This weekend while watching a baseball game between the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies from Atlanta's Turner Field on TBS, the Turner Broadcasting Station which was originally Atlanta's Channel 17 WTBS. The Braves were wearing their "throwback" uniforms from the 70's. I recalled the first Braves game I attended in Atlanta in 1977.
Sometime during my sophomore year in high school I decided I wanted to be in the Advertising business.
That period in my life was pretty much in the sweet spot of the Mad Men era, and during the first Darrin that was Samantha's husband on Bewitched. The glamour of Madison Avenue in New York, New York looked quite appealing from my perspective on Chestnut Avenue in Oak Hill, West Virginia.
Unlike many that jumped from major to major, I stayed focused on Advertising and was able to major in the field at both the University of Tulsa and took (earned may not be the right word here) a degree in the field from WVU.
During my Junior year in Morgantown I began my search for a career in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, sending dozens of letters of interest to all of the well known ad agencies I had followed for years in my favorite read the trade journal Advertising Age. Occasionally I would receive a form letter in response promising to keep my information on file. My goal was to find an ad agency to intern with the summer before my senior year so as to start feeling comfortable in oak paneled board rooms and refine my taste for dry martinis.
Having no luck with the J. Walter Thompsons, McCann-Ericksons or the Cooper Daniels of the world, my hopes of being a Don Draper or David Ogilvy was waning.
Ever resourceful I started searching local yellow pages for any businesses locally that were classified as Advertising. All that was listed in West Virginia was Outdoor Advertising. Outdoor Advertising, billboards. Billboards, this was not really how I had envisioned myself as the Gregory Peck character in The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, not a guy in bib overalls and a pick up truck.
Rationalizing that these local billboard companies may have some knowledge as vendors of Madison Avenue ad agencies, the same linkage we used to make in small town West Virginia with the big city with the excitement of the Kroger tractor trailer coming to town every Thursday. I wrote letters to all four outdoor advertising companies then in business in the State. Hearing back from two of them, one in Bluefield and the other in Charleston.
Woodie Advertising, in Bluefield, WV was the closest to me, and the President and owner of the company Ralph Woodie had invited me over to discuss my future.
In driving over to Bluefield that morning I was picturing in my mind that I would be meeting with a guy in white overalls with paint and paste on them, chewing tobacco, overweight and probably struggling to get out of his run down pick up because of obesity. Who I met was a handsome fit man in his early 30s, in a tailored suit wearing a Pulsar watch, and driving a new silver Lincoln Continental.
I was excited to find that he had worked on Madison Avenue prior to coming back to the South, to work for a friend of his that owned the billboard company in Richmond, Virginia. He sang the praises of his friend and reinforced all of the attributes of the billboard industry. Woodie told me he would be happy to hire me after my graduation. I respectfully declined, explaining I had New York, LA, or another major market in mind. he understood and told me he would support me in anyway he could including giving me a reference to his friend, Ted Turner who now owned the billboard company in Atlanta.
This experience had pretty much refocused me from Madison Avenue to take the contrarian route of outdoor advertising through Cleveland for a year and back to Parkersburg, WV to manage a company there at the ripe young age of 22.
I learned that every spring Ted Turner hosted a large client party including bagpipers, trapeze artists, magicians, open bars, and some other censurable activities.
The morning after WVU had beaten NC State in the Peach Bowl in 1976, while waiting on a flight I read on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution that Ted Turner had bought the Atlanta Braves Baseball Team to air on his newly purchased television station. He had paid one million dollars down and a million a year for nine years. One hell of a deal, considering the TV station had been paying the Braves $800,000 a year for the rights to carry their games, and Forbes now values the Braves at 450 million dollars.
The Spring of the next year I was asked to make a presentation at a regional outdoor advertising conference to be held in Atlanta and the conference would coincide with "The Party" and another night a reception at the Stadium Club at the old Fulton County Stadium hosted by Turner.
As a 25 year old, I had some trepidation on having to present to a conference of my peers that were all older and more experienced, but the opportunity to attend this infamous shindig and a major league baseball game with a team owner outweighed those butterflies.
"The Party" was all it had been billed to be, held in the warehouse facility of Turner's billboard business. I was able to first meet Turner's best friend and roommate from Brown. Peter Dames, who now was his right hand man in the media business. Pete was quite a character himself and in most circles would be considered a renegade but in the Turner Organization he was the cool calm hand. he shared with me one of Ted's secrets of his successful philandering was that his wife was named Jane, his secretary was named Jane, and his mistress was named Jane. This was long before he met and married Jane Fonda. I suppose you might say he had a Jane Addiction.
A huge rare roast beef and shrimp, bigger than your thumb dominated the buffet table in the oversize suite in which our reception was held. Positioned above the third base line at the stadium. I was at buffet table loading my plate, standing with Lewis Manderson and his new wife. Lewis was a hard driving entrepreneur that had built a large outdoor advertising company in the Southeast. The Manderson School of Business at the University of Alabama is named for him. The Business Schools at the Universities of Texas, Texas A&M, and Arizona are also named after Billboard guys. About that time and expectedly late the elevator doors to the suite opened and out stepped Ted Turner and fellow Georgian and bother of the then President of the United States Billy Carter. They both had cans of beer in hand, it was also apparent that those were not the first that Ted and the First Brother had consumed that day.
Turner and Carter came straight to the food table and Manderson introduced me and his new wife who was wearing a low cut blouse. Turner focused his slurry eyes toward the new Mrs. Manderson's cleavage and said "are those real?"
The party moved outside to the seats in the stadium and a constant flow of people brought dollar bills for Turner to autograph, a practice I had not seen before or since. Other than that and sitting with the Owner the balance of the evening was no different from any major league game I have attended. There was one little hiccup in leaving I was riding with a couple of young guys who worked for Turner in a company car. Well over the legal B.A.L. they managed to hang the vehicle on a curb puncturing the gasoline tank and spilling fuel onto the parking lot requiring fire trucks to flush the spill and me courageously to hail a cab back to my hotel. my presentation was the next morning.
Fortunately the morning session started late in that Pete Dames was the moderator and had to be at a photo op with the Mayor of Atlanta for a billboard they had donated for a new lion exhibit at Zoo Atlanta. Dames had come up with copy for the board himself, it had a photo of lions and the copy read "Visit Atlanta's New Cat House"
Turner went on to start CNN, the Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and other revolutionary landmarks in the cable and broadcasting business. He merged with AOL Time warner and at one point was worth over 3 Billion Dollars. He is the largest individual land owner in the World. Turner's father committed suicide the day after he had purchased the Atlanta business and Ted at 24 years old convinced the lenders to let him continue, and he built a multibillion dollar media empire from the back of a business I once had no respect.
Turner's motto is "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise"
Cheers Ted, and thanks for the invitation.
One helluva bedtime story :)
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