Tag Archives: Brouillard

Sep 27

“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”

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Those aren’t my words. They were spoken by John D. Rockefeller who, if memory serves, knew a  Rockefeller-7 little bit about business. And, although I’m not a fan of billionaires past or present, I do find profound wisdom in JRock’s words. You see, I’ve started, and conducted, business with friends and it’s almost always gone south.

While Ed and I were friends when we started Peppercom, it was a business friendship that had been forged through the ‘Romper Room’ days of Earle Palmer Brown and the Kremlin-like autocracy of Brouillard. Just like some of the case studies mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing book, ‘The Outliers.’  Ed and I had probably already logged some 10,000 hours of working together before we ever hung up the Peppercom shingle. We may have been nascent entrepreneurs, but we were tried and tested public relations executives.

Compare that example with the several times my friend, Tommy, and I have tried to help each other out in business. Thos, as he is also known, reached out to me first, hiring my firm to do some corporate ID/branding assignments for the credit union he was running at the time. It started out well enough, but soon I was receiving some rather unpleasant calls from Le Poer (another one of Tommy’s monikers) questioning an invoice. The situation quickly escalated and we agreed to disengage. Now, fast forward to a time when I was able to reciprocate. It occurred when Ed and I started our very own dotcom firm, called PartnershipCentral. This was at the height of dotcom mania and, like everyone else, we figured we’d be multimillionaires within a few months. So, Ed spun out of Peppercom to run P’Central and hired 26 souls to staff it (a ragtag bunch if ever there was one, BTW). TLP (yet another one of Tommy’s aliases) was one of the few, decent employees we hired. If memory serves, he headed up research. But, when the dotcom bubble burst, guess who had to be laid off along with 25 other luckless people? Tommy. And, while it didn’t damage our friendship, it certainly didn’t help either.

I’ve also crossed the line with Dave Mandell, a good friend from long ago who resurfaced to hire us. Having Dave as a client, no matter how well he treated us, nonetheless put a strain on a friendship that, happily, remains very strong.

Ed’s done work with more ‘friends’ than me. In fact, his extended network of friends and contacts has become affectionately known as The Moed Mafia within Peppercom. It’s been the source of some great new business (as well as some totally bizarre dead ends). But, I’ll leave it to him to comment on whether mixing business and friendship works. I don’t think it does.

That said, I sincerely appreciate new business and prospective employee leads that come from my friends. But, I’ve learned enough to know by now that I’ll never cross the line again. JRock’s words are spot on: a friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

Aug 19

The case of the missing luggage

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I’m not sure if it was my Russian adventure, the impending 15th anniversary of Peppercom or Doc_suitcase some late Summer malaise, but I’ve been flooded recently by obscure memories (i.e. the crazy client who insisted we become 18 percent diverse or else, the ill-fated pool party, etc.).

My dusty synapses fired up once again the other day when I spied a PR news brief announcing that a certain luggage company had retained a new PR firm. You see, Ed and I knew this company once upon a time. We knew it very well.

Nearly two decades ago, we toiled for a now defunct, integrated marketing shop called Earle Palmer Brown. EPB was the antithesis of our other employer, Brouillard (i.e. if the latter resembled the Politburo, the former was more akin to what Ed’s charming and vivacious wife, Pamela, liked to call ‘Romper Room.’). The inmates ran the asylum at EPB. And, because, Ed, Bill Southard (our boss) and I were bringing in loads of new business, we were pretty much allowed to indulge any and all excesses.

All of which brings me back to the luggage company. At the time, they were a client on the advertising side of the office. In order to create ads for the client, our ad group needed to photograph the product. So, they grabbed an unused storage room and filled it with the latest, greatest stuff (note: the luggage was also loaned to art directors and photo editors of style magazines for use as props in their shoots).

