Personnel

Last week the following was news: Kenneth Collins, smart young adman, resigned as publicity director of R. H. Macy & Co., Manhattan bargain department store, to form his own agency. Year ago he resigned but changed his mind after a long talk with shrewd, paternal President Jesse Isidor Straus. Kenneth Collins' friends say he wanted to be a millionaire by 1936, that Jesse Straus promised to make him one (in Macy stock) if only he would stay. To Macy's he would be worth it. Since he hit upon his vein of bright, saucy, it's-smart-to-be-thrifty advertisements back in 1927, Macy sales have jumped 40% to $100,000,000 annually. He made the notions department appeal to "firemen, housewives, bachelors and babies." Evening wraps were offered under the head: "WRAP HER UP AND TAKE HER HOME." His was the direction, but about-townish writers like Margaret Fishback turned out the copy. A Macy-Collins-Fishback advt. of last week: a naked "brand-new baby, hot off the griddle," yowling lustily for "hand-knit woolies." Caption: "NATURE IN THE ROAR."

Chief bugaboo of Adman Collins' life is dullness. "When I pick up a newspaper or look at a magazine." he says, "I find 95% of the copy is deadly serious, in fact downright dreary." Most advertising he finds even worse. Though alert copywriters should pounce merrily on "humor . . . and the human element in situations and merchandise," he warns that they must not be funny more than 5% of the time. He admits: "I do not think there is anything funny about a Baldwin locomotive." Chief tenet of Adman Collins' advertising creed is honesty. He deplores the blasts of exaggeration which have undermined buyers' minds with skepticism. Now 34. he proposes to strike out for himself as Kenneth Collins, Inc. Graduated by the University of Washington in 1919, he declined a Rhodes scholarship, taught freshman composition at the University of Idaho for a year, then almost entered the Episcopal ministry. Instead he took an M.A. degree at Harvard. There is no truth to the story that he bluffed his way into his Macy job without advertising experience. Adman Collins had spiced up the copy of a small Boston department store, spent one year in a Cleveland advertising agency before he answered Macy's want advt. The names of his future clients he keeps secret, but when asked whether he thought his prospects good, Adman Collins snapped: "If they weren't good, you don't think I would throw up a $70,000-a-year job, do you?"

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