Confessions of an Ad-Man IV: Southern Fried Ads

The Day of the Chicken

The agency I worked for had a chicken account. Well, that’s actually an understatement. We had, as a client, one of the largest fried chicken producers in the country.

The CEO, Hans Wende, was a tough guy. He was an excellent businessman and had grown the company from a couple of fast food take-out stores to a large, international corporation. He was a man of definite ideas and had a deep-seated I-don’t-know-what’s-right-but-I-know-what-I-like philosophy. He was also a very “hands-on” top executive.

The suit on the account was Ken Williams, a totally off the wall, wild and crazy ad-guy, and he enjoyed the role immensely. For obvious reasons though, he played this account straight. It was kind of funny, seeing Ken file normal contact reports and fight with the art department to keep the creative “down the middle.” We were all waiting for the inevitable conflict between Hans, a man who took his business very seriously and Ken, who didn’t really take anything seriously.

We were almost a year into the account, and we knew, as the great advertising guru Pete Wolfe often said in his newsletter, Blood and Guts, “As soon as you acquire a client, you begin to lose him. Your goal is to prolong the process as much as possible.” We also knew that it was impossible for Ken to play it straight for much longer. You could almost see the transformation taking place. He was becoming quiet, reserved, almost morose. He was becoming someone else.

There were a few instances when the old Ken would rise from the rapidly growing pile of ashes. Like the time he had a print ad done for a small family owned ladies clothing shop. The headline read, “Save One Million Dollars this Weekend.” In very small type beneath it was the line, “just buy 100,000 of our dresses.”

What became known in the agency as “The Day of the Chicken,” was the day that Ken couldn’t handle it any longer. The final ad proofs were going to Hans. They were just for his files because he had already approved them and they had been sent to the newspaper. They were promoting the Company’s new, “Family Meal Box.”

After the ads had been picked up by the courier, Ken and Scott, our artist, breathlessly summoned us all into the boardroom. The ad mats, all three of them, were on the wall.

There was a major and immediately discernable difference between the ads on the wall and the ones which had gone to the newspaper. The ads on the wall, which were exact duplicates of the ones that had just been sent to Hans had, emblazoned across the bottom in boldfaced type, “Guaranteed No Beaks Or Claws.”
[BB]
There were mixed emotions around the room. Most of us were in stitches but the agency owner was not amused.

“Chrissake Williams” he screamed. “Are you trying to eighty-six this whole agency? I mean, doesn’t a regular pay-cheque appeal to you anymore?

His rant was interrupted by Sheila, our receptionist. “Hans is on the phone,” she said. Her face was scarlet.

“I’ll take it in my office,” Ken said calmly. “Hey, that’s a fast courier we have. We better keep him.”

We all listened outside Ken’s office. He didn’t seem to know or care that a public firing was a probable event in his immediate future. The walls were paper thin.

“Yeah, Hans. I know. I added that later. Some of our research showed that people were really worried about getting beaks and claws in their fried chicken. Hey man, we beat the Colonel getting to this one. He’ll be copying our ads. You watch.”

When he decided to break it to Hans that it was all a joke, he had to literally screech into the phone to be heard over the Germanic expletives that were so loud in the earpiece we could hear them through the walls.

We didn’t lose the account. Hans spanked us though. He cancelled about fifty thou in media bookings and a bunch of creative stuff we had already started working on. Then he let us back in.

But here’s the punch line. Two years later, the international Marketing Director of Hans’s company was none other than . . .you guessed it . . .Ken Williams.

Scott, the artist, and I were having a beer one night and reminiscing about the “Day of the Chicken.”

I vowed my undying love and respect for the man who had the kind of cajones that would let him pull a gag like that. Scott had a look of awe on his face. We hoisted our glasses to Ken.

Then Scott broke the reverent silence. “I bet Hans makes him wear the chicken suit at the football games.”

We had a few more laughs and a few more beers over that. By closing time we were raising our glasses and yelling “Ken Williams . . . Chicken Man.” We were still laughing as they ejected us from the bar.

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