Many years ago, I worked in the mail room at advertising
giant Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) in West Los Angeles.
It was the best job I ever had. My astonishing ability to
quickly sort mail into the proper mail slots made me a
perfect fit for the gig. I was also a master at refilling
the soda machine, making photocopies and confiscating the
booze left over at various in-house client meetings.
Besides, it was loads of fun. My cronies and I were privy to
practically everything that was happening at the agency …
we knew all 200 or so employees … and our job couldn’t
have been easier.
Better yet, I was paid a princely sum of something like
$16,000 a year. Woo-hoo!
And they said my college degree would never count for
anything.
However, what really made the job worthwhile was a discovery
I made in the bowels of FCB’s storage area. I’m not sure
what I was doing down in the basement, but I came across an
advertising treasure trove that had been cast off and
forgotten.
To understand its significance, you need to know a little of
the history of FCB.
FCB is the successor agency to Lord & Thomas — the agency
owned by advertising legend Albert Lasker that employed
advertising pioneers Claude Hopkins and John E. Kennedy.
When Lasker retired in 1942, he sold the agency to three top
executives: Emerson Foote, Fairfax Cone and Don Belding,
hence the name Foote, Cone and Belding.
Over the course of his long career in advertising, Lasker
made something like $50 million. And the secret to his
success was ensuring that his copywriters and clients
understood that advertising is — as John E. Kennedy put it
— “salesmanship in print.”
Alas, by the time I worked at FCB, nobody there even knew
who Lasker, Hopkins or Kennedy were. They — and all the
great principles they taught — were mostly forgotten or
simply dismissed as irrelevant to modern advertising.
Branding and image building were the name of the game. And
they seemed to trump the desire for actual sales.
Anyway, the treasure trove I discovered was a collection of
ancient ads — presumably from Lasker’s day — along with
copies of a couple of John E. Kennedy’s long-forgotten books
and pamphlets (this is long before the internet made such a
discovery rather ho-hum).
Having already been exposed to the teachings of copywriting
great Gary Halbert and marketing superstar Jay Abraham, I
instantly realized I had a gold mine on my hands. And it was
just sitting there, dusty and forgotten.
So I made copies of everything I found so I could read it at
my leisure. And then I made the trade of a lifetime, one
that benefited my copywriting career immensely.
In return for a copy of everything I’d discovered, Gary
Halbert gave me a multi-year subscription to his copywriting
newsletter The Gary Halbert Letter, while Jay Abraham gave
me a copy of his legendary course, Your Marketing Genius at
Work.
I was on top of the world. And before long, I was working
for Jay as an employee, and even found myself invited to
three all-expenses paid junkets to Gary’s legendary Florida
copywriting seminars in the early 1990s.
As a result, I got to know great copywriters such as John
Carlton, Dan Kennedy, David Deutsch, Loretta Duffy, Brad
Antin and Carl Galletti.
Okay, so why am I telling you all this? Because I recently
stumbled across the folder holding all these treasures. And
it occurred to me that you might find some value in these
ancient manuscripts.
So I’m considering scanning them into my computer and
turning them into a Special Report or two. If you want a
free copy, click here to email me and I’ll send you a link
as soon as I get it online.
