A Smile from Pyle.

I didn't ask Lesly for her permission to use this from her site.
But why wouldn't I?

Like Walt Whitman, today's guest-writer, Lesly Pyle contains multitudes. She's funny. Warm. Ambitious. Brave. A connector. And a bit of a trouble-maker, the characteristic I most-admire in another human being.

Lesly wrote me last week with the news a lot of ad people are dealing with these days. I wrote back with my usual old man wisdom. "Don't hide the news," I said, "Use it." And moments laters, Lesly sent us (it's for all of us, after all) this wonderful post.

Enjoy it.

And enjoy Lesly's Lesly-ness.

And hire her.

When you do, you owe me one.

Copywriting Portfolio: PyleOfWords.com

LinkedIn CV: LinkedIn.com/in/Friscomoon
Email: friscomoon@mac.com

Best-Selling Dementia-Fundraising Book (with more stories like the one below): PyleOfMemories.com

Angels & Demons | A Tale of Two Agencies

By Lesly Pyle

 

_____ 

 

Cut to 2000.

 

I graduated from the University of Oklahoma in June and moved to San Francisco shortly after. You could say I was a Sooner fresh off the Schooner.

 

My first post-collegiate job was at an incredible ad agency called Foote, Cone & Belding. FCB for short. FCB was known for its creative work — and its equally creative pranks.

This story is about the latter.

 

I was only a month old at FCB when my fellow creative assistant, the mysterious Michael Burbo, approached my desk with a mischievous grin on his face. This was not rare. Michael Burbo was always up to something. He spoke from a 3/4 angle, never quite making full eye contact. This kept him in a stance poised for a quick escape should the need arise.

 

“Look, kid, Bacino called,” Burbo said.

 

Oh boy.

 

Any sentence with the words “Bacino called” was worth leaning in for. Brian Bacino was our boss. He was a Group Creative Director who was kinda like a don. But the fun kind. If Burbo was scheming, Bacino was likely behind it.

 

“Bacino’s at a Giants’ game with the Top Brass,” Burbo said. “They’ve ordered ‘Black Ops’.”

 

Burbo and Bacino spoke in code. It was a great education for this small-town Okie to learn how to decode their cryptic language. But, by four weeks into my four-year tenure at FCB, I had figured out some basics. If the Top Brass were at a baseball game during the workday, this meant two things:

 

They were drinking.

 

And they were thinking.

 

A few days before this fateful phone call, the ad agency across the street from us, GMO Hill Holiday, put up a little sign in their window facing our building. It had basic black letters on a white sheet of copier paper. The lack of visual panache plus its punchy tone made us suspect that it was designed by a Copywriter. It had only two words:

“FCB SUCKS.”

 

“FCB SUCKS.” We got a big laugh about our little brother from another mother calling us out. Both agencies were owned by Interpublic Group — a giant holding company that got gianter recently when it merged with the mothership, Omnicom.

 

FCB was the big kid on the block and felt no guilt about humiliating our brethren publicly. In fact, the command to do so had come from FCB’s executive leadership at the last game of the Giants’ regular season. They were masterminding a sinister plan between overflowing cups of overpriced beer, whilst cheering their hearts out to send the Giants to the post.

 

Bacino gave Burbo a budget.

 

Burbo gave us the green light.

 

The FCB Fox Force Five was led by Michael Burbo. He recruited the rest of us. Brian Tocco, a fellow creative assistant, who was Burbo’s best friend and best pranking accomplice since childhood. Ward Evans and John Benson, a creative director team, who played in a band with Burbo. And the Okie who nobody really knew but trusted with Top Secret intel anyway. I wondered if it was my Gomer Pyle naïveté that got me the nod. My band of brothers shouted my last name like Sergeant Carter repeatedly: “Pyle!” “Pyle!” “Pyle!” That joke never got old. For them, anyway. But if that’s what it took to be part of the hijinks, I was happy to fall in line.

