hamp's ads and ends

A Creative Director's Life, Part 16, Hangin' with Kong

Passing thoughts:

Sign in a 2^nd Ave. laundry: " We do shirts better. Cost the same as your favorite grand latte."

Advertisers who insist on casting kids to spout complicated financial copy in their TV commercials end up with gibberish and are wasting their money. Cutesy but totally lacking credibility. Might as well use a parrot and save on residuals. Would you buy life insurance from Ian, my eight year old grandson? AIG thinks you would.

How did P&G ever transition from kindly old Mr. Whipple, who with a wink would so politely ask customers to refrain from squeezing Charmin, to animated bears in the woods. At a lunch with ad people the other day not one of us could rationalize the current Charmin campaign other than to consider it an outgrowth of the well known expression, "Does a bear poop in the woods?" This from Procter&Gamble, the most politically correct of all advertisers? We could only conclude if it’s selling toilet paper don’t ask.

At a floor high in the fifties of the Empire State Building in 1956 I went to work for Ralf Shockey and Associates. Shockey was a sales promotion outfit with a handful of creative people, writers and art directors. Ralph Shockey was a well known sales promotion specialist who because of his reputation and connections attracted blue chips who desperately needed promotion help that they were not getting from their ad agencies. So it was here that I got to create ideas and colateral material that would supplement the advertising produced by ad agencies. . Accounts included Chrysler, Corning, G.E, various Seventh Avenue fashion houses. I remember writing a booklet for G.E to be distributed to retailers entitled, " Thirty One Ways to Promote G.E. Small Appliances In Store." Believe me it was a strain to reach thirty one and I wonder if any store ever even implemented half the ideas. We even designed sales meetings for our accounts. I was finally working on some big league stuff, a far cry from Winthrop’s Vacuum Cleaners and Stenchever’s Shoes in Paterson.

And the views from my office in the Empire State Building were spectacular. At Shockey I learned to do writer’s roughs, visualizations of the copy I wrote and how I expected it to complement the planned illustrations and folds of a mailing piece for example. Size, number of pages, where pictures fit, headlines and sub headlines. I was not doing the art director’s job but was pointing him or her in the direction the finished layout should take. As a copywriter I thought that my turf was the wording and the layout and visuals were the exclusive province of the art director. Instead I began to see the importance of thinking visually even before a word was ever written. Verbalization and visualization in advertising are intertwined and any good copywriter is skilled in visualizing and vice versa for a good art director. In my career I have seen art directors write some of the best lines and copywriters come up with the most arresting layouts. For example an art director came up with the line for P&G's Rely tampons, "It Even Absorbs the Worry." An ad I wrote while at Y&R began with a tight close-up of a bowl of Jell-O Chocolate Pudding to depict smoothness,  "Jell-O Believes You've Taken Enough Lumps In Your Life."

One day while in the john on our floor in the Empire State in came Joel Frede who was Shockey's right hand man. While standing at the urinal next to me, he says, " How you doing Alvin? You know we just lost one of our biggest accounts. We're going to have to cut back. I'm sorry Alvin but I have to ask you to leave."  Here I was taking a leak and suddenly I'm in shock at Shockey.  " "Are you kidding? But Joel you just hired me about three months ago." 

" I know Alvin but it's LIFO, last in first out."

"All I could say was, ' I can't belive this. The clients are  buying my work.Everyone thought I was doing a good job."

A little later back in the office, he comes over, nudges me with his elbow and quietly says, "Hey Alvin forget what I told you in there. It's a mistake. Apparently when word got around the office  that I had been fired the creative people practically assaulted Joel and let him know he blew it. "You fired the wrong guy." So about fifteen minutes after I was fired I was rehired. And as for the method of dismissal,  Joel Frede really pissed me off. 

Russ was a public relations specialist at Shockey.  One day he invited me to join him for a drink after work when he was meeting Walter Weiner, head of public relations at Young & Rubicam. "You'll like Walter and maybe he can help you get a hearing at Y & R." At the time I felt "Well another one of those help you get a job introductions, but what the hell I'll go and meet the man."

A Creative Director's Life, Part 17, Is This a Joke?

Passing thought:

An update on my brother Daniel, the brainy one in the family. Remember he chose a career in electrical engineering while I went on to become a huckster. Dan is now a hot shot consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. From a recent news release " Booz Allen Hamilton has been awarded a $149.5 million, multi-year delivery order to provide technology, program management and engineering support to the U.S. Army’s Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate under the Strategic Services Sourcing" Dan Hampel Program Manager said " This project is the largest modernization effort in Army history and one of the most complex networking of systems across the joint services." Whatever that all means but it sounds really important. All I can say is we can all be grateful Dan is on our side.

Let it be recorded that I contributed to increased recruitment for the U.S. Air Force with the advertising slogan, "Aim High." Dan and I always competed going back to those fiercely contestedcribbage games we played in the bedroom we shared on 23^rd Street in Paterson. Last time I looked he was beating me by hundreds of games. But you had to count holes and he was always strong on math. I was a word man.

