BOC Week 4: Jerry Della Femina, The big idea

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Jerry Della Femina is an American advertising entrepreneur and restaurateur.
Jerry started in advertising in 1961, as a junior writer and shortly after he started his own agency, Della Femina Travisano & Partners, in 1967. After he sold his agency he stayed on for another six years. He took all of six months to open two hugely successful restaurants and a very popular food market in New York. Then he decided he was bored again and opened another agency called Jerry, inc. in December 1992, with the announcement that he had been awarded the Newsweek account. In the first year, the agency added Marvel Comics, The New York Mets and Financial Security Assurance, among others, to its roster of clients. In May 1994, Jerry, Inc. merged with the New York office of Ketchum Advertising, forming Jerry & Ketchum. The alliance with Ketchum brought on board such clients as Coty and American Express Travel Trade. (http://www.dellafemina.com/jerry.html)

To me he seems like a very busy man and like he didn’t really care what people thought. Any reaction is a good reaction. He released a book called From Those Wonderful Folks That Gave You Pearl Harbor, he was trying to promote his new client Panasonic, which is a Japanese electronics company. The war was not even twenty years old yet and this book came out. There were many WWII vets that were not very happy about the title of the book and how he was almost promoting the war. But this showed that there was something new and exciting coming out and Jerry wanted to be know and make a difference. After that he wanted to keep doing things that were out of the norm, so he wrote a few other books and produced more advertisements that were attention getters.

Back in the day in his agency he had a way of running things that would defiantly not fly today. Every week they would have all the employees write down the name or names of someone that they would like to sleep with. They had different categories such as opposite sex, same sex, and even ménage a trois. They had over 300 voters. The first three couples would receive nights in the Plaza hotel, sex toy stores and everyone one that was left would gather together in a Mexican restaurant and lock themselves in there with martinis flowing like water and Mary Jane burning the place down. He thought that there was nothing wrong with it but it was the best kept secret in advertising for years. The television series Mad Men was inspired by Jerry’s books and actions in his beginning years. The show that is filmed today but set back in the late 1960’s is a great hit on AMC and is currently in its fourth season.

Jerry Della Femina knew what he had to do to become who he is today. He was risky, flashy, new, and exciting. He helped change advertising forever, which meant more customers and profit for everyone involved. He is a very smart man and I find the way that he thinks to be very interesting and I look forward to seeing his future work.