One day, when the account manager was away on vacation, someone in the PR group secured a key to the product storage room. Needless to say, it emptied out faster than a disappointed group of Mets fans leaving CitiField. Everyone grabbed one, two or more items of their liking. It was positively Bacchanalian in its excess.

Now, fast forward to the following week when the vacationing account guy returned, unlocked the product loan door and went totally ballistic. He sent an agency-wide note letting everyone know about the theft, suggesting he knew exactly who had taken it (our rollicking PR group had built quite an image and reputation by then) and declared that no questions would be asked if the merchandise was promptly returned. Sad to say, it wasn’t. The account guy complained to senior management, who promptly told him to back off. He did a little dance with the client and told them uncooperative art directors and photo editors had refused to return the product loans. Amazingly, the room was quickly restocked and the office returned to its normal state of complete bedlam.

In retrospect, the case of the missing luggage is an interesting morality tale. It spotlights the reality that far too many management teams ‘overlook’ inappropriate behavior from solid performers. Just look at Wall Street or Enron or BP. Moral and ethical behavior routinely takes a back seat to profits (which is why we’re seeing such a plethora of crises). At EPB, the PR group were the high rollers, so no one was going to mess with us about a few missing garment bags.

I’d like to think that Ed and I took the best and worst of what we experienced at EPB and Brouillard, and created a happy medium at Peppercom. It also helps that we haven’t represented luggage manufacturers and been tempted to ‘borrow’ a sleek, black briefcase or two.

We’re older and wiser now (even if Ed hasn’t aged particularly well). And, I’d like to think we’d crack down hard and fast on any behavior remotely resembling the Romper Room days of EPB- which should be good news for any luggage manufacturers out there in search of PR agency support. Your bags are safe with us.

Apr 06

There’s nothing thick about this brick

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It's rare to find an advertising agency that does a superior job of marketing itself. The Martin Single-brick Agency is one notable exception. It's rarer still to find an ad agency that believes advertising exists to sell a client's wares. Most creative directors (and, trust me, I've known my share) think they're the second coming of Billy Wilder, John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock, and look to print and broadcast as a means to express their inner Spielberg and, critically, win awards. Client sales be damned.

That's what makes the new OgilvyOne 'World's Greatest Salesperson' campaign a home run in this agency marketer cum blogger's book. Its genius lies in its simultaneous simplicity, call to action and return to the agency's roots (no mean feat accomplishing those three goals in one fell swoop).

The campaign is actually a 15-country contest to find and reward the world's greatest salesperson. The challenge: use a specially branded channel on YouTube, along with Twitter, Facebook and other social media to sell a red brick. Yes, a red brick. The most creative campaign creator wins a three-month internship at OgilvyOne.

Apart from simply being clever as hell, the campaign returns the agency to its founder's core concepts: Ad legend David Ogilvy always believed advertising existed to sell products, not win awards.

I'm a huge proponent of agency marketing and chafed when my long-gone (but clearly not forgotten) Brouillard CEO told me it was a total waste of time. “Clients want us focused on doing their work. That's how we charge premium rates,” he'd sniff. He was all about charging premium rates and always positioned the now defunct firm as the 'Tiffany's of advertising.' A noble aspiration to be sure but, ultimately a doomed one since no one knew who the hell we were because we never marketed ourselves.

I'm of the opinion that clients and prospects hire agencies who understand how to differentiate and market their own services. In fact, I've often heard Peppercom clients say that our agency first attracted their attention through our thought leadership on a relevant subject. 'Why hire an agency to market for me if they can't do it for themselves?' clients would ask rhetorically. And yet most agencies can't, or won't.

We're one of the few PR firms that believes in aggressive agency marketing. It's stood us in good stead and we'll continue to invest the time and resources to drive it forward.

I'd like to think it takes a good marketer to recognize a great one. So, here's a tip of the cap to the OgilvyOne greatest salesperson contest. I love it. And, I have to believe the late David Ogilvy shares my feeling and is smiling down from that great sales convention in the sky. Always be closing, David. ABC.