Ad Men at War
When the two hottest agencies in Texas competed for the Southwest Airlines account, the result was a power lesson in the art of persuasion.
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Grant Richards, Stan’s good-natured, 31-year-old son and a creative head who will run the agency after his father retires, came in with a campaign showing worried executives from other airlines trying to figure out how to compete with Kelleher. And Gary Gibson and Doug Rucker invented a campaign based on the manic, Andy Rooney-like rumblings of Ian Shoales, whose rapid-fire commentaries are heard on National Public Radio. In one of Gibson and Rucker’s scripts, a scowling Shoales exposes the horror of being at an airport (“stuck in a hard plastic seat next to someone with a dripping chili dog and a boring story!”). Then the announcer’s voice explains how Southwest, with its few delays, keeps a traveler out of airports. The ad, even Hripko had to admit, was a winner. Gibson and Rucker just looked relieved that they had hit upon an idea. “I admit, we were starting to get real panicky,” says Rucker, “but we weren’t going to let it show.”
Three days away from the presentation, Richards’ calm manner returned during dress rehearsals. As each creative person read through his scripts, Richards would nod and offer his ultimate compliment—“I think that’s nice”—his voice as soothing as chocolate milk poured down a sore throat.
Instead of just choosing one campaign, Richards decided to present six campaigns to show Southwest the variety of work his agency could do. Included were two of Hripko and Nadurak’s approaches (the Ben Stein ads and “Herb’s Home Videos”), Rucker and Gibson’s Ian Shoales spots, the Little Herb commercials, Grant Richards’ commercials, and Richards own “they make it look easy” ads. The number of campaigns would be a key move in the final outcome. To prove to the Southwest board that his agency wasn’t all that stuffy, Richards arranged to get Southwest baggage-handler suits for himself and his creative teams to wear to the two-hour presentation. Outside the Southwest Airlines headquarters at Love Field in Dallas, Richards secured space on a billboard. WE’VE WAITED 19 YEARS FOR 5 PM, JULY 17 was all the billboard said, a cryptic reference to the time Richards was scheduled to make his presentation and a less-than-cryptic reference to his desire to win the account.
On the day GDS&M and Richards were to make their presentations (GDS&M would present that morning, Richards that afternoon), Richards called a final staff meeting. Richards, true to form, did not make even the slightest stab a pregame pep talk. (“I would never try to create an artificial spirit,” he says. “The best inspiration must always come from within.”) Though the tension was palatable—the younger guys looked as if they were losing their breath—Richards simply asked if everyone was ready. When they nodded their heads, he smiled kindly and said, “Okay, gang,” and walked out of the room.
GDS&M, however, was acting as if it was about to storm the beaches of Normandy. “I felt like Patton walking through the battlefield,” says Spence, “as he told his troops, ‘God help me, I love it so.’ In the middle of the night, I’d walk through this agency—there were papers scattered everywhere, people hard at work, the electricity flowing—and all I could say was, ‘God help me, I love it so.’”
True to his own form, Spence had come up with every dramatic ploy in the book. Secretly, in a room down the hall from the Southwest boardroom, where the agencies were supposed to make their pitches, members of Spence’s staff had created what Spence called the Strategic Air Command. The brought in a circular table with the Southwest symbol, a large pink heart, built in the middle. The put up black-and-brown paneling around the room and big television screens. There the would bring the Southwest review board for their presentation.
In Spence’s most daring gamble, less than a week before the presentation, he had spent the agency’s own money—some estimates, at least $100,000—to shoot and edit fifteen new commercials. During speculative pitches such as this one, agencies always use storyboards to show how their commercials would look. But Spence wanted GDS&M to be completely different. The Warriors had come up with a series of funny fifteen-second commercials—one showed three babies together, two crying and one laughing, with the announcer asking the viewers to guess which one of the three would end up working for Southwest Airlines—and there were also filmed testimonials from such Texas heavyweights as Henry Cisneros congratulating Southwest on its twentieth anniversary.
To demonstrate “The Power of One,” two chartered buses, filled with nearly two hundred GDS&M employees pulled up to the Southwest headquarters the morning of the presentation. All the employees were wearing T-shirts with “Together We Stand” printed on them. Some of the employees had highlighted out of that phrase with red in the words, “Get Stan.” Mysteriously, part of the Richards’ billboard was obscured by a large hand-lettered sign that read, “Good Luck, GDS&M!”
