Assignment America; 103; Jerry Della Femina: The Cat That Barked

We asked cats all over America what cat food would they like best? [cats]: meow, meow, meow, meow. woof. Wiseguy. [music playing] Hello. I'm Doris Kearns and we are here on the island of Manhattan in the city of New York on an avenue we call Madison. Madison Avenue, what images you bring to mind, an entire world of advertising contained within these buildings. One world, the advertising world, symbolized by one avenue, much as Hollywood stands for movies or Detroit for cars, or

perhaps Washington for power and at least for me when that world comes to mind there's another image that comes with it, the man in the gray flannel suit: the Brooks Brothers man. Slick, confident, poised. And, I think of him or dozens of him sitting in these buildings, enclosed rooms, deciding somehow with his special knowledge what it, what it is that he and they want to sell us. Maybe it’s got to do with the fascination of material goods in this society: the latest deodorant, the oldest cigar, the smallest pill box or the biggest car. But there’s something scary and disturbing in the image as well. And I guess it has to do with those men knowing something about us, about our hidden anxieties and out longings and our fears, and somehow turning that knowledge into use for their commercial purposes. And if there are stories of success on Madison Avenue, I’m sure there are just as many stories of failure. Unconfident men, not wearing grey flannel suits, terrified at losing their jobs for the price of losing an account. So what we’re going to try to do today is to get beneath these stereotypes to have a look at who these men are in this world of advertising; how do they go about what they do. And hopefully, in understanding them and what they do, we’ll understand ourselves as well. We are on our way to the offices of Jerry Della Femina. The man who created the ads you saw at

the beginning of this program. In some ways he is like that cat who barked. A maverick in the uptight, button down world of advertising. One moves down Madison Avenue with anonymity. It's all very impersonal. Perhaps like the function it performs. A number of years ago, this man set out to change that world. He's trying to do things in different ways. Yet the essential task of selling remains the same. As I understand it successful advertising requires an understanding of people as well as the product. In fact an understanding of people that goes to their personal longings and their desires and their frailties and their preferences and, and really a psychological sense of what they care about and what they want themselves to be. And what I'd like to do is just to talk a little bit about some of the specific ads that you know about or have been involved in and you tell me what the psychology is beneath them. One for example is the, the ad that, that you did for Talon zippers where you show the kid, the little

baseball kid on the mound and he wants to pitch and then this fly is down and they have to hold up the whole thing. Now why do we like that ad so much? I smile when I see it. [Jerry Della Femina]: Well to begin with I think the kid is a take off on Charlie Brown and we all love cartoons. [Keans]: Yeah. [Femina]: It's a cartoon really. What we did with the kid, was the kid is me. That's the story. I was a kid playing ball and I was always worried about things like that. The kids sits standing in this potentially embarrassing situation and it's funny to us because I think we put ourselves right into that position and say, uh, that could have happened to me. And, that's, that's what would happen to me. And isn't it funny. You always laugh because it's the other guy getting it. I think that what we did with Talon Zippers was to convince people that, uh, and this was done many years ago in another advertising agency. But we set out to convince people that trade, this was original a trade ad, and when I say a trade ad, it was meant to reach men who make pants. [Kearns]: There's a cake mix that wasn't selling very well because all it called for was for the cook to add water to it and somehow the women who were doing it felt that wasn't creative enough. [Femina]: Uh, it was very simple. Housewives do not like the feeling that they are doing nothing when they're, when they're quote,

"cooking." And this was simply add water that wasn't enough cooking, so they felt that they had to do something and the manufacturer pulled the product back and decide, ok, let them break an egg. That's cooking. And they did. They, they broke the egg. Egg goes into the thing, my God, I've cooked something. My partner had the same experience with a product that was an antiseptic that was, ah, absolutely did not burn. The people hated it because if it doesn't burn how are you going to feel better. That goes back to religion. Covers almost all of the things that we've been taught all our lives, we have to suffer to feel good, eventually. And, what, what happened here was that, ah with the ouchless antiseptic, people absolutely turned away from it. No way will I try anything that's not going to burn. I want to suffer, then I know I'm getting better. [Kearns]: So you put the burn back in? [Femina]: The burn was put back in and it's like every other antiseptic and people now love it. I'm mean, now it works. I'll talk about feminine hygiene sprays for a, for a second. A whole industry was created. Vaginal sprays were created and the world for a while was involved with it.

