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OCTOBER 1996
His mother was a nurse, his father a high-rolling investment banker. He's seen George H.W. Bush half-naked. What does Jeff McElnea want? He wants to change your behavior.


For the record, Jeff McElnea didn't fall off The Great Wall of China. He clearly likes to bend over backwards, though, and take chances.

This helps explain how the agency McElnea runs, Einson Freeman, became IBM's global promotion agency of record -- an industry breakthrough -- earlier this year.

If you don’t know who Jeff McElnea is -- or even how to pronounce his last name (it's MACK-el-nay) -- then this is your big chance.

What’s Martin Sorrell really like?

He’s unequivocally the smartest guy I’ve ever known in this business.

He’s learned how to do a lot of things well, not just what he’s known for financially. He's taken big risks and not only redeemed himself but built a tremendous and high-performing conglomerate of companies. You can't do that by just being a financial maven.

What is he beyond just being a financial maven?

He's a good businessman, a good negotiator, a good judge of...

Promotion agencies?

H’yeah! Just a good judge of talent and of priorities. He also covers an immense amount of ground.

What it’s like working for him?

He’s an inquisitor, asks a lot of questions quickly and expects equally quick and intelligent answers.

You really saw George Bush naked?

When McElnea and Einson first intersected, the latter was an old, point-of-purchase display producer and the former a young,twentysomething, dreamer.

(Laughs). Only half-naked!

Which half?

The top. When I was at the lakeside of the Bohemian Grove encampment, lying in the sun and listening to a lakeside talk, former President Bush just happened to find a place next to me on the ground, took his shirt off and we listened together along with about 2,000 other guys.

What can you tell us about the Bohemian Club? What is it, why is it, why did you get involved?

It's not exactly a central part of my life, but it's an organization that has a tremendous history. It's based in San Francisco and originally was founded as a club for men of bohemian spirit -- authors, scientists, statesmen, comedians, even corporate CEOs -- who had a talent or two they didnxt mind sharing. Itxs grown into a good sized club thatxs a lot of fun to visit every year during its mid-Summer encampment.

What's a day in the life like for Jeff McElnea?

Every day is totally different, so there is not a pattern, which has kept me in this crazy business for 25 years. What I prefer is to start my day with some kind of a marketing problem, which somehow gets kicked into my office for my perspective.

McElnea had ideas. He and another management employee, Jan Anstatt, scraped together some borrowed cash and bought Einson Freeman company in 1978.

What scares you?

What scares me is not so much the inability to solve problems effectively, but the challenge of creating an environment in which the best thinking can thrive.

It’s frightening because an agency is a very delicate organism that can get out of balance very easily. It's not just a question of energy and commitment and loving to work with your clients, it's the right combination of all those things.

Creating an environment -- consistently -- where there's a passion for marketing excellence is difficult because of all the human issues and distractions that occur day in and day out.

What do you see as the biggest problem in the world today?

I would have to say real communication. Ixm cutting right to a fundamental problem. If people could really communicate their true intentions and their true feelings effectively, then much of the strife and major problems of the world in almost every aspect of life you can think of would be greatly improved if not resolved.

Together, McElnea and Anstatt reinvented the company as a diversified marketing services company, pioneering the modern-day promotion agency.

Almost every problem relates to communication as the direct cause of success or failure. I just happened to focus on marketing communications as a means to develop tools of persuasion and motivation to get large numbers people to favor a brand or do specific things at a specific time.

We need to learn how to communicate better as a species. Then world leaders could work though problems more readily if they really could communicate their intentions and beliefs.

Is there anything you know about marketing communications that could be applied to solve this problem?

I think verbal communications ought to be taught in school, side-by-side with English. You just can't have too much training or education in that field.

Classic question -- what do you consider to be your largest accomplishment?

Largest business accomplishment, I would have to say, is setting an industry precedent in each of the last three decades. In the 70s, we created the first successful transition from a point of purchase advertising company into a full-service sales promotion agency.

