slogan was, “People listen to us.”

Long before the multiple media recording session, I called Richie and asked him a few leading questions, such as, “If you were a recording engineer in the Northeast, what criteria would you use to choose an audio store for your home?”

As he came up with reasons, I took notes as fast as I could, then used his answers to create the print, radio and TV scripts. When he came to town and saw the copy, he suggested he take the credit for copywriting, too, because I used his words, his phrasing. Not only was it easier for me, it was intended to make it easy for him -- after all, they were his words.

But Peterson was very uncomfortable in front of the mike and camera, as he told us he would be. But he got through it all, and more than thirty years later, I still consider it one of the best campaigns I've ever been involved in. (Sony must have thought so, too -- a couple of years after the Seiden Sound/Peterson campaign ran, they used the same idea with different engineers for their audio component advertising.)

Our campaign ran for a few years, in all the Northeast markets Seiden Sound moved into. Then, as campaigns and electronics stores do, both faded into oblivion. But about five years after the spots ran, Rich Peterson was faced with another task he didn't relish: location recording for a TV spot. It was to be a corporate spot for an insurance company headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts, involving all the employees gathered together in the entry of their office building, singing the company song.

A friend of Peterson's had hurt his leg and couldn't take the job, and since Rich owed him “a large,” he had to do it. Especially since everybody else who could handle the job was either busy or out of town. So Rich took the assignment.

Back then, audio for a film commercial -- especially the kinds where people have to sing -- required a particular kind of tape recorder so that the music can be synchronized with the singing. The recorders, usually the Nagra brand, contain a crystal that permits this kind of “sync sound,” and they were rare and expensive machines.

Richie recorded the employees singing outdoors, then set up his Nagra with the pre-recorded music in a corner of the insurance company's hallway, and waited while the crew lit the employees. There were so many of them that there just wasn't enough light. So they kept adding lights, and more lights, and more lights. The high powered lights didn't just generate light, though, they generated a lot of heat. So much heat that the sprinkler system was set off. Disaster!

As the dirty water poured down, everyone grabbed the expensive equipment they were responsible for and scurried out of the building. Richie managed to save the tape, but the Nagra was ruined. And there wasn't a back-up tape recorder that could do the job.

Peterson called all the electronics retailers and wholesalers in the area. No Nagras. He called the local TV stations and actually located the machine he needed. He talked to the sales manager at the station, explaining his plight, and asked to borrow it. The sales manager said it would be all right with him, but it was the brand new toy of his chief engineer, and that man, he was sure, would never let it out of his sight.

Richie asked to talk to him. He came on the line. Nothing would loosen his grip on that Nagra -- no amount of money, credit cards, nothing. Not one to give up without a fight, Peterson asked if he could just come to the station and talk, face to face.

“Sure, come on over, but it would take a miracle to change my mind.”

Peterson made his way to the station. The chief engineer came out to the lobby. The instant he saw Peterson, he said, “You're the engineer.''

“Yes,” Richie said, “I just called you and told you about the filming --'”

“No, no, you're the engineer. The one in the commercial for Seiden Sound.''

“Yeah, that's right -- you saw that spot?''

“Saw it? We ran it. You want the Nagra -- you can have it, just bring it back when you're done.”

He went back to his office, brought out the precious machine and handed it over to Peterson without asking for a receipt, a deposit, anything. The power of that one commercial convinced the station engineer that Richie was something of a god.

That's when Richie figured out why fate had had him put up with the ordeal of being on camera years before. It was necessary for his work on this particular day, years later. Any other engineer, any other place on earth, and the job probably wouldn't have gotten done that day.

Next time: will I ever settle down?

What's In A Name?

Madison North was calling me. No, not the “bad girl” character in All My Children, played by Stephanie Gatschet. I'm talking about an ad agency that began in the 1970's in Schenectady, New York, that had the reputation as the hot shop in the area.

When I searched the internet for something about that agency that peaked early and slid out of existence fast, nothing but some ancient news items showed up. Pictures of this daytime drama character did show up, so, as misleading as it may be, I decided to post a pretty picture. I could have used a picture of Rod Serling, creator and host of “The Twilight Zone,” because one of today's stories really involves him.

Actually, I did meet another beautiful “soap opera” actress in the 70's, and that story will show up in a future post, I promise.

But for now, a story about my first trip to Italy, and two more about my re-entrance into the wonderful world of advertising.

Ethnic Pride Goeth Before a Fall

A little learning is a funny thing.

