1983-1988
870 Seventh Avenue, @56th Street
The Omni Park Central Hotel
New York City
Original production home of the Jackie Gleason Show
The early 1990s made us face the limits of the business we’d built.
Starting as a production company in 1983, we made a TV series for the Playboy Channel and promos for TV networks and record companies. Soon we’d evolved into the only company branded cable channels; we’d introduced the idea to our former employers and clients at MTV and Nickelodeon. In 1988, Nickelodeon asked us to become their advertising agency. MTV and other clients soon followed.
At first we loved it. After a couple of years, we came to loath it.
The creative and strategy work was fabulous, when we could actually do it. Our lives had become the grind of supporting the overhead of over 40 people, constantly defending ourselves to clients who’s businesses we’d built from scratch, and constantly looking for new business.
Worst of all, Alan and I had stopped actually working together, the reason we started the agency in the first place. We were managing teams and arguing, not about the work (which would have been fine), but about the guarding of some real or imagined disputes between the members of our respective charges.
And the business of advertising agencies was getting stupid. Clients were coming to the conclusion that they could do much of the marketing strategy themselves, sometimes even the creative. There was constant downward pressure on fees, with the standard —15% of the media spend— coming down more than a point a year. The agency reaction was basically to combine in gigantic roll ups to protect themselves. Fred/Alan itself had buyout offers coming more rapidly every year.
I called Alan one night in February 1992 and before our conversation was over we’d agreed to announce the closing of Fred/Alan the next morning. We had a party for all our current and former colleagues at our offices on lower Broadway, a lot of laughs and tears were had, and locked the doors for good in May.
—Fred
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.
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 Rhythm & Blues Christmas Party
Live music by Dr. John
Soul food from Sylvia’s
Featuring: “WE’LL HAVE A BLUE, BLUE CHIRSTMAS WITH (OR WITHOUT) YOU”
Come with the one you turn to when you’re blue…
Monday, December 14, 1987
6-10pm
Illustrated & designed by Noel Frankel
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.
…we were busy wondering what had happened to us.
By the late 1980s, Fred/Alan had morphed into a full service advertising agency, with writers, art directors, and account, production and media departments. Over 40 people.
We started trying to get some new accounts, the lifeblood of any agency. And not a skill we were particularly attuned to at the time. First step, a agency brochure!
It’s great fun doing good advertising, and we’d had a better run than many. Sure, we’d been critical to the building of MTV, VH-1, and Nickelodeon. And we did some awesome work for Swatch, Mosaic Records, Myers’s Rum, and Barq’s which had driven lots of business for them. It ought to be easy to wrap it all up and brag a little, yes?
Putting together a company hype is a drag, pure and simple. In person, we could speak passionately for hours telling you about what went into our work. But somehow, writing it down was somehow crass.
It began to dawn on us that maybe being an advertising agency wasn’t for us.
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.
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.
