It was the classic Hollywood success story: from mail room to boardroom. Robert Morse oiling his way up the corporate ladder in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Michael J. Fox transforming himself from a naive country boy to a crafty executive who nudges his uncle out of power by means of a hostile takeover in The Secret of My Success.
“When our agency was sold, everybody said, ‘Well, Stuart, you better start looking around for work.’ I said, ‘Nah. I’ve been here 35 years. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. I may lose my job as creative director, but there’ll always be something for me in the agency.’ Wrong.”
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“I said I didn’t want to do it. Really, I said that,” says Novy. “I said, ‘I really don’t care for the guy who runs the department,’ and I liked working in mechanical production. A friend of mine in art direction said, ‘Hey, you’re an idiot! Television is going to be the coming thing. Why don’t you get in on it? It’s going to be the opportunity of a lifetime.’ So reluctantly I went to work in TV production, and after that my career just skyrocketed.”
Novy started out as a gofer. The first client he recalls working with was Evans, the fur retailer. Evans sponsored the late evening movie and had 18 minutes of commercial time per night.
All the direct-response products had prices like $2.98. They’d always come with a money-back guarantee and a few extras. Ron Popiel’s Chop-O-Matic (“You men will love it just for chopping ice”) came with a special secret recipe book from the “World’s Finest Chefs.” M-O-Lene could get any kind of stain out of your shirt: “It’s worth its weight in gold.” Then there was the makeup designed to remove wrinkles: “Doctor, it seems to me you have discovered the fountain of youth.”
“When the Wrigley company first went on the air with Doublemint commercials, they put some restrictions on us,” says Novy. “We couldn’t show people chewing gum. They were concerned about showing people chewing. Second, we weren’t allowed to show Doublemint, the product, because the commercials were in black and white, and there was some feeling that you might confuse the Doublemint package with the Spearmint package. OK, we had to come up with a commercial to sell Doublemint gum–but you couldn’t show people chewing and you couldn’t show the package. The solution was twins.” It wasn’t the first time Wrigley had used twins. In fact, Novy says, Wrigley had been using twins ever since Doublemint was on the market. Still, the Meyerhoff agency’s work on the Doublemint account was good enough for them to secure the Spearmint and Juicy Fruit accounts in addition.
About ten years ago, Meyerhoff was sold to BBDO. Six months later, Novy was out of a job. He attributes it to philosophical differences with the ownership, and doesn’t like to talk about it.
