The story behind a big-time ad man
Ad man Palmer was relentless in making deals by staying step ahead of competitors
Let’s Get Frank By Robin Brunet | Douglas & McIntyre 223 pages, $29.95 The acknowledgments page of business writer/biographer Robin Brunet’s study of legendary Canadian advertising executive Frank Palmer thanks the book’s subject for showing the author “you can be thirty-nine forever.” The back page seems a weird place to start a book review. But it’s quite fitting for Vancouverbased Palmer, a man known to do things in exactly the opposite direction as his peers to secure a deal.
And beat them time and time again doing it that way.
Coming out of a city that, for once, is accurately described as a “graveyard for ad agencies,” Palmer and former partner George Jarvis built a company that looked forward and took all kinds of chances. The result was a firm with a contemporary vision of what an advertising agency — in Canada and elsewhere — is and can be in these digital days. Palmer Jarvis sold to DDB and is now a global player.
That it makes for an interesting read should come as no surprise to industry types, who know well that this is a man who generated $108 million in fees in one year, the result of around $800 million worth of sales. An imposing figure with a penchant for really goofy practical jokes, Palmer boasts “encyclopedic knowledge” of his industry and global trends.
This description seems almost cliche in business biographies, but Brunet does a good job showing readers how his subject keeps on top of so many trends. After he consumes four newspapers every morning, he visits dominant industry websites, reads an assortment of magazines, books and gossip rags and keeps tabs on assorted online sources.
Then Palmer gets down to the “hunt.”
His aggressive style is well known and a host of competitors and former employees turn up to offer insight into his no-holdsbarred approach.
Coupled with the friendlier methods of Jarvis, Palmer Jarvis was able to build itself into a highly influential business securing accounts such as McDonald’s for all of B.C. in 1973.
Throughout Let’s Get Frank, stories of Palmer’s knack for doing deals to get clients turn up again and again. From creating a new company (subsequently folded) to taking on the Labatt account in the early 2000s to serving Mr. Tube Steak to hungry staff at Playland and Pacific National Exhibition during a day of pitches, the “value-added” acumen is well worth noting.
Naturally, a fellow like this isn’t all peaches and cream and there are examples of where Palmer put off people. Everyone has faults and this man is no exception. But what mostly emerges in the book is a businessman with boundless energy, an eccentric-but-fair nature and an eye to the future.
Now 78, Palmer’s prediction that Google, Apple, Facebook and gaming companies “will steal all the agencies’ clients in a few short years” is met with that active, creative mind considering what the new business model could be for creative agencies to continue to matter well into the future.