A

FEMINA, JERRY DELLA 1936-

ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE

Iconoclast

In a business world long dominated by staid, Ivy League men in gray flannel suits, Jerry Delia Femina exploded like a grenade in the late 1960s and 1970s. Not only did he propose a slogan for Panasonic, the Japanese electronic company, proclaiming, "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor," but he made that campaign a financial success. (He recycled the title for his insider's book on advertising.)

Brooklyn Brash

Every bit of sassiness, iconoclasm, and aggressiveness that he had learned growing up in blue-collar Brooklyn erupted in a business long renowned for its prudence and respectability. Della Femina turned all that on its head in the name of creativity. No one else dared produce a zipper ad with a baseball catcher telling his pitcher, "Your fly is open." A campaign for Pretty Feet had as its headline, "What's the ugliest part of your body?"

On His Own

Delia Femina was no less outrageous in dealing with his superiors, needling and confronting those whom he saw as blocking creativity, even as he picked up awards from advertising associations. His stance appealed to the creative side of the industry, which inevitably had disagreements with the senior executives. So Delia Femina went his own way, forming an agency in 1967 that, after several rocky months, survived, throve, and ultimately became one of the biggest revenue makers of the 1970s.

Background

He grew up in the most improbable environment for an ad person: Brooklyn, in an Italian im-migrant family, speaking little English until he entered grammar school. He went no further educationally, aside from a few night advertising courses at Brooklyn College. Instead, he spent seven years at odd jobs, while nurturing the dream of becoming an advertising copywriter. He submitted sample ads to an agency, which hired him in 1961, and he began climbing the ladder, moving from one agency to another and gathering acclaim in the industry for the wildly unconventional talent he displayed. He also fought constantly with his superiors, among whom one stated, "His whole life-style is to be a provocateur." This was an understatement, as Delia Femina showed in an aggressive speech in 1966, which his superiors publicly disavowed in The New York Times, All the while, he was putting his talent on display, reaching out to the biggest names, and finally establishing an agency with several partners in September 1967.

Success

The early months were hard, and it was typical of Delia Femina that he risked much of their limited capital for a showy Christmas party to project a successful image with potential clients. It paid off, as did his shrewd courting of the press through deft quotes and comments that made him popular with reporters facing deadlines. Delia Femina made himself Mr. Advertising in the public mind, first with the press and then through his books, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Frontline Dispatches from the Advertising War (1970) and his autobiography, An Italian Grows in Brooklyn (1978). Both attracted clients by seeming to tell it as it was, letting them in on the industry's unstated assumptions and conventions.

Success

The result was success, and by 1979 Delia Femina, Travisano and Partners were doing $100 million in annual business and were winning awards, while Delia Femina himself was leaving copywriting to younger talent while he sought new clients. His actions in the 1970s had helped transform the advertising industry, from reverence and hierarchy to amusement and openness. This corresponded to changes in American society as a whole, and it is hardly coincidental that Delia Femina, an outsider to traditional structures and even to the English language, should have led the assault.