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WORKING in a plain-shoe office that does not even boast air conditioning, George Homer Gribbin, 55. presides over Young & Rubicam (1961 billings: $260 million), the nation's third biggest agency. "We're always described as the second-best agency, right after the agency that's making the pitch for itself," says Gribbin, grinning behind his Mephistophelian eyebrows. Prime reason is that, unlike some of his competitors, Gribbin encourages his copywriters to exercise their individual style, on the theory that there are no hard-and-fast rules for producing effective advertising. Some of the results: those ads in which the Life Savers look good enough to nibble right off the page, and the discreet "Modess . . . because." Michigan-born and Stanford-educated ('29), Gribbin broke into advertising as a copywriter for Detroit's J. L. Hudson department store, worked his way eastward to Manhattan's Macy's before joining Y. & R. in 1935. A dry, reflective man who claims to play "the worst golf in the ad business," he won his spurs at Y. & R. with his whimsical ads for Arrow shirts and Borden's "Elsie the Cow" campaign.
BROWER: The Frank Critic
MADISON Avenue's favorite phrasemaker is Charles Hendrickson Brower, 60, the shambling, 6-ft. 4-in. president of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, which had 1961 billings of $248 million and is the U.S.'s fourth largest agency. A onetime English teacher who describes his forebears as "New Jersey peasants for generations," Brower made his name at B.B.D. & O. as a copywriter with an infinite capacity for hard work. Propelled unexpectedly into the presidency in 1957, he was promptly hit with the loss of the $7,000,000 Revlon account. His reaction: "I'll just go out and get seven new $1,000,000 accounts." He did even better, personally hooking the $12.5 million Pepsi account and the $21 million Dodge account. Feared by his colleagues for his "terrifying frankness," Brower is nonetheless much sought after as a public speaker, won wide attention a few years ago by asserting that the U.S. was verging on decadence with "the two-hour lunch, the three-day weekend and the all-day coffee break. What we have to do is teach that work can be fun—that the only reward life offers is the thrill of achievement." No decadent himself, Brower lives in an unpretentious New Jersey home that he bought 20 years ago, and until recently mowed his own lawn.
BURNETT: The Midwestern Marvel