After my many decades in the ad game, it’s not surprising that I was interviewed on network TV commenting about the 2012 Super Bowl commercials.  What’s surprising is the network that I was interviewed on. Al Jazeera.  When they called to ask if I was willing to do the interview, all I could think of [...]

Our new agency, Cohen, Pasqualina, Timberman, was in its first year of business and we were going nowhere fast. All the accounts that we thought would come flocking to our door were not flocking. Feeling desperate, I pored through the Redbook of advertisers looking for a prospect – a live one – anyone who was [...]

After decades of inappropriate behavior in the ad business, we’ve arrived at an age of extreme political correctness. No longer will people in the workplace be treated with disrespect due to race, age, sex, religion or political persuasion. To understand just how far we’ve come, return with me now to those naughty days of yesteryear [...]

I was sitting on the deck of our rented Fire Island house sipping coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times when my art director friend, Gary Geyer, pointed to a small, unassuming ad and said, “Hmm, this looks interesting.” The ad said something about a concert that was going to be held in a [...]

PETCO ProtestorsIn our fifth year as agency of record for Petco, they hired their third new marketing director.  As is usually the case with the new guy in power, he was determined to put his stamp on the advertising.  So, even though our campaign was helping Petco set retail sales records, we began searching for [...]

After all of my years in the ad business, you’d think I’d be a little jaded.  But actually,  I’m a hopeless believer. One day, when I was in a  TV coma after watching non-stop football for six hours, I snapped to attention when a commercial came on for the best thing I had ever seen [...]

This business has taken me to  many wonderful places, all of them made more special with Carol by my side.  (That’s her standing by the door at a Diet Rite Cola shoot in Paris in 1972.) She was the girlfriend I took to an Alka Seltzer shoot that launched the line,  “Try it, you’ll like [...]

Like most kids, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.  All I knew was that I liked to play with words.  I wrote all kinds of silly stuff, from sappy poems, to rhymy-dimy song lyrics, to corny puns. But if there was one seminal moment when I realized the [...]

Stan Dragoti was the guy who directed the hit movies “Love at first bite” and “Mr. Mom.”  But before he was a Hollywood success, he was a big star at Wells, Rich, Greene. Most guys were pretty jealous of Stan because, besides being tall and dark with leading man looks, he was also a very [...]

As a wise friend once said to me, “Howie, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” This could not be more true when it comes to pitching new business and trying to guess how well you did in the meeting. I’ve been in pitches where our team fired on all eights.  [...]