Put a palm tree in the storyboard.

There are very few careers (outside of the travel business itself) where you can sit down and literally write or art direct yourself to a distant part of the world. Advertising is one of them.

If you had a great concept with an execution hinged on a specific location, then bringing that idea to life almost always involved travel. In the early Seventies, we usually went out to L.A. for a shoot because of all the production facilities in and around Hollywood. For many a star struck creative, a week at the Pink Palace, aka The Beverly Hills Hotel, was an almost surreal experience. Whether lounging around their legendary pool or having drinks at the Polo Lounge, famous faces were everywhere. 

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Out on a ledge.

From 1983 until 1990, I was the Creative Director on the Tonka Toy business. It was an extraordinary period of time that saw Tonka grow from a well known maker of sturdy, yellow, Mighty Dump Trucks to the company that marketed Gobots, Pound Puppies, Sega Video Games and other imaginative toys created to wow kids everywhere. The Account Director on Tonka was a good friend of mine named Ken Kaess.  Ken was a smart, charismatic leader who ultimately became the CEO of DDB Worldwide. Sadly, Ken Kaess died of cancer several years ago. It was a tremendous loss for DDB and for his many friends and business associates. 

On a bright, spring day in 1987, Ken and I were trying out a prototype of Interstellar Defender, a new, lightweight plane from Tonka.  As far as we knew, there were only three of these unique planes in existence and we were told to be very careful with this one. The plane was launched into the air with its wings positioned at its side by a device that looked much like a slingshot. At the apex of its trajectory, the wings suddenly shot out allowing it soar from great heights down to the ground. At least, that’s what we were told.

To test it out for ourselves, we went out on to 56^th St., right off Park Ave., and shot it up in the air. It literally took off like a rocket, going up at least 7 stories between the skyscrapers. Then, as advertised, the wings of our Interstellar Defender shot out and we both watched as this elegant glider took flight.  Our smiles turned to concern when it suddenly swooped down and landed on the ledge of a building six stories up. Oops!

We couldn’t just leave it there and get another one. There were only three in existence. So counting the floors and the office position, we went up to the large law firm that occupied the 6^th floor of the building. After telling our sad story to a string of receptionists and office managers, we were escorted into a very surprised lawyer's office. Once he stepped away from his desk, we opened his window and looked up and down the ledge. There it was.  And there was only one way to retrieve it. 

While I held Ken's legs and the lawyer looked on in horror, Ken leaned halfway out the window and stretched across to the ledge. With barely a fingertip to spare, he recovered our wayward, winged prototype.      

So what ultimately became of Interstellar Defender? A commercial was produced which was shown at Toy Fair in New York to see how much interest our high-flying projectile could generate. But sadly, even after our daring rescue, it never really took off.

A visit from E.T.

It was 1981 when I began working at Jordan, Case & McGrath. It was also the year that Steven Spielberg’s cinematic tale of a little, lost alien and an alienated boy captured the hearts of America and the world. It was raining quite hard the night our family saw E.T. and the emotionality of the ending hadn’t quite left me as we all piled in the car. Between the tears in my eyes and the rain on the windshield, it’s a miracle we all made it home. And my kids have never let me forget it.

The point here is that in addition to making an emotional connection to Elliot, E.T. had certainly gotten to me as well. So it was a genuine thrill when Jim Jordan told me I’d be handling E.T. Multi-Vitamins from Squibb. What’s more, he had scheduled a meeting in Hollywood with Amblin Entertainment and Spielberg’s publicity people.

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There’s a sheep in my office.

At my new agency Jordan, Case & McGrath, the hallways literally ran red. That was because red was Jim's favorite color. But not just any shade. Jim had charged his favorite art director, Alex Ross, with creating the perfect crimson hue for the carpets of the entire agency.  

I had always preferred a soothing hunter green. So when Jim told me I could have my office redone, I started from the floor up. From small, square samples of carpet swatches, I chose what seemed like a nice, verdant shade. However, once it was finally installed, the intensity of the color was almost overwhelming. At this point, I had no furniture – just a wide, very green expanse of carpet.

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A Dangerous Brainstorming.

At BBDO, the majority of my time was spent pounding away on my Smith Corona. But our creative group did get together several times a week for some good, old-fashioned brainstorming. And this almost always involved darts. 

For about an hour at the end of day, we’d sit around my boss’s office and toss out ideas while we all took turns tossing the little pointy things. This was all well and good except that the dartboard was located next to an open window. And that window was located nine stories above Madison Ave. The “dart through the window scenario” was inevitable. It was just a question of when. Unfortunately, it occurred at the worst possible time – about 10 minutes after five at night, just as all the offices on Madison were emptying out and the normally busy street was completely mobbed with throngs of harried commuters heading home.

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The joys of in-house casting.

At BBDO, all of our TV production was housed on the ninth floor. Here, there were spacious, corner offices for the Executive Producers, window offices for the Senior Producers and cramped, little cubicles for their many scurrying assistants. There were also individual rooms for the ancient, clattering movieolas where our commercial rough-cuts could be racked up, screened and endlessly debated before their round trip to the film editors.

But if you needed a real eye opener, a leisurely stroll through our in-house Casting Department was infinitely better than a cup of java.  That’s because on any particular day, there could be as many as 30 absolutely gorgeous girls primping and waiting to audition for the next shampoo, detergent, soup, cereal or cake mix commercial. Every one of these women were truly stunning, the kind that always turned heads wherever they went. On every chair sat former beauty queens, broadways showgirls and soap opera stars on their lunch break. And now, fate and the lure of TV fame and fortune had brought them all together into this one, wonderful hallway. It was almost sensory overload. On days like this, the word quickly spread throughout all the guys in the Creative Department and each in their own time deserted their Smith Coronas for a little personal pilgrimage to the ninth floor. 

