MADMEN The Story Behind The Story
Three Days Without Sleep
Another Panic Presentation
11 Yorkville Ave
Toronto Ontario
1985
When people ask me:
“what did you do?” Meaning of course what work I did. For the
most part I was an audio/visual producer in Toronto. My dad Erik
Dzenis taught me the basics in photography, fine art as well as
commercial art; he was pretty good at all three. Although he preferred to
be known professionally only in the world of fine art. Norman
Rockwell was never able to shed his illustrators tag when he crossed
over to fine art. Erik managed both worlds. He was recognized
internationally both for his oil paintings, as well as his commercial
art.
Photograph or hand painted? Look closely.
Briefly, I produced
approximately 3000 corporation business presentations for Fortune 500
Companies and their advertising agencies. Mad Men of course
refers to the TV show with the name, the behind the scene story of
what went on with the world biggest advertising agency at the time,
McCann Erickson. For a period of 5 years I produced most of their
corporate presentations for McCann and their clients for their office
in Toronto; Coca Cola, Kodak, American Express and 40 other big
names. I also did a number of presentations for their New York
office.
For the most part it
was as the name suggested, Mad Men; complete insanity. It was a love
hate relationship. The agencies loved it when I bailed then out of a
tight spot, but they always knew what was coming; they hated it when
I gave them the invoice. Usually when they called me it was because
they were late again. They needed a presentation in a hurry; that
meant the standard 200% compound charges. If the slide normally cost
$100 for a normal time frame, it went up to $200 then to $400 each.
That was where the hate came in, a business presentation could
easily go from $5000 to $20,000 because someone went “oops”.
It may sound like a
lot, however we would need to stay up two or three nights in a row
without sleep to finish their presentation; redo's. I had to
mobilize a team including copywriters typesetters, and artists etc.
We did not know about the damaging effects of sleep deprivation back
then; Get er done was the narrative. McCann had their fair share of
the biggest accounts in the business, J. Walter Thompson was their
biggest rival at the time. I did work for over 40 major agencies.
All our artwork was produced on a drafting table, all the special
effects photography was done photo mechanically. The only computer
assistance we had at the time was phototypesetting; no Power Point,
no digital art.
It was 2:00 am,
there was a frantic pounding on my front door, it was a little scary.
I opened the door, it was a Senior Vice President from the New York
office of McCann Erickson. He had just flown in from NY to
personally take over a presentation that went bad; his glasses were
cracked. He looked so desperate when he said: “could you help me?”
We had that sort of arrangement with McCann, they knew they could
call me on short notice 24.7; they did many times. You might think
they would learn their lesson at some point and not underestimate the
complexity of a presentation; they never did. It only got worse, I
suppose in part because they knew in the back of their minds, I would
always bail them out.
No digital art back then, everything was done by hand. Erik painted the entire series for American Express Gold Card Series in conjunction with the King Tut exhibition in Toronto at the time.
In this particular
case, it was the American Express presentation; they needed to
convince AE they should retain the stewardship of this multi million
dollar account. By all accounts the account was in serious jeopardy,
way more than they realized. Not only did they miss their time frame,
but the selected format was not going to work out. They selected a
xenon projection system for a really big screen, 100 ft plus; except
the typeface they selected was not readable. I warned them of this
ahead of time. If we somehow managed to produce the presentation,
nobody would be able to read it. Try telling that to a hot shot
executive in a panicked state.
My pal Dave Reppen was an art director at Paul Phelan and Perry
He sketched this poster for me. He handed me a note under the table at one of our meetings wondering if I knew of anybody looking for a good art director. Fortunately I did not know of any agency looking for one. A few weeks later he was promoted to VP soon to become the president of the agency.
I advised them as I
always did, you left it to the last minute, there's a chance it
won't get done. It could be full of mistakes, and it will cost a
fortune. In this case I took it upon myself to produce a parallel
presentation to have ready when they finally came to grips with their
big mistake. When the time came to show them their presentation, 5:00
am just before the team left for the airport to fly to Mexico. There
was a collective groan from the team, they all realized if they show
up with this mess, they would most certainly lose the account. By
contrast, a collective sign of relief came when I pulled out the backup presentation that could actually be read. Love/ hate. It ended
up costing them a small fortune.
The team got back
from Mexico, the meeting was a success, McCann retained the
stewardship of AE. Now it was time to face the music, to explain to
the president how the thing went out of control. That's the hate
part. To save their own skins, one of the junior execs attempted to
blame the fiasco on me; after what I did for them.
I called my pal Vic,
a Senior VP in the Toronto office. Uncle Vic was always my go to guy
at the agency, whenever there was a problem, Vic would solve it. I
told him. I want an apology from the company for how I was treated, I
want to know I still have the account, and of course I needed this
huge invoice to be paid. I had to give my car ownership to the
typesetter to finance the second presentation at 5 in the morning.
Vic looked dismayed, he said: “Ed you might not get any of that”.
Just what I needed to hear after 3 days with no sleep; it was a
little stressful.
A couple of hours
later, Vic called to say you will get everything you requested. It's
too bad it came to that, but that was the nature of the business. It
costs a lot of money when people screw up; that was one presentation,
it went on like that for about 15 years.
A few slides from an agency presentation for my pal Ray Kundinger.
Often on a Friday
night, McCann and JW would show up at my door with presentations
competing for the same account. Not usually done in the business,
conflict etc. All other AV houses back then were required to sign a
non-disclosure contract because of the propitiatory information in
the presentations. They knew better than to ask me. I would do both
presentations and I would always know ahead of time who had the
better presentation and who would most likely win the new account.
More importantly I
would do presentations for the two biggest cola companies competing
for shelf space at major outlets, that was a little more touchy, but
I was never asked to sign the non disclosure. I did these competing
presentations for five years. The new business presentations were a
real time marketing course, a behind the scenes look you could not get a
course at the university level. I would do these presentations and
then take off to the country for a few days to recover.