Late in the summer of 1957 after a brief vacation in Fire Island,  I returned home to find a letter from Young & Rubicam waiting. This can't be, I immediately thought. Y & R writing to me? As my trembling fingers tore at the envelope I imagined all kinds of scenarios. Could this be my first rejection notice from the most prestigious New York ad agency even before I was interviewed? But then again, a rejection from Y&R is better than an acceptance from Ted Bates. Go figure. The letter requested that I call for an appointment. Dorothy recalls that I started celebrating as if I got the job. "But just a minute", she reminded me. The letter is signed by a Harry Rubicam and isn't he dead? This has to be a joke. Someone is playing a trick on me. True to his word, Walter Weiner passed my resume on to the right person at Y&R. Or did he?

Sure enough there was a Harry Rubicam, head of human resources for the creative departments. He turned out to be a nephew of Ray Rubicam, one of Y&R's founders. He was a grandfatherly gent who talked to me about the greatness of Y&R and what a wonderful place to work. Like I needed to be advised. Harry Rubicam introduced me to Bob Work, manager of the copy department. We had about a fifteen minute chat and browsing through my resume he asked why I had moved around so much. "No sir, those are not places; they're the accounts I have worked on."  Bob Work was completely bald and  much younger than he looked. He was a beloved friend of the creative departments and a senior member of the all important plans board, the body that had final approval on critical campaigns for the agency's leading clients. Bob Work offered me a job in sales promotion at a starting salary of $8,000 a year. The cliche that I would have paid him to work at Y&R in any capacity could not have been a more accurate expression of my elation as I left the building at 285 Madison Ave. that sunny summer afternoon. Look ma I made it and I didn't have to work my way up from the mail room, one of advertising's more traditional starting jobs. So what if I started out in sales promotion,  a  tangential department that helped supplement the more glamorous media of print, radio and the fledgling medium TV. I was in the house and that was what mattered. For days I walked around my old neighborhood and places where I used to work looking for friends and anyone who would listen, "Yeah I got a new job at Young & Rubicam.  You've heard of it right?"

My early impressions: Every day I commuted by bus from Wayne, New Jersey and later Ridgewood to the Port Authority bus terminal and a walk east on 41 St. I couldn't wait to go to work in the place I considered a cathedral of creativity. Not a new agency in a new building, Y&R showed signs of aging, its walls dull green (green for Dartmouth, ceo's Sig Larmon a renowned alumnus and a golfing buddy of president Eisenhower) Its furniture, utilitarian and a little shopworn from the squirming and fidgeting of the rear ends that were broken coming up with winning campaigns. From those modest surroundings came such memorable campaigns as  Bert and Harry Piel, the Remington shaving a peach, Jell-o's Chinese baby (trying to eat Jell-o with chopsticks), Lay's Potato Chips, Kent with the Micronite Filter, The Temptation of Beautyrest, Breck, J&J Baby Products, Excedrin Headache, Borden's Elsie, General Electric, Chrysler, General Cigar Modess Because, Band Aids, (one new and naive copywriter submitted a headline to her supervisor, "Never Neglect the Smallest Prick.". The ad never ran.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 19, An Auspicious Beginning

Passing thought:

Ever since I decided on advertising copywriter as a career, I dreamed of one day working in a Madison Avenue ad agency. Now that I'm officialy a  copywriter at Y&R, an agency many considered the most creative of the large ad agencies, I regularly pinch myself and ask, " Is this really happening or am I still dreaming?"

Since this memoir is the story of a kid from Paterson who made it in the big leagues of advertising and made it big in the big leagues, I'm about to embark on the "I/me chronicles", a recounting of my work at the job I loved. So, it's not because I have a big ego that I will regale with my hits and even a miss or two, but because this is the work that helped propel me to the top. By the way I'd rather have a big ego and display it than be known as a shmendrick ( a meek, ineffectual Milquetoast).

I left the world of trade advertising in a blaze. Assigned to the Simmons Beautyrest account, I immersed myself in the world of mattresses and particularly the merits of Beautyrest. No one could convince me that there was a better mattress in the world. I knew Beautyrest from the innersprings to the ticking and to learn how the trade approached the selling of Beautyrest I spent time on the selling floor at Bloomingdale's. From this research a four page all copy ad was born with the headline, "How One of the Most Expensive Mattresses Became the Biggest Selling Brand in the World." over my byline, By Alvin Hampel. Copywriters normally create anonymously, but early in my copywriting career I had my one and only by line.

My next assignment for Simmons Beautyrest was to craft a campaign aimed at the salespeople who were asked to sell fair traded Beautyrest for $39.50 while the competition was selling mattresses for as low as $25 and claiming they were as good. Here is where I went off in a different direction from the straight,factual promotional work I was turning out. I decided to go clever and get bold and edgy. Ever since grade school I was known to be clever or funny even a cutup at times and that description stuck with me through college. Indeed it was the reason I was first attracted to advertising, a business built on cleverness. I learned later on that cleverness might have been a way to grab attention but cleverness without selling might have been entertaining but was really a waste of money. The Beautyrest trade campaign featured such sassy headlines as " Anyone Who sells a $25 mattress deserves the $2 dollar profit", "The backbone is connected to the money belt", "Price isn't the only thing that gets cut", an ad featuring the salesman with his finger crossing his neck as in a suicide gesture.  " Invite the customer to test a Beautyrest but be sure to leave a wakeup call." Each ad was illustrated with a full face shot of Jack Grier, one of the more colorful account executives at Y&R. His grumpy , sell Beautyrest or look- for- work mug fit the campaign perfectly.

