After ten minutes with Ed Tettemer in the offices of the agency he
founded with partner, Steve Red, you begin to understand the agency's
passion for excellence. After an hour with Ed, you begin to understand
the intensity of his personal passion. You begin to understand it but I
have a feeling that, even after days and days of exposure to him, you
probably wouldn't get the whole picture."Passion," the word, may seem
descriptive of a complicated set of feelings and opinions. Oddly, in
thinking about Ed Tettemer's passion for his agency and its clients, it
seems rather simple. It's just that he wants everything to be
excellent: excellent clients, excellent co-workers, excellent marketing
solutions, excellent creative executions, excellent everything."Where'd
you go to college, Ed?" (A question most interviewers ask without
expecting surprises in the response.) "Never went to college. Dropped
out of high school and never looked back. Got my college degree at the
Elkman agency and my graduate degree at Earle Palmer Brown."Maybe it's
best to start at the beginning. Ed was born and raised and was "scared
of the city," living in a rather parochial environment. His Father was
a sheriff in Bucks County and his Mother worked as a secretary in the
office of the small township where they lived. Theirs was a simple
life, a good life in a small town atmosphere. He and his Dad fished a
lot and they ate what they caught. The vegetables on their table came
from their garden except for the mushrooms they harvested after heavy
rains. It seemed to be an uncomplicated existence far from the
pressures and tensions of traditional business, especially the
advertising business.Dad was pretty much occupied with his job and the
politics of the community. Mom was more influential on the lives of Ed
and his older brother. Neither parent made strong suggestions about
what Ed and his brother did to prepare them for a career. They were
good people and Mom, especially, influenced the way Ed has turned out.
She was passionate about music and books. Ed is, too. She preached,
"Keep your eyes and ears open." Ed tries to do that. All she wanted for
her children was for them to be happy and she didn't try to control
their every move. Today, Ed appreciates that.His childhood was a happy
one. He liked to fish. He played a lot of baseball. He was a fairly
typical American kid. Then, when he was in high school, there was a
dramatic change. It was called the Viet Nam War. Consistent with how
many people felt at the time, his older brother took off for Canada to
resist the war. That had severe, negative impact on life in peaceful
Bucks County. Overnight, the Tettemer family became pariahs. Friends
deserted them. The community changed its view of them. Church changed.
Bad stuff!Clearly, that situation had a powerful influence on Ed's
psyche. He dropped out of high school and spent over three years hitch
hiking all over the country. He found ways to make enough money to do a
lot of both savory and unsavory things. He was a confused young man
wandering the country during confusing times.But he never lost touch
with his Mother and Dad so, ultimately, he went home to Bucks County
and found a job working as a glorified gopher for the Doylestown
Intelligencer. He ran ads back and forth from the paper to its small,
retail advertisers. He says, "I guess I was a junior account executive
and didn't know it." He delivered ad proofs, started helping small
stores with their ad copy and quickly learned how those small retailers
did their newspaper advertising. During the year at the paper, he got
to know and got to be friendly with many of his customers. He realized
that most of them didn't have a lot of confidence in the help they were
getting from the paper. He believed that he could help them do better
advertising, advertising that actually worked and could be tracked. He
doesn't know why he believed that but he believed it.He remembered
Pete's Place in a rather nostalgic way. Pete's Place was a restaurant
in Ottsville just north of Doylestown. Their ad always ran on the same
page with other restaurants. All of the ads were the same size, were
laid out in a conventional rectangle and had many of the same messages:
good food, low prices, family atmosphere, etc.Pete's Place was pretty
much the same as a lot of places in that part of the country.Except for
one thing. Their logo and sign was a big wagon wheel. After Ed
convinced them to try to look different, their next ad was designed to
be round. It stood out nicely on the page with all the rectangles.
Someone once said that good advertising should zig when the
competition's zags. While Ed didn't refer to that specific quote during
our interview, much of what he said about Pete's Place and about Red
Tettemer's work seems to support that "Zig if they Zag"idea. Ed
reflects, "I think I made six bucks on the work I did for Pete's."