Now you get very uptight about vaginals sprays, but what if I told you that they're not really, uh, what they seem to be. All they are is psychological products. And, I'll go, I'll give you a few steps. Let's say that there's a woman who is, uh uptight about herself, really uptight about herself and consequently she is just, uh, not able really to enjoy, uh, sex. She really feels uncomfortable about herself. And let's say that one day this woman, you know who after years of never enjoying sex, one day she goes out and buys a bottle of Feminique and psychologically she now feels like she is fantastically sparkling clean, bright, or whatever. And let's say that night when her husband comes home or her boyfriend comes in she jumps on him. And for the first time in her life she has an orgasm. Now I sold her the Feminique and I created one extra orgasm. I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. [Kearns]: It's a part of the whole advertising industry to create artificial needs. You need to have a new refrigerator every two years. You need to have a new car every three years. You need to have these body

odor sprays. You need to have tooth brush three times a day. I don't, just don't see where those needs are really human needs. But I think there engendered needs by advertising and people begin to feel after a while that they really are needs and that's the problem. You do have a power over people. You create needs, it's not as passive as you say it is. [Femina]: I don't think we ever had that, that great power to manipulate people. I think people know exactly what they want. When they decide that they have enough money for a car, then they look at all the ads and they run out and they buy a car. You know, you know, I don't think we, we create that demand because something's happened this year. People aren't running out. We haven't lost any power. We never had it. Uh, [Kearns]: So do you think the quality of Madison Avenue is the same as it was before [Femina]: Yes. [Kearns]: it's just that things have happened in the society. [Femina]: a little more frightening then it’s ever been but it’s just the same. Society is just sitting there saying saying we don't, we don't want cars right now. I'm worried about my job I'm not gonna run out and buy a car. I, I laughed at other people in other agencies because, not because they were great manipulators, but because they're bumbling idiots. I mean let's not forget that H.R. Halderman was in advertising. I mean, he's the biggest bumbler in the world. Uh, let's not forget that their whole crew, I mean

they, they were working in advertising, a great big agency somewhere in California. They are bumblers, they're not manipulators. They can't even, I mean they truly could not even lie and get away with it. When you think of advertising, don't think of Rock Hudson manipulating Doris Day but think of H.R. Haldeman trying to screw up some tapes, uh, because that's closer to what, what advertising, large agency advertising men are like. So yeah, there is a difference between my agency and a large agency but it's not that they manipulate and we don't. It's that I don't think anyone really is capable of manipulating it that way. I think it's just, it's a rap that people give us. But then I think that at this point we are the chosen people, we are getting, we are getting all the raps. Uh, I believe the next crew to get it it's, it's going to be the lawyers. Everybody gonna jump on lawyers now because they're they're fairly corrupt. And then they're gonna get judges, and they’re gonna work their way down and finally they’re, you know everyone’s gonna get it. They’re gonna get to interviewers, news people, public service television, everybody's going to get it eventually. [music playing]. [Doris]: Tell me a little about this floor of offices.

[Kearns]: Tell me a little bit about this floor of offices. The furnishings look a little weird to me. Those crazy old posters. It looks somehow like nostalgia around around the bend. They surely don't look like business offices in any conventional sense. What all was the purpose of all of this ? Is there a hidden purpose to the ? ? machine Is there a hidden purpose to that patchinko machine? Or to those dwarfs? [Femina]: Well, the concept of it really, is uh, based on freedom. I mean I really believe that people should be free. The bars is open all the time. People could come in take a drink. Every day at 5 o'clock we have a ceremony. It's very English for us. We have a drink in honor of the survival of the day. I mean we survived another day. Everyone comes in, and it's the entire staff, secretaries and everyone comes in and takes a drink. Consequently our single biggest supplier in this agency, not the type houses and certainly not the, the engravers or the photographers, our single biggest suppliers is Atlas Wines and Spirits. We spend an awful lot of money on, on liquor. [people talking in the background]