A few months after the campaign broke I was called on stage at an awards luncheon sponsored by a retailing group and was awarded first prize for retail trade advertising. Jack Grier accompanied me on stage and got a rousing ovation too.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 20, As If It Was Yesterday

Passing thought:

One day as I was watching the Boston Red Sox on TV, up to bat came a center fielder called Coco Crisp. My five year old granddaughter Erin Maeve said, " Coco Crisp, what a funny name." I told her his mother didn't know what to call him when he was born, so happening to gaze at a box of cereal on the kitchen table she thought, " Why not?" And that's how he got his name. With one of her exuberantly beguiling laughs, lovely, little Erin quipped, "What if it was Fruit Loops?"

It's two a.m. in Los Angeles and I'm fast asleep in my hotel room when the phone jars me awake. Operator: "Mr. Al Hampel. I have a call from a Mr. Hoagy Carmichael." Hear that Scaz, Maish, Harry, Bull, Squirrel, Tommy, Bobby and all you othe guys on Eighth Avenue in Paterson? The great Hoagy is calling Al Hampel. He wants to know if he can change one word of the lyric in a voice over to introduce Log Cabin Country Kitchen Butter Syrup, a product to compete with Mrs. Butterworth. "Get that you guys. Hoagy Carmichael is asking Al Hampel if he can change one word of Hampel's lyric. I say,"Let me hear how it sounds Hoagy." So Hoagy Carmichael sings the new lyric on the phone to Al Hampel in his hotel room in Los Angeles. It wasn't Stardust but it was just as memorable to me.

I got the script for the next Jack Benny TV show about three weeks before taping in Los Angeles. All I had to do was tailor a Jell-O commercial around the theme of the show so that viewers would stay tuned. That final segment had to be such a seamless transition from the main story line that the viewer would not anticipate the commercial that was coming. They were called integrated commercials or cast commercials. "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Because General Foods owned the show, the agency was entitled to use Jack, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Rochester, and Phil Harris to deliver Jell-O commercials woven into the show's fabric.  Creating those commercials became my specialty at Y&R.

And that's how I came to find myself winging to L.A. to meet with Irving Fein, Jack's manager who had approval of the script. I walk into a small office on La Cienega and wait a few minutes for Irving Fein. My legs were aquiver like the consistency of Jell-O itself. I introduce myself and hand Mr. Fein the script. All the while I'm thinking, "If I have to fly back to N.Y. without aprroval from the Benny people, I can go back to writing trade ads. Fein looks it over for what seemed like the time it would take for the show to play out. Eventually he nods, as if in approval, but says, " I don't think so, but I'll show it to Jack. He goes into a back room and brings Jack Benny out to meet me. We shake hands and I'm thrilled to learn his handshake is as limpid as mine, only drier. "What do you think Jack. I'm not sure," says Fein.The great Jack Benny, a comedian I adored from radio days on, says with a smile, " I like it. I'll do it. Nice going kid." I admit to slipping a line from one of the old radio shows into the script. I described Jack's eyes as being Lake Louise blue.

I could have flown home without the plane.

From then on I became the integrated or cast commercial writer for such shows as Andy Griffith, Hogan's Heroes, I Love Lucy, Jack Benny, Roy Rogers, Bugs Bunny (Chuck Jones), Jean Arthur, Carol Channing, all for General Foods products:  Jell-O Gelatin, Jell-O Pudding and Pie  Filling, Dream Whip, Sanka, Post Cereals, Log Cabin, Tang. All cast commercials required my being on the set at the shoot. My home in L.A., sometimes for weeks on end was the fabulous Bel Air Hotel which spoiled me for every other hotel in the world.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 21, No Buddy Can Eat Just One

Passing thought:

Every morning millions of men get into a scrape with a phenomenon known as hysteresis. If you shave with a multi-bladed razor you benefit from hysteresis. As so ably demonstrated in Gillette’s Trac II commercials in the early 70's: as the first blade cuts the whisker it also pulls it out for the second blade to slice it off and leave nothing but smooth skin. So effective was this animated demonstration, research showed that shavers actually visualized the process as they were shaving. Trac II and hysteresis were so successful, Gillette, ever alert to product improvements and company profits, soon followed up with Mach 3 (three blades) and now Fusion with four blades. But since hysteresis proved that two blades provided the world’s best shave, why the extra blades which are nothing more than sluggards? .Because men are willing to pay more for the perception of an even closer shave. As if that wasn’t enough, now Gillette sticks a AA battery in the handle of the razor and gets even more money for the tingle provided with Mach 3 Power and Fusion Power razors and blades. You get a hand vibrator and a pleasant buzz but probably no better shave than you get with the original TracII.. It seems that men are not averse to paying more money for an ever closer shave, perceived or imagined, in a process Gillette has termed, "face validity."

When the Friendly Lion , a.k.a. Bert Lahr passed away Y&rR and Frito Lay faced a serious dilemma. Lay’s Potato Chip commercials, starring Bert Lahr were working so well, i.e. selling so many potato chips, the challenge was to keep the momentum while finding a replacement for Lahr. I never thought the Lahr spots were that good but the likeability of Bert Lahr prevailed and the advertising became among the most popular of the time.