While I was working for “The Church,” a wave of ethnic pride came over me, and I changed my name back to my grandfather's name – Visco, and at the same time, took my maternal grandfather's name for my middle name – LaPosta. So, I changed my name from Frank Anthony Christopher Visk to Frank LaPosta Visco, and even enrolled in an adult education course to learn basic Italian.

Like a lot of first and second generation immigrants, my grandparents and parents used the language to hide “grownup” talk from their kids.

Maybe women know this better than men, but things change when you change your name. You change. In this case, life changed for me. It seemed to just keep getting better and better from that point on.

For one thing, Sevan and I re-started our long distance relationship – although it was me going to the City, since I didn't have a place of my own for her to visit upstate. Mid-thirties and living with my mother!

For another thing, I had earned vacation time from my year of doing penance. That was pretty much how I thought about my service to “The Church” – doing penance for all the missteps of my life up to that point.

Sevan had been planning a solo trip to Tuscany for a while, and just two weeks before her scheduled departure, she casually asked me if I'd like to go. Surprising both of us, I said yes, and it started a whirlwind of activity. I didn't even have a passport. It was the perfect project for a producer who could handle the dozen little details of an impossible emergency. Our trip became her obsession, and she got it done.

I had just read a dog-eared copy of a later John Steinbeck work, “Travels With Charley,” a cross-country trip he took with his dog, trying to recapture his familiarity with America. In it, he makes the observation that trips have a schedule of their own – they start when they want to start, and they end when they want to end, even if you're hundreds of miles from home.

I took that to heart, and was very relaxed about my first trip to Europe. My first big trip anywhere, for that matter. The fact that it all happened so fast and that I didn't have time to worry about didn't hurt my casual attitude, either.

Well, my laissez faire demeanor paid off. Sevan and I got to JFK International in plenty of time, had all our papers in order, and were settled in to the Alitalia waiting area, casually playing a game of Scrabble on a great little magnetic travel edition Sevan had bought. We weren't playing our erotic version of “strip Scrabble,” of course, but just thinking about how, in the privacy of her upper east side apartment, we would remove an article of clothing each time the other accumulated 50 points was a thrill.

It got closer and closer to boarding time, and no announcements were forthcoming. It got past boarding time, and still nothing. People around us began stirring. We could feel the tension around us. Then the announcement came – it was like the breaking shot that sends a neat triangle of billiard balls into a chaotic universe of wildly careening mini-planets. Everyone around us seemed to jump up, bump into each other, grab their belongings and rush somewhere, anywhere.

Sevan was ready to join them, until I calmed her down. Stay calm, I told her, this trip will start when it wants to start. People were panicking – crowding around anyone unfortunate enough to be wearing an Alitalia insignia. We sat and finished our Scrabble game. As we were putting it away, we thought we heard our names over the PA system. Our names, and one other. It repeated. Yes, someone was paging Sevan, me and one other passenger, asking us to report to a particular Alitalia counter. We gathered our things and went there. A friendly Italian informed us that of all the passengers on the cancelled flight, we were the only three who were destined for Milan, the rest were headed for Rome. There was a flight to Milan in an hour, there was room on it for us, and would we follow him to the baggage area to remove our bags from one cart and place them on the one that would be loaded on our new carrier.

We did just that, left and landed in Milan just one hour later than scheduled.

From Milan, we transferred to the train station, and enjoyed the high speed train, the Rapido to Florence, where we experienced another potential problem. Sevan had reserved a single room, but we obviously needed a double. This seemed to pose a gigantic problem for the hotel clerk, who agreed to let us stay for one night, but would have to see about the rest of the week.

We were too exhausted to argue, so we went to our room and zonked out. An hour or so later, the phone rang. Having learned a few basic phrases from my beginning Italian class, I answered, “Pronto!”

The clerk on the other end, hearing my perfect pronunciation, began speaking Italian as Italians speak it to each other – rapidly. When I made absolutely no response, the clerk switched to perfect English and said, rather imperiously, “Perhaps I should stay with English, Mr. Visco?”

I agreed that would be best, and he informed me that the room was ours for the rest of our stay.

Chocolate Chip Emergency

An Example of How Seriously Advertising People Take Their Jobs.

After contributing to the demise of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany Communications Department, I didn't know what I would be doing, but for some strange reason, I didn't worry about it. I had learned by this time -- the mid seventies -- that things would work out.

And when I returned from my first vacation in years -- as a last minute addition to a girl friend's week and a half in Florence -- there was a job waiting for me -- at the then hottest ad agency in the area -- one that was trying to be what Fallon McElligot actually became a decade later -- a hot national agency not in New York.