The
result? He worked with mostly small retailers for four years and
developed a keen understanding of how the retailer thinks and of what
it takes to motivate consumers to respond to advertising and promotion.
In his own words, "I guess I didn't really know what I was doing but I
liked my clients, worked hard and made a decent living."
Marriage
followed as did a move into Center City where he, wife Lyn and daughter
Jessie still live. His first job in the city was with the old Elkman
Agency where he claims to have started "Knowing nothing." His boss,
Creative Director Jim Block, promised to make him into a copy writer
and further promised that he would like doing it. Jim did what he
promised and Ed did like it. He had five productive years there but was
always the junior writer. He needed more.
Off to Becker/Kanter
(now Panzano & Partners,) he soon learned the logic of focusing on
vertical businesses. He was a senior creative director there working
almost exclusively on shopping center advertising and promotion. The
"vertical" idea had great influence on him in the early days of Red
Tettemer when they spent most of their effort with cable TV and
entertainment accounts.
He was recruited to Earle Palmer Brown
where three factors influenced his thinking and his behavior. First,
Brian Meridith, then the head of creative at EPB, showed him how
important it was to have a good idea at the beginning of creative
execution. "What's the idea? What's the idea?" was hammered into his
consciousness. Second, he formed a new perspective about "vertical."
While it's valuable and, at times, necessary, to focus on specific
industries, it's also valuable and stimulating to have a broader base.
Today's Red Tettemer is definitely broad based and probably always will
be.
The third factor was, perhaps, the most important. In early
1992, Ed just didn't know what to do with his career and his growing,
positive reputation. "I was disillusioned.I just didn't believe in the
people I worked for."
Fortunately, he was allowed to do some
free lance work and frequently collaborated with Steve Red with whom he
had a marvelous working relationship. He got a call from Steve about
working with him on several large assignments. His copy, Steve's design
skills and their ability to work together so effectively brought out
his assertion, "I had the time of my life working with Steve."
It
took Ed three years to convince Steve to join with him to form Red
Tettemer in 1996.They live by their mission statement, "Energize our
clients and their businesses." Ed is proud when he reports that they
try hard to make their clients' competitors envious. They've followed
those convictions while moving from "vertical" client groups into more
general accounts. Some of their recent acquisitions are SEPTA,
University of Pennsylvania Health System and Hatfield Meats.
Neither
Ed nor Steve has much tolerance for the traditional approach used by
many agencies. So, they've successfully created a fun environment.
Their office space is designed in creative ways. The décor is
imaginative but comfortable. There are surprises everywhere: a
conference room with no conference table, eclectic art work all over
the walls, small nooks and crannies with interesting appointments and
two balconies which allow for panoramic views of the City. The physical
experience of the offices is sure to be pleasant and entertaining for
every age group: traditionalists as well as employees, whose average
age is under thirty.
What's the smartest business decision you
ever made, Ed? Instantly, the response is,"Being in partnership with
Steve Red. In fact, that may be my best life decision."How about your
worst decision? "I waited too long to expand from our "vertical"
focus.also, I think I've been too reclusive." (Maybe this article will
help, Ed.)
Fun for Ed? Trying to understand client needs and
finding solutions. Cooking. Reading. Joining the fire company near his
beach home. Remarking that he thinks he made his Mother and Father
proud. Red Tettemer's annual retreat. Family. Many things.
One more question, Ed. "What would you do with a couple of wishes?"
Thoughtfully,
he responds in a way that further demonstrates his passion. He says
that he'd like to keep in closer touch with all of his employees, that
he wishes he could reenergize the agency more frequently and that he'd
like to take time to celebrate their good fortune more frequently.
If
life is dull, if you need a shot of passion in your life, if you'd
enjoy being stimulated by the innards of an ad agency, if you respond
to another person's motivation and, yes, passion, visit Red
Tettemer. While you're there, try to spend a few minutes with Ed.
As his Mother taught him, "Keep your eyes and ears open." You'll enjoy
the visit.
Allan Kalish founded, managed and sold Kalish &
Rice, one of Philadelphia's largest ad agencies. He is currently
chairman of Trichys, providers of intranet and extranet solutions for online collaboration and online document sharing.
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