Transcript
Introduction
Who was this Albert Lasker whose energy and imagination ran in so many directions at once? And who was, in his own words, driven by 1,000 devils? His friends considered him charming, brilliant, thrilling and exhausting. His subordinates admired him enormously and dreaded his arrival at the office and the tumult that inevitably ensued.
Clients quickly learned that there was no such thing as a half embrace of or by Albert Lasker. He pursued life with a fervor that offended and alienated many people. "A lot of people can't stand me," he once admitted, "because they think I'm too aggressive and too dynamic. Little men," to use his terminology, "were driven off by it. Big men, such as RCA's David Sarnoff and American Tobacco's George Washington Hill, drew energy from it. They looked forward to fighting with Lasker. They learned from him, too.
"He's the only man I felt I'd like to murder every now and then," Herbert Field confessed, almost 20 years after being pushed out of his senior position at the advertising agency, then adding, "There isn't a finer man living." "I'd like to kick him in the back," said a former associate who left under duress, but then added, "I've never met a man as colorful and viral and as personable as Mr. Albert Lasker. Never." Lasker's energy and passion infused both his personal and professional lives. And sometimes, those 2 lives converged.
One Monday morning in 1939, his top lieutenants gathered for their weekly state of the agency meeting. This was no ordinary Monday, however, it was the first meeting after the very public unraveling of Lasker's second marriage, a disastrous union with a Hollywood starlet that fell apart even before their honeymoon ended. Everyone in the room knew all the salacious details. All were eager to see how the boss would handle the situation.
The door from Lasker's office opened and he walked in and said, "Gentlemen, in his life, every man has a right to make one mistake. I have made mine," and then the meeting began. Lasker, who's often referred to as the father of modern advertising, exerted an enormous influence on his industry. Before he arrived on the scene, advertising agencies were mostly brokers of space in newspapers and magazines. With Lasker's prodding, the industry became a creative force and began earning substantial commissions.
Lasker worked his magic by relying on the power of ideas. The list of companies and brands that he held to launch or revitalize, in large part through the selective amplification of powerful ideas and in part through his own instinct for drama, is unparalleled in the history of advertising. Lasker invented a particular kind of ad agency, one that delivered high service to a relatively small number of key accounts, most often driven by a personal relationship between himself and the head of the client company.
The result was high margins and for Lasker, enormous personal wealth. He maintained close relationships with dozens of powerful business people and applied the insights he gained in one context to give advice in others. "Give him an equal knowledge of the facts," said RCA's legendary head David Sarnoff, "And I'd rather have his judgment than anybody else's I know." Sometimes Lasker failed and failed spectacularly, but he always rebounded.
Lasker's scope and impact were nothing short of astounding, and he knew it. "There wasn't a living American in so many ways each day partially responsible for people doing as many things as I was," he once commented, "That is provable," he said. Lasker was blessed or cursed with an extraordinary high energy level, but there was another side to this intensity. He suffered most of his adult life from a major depressive illness. At the age of 27, he experienced a complete mental and emotional collapse. "I could do nothing but cry," he said. And unfortunately, for Lasker, the pattern set by this first breakdown persisted for most of his life.
I always say that I got over all my breakdowns, except the first one. He slept poorly, drank heavily. Under the influence of alcohol, he once attempted to drive a horse-drawn carriage into a bar. He suffered from dramatic mood swings and indulged in impulsive behaviors. Drawing on his reserves of energy, self-awareness and determination, Lasker fought back against his illness. He survived and flourished.
His rare ability to put troubled geniuses to work on challenging problems, legendary advertising talents like John E. Kennedy and Claude Hopkins grew in part from the fact that he himself had been driven by 1,000 devils. In his final years, Lasker developed an absolute passion for anonymity in everything he did. Little by little, Lasker became invisible. The curtain that Lasker created between himself and the pages of history became almost impenetrable. This book parts that curtain to reveal the man behind it, the real and extraordinary Albert Lasker. The man who sold America.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century and it was written by Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz.