The search is on for advertising's new stars By Richard Morga

It's symptomatic of the times, I suppose, that two of the most interesting personalities in advertising aren't even from it. One of those is Robert Lou

That’s not to say Madison Avenue is completely bereft of personality, though the business does seem to harbor fewer and fewer characters. Some egos remain outsized, sure. But their ability to command interest seems to have contracted with the advertising economy. A lot of this makes sense: Self-preservation is more motivating than self-aggrandizement; flamboyance isn’t nearly as compelling these days as creativity. Besides, more than a few individual personalities got lost–some on purpose, I suspect–in newly formed corporate ones.
Omnicom appears particularly prone to disappearing acts. Allen Rosenshine, who as BBDO’s chairman runs Omnicom’s largest unit, remains among the industry’s top managers and strategists. He has all but abandoned, however, his once active role as industry spokesperson. A Nexis search of ADWEEK stories in 1987 produced 38 mentions of Rosenshine; the same search for last year saw the number of citings fall to eight.
Keith Reinhard, who runs DDB Needham, Omnicom’s sister agency, also has a lower profile. His number of ADWEEK mentions fell 43% between 1987 and 1992, although Lou Tripodi, the public-relations master who crafted Reinhard’s enviable image, claims his boss’ visibility has stayed high inside the agency. “There’s just so much attention and space the outside world is prepared to give,” Tripodi says. “That’s why you create new stars . . . . Andy Berlin (president of the agency’s New York office) is our new guy on the block, and we’re delighted with all the attention he’s getting.”
The newest guy in all of Omnicom, however, is Bill Tragos–the “T,” as he’s so fond of saying, in TBWA. Omnicom, which announced plans to acquire TBWA a week ago, has promised Tragos & Company plenty of capital and complete autonomy. And the 58-year-old Greek American, who remains as passionate about the industry as he does about his own agency, promises to exploit both. “I want to be as famous in America as I am in Europe,” admits Tragos, who has served as TBWA’s chief since the agency’s 1970 origins. “It may take me five more years, or maybe seven, but I’m going to get there.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Tragos makes it, to see if he can transcend the black hole not just of Omnicom but, increasingly, of the entire industry. TBWA’s outspoken leader certainly enjoyed his previous stay in the limelight, even though it was years ago in Paris, where as the brash, young Yank who ran the Young & Rubicam office he captivated the French to the degree he could claim, in a typically Tragosian way, “I used to be the Mary Wells of Europe.”
The mere mention of the name renders some old-timers wistful. Advertising used to be a cult of personality as much as a discipline in image manipulation. And, in the best cases, it still is. Earlier this month, at a Duke University conference on the need for advertising archives, Kristin Anderson, vice president of community affairs at Leo Burnerr Co., ran a decades-old clip of Leo himself talking to his assembled troops. It was the famous “That’s when I’ll take my name off the door” speech, an articulation of values by the agency founder, who died way back in 1971.
The speech is still shown to every Burnetter every year at Christmas and to new employees within two hours of starting work at the agency. It’s also shown to new-business prospects, much to the dismay of Jerry Della Femina, to mention another of advertising’s few remaining lights. Della Femina’s shop, like Burnett, was pitching Sony, and both were pulling out all the stops. Della Femina admitted to making a special plea, promising, for example, to write all the ads himself.
Burnerr made a special plea as well, showing its founder as preserved on film. The tape supposedly made all the difference, prompting from Della Femina the sort of candor that makes him such a personality. “Sony would rather work with Leo dead,” he surmised at the time, “than with me alive.”
Of course, not everyone applauds Della Femina’s penchant for publicity, Tragos’ perceived arrogance or, for that matter, Burnett’s Midwestern homilies. The prevailing sentiment these days–especially in light of the criticism aimed at today’s attention-getting Turks like Donny Deutsch and Richard Kirshenbaum–is that one’s work should speak for itself. That’s all well and good, but it seems to me that when advertising spoke best for itself there were also a lot of willing and articulate spokespeople around who were unafraid to imbue it, as well as themselves, with personality.
Copyright Adweek L.P. (1993)