Taking Off with Talk

When they opened for business last spring, the brash young founders of Manhattan's new advertising agency, Wells, Rich, Greene, Inc., promised to "build the most profitable agency in history." With a flair that made even Madison Avenue eyebrows twitch, they started out by getting just about the most publicity in history.

Dazzled by the agency's bright, blonde President Mary Wells, 39, newspaper ad columnists reported her every move; the trade papers began running endless features on "The Gray Flannel Gal" and "The Wondrous World of W.R.G." Soon Sunday supplements, weeklies, even the prestige business magazines were weighing in with more talk about "the most talked-about agency." Last August Syndicated Fashion Columnist Eugenia Sheppard went so far as to coo that Mary Wells's "soft, thrilling voice makes the maddest ideas seem perfectly possible"--extravagant praise, since at the time W.R.G. had just begun to produce its first ads.

"They Come to Us." Now all that free space is paying off handsomely. W.R.G. began this month by picking up three new accounts--Boodle's Gin from Britain, Bristol-Myers' Score hair preparations and the General Mills nibbles called Bugles, Whistles and Daisy's. Last week it snared another: an as yet unnamed Scotch to be marketed by Calvert. With total of 14 clients worth $52 million in annual billings so far, the 14-month-old shop has been publicized into the ranks of the nation's 50 biggest agencies. Mary Wells is certain that billings will rise to $100 million in a couple of years, even though "we don't --and never have--solicited accounts."

Says she: "They come to us, and we only take the ones we can't resist."

An Airline Lift. Some of the come-on reminded Madison Avenue veterans of Adman David Ogilvy's effort to escape anonymity in the late 1940s. Ogilvy sent out salvos of press releases until, as he confessed, competitors complained that "nobody went to the bathroom at our agency without the news appearing in the trade press." Wells herself admits to "a staggering lack of modesty," but her agency has avoided outright flackery--if only because its partners were never quite obscure in the first place.

An Ohio-born divorcee with two adopted daughters, Mary Wells was educated at Carnegie Tech, wrote copy for Macy's, McCann-Erickson and Doyle Dane Bernbach before joining Jack Tinker & Partners in 1964. There, she and her present partners, Richard Rich, 37, and Stewart Greene, 39, ran some notable successes up the flagpole. They were responsible for the whimsical ads ("No matter what shape your stomach's in . . .") that boosted Alka-Seltzer sales by $13.3 million. When Braniff International President Harding Lawrence came to Tinker in 1965, Wells thought up the idea of painting Braniff's jets in pastel hues--and persuaded Lawrence to go along. Rich and Greene also had a hand in Braniff's "airstrip," which features stewardesses in quick-change Pucci-designed uniforms. Lawrence was delighted with the trio's part in his once stodgy airline's subsequent success. When Wells, Rich and Greene took off on their own, Braniff's president switched his $6,500,000 account to the new firm to assist their climb.

"Braniff or Alka-Seltzer." To help word of such coups get around, Founder Wells issued a sort of Madison Avenue manifesto promising more Braniff-style "advertising that will generate, as a byproduct, its own publicity." Western Union, Burma Shave and La Rosa spaghetti, she says, came clamoring for "a Braniff or an Alka-Seltzer." Utica Club beer signed up with the explanation that "it is once in a decade that an agency like this is formed."

Understandably, the 125-man agency is under high pressure to match such high expectations. The very first campaign that was developed entirely at W.R.G. was for Philip Morris' Benson & Hedges 100s. It started last August --and Philip Morris is already convinced that the self-kidding ads ("You'll never have to worry about lighting your nose") are responsible for the fastest start of any of its brands since Marlboros hit the market.

Other ads are following with the same soft sell, and winning genuine, though sometimes grudging admiration. Ned Doyle of Doyle Dane, which pioneered the style (Volkswagen, Avis) long ago, gives Mary Wells credit for being a "quite beautiful" ad woman ("Most of 'em look like haunted houses"). Recalling Mary's days at his shop, Doyle quickly adds that "everything she knows she learned here." Wherever she learned it, Mary Wells is surely one of the most successful graduates around.

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