Posted 1/10/2011

REAL-LIFE "MAD MEN" : THE GREAT SCRUFFER PEN COMPANY CAPER

Dear Reader –

We are going to tell you a true story of some of the real Mad Men of the 1960s. The names have been changed to protect the miscreants. Most are actually composites of actual people who populated one advertising agency during this incredible era. I think you will find these stories make the television version look fairly bland. The story is about the Bland, Sham & Fawn advertising agency of Chicago. The chapter below deals with the Great Scruffer Pen Company road trip.

One afternoon at 5:30, five of us boarded the Santa Fe Super Chief to begin the Great Scruffer Pen Company new business solicitation. We were taking the train because Scruffer Pen was located in Fort Madison, Iowa, which did not have an airport. The train was the only way to get there.

We had a high-powered group going to Ft. Madison. The presentation would be headed by agency president Peter Bland. Bob Lewis would do his song and dance about the importance of marketing, segmentation, brand positioning and other kinds of esoteric hoo-ha. Our creative director, Bruno Lipnick, would attempt to entertain and dazzle the client with a reel of our very best television commercials. I, Carl Forester, would follow by describing the market results of these efforts, attempting to tread the fine line between salesmanship and misrepresentation. Keith Billingsley would talk about the importance of client service.

The meeting would conclude with a serious, sincere and appropriately boring discussion of agency management philosophy. At the end, Peter Bland would rise, thank the president of the Great Scruffer Pen Company for inviting us, and ask for the order in a gentlemanly way. Then, in the best traditions of selling, we would turn down an invitation to lunch and get out of Fort Madison as soon as possible.

According to the rules, you always wanted to leave on a high note. Hanging around for lunch could only lead to mistakes like someone spilling a drink on the client's president.

Fort Madison was not all that large. The Great Scruffer Pen Company was the second largest employer in town. The largest was another pen: the Iowa State Penitentiary. The old Anthis Hotel still stood by the railroad tracks, harkening back to the way western towns looked 60 years earlier, before the invention of the airplane. Rooms were small, but contained all-over tile bathrooms which were quite large and out of proportion to room size. After dinner, drummers (salesmen) still sat in the lobby with their hats planted firmly on their heads. As expected, there was a substantial bar where bourbon was the preferred beverage.

There was a second reason for taking the train. The Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad was one of our accounts. We won it after the former agency deserted the company in order to take on the much larger-billing United Airlines account.

The executives at Santa Fe still felt depressed about being dumped after a 25-year association, but were very kindly disposed to us. As a result, the company had agreed to provide us with the famous "Turquoise Room" dining car. Because the trip was only four hours, we didn't bother with other accommodations, planning to drink and feast for the entire trip. Service in the Turquoise Room was magnificent. Expensive champagne was served, followed by a seven-course meal, topped off with much brandy snifting.

In working with the Santa Fe, we had inadvertently discovered the reason railroads had failed in the passenger business in America. The entire railroad workforce was trained to give its very best service to management and executives traveling on the train. The next tier of service was given to Santa Fe's suppliers, people like us. The lowest level of service was reserved for the passengers.

Bruno Lipnick, our creative director, did not hold his alcohol well. He had gotten more into brandy snorting than sniffing, and needed to be helped off the train. He once had passed out at dinner in the famous Coq d'Or in Chicago, slumping face down into his mashed potatoes. A mean-spirited account supervisor had bribed the waiter to bring in an oversized napkin, large enough to contain the plate, food and silverware. The bundle was tied around Bruno's neck and he was put in cab for home, which caused some problems in domestic tranquility.

The five of us entered the venerable Anthis Hotel in Fort Madison sometime after midnight. After checking in, we were planning to go to our rooms when Peter suggested a nightcap. After some negotiations, the bar was re-opened (having already closed at 9:00). Unfortunately, nightcaps led to a poker game which went on until 3:00 in the morning. By that time Bruno was nearly comatose, so our account executive, Bob Lewis, offered to take him up to his room.

Fifteen minutes later I followed and was surprised to find that Bob and Bruno were still in the lobby, apparently engaged in serious negotiations with a drummer wearing a hat. Because we had to make our presentation at the Great Scruffer Pen Company at 8:00 in the morning, I felt the need to help Bob get Bruno to bed.

It took some time to break up the negotiations, which had become bellicose over price. It seems that Bob was trying to sell Bruno to the visiting drummer as a dancing bear. The drummer, who appeared to have been drinking heavily, had agreed to buy Bruno, but was incensed over the price of $150. With the astute skills of a divorce lawyer, I managed to separate the parties and helped lead Bob and Bruno to their rooms.

The last thing I remembered of the incident was falling asleep in my room at 4:15 a.m. An hour later I lurched up in bed, having been stabbed with the hot poker of heartburn. I got up and went to the bathroom to mix a little baking soda and water while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. As I was mixing, I noticed that the mirror began to slowly fall away from me. I reached out, grasped the shelf and pulled the mirror back into place. As I was stirring the stomach remedy, the mirror again began to fall away. Quickly I reached out, grabbed the shelf and pulled the mirror back into place.

Although puzzled by the mirror's curious behavior, I grasped the glass and lifted it to my lips. I closed my eyes in swallowing. Opening them, I was horrified to see that the mirror had fallen a long way away from me. Frantically I reached for the shelf, but missed it.

The next thing I remembered was the sound of the alarm, which seemed a long way off. It was. To my great puzzlement, I found that I was lying on my back on the floor of the bathroom. As I cleaned up, shaved and dressed, comprehension gradually came to me. The bathroom mirror had not been falling away from me. I had been falling backward away from it. I realized the strange truth of things after feeling the painful bump on the back of my head.

