Our last office

1991-1992

Fred/Alan, Inc.
708 Broadway @4th Street
New York City

Our first office

1983-1988

870 Seventh Avenue, @56th Street
The Omni Park Central Hotel
New York City
Original production home of the Jackie Gleason Show

Our cabride through history.

A Cab Ride Through History [fronts here, backs here] Publish at Scribd or explore others.

The cool thing about advertising is you get to do a lot of different kinds of work. The drag is that it’s the clients’ work and the agency, in the end, has to do what it’s told. So, when there’s a chance to do stuff with yourself as the client it’s a lot of fun.

We were moving to our third office in a decade (by this point “we” was Fred/Alan the ad agency and Chauncey Street the TV production company), down in the East Village, so we used it as an excuse to have a hoot. Art director Tom Godici contacted some artists we’d worked with (like Joey Ahlbum) and some we were looking forward to meeting (like Leslie Cabarga). Alan and creative director Bill Burnett wrote some amusing copy about some classic New York landmarks off the tourist paths, we printed a postcard folder, and our moving announcement was complete. On the first day in the new office we had an art show of the original illustrations (we had space for a small, private art gallery, where we were to have shows every month), and a good time was had by all.

And, it gave Fred a taste of what was to be his continuing obsession with promotional postcards.

A belly dancing soul christmas.

We started having Christmas parties in 1985 because it was so damn hard to figure out which clients and hope-to-be-clients to give presents to, and exactly what to give them. We figured it would probably cost us the same to party and everyone would be happier anyhow. The first year we rented out the Museum of Radio & Television; everyone thought we were classy. Then a roller disco; they thought we were fun.

By ‘87 Fred/Alan had morphed into a bona fide advertising agency and we were so horrified at the thought a great party was in order. Luckily, Ed Levine and Noel Frankel had joined our ranks. Ed had recently produced one of the best Dr. John records ever and thought he could talk the good Doctor into our budget on an off night for the band. Noel, a brilliant art director, knew about our soul music obsession and one day in a planning meeting did the invitation illustration completely with a Wite Out brush tip!

We rented out a belly dancing joint on 8th Avenue, put out some checkered tableclothes, catered soul food from Sylvia’s, and Fred/Alan raised the roof on the greatest R&B club north of the Mason-Dixon. From then on our parties were legendary.

Fred/Alan buys the New York Times.

Fred/Alan didn’t do too much advertising for itself (it was expensive), so we tried to make every one count.

The New York Times was, by far, the most influential publication in advertising. In the 1980s Phil Dougherty had a repuation as the most honest, authoritative columnist in the business, and any ad in the Times would guarantee sales for your client.   Well, why shouldn’t we be our own client, and use the Times to generate new business leads? We could buy remnant space at will for less than half price, our current clients would feel like they were with a pretty together agency, and businesses outside New York would take notice and call.   Did it work? You bet.

The movies we never made.

We originally started Fred/Alan to make TV shows and movies. Finally around 1985, somewhat stable as a business, we tried ‘getting into the movies’ with something other than a ticket. We’d always liked quickie teen movies and there was a popular spate of them happening right then so we took a flyer and somehow succeeded (we really had no idea what we were doing) in optioning the rights to one of the most popular (and strangely controversial) songs of the rock era, “Louie, Louie.” A script was written by Alan, Albie Hecht (pre-Nickelodeon fame), and our director, Tommy Schlamme (pre-fame as the executive producer of The West Wing).

This ad was put together for the back cover of the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards program, figuring that something might happen. We got of a lot of attention in Hollywood and subsequently optioned two other garage band classics, “Wooly Bully” and “Wipeout,” wrote a couple more scripts, and…nothing. We were busy with the agency, and ultimately, we probably just didn’t want it enough yet.

Fred/Alan Reunion, 2004

Jill Gershon was an account executive at Fred/Alan in the late 80s, and she kindly decided to put on a party for those of us she could locate. The result was a wonderful time for all (though Fred had to leave early due to a severe allergic reaction to Jill’s cats).   We thought we’d commemorate the event with a small poster run for the attendees. Maybe it’ll inspire another get together.

We loved posters, especially Fred, who collected (and still collects) more of them than was healthy. Any time we could come up with an excuse we made a poster. This one was a direct cop from a poster Fred had made by the world famous Hatch Show Print in Nashville for one of his cartoon series in 1998.

Fred/Alan spent a fair amount of time promoting itself; we had to get new business after all. But, of course, like all creative companies we had a lot of cool things we wanted to do, and the best client for cool things is always yourselves.