A Winter Dream(17)

It took me less time to get to work than I had planned, so I got a coffee in the building’s lobby.

I felt like a kid on the first day of school in a new town. I hoped they played nice.





CHAPTER


Ten


Last night I had a peculiar but hopeful dream. I was in a photo studio. Everything was white and lit so brightly it was difficult to see. Suddenly there was a man wearing an orange suit, orange sneakers and an orange shirt and bow tie. He was leaning against a black cane.

“Welcome to the first day of your new life,” he said, flipping his cane. “This is where we play hardball.”

“Do you think I’ll make it?” I asked.

He looked at me with a wry grin then said, “You can bank on it.”

Joseph Jacobson’s Diary





Chicago is home to some of the greatest advertising agencies and admen of all time—pioneers in marketing like Albert Lasker, Fairfax Cone and the great copywriter Claude C. Hopkins.

These names may mean nothing to you, but they should. These Chicago men defined advertising before the world even knew what it was. They have influenced your life far more than you know, and likely want to believe. For instance, if you drink orange juice, you’ve been affected by Lasker, because before he sold us packaged orange juice, people only ate oranges.

These legends of marketing have made household names of brands like Goodyear, Van de Kamp’s, Quaker Oats, Marlboro and Palmolive. The fact that many of the campaigns that defined these brands were designed nearly a century ago makes it even more astounding.

Leo Burnett, the founder of the agency that had hired me, was also one of the pioneers of the field, and the agency that bears his name is legendary. Burnett, who started his agency in the midst of the Great Depression, understood how to reach people through imagery. He gave us cultural icons that survive today: Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie Tuna, the Jolly Green Giant and the Marlboro Man. For a young adman, I was walking hallowed halls where the giants of the industry had walked.

I was stopped near the elevator by a security guard who walked me to the first elevator and rode it with me to the twenty-first floor. “This is your stop,” she said.

The reception area was contemporary and hip: frosted green glass panels lined the wall, behind a white reception counter nearly 50 feet long seating nine or ten employees. The ceiling was open, exposing ductwork and lighting fixtures, all of which were painted black. On the far end of the counter, hanging from the ceiling, was a pair of eyeglasses 12 feet long, as iconic to Leo Burnett as the cigar was to Churchill.

At the reception desk, a young Asian woman with a telephone headset and orange hair even shorter than mine, looked up to greet me. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Peter Potts.”

“May I ask your name?”

“Joseph Jacobson.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobson.” She pressed a button on her phone. A moment later she said to me, “Someone will be right with you. Have a seat, please.”

A few minutes later a young woman walked around the corner from the far end of the reception area. She was probably a couple years older than me, with long blond hair. She smiled at me as she approached. “Mr. Jacobson?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, standing.

“I’m Kim. Mr. Potts has been delayed a few minutes. He’s asked me to show you upstairs.”

The elevator’s ceiling was paneled in colorful stained glass set in a pattern that looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch. We got out on the twenty-seventh floor.

“This building is the Leo Burnett Worldwide headquarters. We have sixteen floors and more than seventeen hundred employees. Twenty-seven is one of our creative floors.”

Kim led me into a large open office space, a jungle of cubicles, each individually decorated to show its tenant’s creativity and personality—the Monopoly guy, a jungle, a collector of superhero figurines, and a Wizard of Oz fan. One cubicle was simply painted with jail bars.

“Here’s your desk,” Kim said, leading me to a plain cubicle. “I’ll call you when Mr. Potts arrives.”

“Thank you,” I said.

After she’d gone, I looked over my small, austere cubicle. I sat down and sighed. Back in Denver I had had a private office. One of many changes, I thought.

Painted in rainbow colors on the wall across from me was:

We are

eternal

students of

human

behavior

“You’re the new guy,” a thin, tinny voice said behind me. I turned around to see a man leaning against my cubicle. He was tall and blond, with a slight underbite. I pegged him at a year or two younger than me. He wore John Lennonish, wire-rimmed glasses.