There's a saying in advertising, that it's a good thing we don't run an airline, because when we make mistakes, no one dies.

Anyway, the hot agency now wanted me as a sometime writer and sometime broadcast producer, and they doubled my Catholic salary and gave me a company car to drive.

So, naturally, I moved to an apartment within walking distance of the agency, overlooking the Mohawk River, in a beautiful, historic part of Schenectady called The Stockade, because that's what it began as in the 17th century.

One of our accounts was Freihofer's Bakery, then a local, family owned enterprise whose chocolate chip cookies were legendary. The firm has since been sold to a national corporation, but they've stayed close to the original recipe.

One beautiful summer Friday afternoon, when everyone else in the creative department had either taken off early or had taken that week for vacation, I received an interoffice call from Claudia, our media buyer. She was obviously upset, because she started the conversation, in a voice that reeked of panic and worry, with the words,

“We have a chocolate chip emergency!”

That is not a phrase you expect to hear in the course of a normal life, unless you bake cookies for a living, or, in our case, you sell cookies for a living. I asked her to explain the nature of this emergency, and she told me that the agency had scheduled chocolate chip cookie commercials to start on Monday, and that while we had produced a TV spot, we had somehow neglected to write and produce a companion radio commercial.

The solution was easy, and I took care of it -- taking the sound track of the TV spot to a recording studio and, with a few tweaks here and there, turning the track into a radio spot. They made the dubs (the radio station copies of the taped spot), I delivered them to the local stations, and another advertising disaster was averted.

And no one died.

Rod Serling And The Door That Goes Nowhere

Wherever you are, you can be in the Twilight Zone.

One of the best commercial recording engineers in the advertising business was Rich Peterson. I've known him since the mid seventies, and like many of my friends, they became friends because of mutual respect from first working together professionally. This starts out as Rich Peterson's story, but ends up being all Rod Serling. You'll see what I mean.

Rich had been the favorite recording engineer of many commercial radio talents, including Bob & Ray and Rod Serling himself.

Serling became a commercial voice over in self defense, sort of. Other people were imitating his style and making money, so, why not offer the original? He did, and since ad people like to work with famous people, once they knew Serling was available, they used him. A lot.

According to Peterson, Serling liked to work early in the morning. And Peterson was at National Recording studios in Manhattan when this story occurred. The studios were in your average midtown office building, but recording studios demand a construction all their own. The doors to these studios were along a normal looking corridor off the street, except that the first door, which had been the door to a mezzanine, was now called “The Door That Goes Nowhere.”

It was called that because it didn't go to the mezzanine, or anywhere, anymore. It opened on the few steps that used to lead to the mezzanine, but then ended abruptly at a wall. On the other side of that wall was the actual announcer's booth.

You couldn't get there through that door -- you had to go to the second door down the corridor, into Peterson's studio and then into that booth. Well, you see what's coming, right?

Showing up for one of his early recording sessions, Serling forgot about that first door, opened it and started up the stairs. As the door was closing behind him, he realized his mistake, turned around and came down the stairs and opened the door. That was precisely the moment that the building's janitor came around the corner, pushing a broom, and saw ROD SERLING COMING OUT OF THE DOOR THAT GOES NOWHERE!

Serling, loving a practical joke, saw the stunned expression on the now frozen-in-place janitor, sauntered past him with a “Good morning,” and went matter-of-factly into the correct door.

When Serling told Peterson what had happened, Rich went out in the corridor to find the janitor totally still, although metaphorically very moved. The janitor kept repeating, “Rod Serling came out of the door that goes nowhere,” while Peterson kept trying to explain how it had happened.

Now, jump ahead a few years. I'm having lunch in Manhattan with another friend in the business, Bill Onderchain, and he starts telling me this story. Naturally, I stopped him, and since I'm always sure I'm right, told him that I had told him the story that Peterson told me. Bill insisted that I hadn't told him.

“In that case, Peterson must have told you,” I said. Bill insisted that Peterson hadn't told him, either.

“Well then, who did tell you?”

The answer should have come with those eerie, repeating opening notes from Twilight Zone -- go ahead, whistle them here.

“It was Rod Serling who told me,” Bill said. And it was!

Bill had gone to Ithaca College, where Serling lectured, and told the same story to his classes.. So there we were, two people who had nothing to do with the story, having heard the same story from two different people who were in the story. What was that? Did you just hear Rod Serling laughing?

Next time: Trouble in Paradise