Ad agency people are eternal optimists and often complete suckers. Every time a client comes along with a wacky product concept and a good sales pitch, agencies line up for a chance to get in on the ground floor. We were far from immune to this stupidity. Back in the late ’70s we had a client called Tri-Flon that had developed a Teflon-based lubricant. The damn stuff really worked and we were convinced that it would steal market share from WD-40 and that we would become immensely wealthy as the company’s fortunes skyrocketed and its advertising budget ballooned. Tri-Flon was an underfunded start-up so instead of doing a big, national TV campaign we created a bunch of very small space print ads targeted at a … Continue reading Irvine, California, circa 1977: How my farmer father became a supermodel