A RICO bust at a sleepy client for an bland product. Go figure, we did great work and had fun.

We introduced the NCR Tower in the shadow of IBM's splashy PC launch and just before Apple's "1984" thunderbolt. Our client was an unlikely gangster. It was perfect.

In 1982 I was recruited out of Geer DuBois to join Backer & Spielvogel, the Miller Lite, 7Up, Hyundai hot shop that everyone wanted to work for.

I was hired to help NCR, the chronically-beige cash register company, launch a line of mid-range computers at the dawn of the technicolor PC era.

Not exactly Apple

National Cash Register, or “The Cash,” as it was known around Dayton, Ohio, had never believed in advertising. My decision to take the job echoed that real estate cliché when considering a lousy property in a great neighborhood: “Location, location, location.”

In 1980’s AdLand, that location was Backer.

NCR invented the modern sales force between the World Wars.

IBM usually gets credit for that, but it was NCR who trained Tom Watson for 15 years before his 1913 firing, indictment and conviction for illegal sales practices before he joined the small tabulating company he built into IBM.

Sales vs. marketing cultures

If you’re a marketer or ad person who’s worked for a sales-driven company like NCR, you know the challenge that presents:

• Sales cultures think advertising is a waste of money. “Salesmen sell products, not ads!” (99% men back then.)

• Marketing and ad cultures think salespeople are stupid. “We drive the business! Salespeople just take orders.”

Each is wrong about the other, of course, and companies need both.

NCR flirts with advertising

NCR’s PC launch was delayed, giving IBM a full two years to stake claim to the PC business before NCR could muster their clunky entry.

IBM’s Charlie Chaplin-inspired “Little Tramp” campaign was massive and highly successful, and this may have finally pushed Chuck Exley, NCR’s buttoned-down, newly-promoted CEO, into AdLand.

A team of recycled salesmen were deployed to find an agency, and maybe they thought, “Hell, we know nothing about advertising—let’s just hire that New York hot shop.”

I get the boring side bet

While playing PC catch-up, and saving the big budget for that launch, NCR decided to advertise the NCR Tower, a mid-range computer for up to a dozen workers that we pitched to small business owners as an alternative to PCs. I was the junior account guy, so I got the nod.

We slalom successfully between IBM and Apple

Richard Mahan, our brilliant young art director, and his copywriting partner, the late, great wit Phil Guthrie, were the creative team who built the Tower campaign. Lucky for us, we put it out there before Apple launched the Mac with their “1984” commercial, the best TV ad ever created.

Here’s our TV spot:

The client panics the night before the shoot

Richard and I were laughing the other day about working with Paul Lappetito—the division head in charge of the Tower. His success in sales didn’t prepare him for dealing with us, and we wrestled with him in good spirits and came to like him.

But the night before the TV shoot his inexperience got the best of him and he came apart at the seams.

He called Richard at home, demanding we change the raw office space you see in the spot to a traditional office setting, screaming “YOU’RE FUCKING ME, RICHARD! YOU’RE FUCKING ME!”

Mercifully, Richard is clinically unruffleable

Richard let him vent while calmly interjecting why the setting was core to the story: two young entrepreneurs building out a bigger office space, with nothing to distract the viewer from their appeal before delivering the product pitch.

Lappetito finally surrendered, became a fan of our work, and the spot won an Effie (our industry’s prestigious effectiveness award.) And in spite of being sandwiched between the IBM PC and Apple Mac launches, the Tower powered much of NCR’s computer business into the early 90’s, surging past its late and not-great PC offering.

Our print ads worked hard with the same whimsy

Print ads in the computer industry were deadly-dull spec sheets back then, and Phil’s copy always invited people in with a smile, then got down to business in a relatable, friendly way.

Turned out our twitchy ad manager was a serious embezzler

While Lappetito developed a taste for advertising, his ad manager, Ed Feltz, had a taste for larceny.

It turned out Ed was the family patsy, coerced into theft by his wife Stella and her sister Jeanette. He was steadily draining funds from our marketing budget by ginning up fake purchase orders for advertising and research and sending checks to the family “business” to buy a house and pay off loans. No wonder he seemed distracted on the job.

I should have guessed Ed had something to hide

His delusional toupee/dye-job/comb-over turducken was a lousy cover-up, painfully revealed one day on a rainy golf course. Whenever he drove me into town for lunch, his car littered with stress management tapes, a seminar would start playing and embarrass him as he started the car.

Maybe I was fooled by the multiple “Lookin’ Good Award!” citations on his cubicle walls, even though his professional and sartorial weaknesses declared otherwise.

We successfully launched several other product lines, including the global introduction of their latest mainframe system for financial institutions. We were a one-office agency but pulled off the campaign through an international network of agencies sourced from Carl Spielvogel’s bottomless Rolodex.

Sales wins out over marketing and advertising

NCR’s 100-year-old sales culture finally snuffed out the ad department and its budgets, and we were shown the door after 3 good years, in spite of it all.

Richard and I are still proud of the TV spot and print ads. We only wish we could toast the campaign’s success with Phil.

I took that real estate analogy to heart, and it served me well

“Location, location, location” played out again when I was recruited to join FCB San Francisco after a wonderful 10-year run at Backer & Spielvogel. Once again, the “location” was the agency, even though the assignment was awful, the agency culture was toxic, and we never took to San Francisco.

I’ll explain all that next week.

Notes & Sources

[The Ed Feltz case]
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/983/1068/466648/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/9/110/540730/