Creative Catalogues the Craze in Ad Industry

Bob McMahon couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Hello, Bob, this is George Harrison, the ex-Beatle,” said the man with the British accent at the other end of the telephone. “I’d like you to do some work for me.”

Sure. Out of the blue, George Harrison calls some relatively obscure Los Angeles illustrator and ask him to design the cover to his new album. Well, it was, indeed, George Harrison. And McMahon did eventually design a cover--albeit, one that was never used--for a hot new album, The Traveling Wilburys. McMahon’s cover design, for which he was paid $4,000, featured humorous caricatures of Harrison, along with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and others who recorded the album.

But how did the former Beatle ever find McMahon? It wasn’t through an agent, the Yellow Pages or an illustration hanging in some gallery. How about through the Workbook?

Most creative people in the California advertising community are familiar with the Workbook. The 11-year-old catalogue is a 600-page Los Angeles-based directory of creative people--from photographers to illustrators to jingle writers--whose talents are often sought by advertising agencies.

The Workbook plans to spend more than $1 million over the year to become a national publication. Next year, it will publish three separate directories in the West, Midwest and East Coast and directly compete with the granddaddy of all creative guidebooks, the 20-year-old, New York-based Creative Black Book.

“We have to go national,” said Alexis Scott, publisher and co-founder of the Workbook. “It’s a matter of either distributing the book nationally or losing a lot of advertisers.” Indeed, those illustrators and photographers who now pay up to $3,500 for full-page ads in the Workbook recognize that they can pick up a lot more business if their talents are not just advertised in California--but from coast to coast. Wider exposure will come at a modest price. Full-page color ads in the Black Book cost up to $6,560; the national Workbook will charge up to about $3,900.

Over the past decade, the Workbook has grown from a small Los Angeles directory to a thick California creative guidebook. But other directories are close on its heels. The trade magazine Adweek publishes a similar guidebook. Regional directories also are published in San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Washington, Minneapolis and Boston. Advertising executives conservatively estimate that at least 20 of these directories--most of which are regional--are being published in the United States.

Many top ad agency creative executives receive the Workbook at no cost. Most other people pay $65 for it. In all, some 32,000 volumes were printed this year. The Workbook features pages and pages of advertising including examples of work by various artists. To the novice, all the fancy illustrations might make it look more like a coffee-table book than an office manual. An accompanying directory lists the phone numbers of virtually any free-lance talent that an ad agency executive could ever hope to call.

Need to know the phone number of a company that rents fiberglass rocks? It’s in the directory. So are the phone numbers of typographers and lithographers. If you need hand models for your next hand lotion commercial, they’re listed in there, too.

But can this Los Angeles publication compete against New York’s Creative Black Book that is published by the giant Macmillan Inc.?

“They have a real good shot at it,” said Alex Farnsley, co-publisher of the San Diego Creative Directory, which he says he directly modeled after the Workbook.

And executives at the Creative Black Book say the competition has never been more fierce. “Our edge is experience,” said Maria Ragusa, book sales manager at the Black Book. “But there’s no time to lay back and take it easy.”

The Workbook has plenty of boosters. “I think in time, they’ll knock the Black Book out of the market,” said Charles Bush, a Los Angeles advertising photographer who specializes in cosmetics and fashion photography. Bush placed ads in both books last year. He said that he got little response to his ad in the Black Book.

But shortly after his ad ran in the Workbook--featuring photographs of Neutrogena skin care ads--he received a call from Noxzema to supply photography for some ads for them. Bush figures about 15% of his new clients come from his Workbook ad.

And McMahon, who drew the album cover for George Harrison, estimates that from his $3,200 advertisement in the Workbook, he picked up at least $30,000 in new business.

Not everyone, however, swears by the Workbook or its competitors. “Somebody is really selling a bill of goods,” said Hy Yablonka, executive creative director at the Los Angeles office of the ad firm, Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt. “I don’t think any of these directories are worth diddly.”

In fact, Yablonka said he usually throws the directories away when they come in the mail. “When I need a professional photographer, I don’t go to a directory,” said Yablonka. “You just know who the good people are out there, and you go to the people you like.”

On the other hand, directories can sometimes prompt agency creative directors to look beyond the same clique of illustrators and photographers that they usually turn to. “Sure, if you’ve been in the business awhile, you think you know what’s out there,” said James F. Benson, executive creative director at the Los Angeles ad firm Eisaman, Johns & Laws Advertising. “But there are so many good people in these directories, that it would be a shame not to explore them from time to time.”