Buddy Hackett as a replacement for the inimitable Lahr was near or at the top of every decision maker on the Frito Lay account, including myself who had Hackett as first choice. With my experience writing cast commercials for many of TV’s leading shows, I became the designated front man for the Buddy Hackett project. My first assignment was to get Frito Lay to sign on for Hackett at the then generous fee of three thousand dollars for one year’s use of Buddy Hackett for advertising in any or all media. It was not the easiest sale I ever had to make. The decision makers in Dallas knew Hackett from his many appearances on Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson. His Chinese waiter bit remains a classic comedic gem. He had also starred in Disney’s Love Bug. He was not unknown to the client, yet they had qualms about Hackett’s reputed intractability and his history of blue material in his Vegas act. I negotiated the contract for Buddy with his manager and lawyer, Paul Sherman who was to become a good friend. He was not the typical Hollywood barracuda. While extracting every advantage for his client, he was also fair and square with me. Paul Sherman, Wally Sheft, Buddy's  accountant, and Joe Kelman, a close friend from Chicago were known as the Hack pack. As Buddy Hackett’s representative for advertising, I automatically qualified for membership in the Hack Pack. It was like getting a private pass to the exciting world of show business topped by the unique privilege of hanging out with Hackett in Las Vegas every time he appeared in Sin City, which was quite often.

With his rolypolly girth and a mouth that worked only out of one corner, Buddy Hackett had a head start on funny. Once, when he was playing the lounge at the Sahara hotel, Don Rickles saw Buddy in the audience, "Hey there's Buddy Hackett.  Buddy why don't you paint stripes on your ass and go as a beach ball." When you hung out with Buddy, as I eventually did, you had to marvel at his improvised brilliance. Not a joke teller per se, but a story teller who drew inspiration from every day events and ordinary people and came up with unimaginalble twists that were hilarious. Buddy played Vegas a half dozen times a year and sold out every performance. I would watch as he convulsed audiences. Many times women would reluctantly leave the room to relieve themselves. He delighted in breaking me up which was constantly.

No sooner did we go into production of Lay's Potato Chip commercials, starring Buddy Hackett, than I became a mediator as well as creative director. The client had settled on the words they deemed inviolate in every spot, "so light, so thin, so crisp, you can eat a million of 'em but nobody can eat just one." Buddy thought by the time you say all that crap, the commercial is over. Where's the room for comedy he would ask. Therein lay the dichotomy. The client insisted on the sell. Buddy was playing for laughs, at the expense of the sell, if he had his way. And in the middle was Al Hampel. Every script I brought to Buddy created a tug, sell words or comedy. If I had not endeared myself to Buddy Hackett early in our relationship he would have thrown me out on my ass. Deep down he knew I was right.  The obvious solution was compromise. With a soft spoken argument for an approach that featured both humor and sell, I eventually convinced the giant among comedians of the day to do it my way, shortchanging neither Lay's nor Buddy. Often I couldn't believe I was telling Buddy Hackett how to be funny in the context of delivering the selling idea. He bought my act and we went on to produce dozens of commercials and have a lot of fun in the process. After a while Buddy caught the hang of the compromise and he began to improvise funny spots that did not sacrifice those precious words, "So light, so thin, so crisp, you can eat a million of 'em but nobody can eat just one.." He even went as far as delivering a half dozen improvised commercials when only one was scheduled for production. We had a happy client in Dallas.

Best of all, the commercials were so successful (sales were at an all time high) that Frito Lay renewed Buddy's contract for another year at an increased fee. At one of Buddy's shows at the Sahara Hotel in Vegas, there was a bag of Lay's imprinted with "No Buddy Can East Just One" at every table and in the middle of his act, Buddy introduced me to the audience as the creator of the campaign. I stood to a rousing ovation in a packed showroom in Vegas. Can any other advertising copywriter make that claim?

In the meantime, back at Y&R, I had been promoted to senior vice president and copy chief, the head of a department of hugely talented copywriters, most of whom were older than I was. I was in my mid 30's and the youngest ever to have held the job of copy chief of Y&R.  My dream of making it to Mad Ave was realized in a fashion I could never have envisioned, a job with a title which in those days represented one of the most highly respected positions in the world's most creative industry.

But alas, the Buddy Hackett saga came to an ignominious end. I had arranged to have Buddy perform at a Pepsi bottler's annual meeting in Texas. He put on a hell of a show. Delivering some of his raunchiest material, the bottlers laughed hysterically and gave Buddy a long standing ovation. Afterwards I had Buddy meet Don Kendall, Pepsi Cola's CEO (Pepsi owned Frito Lay). The two exchanged pleasantries but then Kendall said something to the effect that he enjoyed Buddy's work in the Lay's commercials, adding a but, " In some of those spots I couldn't make out what you were saying" There was a long pause while I went numb and Buddy got a faraway look in his eye. I knew what was coming. Hackett replied," Hey mister I don't know what the fuck you're talking about now."

Some weeks later Buddy was on Johnny Carson when he revealed he was no longer working for Lay's Potato Chips. " Those chips didn't taste good. I didn't like them." Carson said, " But Buddy you been telling me for years how great those chips were and nobody can eat just one. How come you've been hawking them for so long?