After finishing dressing, I hurried down to breakfast, where I was met with a shocking surprise. Agency president Peter Bland was sitting at a large table, apparently in great pain. His face was snow white, which called attention to an ugly two-inch vertical gash in his forehead. He was lightly dripping blood into a linen napkin.

Sitting down, I asked, "Peter, what happened?"

He looked at me with his fearful blue eyes and exclaimed, "I think Bruno killed himself last night!"

"Bruno killed himself? What makes you think that?"

Dabbing the napkin gently to his forehead, Peter explained. "I was asleep on the second floor, just under Bruno's room on the third floor, when I heard a terrible crash. The noise was terrifying and I was showered with plaster and dust falling from the ceiling. Then there was no sound at all. Still as death. I'm sure Bruno did something terrible to kill himself."

"Falling plaster cut your head?" I asked.

"No. When the plaster started falling, I jumped out of bed and ran for the light switch, but I missed it and ran into the open bathroom door. I smashed my head and fell down, passing out. I came to about a half hour ago and have been sitting down here ever since. I tell you we have to do something. Bruno killed himself!"

With some thin light seeping into my brain, I asked, "What room were you in?"

"102, right under Bruno's room," replied Peter.

Patting his hand reassuringly, I mumbled, "Bruno didn't commit suicide. He was in room 302."

Eyes widening and looking slightly relieved, Peter asked, "Then who was in 202?"

Sheepishly, I admitted that I was in room 202 and explained my crashing down on the bathroom floor over his head. I was the one who had been responsible for sending debris cascading down on him.

Before Peter could absorb all this, Bruno staggered into the dining room looking for us through tightly slitted eyes.

Before I could celebrate in Bruno's Lazarus-like reappearance, Bob Lewis came into the room, looking brisk, efficient, sober – and terribly rumpled. This was shocking because Bob had always prided himself on his ultra-neat and clean appearance. He was supposed to look good because we were proposing him as management representative. Which meant he wouldn't have to know much about Scruffer Pen's marketing and advertising, but he would have to schmooze and golf with Scruffer's president.

"What happened to your suit?" grumped Peter.

"When I got to my room, I fell asleep in my suit and forgot to unpack the other one." (This was before the era of hanging cases.) "When I looked at them this morning, one was terribly rumpled and one was terribly creased. I chose rumpled. Do you think I can still go to the meeting? And what happened to your head?"

"I had an accident. We we'll talk about it later." Looking around, Peter asked, "Where's Billingsley?"

He directed me to find Billingsley, who in 40 minutes was expected to appear in front of the president of the Great Scruffer Pen Company as our outstanding marketing expert. I had the desk ring his room. There was no response. I went up to the second floor and pounded on the door. Utter stillness, except a door opened down the hall and the drummer who had tried to buy Bruno as a dancing bear peered out, wearing long johns and a hat. Assured that there wasn't a fire or anything, he mumbled obnoxiously and disappeared back into his room.

I couldn't find Billingsley anywhere. What I didn't know was that Billingsley, in his greatly depleted mental condition, had lost his key and stumbled around trying different doors on the second floor. He had found one unlocked and plopped himself down in bed. While I was frantically looking for him, he was snoring peacefully, fully dressed, in room 211, which was officially unoccupied.

When I reported Billingsley's disappearance, Bland blanched an even paler shade of white. Going from "Bruno killed himself" to "Billingsley disappeared" in one short, already stressful, morning was too much for him. He sat back over his black coffee moaning to himself.

It was quickly decided that we would proceed on to the Great Scruffer Pen Company headquarters, where the four of us would make the pitch. I would do an imitation of a marketing expert and we would try to get through it by extending Bruno's slide and film show. Peter would make brief introductory remarks and sit down.

Forty-five minutes later, we had shaken hands with the tall, patrician President of the Great Scruffer Pen Company and were all seated. From the head of the conference table, the president stared at us aligned on the other side. He saw what must have looked like an extremely weird traveling road show. Weird for Chicago, but far, far out for Fort Madison.

A white-faced man with a gashed forehead rose to start the presentation. To his right was a creative director with both hands at the side of his face, each index finger attempting to prop open an eyelid. To the white-faced man's left was someone who appeared to have slept in his suit. The seat next to me was empty, possibly occupied by the spirit of Keith Billingsley, who snoozed blissfully back at the hotel. I appeared to be gently stoking the back of my head, hoping the bump wasn't showing.

I don't remember much of the presentation, except that we got through it. But we had the good sense to decline the gracious invitation "to lunch at the club" and skedaddle early.

We ate something at the Anthis and downed it with Bromo Seltzer. In the afternoon we took a cab to an airport at an adjoining town which contained an unscheduled airport, which I had never heard of either. We bought our tickets, the desk man locked up the counter, grabbed a huge red flag standing against the wall and ran outside to the air field, where he waved frantically as a plane flew overhead. The plane wagged its wings, circled and landed. We loaded up and were off to Chicago.

Two days later Keith showed up in the office. He lost a day because the flag man wasn't able to get the plane to stop that day. He insisted that the reason he missed the meeting was because no one had bothered to attempt to wake him. He told us that he had really given the desk personnel a piece of his mind, but the hotel insisted he had not slept in his room.

A week later we were notified that we had won the advertising account of the Great Scruffer Pen Company. We had been selected to introduce the first felt-tipped marker designed for writing and not marking. We did a good job in test markets. Our introductory campaign got everyone to buy one Scruffer marker. But because they wouldn't write, the whole thing failed.

A few years later, Papermate introduced the same idea in a brand called Flair. Their product actually did write, although most people used it for doodling. It was a huge success.

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