Letters to the Editor

DRAFTFCB: A GUIDING LIGHT

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lewis Lazare's doom-and-gloom appraisal of the Draft-FCB merger as one of the darkest moments in the history of the ad business is 180 degrees off target (“From the Big Chair,” Oct. 15). Time will prove it to be the guiding light to new horizons for the marketing and advertising industries and a boost for the sales profession.

The marriage of Draft and FCB will converge two disciplines into a cohesive selling force which will couple branding and awareness with the power to convert them to sales action.

Buyers are at the center of the marketing universe. Nothing happens until somebody buys something. There's no profit in products and services. Manufacturing, transportation, warehousing and financing are all costs. Profit results only when goods are moved. To do this takes talented general and direct advertising people as well as salespeople to persuade consumers to buy.

DraftFCB has the power to become the industry's new pacemaker, bringing impressive advertising into focus with advertising that makes a sales impression.

The only “oops” is that a merger sometimes results in one faction dominating the other. I believe Howard Draft has the management moxie to channel the creative thinking of people from two different areas of experience into a common synergy. This will benefit the staff, the client and the industry.

This merger — or marriage, as I prefer to call it — brings the better of two worlds together. If the two marketing disciplines can establish a dialogue of meaningful information throughout the agency, this marriage will become a beacon lighting the way to our industry's future.

The stars are all in alignment for this marriage to be successful. In the early 1900s Albert D. Lasker was president of the Lord & Thomas advertising agency (the predecessor to Foote, Cone & Belding). Lasker was a newspaperman who apprenticed himself to Lord & Thomas. He wanted to learn about advertising from the agency viewpoint before returning to newspaper work.

He found the answer he was looking for, and the credit goes to a man named John E. Kennedy, a former member of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police who'd become interested in advertising. Kennedy's concept was simple: He said, “Advertising is salesmanship in print.” Then he added, “Give the consumer, in an interesting way, the reason why it is in [his or her] interest to buy the goods you have for sale.”

This is the highest form of salesmanship in the printed, spoken or electronic word — convince or persuade readers that they should buy because it's in their best interest to do so, and not because you merely have a desire to sell. This concept is FCB's taproot, as well as direct's clarion call.

Consider all this in the light of more on FCB's background:

• Don Belding shared with me his concept of advertising copy: To give it that “me to you” appeal, he counseled copywriters to write a direct mail sales letter to a friend, then apply the same personal tone and perception to the ad.

• FCB is rooted in direct. When Lou Scott was FCB's president, he brought two direct marketing gurus, Stan Rapp and Tom Collins (now Direct magazine's “Makeover Maven”), together and formed the agency Rapp & Collins.

• When FCB acquired the Seaboard Financial account (later to become Avco Finance), he brought in my agency, Smith & Hemmings, to do the direct mail presentation. FCB did the image and awareness branding and Smith & Hemmings converted to direct mail sales. In 1988 FCB bought Smith, Hemmings & Gosden.

You can see, I hope, that the genealogy of the direct and general families is a pedigree for success.
Bob Hemmings
Hemmings IV Direct
Pasadena, CA