Tag Archives: confessions of a mad man

Some guys get all the luck… My friend George Parker of Adscam fame is a world-renowned authority on advertising and some of the bits that go with it (like the occasionally illegal things that help you pass the time on ...

“There’s an extra heavy vehicular loading situation on the Bay Bridge” droned the voice of the traffic dude floating out of the multi-thousand dollar Blaupunkt in my pristine banana yellow Porsche Targa, as I sped up the fast lane of ...

One of my first tasks as Dorland’s “Agency Fireman” was to save the Dubonnet account which, even though it was a popular woman’s drink, was despised by beer guzzling, British men who regarded anything that didn’t come in a pint ...

I arrived back in England in 1972 after ten years in New York. In those days, anyone with that amount of American advertising experience could write their own ticket in London. However, being a schmuck, I allowed myself to be ...

My favorite Benton & Bowles client was Heublein, which was one of the biggest distillers in the US. Their best-known brand was Smirnoff vodka, but they had dozens of others, from high-end imports to nasty, low-proof, canned cocktails aimed at ...

Besides my never to be forgotten adventures with Mr. Whipple, another account I worked on at B&B was Maxwell House Coffee, one of General Foods’ biggest brands. In common with P&G, General Foods researched the shit out of everything they ...

There’s always been a perception in the business world that advertising agencies have an unlimited license to print money. Back in the glory days of the sixties and seventies, this was accepted, because most agencies, in collusion with the avaricious ...

After arriving in New York in the booze and drug fuelled Mad Men sixties, my first task was to get a job. For two weeks I trudged the concrete canyons of Manhattan lugging my oversized portfolio of samples. I soon ...

When, in 1963, as a snot nosed 23 year old, I disembarked at pier 96 from the Queen Mary (the one that’s now a conference center in Long Beach), my sole objective was to get a job on Madison Avenue, ...