How IBM Changed The Playing Field

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Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein didn’t win the IBM PC Co. account. Merkley Newman Harty did. But the way GBS/S.F. co-principal Jeffrey Goodby sees it, that was almost as good. ‘What that review showed is that anyone can win anything,’ Goodby says. Before the IBM win, billings at the New York-based shop barely topped $40 million. A few years ago, an agency so small wouldn’t even cross the lips of a client with an account of IBM’s size or prestige.
For that matter, a blue-chip company like IBM wasn’t likely to travel any farther West than Soho for an ad agency either – believing as they once did that ‘legitimate’ advertising came from Madison Avenue.


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