This year’s just-published Workbook contains more than 600 pages, and along with it are three soft-bound companion directories that list related suppliers. With plans under way for a national edition, the Workbook opened sales offices in Chicago and New York this year.

The Workbook began as somewhat of a fluke. It was 1978, and Scott was helping a new photographer in town find some free-lance jobs. She spent much of her time phoning ad agency creative directors. And she stored their phone numbers in her personal address book.

Then, one day, she lost the book.

“I’d spent two years gathering all those names and numbers,” she said. Some listings she’d found literally pinned to bulletin boards at local ad agencies--and others she got by raiding the Rolodex files of some Los Angeles area ad directors. “I had no idea how I was going to find all the numbers again.”

Luckily, she eventually did find that address book. And when she did, she told Craig Butler about her idea to publish a creative directory. Since Butler, now her husband, worked for a graphic design firm, Butler Kosh Brooks, she asked him if he’d design the directory. “I was shocked,” recalled Butler. “I didn’t even know that she was thinking about anything like this.”

But design he did. And the first Workbook was mapped out on the dining room table of Scott’s Los Angeles apartment with the help of two telephone lines. The original directory was basically a 150-page, paperbound directory of names, addresses and phone numbers of illustrators and photographers in Los Angeles. They printed 5,000 copies of the directory, which sold for $12 each.

With annual sales approaching the $3-million mark, Scott receives occasional offers to buy the publication. “It’s not for sale,” said Scott, “I just can’t see sitting home and knitting.”

Western Gear Firm Grants Equal Time

When an advertisement for a raincoat recently appeared in some national horse magazines, the Malibu company that ran it found itself saddled with complaints from women.

The company, Australian Stock Saddle, is perhaps best known for the saddles it makes. But this was an ad for a $149 raincoat, and it featured the vice president of the company and her boss.

Vice President Linda Fox is decked out in one of the raincoats, perched on the hood of a Mercedes-Benz, with her legs dangling. Sitting there, she is shown fixing the bow tie worn by Colin Dangaard , the company’s president. Both were identified in the ad, including their titles.

So many women wrote to complain that the ad was sexist, Dangaard said, that Australian Stock Saddle quickly pulled the ad. What, then, is the replacement ad? Well, it’s virtually the same story line. But this time, Dangaard is the one seated atop the car--his bare legs dangling outside the raincoat. Said Dangaard: “I don’t want anybody to accuse me of never giving equal time.”

Lack of Interest Kills the U.S. Ad Show

The U.S. Ad Show is dead. The three-day convention, which was supposed to be the first major Los Angeles trade show for advertising agencies and potential clients, was canceled by its sponsors last week for lack of interest.

“It was a Catch 22,” said Bruce Golison, whose Long Beach-based promotion company, Golison & Caley, planned to co-sponsor the show along with the trade magazine Advertising Age. In casual discussions, “the agency people all said they liked the concept, but they all wanted to just take a look the first year and not buy space.”

In fact, only a handful of major Los Angeles ad agencies had signed up as exhibitors. Among them: Ogilvy & Mather, Tracy-Locke, and Davis, Ball & Colombatto. Golison said his company will lose about $70,000 on the unsuccessful venture. And before attempting to sponsor an ad show next year, he plans do a written proposal for the major agencies. “Obviously,” said Golison, “the concept needs to be restructured.”

Those Who Sell Space to Get Own Magazine

It didn’t make the best-seller list, but author Jack Bernstein was surprised by all the response to his self-published book, “The Guide to Selling Advertising Space.” As a result, he began publishing a monthly newsletter called Selling Space.

That was in 1985, and now that newsletter is about to become a magazine by the same name. Selling Space is mostly read by people whose job it is to sell advertising space in magazines and newspapers. With the March issue, Selling Space--which Bernstein publishes out of his home in Manhattan Beach--moves from newsletter to magazine status and will boost its circulation to 4,000. And it has begun to sell advertising, too.

The most popular issue is the April edition, which annually tracks salaries of advertising sales professionals. Last year’s survey reported the mean annual salary of ad sales representatives nationwide was about $37,000, while ad sales managers were pulling in about $58,000. Until his publication came along, Bernstein said, “the people who are most responsible for the financial health of magazines were being ignored.”