When Richards, back at his own office, heard about the billboard, he looked genuinely stunned. “That’s so high school,” he said gravely.
But that is the way the advertising business works: It runs on passion as much as it does on logic. For all the money and research and focus groups and marketing studies that go into creating an ad—for all the hours that a writer and an art director will spend to make sure the words are just right—the best advertising is usually nothing more than playing on an audience’s emotions. As Spence and the other partners made their presentation, the GDS&M employees quietly gathered in the lobby of Southwest’s headquarters. At the end of the presentation Spence, Wally Williams, Tim McClure, and Judy Trabulsi escorted Herb Kelleher to a balcony overlooking the lobby. As soon as they got there the GDS&M employees began singing “Stand by Me.” Yes, GDS&M went with a jingle, and Herb loved it. Spence and the others came running down the stairs, shouting and giving high fives, to sing with the group. Herb, moved by the display, began to cry.
When members of the Richards Group heard what had happened, they said, “We just lost.”
But at five that afternoon, when the Richards Group started its pitch, there was renewed hope. As Hripko read his Ben Stein commercials, Kelleher laughed so loudly that Hripko had to stop to make sure all the others could hear him. The review board also roared over “Herb’s Home Videos,” Little Herb, and Ian Shoales. Consultant Jack Trout said afterward, “Richards obviously demonstrated the most creativity of all the agencies involved. He was the most creative in using humor.”
That night the Richards group had its first company party ever in a little beer joint near Love Field. Stan, predictably, didn’t come. But everyone else was there, shaking each other’s hand, saying, “They loved it. They loved it.” But, the revelers knew the odds were against them. “Southwest wasn’t necessarily ours to win, no matter how well we did,” recalls Rich Flora. “We knew GDS&M would have to screw in their presentation for the account to actually move.”
The truth was that GDS&M did better than Richards in one critical area—the theme line. “when the positioned Southwest as the premier short-haul carrier,” says Trout, “they took the lead. Richards, with its ‘Beat the System’ theme line, showed what Southwest’s benefits were, but the never defined the airline except to call it different from other airlines. That wasn’t enough.” Moreover, says Trout, Richards made a mistake by presenting so many campaigns, “leaving a lot of us confused and distracted over which way he wanted to go. After GDS&M had finished, I said [to the Southwest board], gentlemen, this looks like a different agency than the one that used to work for you. Their work hangs together and it’s consistent. There’s no reason to fire them.” In fact, the board, without much hesitation, returned the account to GDS&M. In a prepared statement, Southwest said GDS&M was the “clear winner,” but GDS&M had agreed, in turn, to bolster the number of creative people working on the account and give Southwest more attention.
GDS&M had three parties over the next week to celebrate its presentation and victory. Spence had “Stand by Me” played over the company’s loudspeakers, and he barreled around the office pounding backs and shouting, “The Power of One, the Power of One!”
The morning after his presentation, Stan Richards and his staff were back in the office promptly at eight-thirty. The familiar hush had returned to the office. Stan’s young Turks were already busy on their other projects. Richards knew there would always be someone else knocking on his door (the week after he lost Southwest, he won the $10 million Whataburger account and soon after got the $6 million Memorex tape account.) But at noon, he gathered the entire agency for one last speech.
As usual he seemed unperturbed, faultless-looking, like the people one sees enjoying life in advertisements for luxury cars. “What an extraordinary performance I saw from you yesterday,” he began. “We have been absolutely a great agency over the last several weeks. It was a remarkable effort, and what resulted was brilliant work.”
He stopped and looked at his people. The air conditioner whirred overhead, emphasizing the quiet. “I want to say…” he stopped again, his eyes blinking quickly behind his glasses. Thomas Hripko, leaning against a wall, peered curiously at his boss. Could it be? Was the great Stan Richards actually close to tears?
Richards tried again. “Whether we won or lost doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “We accomplished much more than that.” Richards’ voice trembled, and for a few seconds he tried to calm himself. Finally, he said, “I just want to say that I’m proud of you all.”
And in the stunned silence that followed, the stoic aristocrat turned away, walked down a hall, and disappeared into his office, returning to his work.
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