Among the fondest memories I have of life in the ad biz are my early years. I got into the business in the summer of 1968, when I was twenty, and knew nothing, other than the fact that all I wanted to do was write ads.
My advertising career began at a department store chain in New York City – S. Klein on the Square – in the advertising production department. I worked for a man named Mario, and the stories I could tell about my short tenure there would take up a couple of chapters in a book, so let’s just say I never met anyone who cursed as much as him, yelled as much as him, or worked as well under pressure as he did.
I made friends with the Lucille, the copy chief, who had “real” ad agency experience and spent many hours talking to her about the advertising business. Hearing the stories about pitching new clients and working on campaigns was wonderful for this impressionable young adman, and the more we talked, the more I wanted out of the S. Klein asylum and into a real agency environment.
I got my wish relatively quickly. Lucille knew a woman who owned an agency named Claire Advertising, and they were looking for a production trainee and someone willing to do messenger work. It wasn’t creative, but I wanted that job, since I figured once they met me, they’d realize I was a creative genius and they’d have me writing all their ads.
Silly me. I got the job, but the only genius there was the agency’s owner, Claire Bauman, a legitimate Mensa intellectual who would — over the following seven years — teach me about advertising, business in general and life in particular. She was tough, but fair, and frighteningly generous. She gave me a trip to Jamaica as a gift for working hard. Claire knew I was an audiophile with no money, so one day she asked me what speakers would be best for her stereo system. She purchased what I recommended, and when they arrived at the office and I asked if I should bring them to her apartment, she replied, “No Tommy, take them to yours.” Again, another gift for her young protégé. She also wrote every tuition check for my college education.
These presents were wonderful, of course, but the best gift she gave me was what she taught me about advertising. All I had to do was watch her in action. How she worked with our clients. How she developed a campaign. The rationales she wrote. And how she ran that agency. I had a front row seat at a live performance of “How the Advertising Business Works” and Claire was the star. There is no question that the things I learned from this brilliant woman helped me understand so much more than how to write a better headline and structure body copy.
Forty-six years in the advertising business is a long time and I’ve learned a lot. I have a long list of heroes whose work I’ve tried to emulate that include, Bernbach (I worked for him, too), Ogilvy, Krone, Gage, Wells, Lois, Levenson, and Paccione. They were creative revolutionaries, giants in our industry, who had a lot more prominence than Claire Bauman, to be sure. But to this day, when I’m finishing a concept, I often wonder, “Would Claire approve this?” If I can honestly answer, “Yes,” I know I’ve done something good.
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