"Hey John, for what they were paying me I would eat dog shit." Buddy retained  his record as the most bleeped guest ever on the Johnny Carson show.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 22, People Who Never Thought They'd Meet Al Hampel

I was at the pool one late August afternoon when I got a phone call from Buddy, "Hey Al a friend of mine wants to see the show tonight but she’s alone and she would like an escort to sit with her." "Of course I’ll go. The first show?" "Alvin all you gotta do is tell the maitre’d and he’ll show you to the table, ringside.". "You will like her; she is a nice person.’ I get to the show room promptly at eight, hand the captain a ten dollar chip and I’m led to the table where an attractive blonde in a white sequined off the shoulder dress awaits. The early arrivals for Buddy’s first show around ringside now shift their gaze from her to "who’s the lucky guy?" She extends her hand, "Hi I’m Phyllis McGuire. You must be Al." Phyllis Mcguire of the Mc Guire sisters who I used to see on the Arthur Godfrey show? Can this be Phyllis McGuire, the girlfriend of mobster Sam Giancana? And I’m supposed to watch the show?

It turned out to be a wonderful evening. She was delightful and we both laughed until it hurt.

When it was over I walked Phyllis Mcguire through the casino to her car, amid stares and whistles from the one armed bandit crowd.  She did not offer "I'd like to see you again" and I did not say "Can I have your phone number?" All I could think of as I walked back, "I had a date with the mistress of Sam Giancana, one of the most ruthless of mob bosses. And I lived to tell about it.

Later when I went backstage to visit Buddy I said, "She was great. Who you got for me tomorrow night, Mrs. John Gotti?"

One night I accompanied Buddy to a testimonial dinner for Vince Scully, the famed voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers and a legend  in L.A. Buddy was one of the speakers and a laugh riot as usual. As the dinner broke up, Buddy cornered Cary Grant walking off the dais, found me in the audience and steered the rather reclusive actor to meet Alvin Hampel.  I shook his hand which was even clammier than mine. "It's a pleasure Mr. Grant, Gary, I'm sorry Cary. In the middle of one of the most stuttering, most nervous responses to meeting one of the all time greats, Buddy nudges me and says, "Cary, not Harry you schmuck." Cary Grant doubled over laughing.

The Sahara Hotel's house for its star performers was a way station for anyone visiting or performing at other Vegas hotels. When Sean Connery dropped by for a round of golf with Buddy, I was invited to walk the course with them. In addition to watching a couple of duffers I witnessed an olympian event of wisecrack and expletive hurling , expectedly from Buddy, but surprisingly from the urbane Mr. Connery. Apparently the Scots also invented the cant that facilitated the exciting and exacting new game of golf. It was great fun to watch OO7 confront a terrorist,more sinister than Odd Job or Goldfinger. Buddy Hackett messed up every one of Sean Connery's swings with a weapon OO7 could not defuse. He made Connery laugh. Much of Buddy's take on golf is recounted in the book he wrote, "The Truth About Golf and Other Lies."

I got in the car and we were off on a magical mystery drive. I don't ask. Hackett doesn't tell. We stop at a modest ranch (if there are any in Beverly Hills) and the woman working in the kitchen bids us a warm welcome then ushers into the den. I sit in big leather chair, look around at the many artifacts and photos that should have been a clue to who lived here. They weren't. In just a few minutes a smiling hulk of a man shuffles in and greets us with clicking and sucking sounds that are uniquely this man's signature. When I come to I am being introduced to  Jonathan Winters. Who is going to believe this? I have been turned into an audience of one sitting between two of the most inventive comedic minds who waste no time beginning to shpritz  (shpritz: the term that describes two or more comedians throwing laugh lines at each other in a can-you-top this fashion). Sensing they had a pigeon for an audience, these two guys put on a show for my benefit. That  hour in the home of a true legend became one the most memorable of my life. Imagine actually meeting Maude Frickert.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 23, Countdown to Liftoff

Meanwhile back at Y&R, I was on a mission to run the table, from sales promotion writer to copywriter, sharing a small office with another copywriter, then on to copy supervisor and my own office plus a secretary. What a wonderful partner came my way in the person of a recent Manhattanville College grad named Maura Kavanagh. Tall, blonde, blue eyed and very bright, Maura not only typed my copy, she edited it too. I hit the Irish Sweepstakes. Maura remains a friend of the Hampel family to this day. Next came a giant step up to associate creative director and ultimate creative responsibility for a half dozen important accounts. My office space grew as large as the office of the copy department head who first interviewed me. It had two gigantic windows and came with the privilege of picking out my own furnishings.. It was here where the legendary yellow paisley sofa which drew more visitors to my office just to glimpse it, made its debut. Someone said, "Wow you could throw up on it and no one would know the difference. Someone once did.

With associate creative director came the mantle of vice president of the company. Imagine, the nebbish from 23^rd Street a VP of Young & Rubicam, the paragon of the craft of advertising, the engine of American business. When I excitedly phoned my dad to give him the news of my promotion, he said "Mazel tov. How old is the president?"

Navigating the talent laden layers in the highly structured creative department at Y&R. was no cake walk. After all, I could not leap tall buildings or fly faster than jet airplanes or skip the hierarchy of the agency’s organization. Even though I was once referred to as "Super Jew" in a pejorative way by a Texaco client at another ad agency. When I arrived at Y&R in 1957 it didn’t take long for me to size up the landscape. Now the nebbish from 23^rd Street in Paterson, New Jersey was in the big leagues, like a rookie shortstop from the minors on his first day on a major league team roster. What will it take to shine in this environment among copywriting stars whose award winning print ads and TV reels make my meager output look like typical catalog copy?