You meet a lot of strange people in the, in the advertising business and I really don't know if they're strange because they come into advertising or they become strange as a result of, as a result of being in advertising. My favorite was a fellow by the name, I called him Herbie in my book. Uh, he was a kid who came in late all the time. I went in to him and I said, ah, Herbie, I'm going to have to let you go. He says, no, no. Please don't let me go just just give me a raise so that my girlfriend can move in with me. And I couldn't believe him. I said Herbie, Herbie. You don't understand I'm gonna have to let you go. They're telling me to fire you. And he said please if my girlfriend moves in she'll get me up every morning, I promise you. And I said is that, you want to raise so your girlfriend can move in. And he said absolutely. I said, Herbie, have you ever heard of an alarm clock. And he looked at me and said Jerry have you ever tried to [beep] to an alarm clock. Those weren't exactly the words he used, but he got the raise. As a result of

that, uh, whenever someone was looking for Herbie, they would say, have you seen Herbie and Shep Kern, the President of that agency said no, I understand he's doing something to an alarm clock. [Kearns laughs] [Kearns]: Well even if you can remove some of the restraints on your own employees inside the agency what happens with restraints that come from the outside? For example, how much of your work is affected by censorship imposed by the outside world on the products that you produce? [Femina]: I'm against uh somebody telling what to say and how to say. And what kills me is the censor at most network is a very fat ,ugly lady who sits there and, and, and all she, all day long, her life is filth. I mean everything is filthy. Was that an elbow or was that a breast? Ah, did that guy say don or did he say damn. She sits there and day in day out she trades in filth. I mean her mind is much worse than anything I can ever write anything I could ever think, I mean there is enough in the censors mind to keep Screw magazine going for 6 months.

[Kearn]: I, I can understand your feelings about censorship when its got to do with some fat old lady sitting there worrying about whether you use the word damn or not, but there's another area of regulation that that I would support. I mean it's one thing to say ok this woman is an adult and she's got a skepticism and she can buy the product or not. But what happens when an industry is caught up in putting ads on television for these passive toys Big Jim, G.I. Joe, G.I. Mary, instead of having kids playing with papers and pencils creatively the way they used to, they see this thing on television they gotta have it. And it equates for young children, it seems to me, the love of play, which every kid has naturally with the possession of something material. [Femina]: First of all I do believe that parents have, uh, have certain amount of control over their kids. I once was sitting down in a, in a, uh seminar and was sitting next to a man by name Robert Choate, who was also very strong about children advertising. Uh, and they were talking about food advertising

and how can you show food to children when there are so many children starving. And in fact one woman got up and I'll never forget this, the audience was kind of hostile towards me, uh one woman got, up raised my hand and said, "How dare you show a color shots of food on the air when there are kids starving sitting there looking at this food, uh with steaks and Kraft cheese and everything else? How dare you show that kind of food when these kids go to bed hungry?" And I kind of said, "Madam if you can tell me why that kid can afford a colored television set and can't afford Kraft cheese or whatever cheese that, uh, then you're right I'll stop advertising." The fact is that we do have control over our children. [Kearns]: You know in some of the things you've written you've talked about the different kinds of advertising campaigns, of different liqueurs and-or liquors and one of the ones that interested me was your discussion of the Peel's beer. Now what, what happened there? I mean there you have these terrific characters Bert and Harry Peel that everybody loved and yet I gather it still didn't matter.

[Femina]: It was rotten beer and you [Keanrs]: Is that the problem? [Femina]: Yeah, the problem is you can't sell a bad product, uh and, and from that I can go to political advertising. That truly is, and I don't take on political advertising. That truly is the only bad product that you can probably sell once. Uh, and so I won't take on political advertising ?inaudible? [Kearns]: You mean you wouldn't, if, if any politician came in you just would simply say no. [Femina]: No. No. [Kearns]: You know I think it is true that there's a sense in which politicians are becoming even more package today than before. You know, once upon a time they did go out to rallies and they saw people and election campaigns had something to do with the response of crowds. In 1972 I was working in the McGovern campaign and I had the feeling that all we were doing was getting on a big jet airplane and popping down into different cities inorder to show that he liked things rather than that he really could relate to people. And I suddenly got the feeling that the politicians just sit in Washington during the whole campaign and simply have a backdrop of every city behind them and that would suffice instead of running around the nation, because it's just a matter of packaging what they care about rather than who they are it's pretty scary. [Femina]: I think most politicians are dishonest and most politicians are corrupt.

