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WHEN Brower took over BBDO in 1957 from BBDO President Bernard Cornelius Duffy, it was like a batter following a home run by Babe Ruth. Ben Duffy, one of the shrewdest and best-liked admen ever to stroll Madison Avenue, had built BBDO from a smalltime outfit postwar into fourth place in the industry before he was forced to retire from active leadership after a stroke. No sooner had Brower taken over than he faced a passel of trouble. Revlon, Inc. pulled out its $7,000,000 account. Then, to avoid trouble with its $17 million American Tobacco account, BBDO resigned its $1,500,000 account with Reader's Digest, after an unfavorable cigarette article appeared. "Being an intellectual uninterested in money," quips Brower, "I resigned the one that billed the least."
Brower reorganized and streamlined the agency in what he himself describes as a "blood bath" that swept out many employees. Then he set out to get new clients, won such new accounts as CBS, Air France, Book-of-the-Month Album Club, Coty, Gallo wines, and the $7,000,000 Valiant account, which proved so successful, says Brower, that "we lost the account—Dodge said that they just had to have us."
BBDO's rebound has netted Charlie Brower far more than he lost. This year BBDO will soar past its 1959 billings to reach an alltime record estimated at $235 million. Charlie Brower intends to make billings even bigger by exporting his smart sell. Last week he was off to London to give aid and comfort to BBDO's first overseas branch. He spent a night on the town, wrote a presentation before dawn, and sewed up a new campaign for Britain's Double Diamond beer before lunch.