Alan Jay Lerner of the musical writing team of Lerner and Lowe was once asked why so much time elapsed between writing of his shows. "It's not that I'm slow to write. I'm just quick to throw out." (Lerner was married eight times). I subscribed to Lerner's method. In fact I became a fanatic.For every headline I ever wrote, I rejected dozens and dozens. I knew what I was after and I was never satisfied until I reached that "aha" moment.  Every assignment became a challenge on which my reputation rested. So I chased the winning solution while at home, during the commute, while on long walks and doing chores around the house, before bed and upon waking. Chasing perfection can drive a person crazy. My wife will attest that it did.

There was always a better headline around the corner. The idea was to keep going until you found it. Years later at another ad agency I distributed buttons in the form of a STOP sign but with the word" "Don't" superimposed on top. I still have a limited supply so if you want one e-mail me, alhamp@aol.com.

Early on I identified what I was after. I worked to create the kind of advertising that would attract me and that I would remember.  That genre is best summed up in the word UNEXPECTED. I think people like surprises in advertising, just as they do the unexpected endings of stories by O.Henry , Poe,  Roald Dahl and films by Hitchcock. 

Most advertising is so boring, an unexpected approach stops the reader or viewer and contributes to memorability. And that's why I'm also a great believer of HUMOR in advertising. The punch line of a joke is the perfect example of the unexpected.  Case in point: George Burns was asked "What was your worst sexual experience?"  Burns replied, "Terrific." The most popular and most memorable TV commercials are almost always the humorous ones.

Searching for a headline for a Jell-O Pudding ad, the strategy of which was Jell-O's superior  texture or smoothness, I must have filled two pages of possible captions before finally settling on "Jell-O Believes You've Taken Enough Lumps in Your Life". The line ran over a scrumptious Irving Penn photo of a dish of Jell-O Pudding. The ad was an award winner.

It has been said success is a matter of luck, tenacity, attitude and talent. The loss of any one can sink you. But if you have all four,  success is assured. I could influence the latter three and I did. But luck? How do you get lucky? You have it or you don't. Luck came to me when I was assigned to General Foods. and particularly its flagship brand, Jell-O Gelatin. It was one of Y&R's oldest and most  carefully nurtured accounts. My first job for Jell-O began when I subbed for an ailing copywriter and wrote a cast, or integrated commercial for the Jack Benny show. It featured the stars of the show and appeared to be a continuation  of the story line but was really a pitch for Jell-O Gelatin's new fresh fruit flavors woven seamlessly into the show's theme. Sometimes the Benny writers would help polish my scripts. The job of crafting  General Foods commercials for some of the most popular TV sitcoms of the day became my stock in trade. I was forever winging off to L.A. to oversee my General Foods spots as they were produced at such studios  as Desilu and Warner Bros. I remember kidding around with 5 year old Ron Howard, while as Opie, he waited for his next scene on the Andy Griffith Show. The kid grew to be one of Hollywood's legendary award winning directors.  These were undoubtedly exciting times as I fancied myself a TV sitcom script writer for the shows I would watch on my 12 inch duPont TV in our apartment back home in Paterson. Who'd of thought that the nebbish from 23rd Street would make it in show business. Wasn't  I  producing miniature, 30 and 60 second movies that were seen by more people than many feature films?  To those who knew me best, I was in the process of leaving  my humility on the doorstep and morphing from a nebbish to a gonse k'nocker (a big deal).

It didn't hurt to have a patron in a high post at Y&R. Mine was Dermott McCarthy, a big lovable Irishman who was copy chief of the agency. He dug my copy and always matched my style with accounts that appreciated the unexpected.  We took memorable trips to the West Coast together. L.A. was Dermott's home town. The plane would no sooner land than Dermott would shlep me to one of his old haunts, a neighborhood bar where he knew every bartender and most of the patrons. One time he took me to lunch at a convent where his sister was a nun in residence. It was o.k., I was wearing a mezuzah at the time. Dermott loved his martinis. Try as he did he could not convert this Manischewitz drinker. When he and Dorothy flew out together to meet me in L.A. he almost made a shikker (drunk) out of my wife during the flight. Martinis before and during  were Dermott's antidote for fear of flying. The flight attendants who served him became his friends and those flights turned into parties in the sky. One flight attendant became Dermott's secretary.

Dermott McCarthy was the first one to recommend  me to replace him as copy chief of the agency when he went  off to become creative director of European offices.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 24, Among My Souvenirs

Until I arrived at Y&R I had never written a T V commercial. Of necessity I was strictly a writer of print advertising. Print presented a neat package of headline, sub headline, an illustration designed to capture the attention of the reader, body copy where most of the sell took place, and a logo and theme line at ad bottom that identified the sponsor. Print advertising filled the sample book that helped get me the job at Y&R. At the time TV commercials, while not in their infancy, were still black and white and 60 seconds in length and on a path to overtake print as the dominant advertising medium of many large advertisers.

The idea of creating TV spots intimidated me. What is this stuff: dissolve, match dissolve, cut, CU and ECU, super? I didn’t understand this lingo so how would I ever create commercials containing those production directions. On the verge of panic, a terrific veteran copywriter named Bob Higbee took me aside and told me to forget the technical mumbo jumbo and to just write down how I visualized the commercial and the words that went with it. That good advice freed me up to jump into TV commercials and create some pretty good ones over the years. But I never lost my love of print even as it seems to be on a course to oblivion..