And I, I blame all of the problems that we have right now on politicians. I would not take on, as I said before, I will not take on a politician or advertise a politician. Uh, I don't know. They turn, they change. They're not lika product... Even Feminique. You may hate Feminique, but if you hated it, it was an investment of 59 cents and if it didn't turn out the way you expected it to turn out you threw it away. When you buy, when you, you know when I get you turn down that lever and your in the name is Nixon and I just sold you something for four years. I, I don't want to be the man who, who, who did it. I don't want to sit back and say to myself, ok I just sold someone who started a war. I just sold someone who, you know, was dishonest. [Kearns]: And yet, don't you think that is possible now that people can package candidates? [Femina]: Yes, uh, you can pack ... Well I believe that you can package Hitler right now. You have to understand politicians spend all of their time, I mean it's kinda interesting the way they work with advertings and agencies. They spend all their time soliciting money from businessmen, sometimes almost at the point of a, of a gun, as we learn now. They

take all these funds from businessmen and they go out and pick up an advertising agency. They spend 6 million dollars or 10 million dollars or 20 million dollars selling this product. The day they're elected, they turn on business and advertising for the next four years. [Kearns]: Right. [Femina]: Uh, they they disappoint in every area. They start wars. They, they help recession, you know. And it's kind of interesting, you know, out of this recession, depression whatever we want to call it, comes a button that says win. [Kearns]: There's one thing that's been bothering me ever since I read your book. Which is to know where did you come up with that crazy title? [Femina]: Well that' was based on a true story. I was working at the Ted Bates agency, um, an agency that I hated at the time. Um, as a matter of fact, I still hate it now. I haven't changed. I went to work on my first day and I was kind of nervously sitting there wondering what they had for me and they said we have, you have to work on Panasonic, and I said what's Panasonic. I truly didn't even know what it was about. It was a new account at the agency and it was a

Japanese set and everything else. And they sat down, and in this great big meeting with the account supervisor and a couple of vice president, I mean the place was dirty with vice presidents. If you serve coffee, as a coffee lady, after 3 years, they made you vice president. Everybody I mean vice presidents galore and everyone was kind of stiff and they were sitting around talking about how we had to do something for the Japanese. The Japanese are looking forward to this ad. This is very important to the Japanese and the Japanese and I couldn't stand it and I kind of said wait a second I've got it, I've got it. And they really believed me. I mean everyone, were coming up out of their chairs and I said, I see a headline. Just the way they do it in the movies. I mean, I've never said that in my life. I said, I see a headline. The headline is, "From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbor," and there was a silence. I mean I laughed a lot because I do laugh a lot at myself, but they were absolutely shocked that this guy came to work, they're paying him $60,000 a year, suddenly has truly screwed up the entire Ted Bates Agency. My career went down hill from that point on. I remember one guy his pipe turned over at that point and he was brushing the ashes off to keep

from burning to death. Um, I laughed alot and at that point that was really, truly the end of my career. I lasted a year and, and then started this agency. [Ron Travesano]: We started the agency with a lot of hopes. $100,000 in, ah in backing from our relatives and friends and 4 partners. And after about, oh, 3 months, uh, the $100,000 was gone and so were the partners. All of about $4000 anyway. And, um, Jerry and I were walking down the street one night quickly after our, our partners had left, who decided to go on to greener pastures. Uh, we were walking down the street and Jerry said to me, we're both kind of depressed. In fact we were walking in, both with our shoulders slumped, and we saw somebody we knew coming from the other direction and, uh, I look at Jerry, I said smile. And we both smiled, you know and, uh, as the person we know passed, we, our shoulders slumped again. We said what are were going to do now? And

we walked another block and Jerry turned to me and he said I've got a great idea. I said how could you have a great idea. We're both both depressed. He said well let's take $2000 of the $4000 and we'll throw a party. I said, we're gonna throw a party? What are we going throw a party for now? And he said well if we throw this party everybody will get very excited. They'll think they're really doing well. We can introduce a new account we just picked up, you know, the Moxie Soda Company and we'll have a guy come in from, with a truck and he'll bring the thing into them. We'll have publicity and this will happen and that. I said Jerry you're crazy. And he said, well he said, you're right. He says, but I think it's going to work. And we did it, and uh we had the party, we had the publicity, um and it really was the beginning. And, uh, every week for the next five weeks we announced one little account and all of that together really sounded like we were doing well. And we had the party, and the whole thing and it really worked out beautifully. You know people think we're crazy and I think it's partly due to Jerry's book. I think it's also partly due to the way we decorate our offices. For example, mine is done

