Who are those two maniacs in the swimming pool? A little glimpse into the way it was when we ran our first agency
Dozy old codgers always moan on about the good old days. So this is my turn.
When we got our first agency going one of the cheeriest sounds on many afternoons was the happy clunk as another empty bottle of champagne landed in a wastepaper basket.
In the back of our Covent Garden office was a table-tennis table. Kim Marriott, Chris Jones and I were the champions.
At Christmas parties cocktails were mixed in dustbins. Did our clients come? You bet.
Every time it was someone’s birthday we all went to the pub at lunch – and came back late, if at all.
When we grew too many for this practice to work we would take over a restaurant for the afternoon and all go out, leaving one person to answer the phone.
We would have jolly car rallies and country house jaunts. I recall seeing one bright young executive’s husband climbing up the side of a building somewhere in Sussex. When last I heard he was a high court judge.
En route to that little do my wife and I stopped because we saw some goats with a lot of people in a field. Thus I became – and remained for many years – a member of the Hampshire Goat Circle without owning a goat. Why not?
One year we piled into a coach ant went to a stately Lutyens manor house.
Someone had baked a cake containing a stimulating substance to go with champagne aperitifs consumed en-route.
So we were unusually boisterous that day. The owner of the place found one of my art directors – a studious looking chap – quietly reading in the library.
“Are you in charge of this lot?”
“No. That’s the two guys in the swimming pool”
Glenmore and I had jumped in with all our clothes on to follow a lady who had taken most of hers off.
Yes; we worked like hell.
But now you know one way to build a business and sell it for a lot of money in a very short time.
It’s called making it fun.
Thirteen years after I sold that business to O & M and it no longer existed it was still listed high on a poll of the most desirable places to work in London.
And you can take your missions, your visions, your strategies,your CRM, your Content Marketing and your Social Media and stick them wherever you bloody well please.