Following are some of the highlights of my years at Y&R. Most advertising is the result of teamwork. You might get the initial idea for an ad but it cannot be produced in a vacuum. A team of assorted specialists contribute to the finished ad: art directors, designers, photographers, actors, directors, producers, editors, and the crews who work on commercials. It takes almost as many people to film a TV commercial as it does to produce a feature film.

As mentioned previously, Jell-O offered the opportunity to produce imaginative, eye catching work that became a passport to success and promotion at Y&R. I made the most of the opportunity.

Jell-O Cheesecake, the no bake cheesecake. Simple set up. Husband and wife. And two of the most talented actors in film and theater: Louise Lasser, famous for the series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Josh Shelly, a veteran featured player in Hollywood, who had no lines in this commercial but just continued to eat and enjoy the cheesecake, oblivious to his wife’s delivery of the copy points. Finally getting no response to her question, "Do you like it?", she self answers it with a last line, "He likes it." A simple spot that won a Clio , presented at the awards ceremony by Woody Allen, married to Louise Lasser at the time.

A campaign for Jell-O Pudding and Pie Filling featuring Paul Lynde as the presenter. Lynde who was gay was not an easy sale to the uptight conservative culture at General Foods. Lynde’s fey style turned the commercials into comic gems, but not at the expense of the selling points. Such lines as "If I’m not telling you the truth my nose will grow longer." and interacting with a horse at a farm, "Treacherous beast." delivered by Paul Lynde made people laugh much as they did when he responded to loaded questions on the popular show, Hollywood Squares. Turned out that the lynde commercials got the highest memorability scores in copy testing and sold a lot of Jell-O Pudding and Pie Filling. Only then did General Foods retain him for another season.

"There's Always Room for Jell-o" was one of the most renowned of all Jell-O campaigns. The ads featured  ethnic family  feasts : Italian, Jewish, Greek, etc. These were large cast commercials showing guests enjoying the various courses, followed at the end of the meal by the only desert there was room for,  J E L L- O.  This campaign was a classic example of product as hero and a  cinch winner of the Clio awards for best of package goods commercials.

Vote For Your Favorite Jell-O Flavor in the GREAT BIG JELL-O ELECTION. Each flavor had its campaign slogan displayed in a two page rendering of campaigners parading with signs touting their favorites. The big ad ran in Sunday magazine sections. Buttons featuring the slogans were distributed nationwide  "Sweet on Strawberry", "I'm for Lime", "Ape for Grape", "Cheers for Cherry","Lemon's my Squeeze", "Orange has the Juice" Nothing to buy. All you had to do was select your favorite on the coupon in the ad. Hundreds of thousands voted. Strawberry won in a landslide. This idea was way ahead of its time. It was ideally suited to be a promotion on the Internet many years later. Cherry demanded a recount.

No sooner did General Foods sign with Warner Bros. for the use of Bugs Bunny as spokesman for Tang, the instant breakfast drink,  then I headed west to meet with Chuck Jones. From the forward to "Chuck Amuck,The Life and Times of Chuck Jones,", Steven Speilberg wrote "With the creation of Pepe LePew, Coyote, and Road Runner and as part of the team that created Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and directed over fifty Bugs Bunny cartoons, Chuck broke away from those sweet preschool characters to whom Walt Disney had given eternal life."  It did not soothe my nerves to know I  would be working with the king of animated cartoonists. I discussed my idea for the commercial with Jones in his office. I envisioned Bugs Bunny in "Tangrila"  He sparked to the idea and I silently sighed a "whew". We went off to the Warner Bros. commisary for lunch and Jones sketched the whole thing out on a place mat which I now have framed on my wall at home. 

As newcomers to the Tang account, the creative team took a field trip to Battle Creek , Michigan to see how Tang was produced. The process was little more than a variety of powders moved from vats to a jar. For sanitary reasons we all had to don white paper hats. I thought, "If a hair ever got into Tang it would be the only natural ingredient in it.

Switching to print, I enjoyed an incredible run of Gulf advertising one three month period. For Gulfspray, an insecticide,  the page was blank except for one dead bug on its back on the bottom and the line "Not Everyone Benefits From Gulf Research."

A Whitney Darrow cartoon depicting two kids talking through empty Gulf Oil cans connected by string and the line, "The Best Way an Oil Company Talks to Its Customers is Through Its Products"

The photo showed the contents of a woman's handbag strewn about the page and a Gulf Credit Card prominently featured. The line, " A Woman Doesn't Get Very Far Without Certain Basic Necessities."

Harry MacMahan who wrote a column for Advertising Age titled, "The Month's Ten Best" included each of the above ads three months in a row.

A Creative Director's Life, Part 25, The Carol Channing Show

If you wanted to cast someone to oversee the General Foods shows for which Y&R was agency of record, you couldn’t do better than Bud Barry. Tall, handsome with white hair atop a ruddy complexion and a hint of an Irish brogue. Charismatic Bud Barry was most importantly a salesman. He could sell Hershey Bars to the Mars brothers. Salesmanship was the essential skill necessary to negotiate with the assorted Hollywood types that Bud dealt with on behalf of General Foods. Only a man with Bud Barry’s experience and temperament could wheedle concessions from that crowd.