in early Barbershop. Um, we did it in early barbershop for one thing. My father was a barber and ?inaudible? after that he became beautician. And I like to keep my office that way as a sort of a reminder of what it could've been if I had been lucky. Crazy? Well, if crazy means that you're you're dedicated and you love your work, Then we're crazy. [James Travis]: I would say that Madison Avenue right now has a fairly bad name. I believe that, uh, that name was not helped by our recent administration in Washington D.C. where we you get people like the Haldeman's and the Magruder's. But as far as the group of people I've met in the industry I think that they're, uh better in many ways and more dedicated in many ways and harder working in many ways, than almost any industry I've ever seen. I'm talking about

manufacturing companies, marketing companies. The people, it's a little neurotic because the people in the business sometimes don't know that, whether they're businessmen first and writers second or are they, they sometimes think that they're writers first and businessmen second. But the fact is we're a salesman. And we're selling somebody's product and this makes us a little schizoid and we, sometimes we get a little uptight about our own consciences, about whether we're doing the right thing. But, uh, I like people who are a little neurotic. I like people who are a little crazy and I like people who are very bright and articulate. And therefore I like the people in the industry.

[Kearns]: What's still not clear to me though is how do you know what the people really want? How do you know that that woman really is worried about her ability to make love to somebody? I mean you know what you want, but can you really know from what you want what the American people want? [Femina]: Well, ok. I've been very poor. I've lived in a terrible neighborhood and in, in living in that neighborhood you got to a point where you truly had to know what was going on, what people were up to, what people were thinking. You got very sensitive to what people think because it was a, was a kind of a dangerous area. And so you become super sensitive to what the world is all about and someone laughed before, and said it came from living in Brooklyn. Well that has a lot to do with it. You become much more sensitive. Maybe it's an ethnic thing. You become much more sensitive to what people think what they feel. And when you become that close and that sensitive to it, then you can write to it. You can, you can, you can uh ... I write to my mother and to my wife and kids. Now, uh, and I'm sensitive to what people feel and how they act and how they react. [music playing] [Kearns]: Does Jerry Della Femina

really know how you react? Is he really different from anyone else on Madison Avenue? He certainly looks different, and he acts different, but he, like everyone else, is still selling products. Substituting technique and feminique for intimacy. Playing on hidden anxieties and fears and creating needs, where perhaps, such needs do not exist. At the turn of the century Madison Avenue looked like this. [music playing] And advertising looked like this. [music playing] [music playing]

[music playing] [music playing] [music playing] And St. Patrick's Cathedral looked like this. And now Madison Avenue looks like this. And list price catalogues have given way to luncheon dialogues where, in the subtle way of modern business, genteel muggings take place. Men are hired and fired and ulcers are created to the clink of martini glasses and the velvet sound of musak. And the message of it all is selling, selling, selling. And it all neatly encased in a veneer of glass and of plastic and of concrete and of steel. In the word of Oscar Levant, "How high can you stoop?" [music playing] [Ray Bradbury]: Romance that, that wonderful moment when you go to bed at night when you're 9

10, 12, 16, 18, whatever. And in the moment before sleep you name yourself for the future. You give the dream to yourself. And so this goes back into the seabed of the literature you're writing. So I named myself John Carter a Warlord of Mars, went out on the lawns of summer and asked to be taken into space. And that's how I shaped my career. [Maya Angelou]: Supposed NASA said we are ready now. We have the ship. We have the crew. We have the navigation all worked out and all we need is the singer. All we need is a poet, and we want Ray Bradbury and we're on our way to Mars tomorrow. What would you say? [Bradbury]: It would be terribly something to go along and nag everybody, which I've been doing for a good number of years now. But I would be especially great to, to, to be buried on Mars, you see. And then when Mars rises in the sky [Angelou]: Yes. [Bradbury]: at night, people would look up and say, "My God, there he is again.We can get rid of him." [Angelou, laughing]: I can't get rid of him. [music playing]

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