The Rise of Byron Keating

Three months ago, advertising trade papers carried stories that Byron Keating had opened an advertising agency. When he landed his first account--the Little Tot Food Products Co.--such trade papers as Broadcasting carried the news. Then Advertising Age bulletined that Byron Keating Co. ("Cincinnati's fastest growing agency") was planning a new campaign for Soyscuits, a soybean biscuit mix.

But Keating made his biggest splash in the report of his talk before the Cincinnati Businessmen's League. Said Keating: "Agencies are doomed unless they establish totalitarian principles . . . with clients. Businessmen should keep their fingers out of advertising. Many agencies are producing inferior advertising, against their better judgment, for fear of losing lucrative accounts and because account executives 'butter-up' the client."

From frustrated copywriters all over the country, this speech brought Keating high praise, along with requests for jobs. Commented Advertising Age: "It's things like this that reaffirm our occasionally wavering faith that it's fun to be in the advertising business." Worldly-wise Variety headlined the talk "Just Let 'em Pay the Tab--Keating."

A month ago, advertising trade papers carried news of the death of "Byron Keating, 59, after a heart attack attributed to overwork." Actually, Byron Keating was killed by his own parents--the two Cincinnati copywriters from whose lively imaginations he had sprung to hoax the advertising world.

Keating's creators were small, witty James B. Hill and big, sandy-haired John L. Eckels, advertising-agency copywriters. They dreamed up Keating to win an argument that political bigwigs are built by publicity, that they could create a tycoon in their own business out of thin air. They spent $4 on letterheads, sent publicity releases to newspapers and magazines, invented companies and clubs for Keating to address. When the American Newspaper Publishers Association and Dun & Bradstreet Inc. requested financial statements, Authors Hill and Eckels decided the hoax had gone far enough.

Last week the remains of Bvron Keating--piles of news clips--were decently interred in Keating's "office," the middle drawer of Hill's desk. Hill and Eckels have only one regret: "We had a corker planned. We were going to phony up a foundation-garment account for Byron Keating. We were going to have the phony company pick a Miss Uplift from clerks behind brassiere counters."

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