Internally, Barry ran his department with little slack for ineptitude. The only time his face would turn more florid than usual was when he summoned his minions to his office for a grilling. "Now Colgan, what were you supposed to do that you didn’t?" And a shaky Colgan Schlank would spill his kishkes (guts) out, even confess to the seven deadly sins to avoid the wrath of a Bud Barry who thought you were holding out on him. Still  the TV honchos on the west coast and the sitcom's  performers loved Bud Barry.

I remember a meeting with George Burns and when Burns learned that I was from Y&R, he immediately asked about Bud Barry. "Bud has had some health issues" I replied. "In and out of the hospital." Why I followed up with, "His wife died." I don’t know. But in the context in which I blurted the sad news, George Burns laughed out loud. He could laugh; he was in his 90's. And that’s how I made George Burns laugh. Incidentally, Florence, Bud’s wonderful wife ran a renowned resale shop called Encore where some of New York's most famous socialites turned in their shmattes (hardly ever worn frocks) for immediate cash. My wife, Dorothy became friendly with Florence and was let in on a collector’s item, a Valentino coat owned by Jackie Onassis. Florence confided to Dorothy that Jackie was a  ferocious hondler (bargainer) often asking more for her worn clothes than they were worth. Dorothy bought the coat and would trot it out for all her friends to see.  It was a lovely A-line apricot colored garment. Dorothy treasured the memento though she rarely wore it. Eventually it disappeared from her wardrobe.

One day I got a call from Bud Barry asking me to come  to his office for an important meeting. What could Bud want to see me about? Not one of those infamous interrogations. I don't even work for the guy.

"Chum, ( a greeting borrowed from Walter Bunker, Bud's west coast representative and a legend in radio and TV circles on the coast) I got a big one for you" said Barry jumping up excitedly from behind his desk. "I just bought Carol Channing for General Foods. I got Charles Lowe, Channing's husband, to throw in the lady to do commercials on the show".  Since Carol Channing had never done commercials, this was a major concession and only the inimitable Bud Bud Barry could swing it.

"Here's what I need from you Mr. Hampel. I want you to tell me how to use Carol Channing in  five or six commercials  and then write them so they will be acceptible to her and Mr. Lowe  and most of all to General Foods. I know you're goingto love this; I need them by Tuesday morning for a presentation to the client for approval." It was then Friday afternoon when Bud Barry was laying this on me. He's got to be kidding.  "I've got all that time? Hell I could write the whole show in that time" trying to make a nervous  joke out of a next to impossible request. Here's where I go on my ass was all that I could think of.

"Brother Hampel I'm going to put you up in a suite in the Plaza hotel for the weekend and you can order anything you want from room service. Send out for stuff if you need it. Bring all your writing gear and give me the best you got. This'll make you famous. Hell, I'll even supply the girls. Whaddya like, blondes, redheads brunettes, what other colors they come in? You name it you got it."

I'd be lieing if I said I didn't consider Bud Barry's offer. But my saner head prevailed and I trudged across town and caught a bus to our modest little home and my wife and kids in Wayne, New Jersey. And for one whole weekend I played husband and daddy , while never being uninvolved with Carol Channing.

Usually I put aside the first idea that comes to mind. That would be in keeping with the theory of "Don't Stop" which I always encouraged my creative people to observe. Try some more.  There might be a better idea around the corner. But in this case I violated my own tradition. I felt so strongly about the first idea that popped into my head that Saturday morning that I stopped. "That's it."  So I had the rest of the weekend to write the copy for Carol Channing and others she would interact with if my idea was accepted. It had to be approved by Barry, Ed Ebel, the head man at General Foods, Charles Lowe, Carol's husband and manager, Carol Channing, the producer and writers of the show and who knows,  assorted others. This was a gauntlet that could chip away even kill my idea. What if they all didn't like it? You never stop fretting til the finished product is in the can, meaning produced and ready for airing.

The next time I heard from Bud was a phone call on a Wednesday afternoon from White Plains, the headquarters of General Foods. "Brother Hampel pack your bags. You' re off to meet with Hello Dolly. See you next week at the Bel-Air hotel."  So began one of the most magical periods of my show business career.

Following are excerpts from a review in the Hollywood Daily Variety of Monday, February 21, 1966:

AN EVENING WITH CAROL CHANNING

"Carol Channing's first TV special was an unmitigated disappointment. Those who masterminded didn't appear to know how to transfer the gifted Miss Channing's many talents of song and mimicry to the small screen, and the result was a generally vapid and unfunny show. There was a cloying approach throughout most of the tint hour. It seemed as  though those in charge theorized viewers wouldn't understand Miss Channing's great routines and her wonderful ability to mime, so they steered her into a cornfield instead, etc., etc.,...........

Producer-director was Bud Yorkin. Writers were Hal Goodman, Al Gordon and Sheldon Keller. Choreo by Hermes Pan was undistinguished.

INTEGRATED BLURBS IN WHICH MISS CHANNING APPEARED WITH ANDY GRIFFITH, JIM NABORS, EVA GABOR, EDDIE ALBERT AND "HOGAN'S HEROES GANG- ALL SPONSORED BY GENERAL FOODS-WERE THE MOST INVENTIVE, INGENIOUS AND AMUSING PART OF THE SPEC. WHOEVER PRODUCED THESE SHOULD HAVE PRODUCED THE SHOW."

STICKING MY ADS OUT

A CREATIVE DIRECTOR'S LIFE

BY AL HAMPEL

Author of It's Not Creative Unless It Sells