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The Music of Madison Ave.

Throughout the Seventies, Eighties and part of the Nineties, the jingle business played an important role in advertising. There’s an old adage that many agencies and clients subscribed to: You can’t sing the announcer. And this was sage advice. Whether you were selling soup, cars or cereals, an upbeat jingle or a heartfelt anthem was often the most successful way to get a test score high enough to get your commercial on the air and a very effective way to make a lasting emotional connection with the consumer.

Jim Jordan loved jingles. Over the years, many of his creations had fueled his rapid ascent to Creative Director. Among his memorable musical campaigns were:

 Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.

 Delta is ready when you are.

 And for Campbell’s Soup:  

How do you handle a hungry man? The Manhandlers.

(In later years, he would also write  You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zestfully Clean and Chocolate is S-CRUNCH-OUS when it crunches. That’s why I love Nestle Crunch.)

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Shooting two commercials on two different floors.

 The client was Campbell’s Soup. The assignment was to memorably introduce two new beef soups. Many ideas were presented, but only one survived – two cows standing around a chuck wagon bellowing the word “Nuuuuuuu” every time the cantankerous, old cook mentions the two new Campbell’s Beef Soup varieties. In fact, Campbell’s liked the concept so much, they put it promptly into production.

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A Master Class in Presentation Skills.

Writing a compelling commercial is one thing. Selling it to a client was another thing entirely. And if you can’t persuade them that this big idea of yours has the capacity to drive their market share, it just becomes another unsold story board gathering dust in your office. Fortunately, when it came time to sell my first big idea, I had a powerful salesperson and a front row seat to watch him work.
 
The client was Hunt Wesson, and the campaign idea for their flagship brand Wesson Oil was the concept “Wessonality.”

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It had to be WU

During my years at BBDO, I had the good fortune to work with two renowned, older Art Directors who both had flourished under the strange, insular creative system that demanded that copy concepts always preceded art direction. Each was unique and legendary in their own way. The first was named Kong Wu. Kong was Mandarin Chinese and stood over six feet tall.

In some ways, working with him was a reward for the torture of getting a script approved. After days of rewrites and copy tweaks, I would cross over to the 385 side of the building and triumphantly show up at his door, yellow copy sheet in hand, and he always seemed genuinely pleased to see me. His face would light up and he would proclaim …

”Ahhh, Mark Itkowitz, hot shot young writer. Come in! Come in!”

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Career Continuity.

In 1975, my wife Sandy gave birth to our first child – a boy. When it came time to choose a name, we both wanted one that not only connoted strength and decisiveness, but sounded okay with the last name of Itkowitz. Not an easy task. Now by this time, I had already been at BBDO for two years. Every day, our conversations were peppered with the name Jordan and the underlying power that the name represented was never lost on me.

"Jordan wants this."

“Jordan killed that."

"You take it down and show Jordan.”

Not surprisingly, I suggested Jordan to my wife, and Sandy also liked the sound of it. But it clearly didn't carry the same weight as it did with me.

When Jim got word that our firstborn carried his name, he responded with great warmth and pride. The rest of the agency thought it was hilarious. They couldn't believe the lengths I'd go for career continuity. Even Allen Rosenshine, soon to be our Creative Director, President and ultimately the CEO of Omnicom, made me promise to name my next child Rosenshine. 

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Meeting Jim Jordan.

During my first few months there, I never met or even saw Jim Jordan, though his presence loomed over the creative department. With posters on the agency's walls proclaiming,  "He who crosses the Jordan will surely sink,” his fearsome temperament was continually reinforced. He was, however, aware of me. During my first month, there was an agency-wide assignment to create a campaign line for Liberty Mutual Life Insurance. The goal was to define the concept that Liberty Mutual deals direct. Hundreds of submissions came in from the entire creative department. But he chose a line that I had written:

Liberty Mutual deals direct. 
It's the shortest distance between two people.

So I was, at least, on his radar as the guy who had written that line. Before long, I was working on a number of accounts, including Campbell's Soup and Dodge Cars and Trucks. Jim had recently written a new song for the national Dodge campaign. It was called:  Number One for the money is Dodge.

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Life in the ad world.

What else rings true about MAD MEN? Well, certainly the drinking and the smoking and to a large part, the way everyone dressed, acted and looked. Even though the British Invasion swept ashore in 1964, long hair and bell bottoms never made it to our halls in 1973. Most creatives, in fact, wore ties and jackets. Combine that with the row upon row of cubicles, wavy glass shower-stall inside offices plus box- like window offices and the total effect was much like that of a semi-art deco insurance company.

Making it to New York.
Getting into advertising has never been easy. Even though I had cut my creative teeth at a small agency in Philadelphia, it carried little weight when it came to landing a real job on Madison Ave. No one I knew had ever attempted it. Although Manhattan was only about two hours away, it could have been on the other side of the world. Everything up there was bigger, better and certainly much more expensive. I was just recently married at the time and I wound up spending so much money just taking the train up for interviews that it put a serious strain on our fragile finances.

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Since the rise of MAD MEN as a TV phenomenon, there’s been a groundswell of curiosity about the way the business used to be when Madison Ave. really was the center of the advertising universe.  I’ve been asked repeatedly whether what we’ve all seen unfold week after week is close to what I remember from living and working in that time and place. How much of that advertising world is the same, where does it differ and if I ever knew anyone like Don Draper?

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