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'The Last Three Feet of Selling'
Madison marks a decade as local advertising's Lone Wolf
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Business New Haven
2/16/2004
By: BNH
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Russ Madison is the president and creative director of Lone Wolf Advertising in Woodbridge. The novelist and veteran ad man (a co-founder of the New Haven ad agency Mason & Madison) says he writes on rolls of paper towels, not on a computer.
This is your tenth year as Lone Wolf Advertising. How did you get to here from there?
I started as a writer 35 years ago with Hepler, Gibney & Hill in New Haven; they were a fairly large agency in the '60s. Then [I moved] to Chriurg in Farmington, Boston and New York City, also a fairly large agency. Eventually I said the hell with it all and I formed my own shop with Bill Maier, who still has [an agency] up in Farmington.
After a few stops along the way I went to work with Charlie Mason, who had an agency. We eventually renamed it Mason & Madison. Ten years ago I formed Lone Wolf, although we do have three of us working here. The mindset is a lonely one. We pride ourselves on being relatively small and being out for larger accounts, which we are successful at landing.
What is the core ingredient for a successful client-agency relationship?
You and the client have to be on the same wavelength. They must let you do what you want to do. They have to run the business and you have to do the marketing. It's more or less hands-off, 'Let us do it.'
What makes for great advertising and how
do we know it?
Forget what you've learned, and operate existentially. It's one thing to write a plan for a year, but there are so many aberrations today you have to keep your finger on the second hand of the clock, not the big hand.
The average retail business with an agency that's really doing it, they'll know after 60 days if it's working. [With a manufacturing company] it's relatively the same but it will take a little longer - four months, maybe six months. If your work is innovative and you hit the right target and you have the proper bucks, you should get a return on investment relatively quickly.
Is there any general thing that people are doing advertising-wise that stands out to you?
Overall, advertising sucks. Eighty percent is a waste of money; 20 percent is marvelous. That threads through all of the media. [National] television is a waste. Not necessarily locally: I've seen spots locally that have the right strategy, reached proper demographics and even when the production was lousy it made sense. The big pros in the 'hot shops' no longer know what the street language is all about. Maybe Nike knows, they're appealing to the whole hip-hop culture.
How do you appeal to the 'street' for your clients?
I draw on 35 years of experience in the street, various occupations. I was an apple picker, a laborer, worked in the factories - and I use all that. When others would say, 'Let's use focus-group research,' I've done that. But when I walked out I would say I already knew the answer.
What makes a failure?
All the current automotive spots [commercials] you can see on local television. If you study those spots you don't know what you saw. There is no way any sane individual could say, 'I know the name of that auto dealership.' Some appear to be national spots shot by L.A. agencies that have no idea what the mindset of the New Haven buyer is.
When do you decide you have to do something more radical?
I do that at night when I'm sleeping. I go to bed with a project in mind, I wake up during the night and I have the solution. It's always a process that is like DNA - it's almost something you can't explain. You either know how it works, or you don't. It's something that is not academic. It's like I'm tuned on for the clients 24 hours a day.
What are the most significant changes over 35 years?
The disappearance of the term "the last three feet of marketing." In years past there used to be what was called 'belly to belly' selling. All the other techniques ended up with that face-to-face sale. That last three feet has almost vanished, because of the Internet and all of the other stuff that has entered our lives that has intercepted that relationship.
What do we have to change in advertising?
We have to get back to it. I say that the Internet somewhere up the road will have a nervous breakdown. People will not be able to deal with it. The Internet will fail, ultimately - all of our relationships are falling apart from human to human. I even see it in our office. I find it hard to relate to someone who is constantly using that damned monitor. I won't use a computer at all. I have a lot of respect for it and I see what others are able to do with it. Others don't understand that at some point it interferes with what we are doing. No one thinks anymore - they just look.
How is the 20 percent of advertising that is good being produced?
On paper towels.
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