 

FCB’s and GMO’s buildings were smack dab in the middle of the San Francisco “Ad Ghetto.” Yes, that’s really what it’s called. The Ad Ghetto. Our office was seven stories tall with a modest roof deck. GMO’s was only three stories but they had a much larger rooftop. The kind where you could throw all-staff parties. In three days, the Blue Angels would perform their annual Fleet Week Flyover. Ad agencies were always looking for excuses to party. Fancy flying was more than reason enough.

 

The FCB Fox Force Five had little time to prepare our disproportionate response to the 8.5 x 11-inch “FCB SUCKS” sign taunting us from across Pacific Ave.

 

Cut to October 5, 2000.

 

At 0900, we enlisted the FCB championship softball team. We drafted the players with the strongest arms and the tightest lips. Until our strike, you could count the number of people who knew about our secret mission on two hands.

 

At 16:00 hours, from our lookout atop FCB’s building, we saw trays of charcuterie and tables of booze being carefully arranged on GMO’s roof deck. Perfect. It would soon be full of unsuspecting victims.

 

We waited for the right moment. The GMO crowd was at a quorum. The Blue Angels’ aeronautical acrobatics appeared overhead.

 

Ward Evans was a creative by day and a musician by night. He played a few instruments but on tap for this day was one in particular. His trumpet. He tooted the iconic “Attention” bugle call. Everyone across the street turned their awe from amazing circles in the sky over to us. We stole the Blue Angels’ thunder. Our plan was working already.

 

Ward’s bugle call was our team’s cue too. John Benson and I unraveled the first of two king-sized sheets which cascaded down the side of our building. It held our giant two-word retort:

 

“HEY GMO.”

 

Ward trumpeted again. Burbo and Tocco released our second sheet to reveal the ultimate call to action:

 

“SUCK THIS.”

 

It might not have won a Titanium Lion for copywriting excellence but it got the point across.

 

For the next several minutes, the FCB bombardiers pelted GMO over and over and over again with water balloons. We had buckets of balloons in our armory. Allegedly, our assault was all caught on tape. The softball team’s captain also ran the in-house A/V Studio.

 

With the help of long-range slingshots and throwing arms like cannons, we targeted GMO’s trays. Splash! Food went flying. We targeted their booze. Splash! Bottles went flying. We expected all of this.

 

But what we didn’t expect was their reaction. Or lack thereof.

 

We thought our sibling rivalry would just keep escalating into an “Ad-nerd War for the Ages” with antics press-worthy enough for the front page of trade magazines like Ad Age. First things first. We needed GMO’s counterattack. Aside from a half-hearted attempt to dump buckets of water on our heads during a Pacific Avenue block party, it never came.

 

A different headline made the news instead. GMO had just laid off much of their San Francisco staff. Many of the people we had just soaked from head to toe had just lost their jobs. We literally rained on a parade that had already been deluged.

 

We eventually got ours.

 

A few months later, FCB went through a large layoff of its own. It rendered our big seven-story building that housed 500 people unnecessary. And we had to move.

 

Our office was converted into luxury condos. We watched this sad transition take place from FCB’s new home, across the street, in none other than GMO Hill Holiday’s recently vacated space. FCB continued to shrink and had to move again in a few years. “600 Battery” has since been known as a doomed address for ad agencies. Commercial real estate seekers beware.

 

Cut to 2022.

 

I moved again. This time, to an agency far, far away: The Richards Group (TRG) in Dallas, Texas. On my first day, I met one of TRG’s group creative directors and fellow copywriters. He’s a neighborly fella named Mike Bales. He told me he had also moved to Dallas from San Francisco.

 

“Where did you work in 2000?” Bales asked.

 

“FCB,” I said. “You?”

 

“GMO Hill Holiday,” he said.

 

Mischievous grins appeared on both of our faces.

 

“And to answer your next question,” he said, “Yes, I was there.”

 

But he’s yet to admit if his was the infamous window that faced FCB.

 

Cut to 2025.

 

In another twist of fate, the author of this story, Lesly Pyle, was laid off from TRG and she’s now looking for a job. Contact her for creative positions and/or creative shenanigans. She’d like to thank George Tannenbaum for giving her this space so this story would finally see the light of day in an official advertising trade magazine: Ad Aged, not to be confused with Ad Age.