In the 80s, we created the first account-specific and channels marketing structure with clients like Pepsi and Kimberly Clark, which were original architectures. Also, the CBS "Watch & Win" promotions -- the first time a media company used promotion and made it audience interactive. And then we won the first worldwide client for promotion, IBM, in the 90s. Underpinning all of this is building a strong and stable organization in an industry that's very volatile.

In personal terms, therexs nothing that comes close to the accomplishment I feel in raising a family well. And I think each and every one of my children is a magnificent individual and an equally good member of the family. That's something I haven't come close to doing on my own, but I'm very proud of it. I've done it with the help of Judy and the boysx mother and a strong dose

Einson grew rapidly and ten years later was sold to the British holding company, WPP Group, plc, joining J. Walter Thomson, Ogilvy & Mather, Hill & Knowlton and some 45 other agencies.

of lucky genes.

The other half of the classic question - what is your biggest failure?

That's easy. My biggest failure is in not spending enough time developing long-term career paths for our people. That's being very candid. When you feel like your talents are spent in the craft of the business, in bringing the business in, and you find that it's so time-consuming to nourish someone's career and help them develop their career -- times the number of people you have in an organization like this -- it's a real frustration not to have the time or ability to do that as well as they deserve.

The other biggest disappointment is we havenxt done a sufficient job promoting our own discipline -- promotion marketing -- within the marketing community. We're good at packaging our clients, but not ourselves. While the credibility of promotion has increased since I started in the business, it's not nearly to where it should be relative to its size and spending. Too many people still perceive it as too tactical.

Which of your competitors do you most admire and why?

I think I most admire Frankel for what they have accomplished in terms of client tenure and setting top standards in account service, growing the business to the heights that it is with tremendous integrity.

What was growing up all about for you?

It wasn't quite Ozzie and Harriet, but this was the fifties. My mother, having been a registered nurse, had the look and the demeanor of a very caring, loving soul, who was known around town as kind of"Sweet Jane." She was simple and plain in her name and tastes and lifestyle.

My father was a tall and charming kind of Richard Chamberlain figure. My father was a kind of a high-rolling investment banker, in as much as his firm was known for taking the riskiest deals that the rest of Wall Street turned their noses up at.

Some of my earliest memories of my father -- other than giving great birthday parties and being there for all the school functions -- the more potent memories are those where he would bring customers home after work, for dinner or drinks or whatever. And he would allow me to sit in the living room and absorb, first hand, what turned out to be very interesting business discussions.

"After breakfast with the family I will sometimes go down to the corner to a coffee shop called the Beekman East, at 50th Street and First Avenue, where I'll just have a couple of cups and rehearse my notes for a presentation or for that day's meetings."


I saw some real characters walk through our house. Some who were considered crazy inventors at the time, like Bill Lear, who really wasn't crazy. Once he got the financing he needed from my father's investment house, and others, he launched the Lear Jet company.

When you were back in elementary school and the teacher said, Jeffrey, what do you want to be when you grow up, the answer was...

Outside of this classroom! In those days I wanted to be an actor, first. Then after that a lawyer. In fact, there was a period in my life when I would seek out lawyers and pick their brains. I thought the whole area of argument was interesting. Around the schoolyard I was known as a good arguer.

At what age did you develop an interest in marketing?

When I first started to study psychology at Dartmouth I was very interested in behaviorism. I was really excited about B.F. Skinner's theories. I had particularly good professors in behavioral psychology.

I started thinking about how behaviorism could be used constructively to modify peoplexs responses in the marketplace, as opposed to the mentalistic approach toward psychology, which deals with attitudes.

I did my marketing thesis on something that was new at the time -- social marketing -- now called cause marketing. Specifically, the case I used was Planned Parenthood. So the subject was how Planned Parenthood could be more effectively marketed like a bar of soap.

But if it hadn't been for the original stimulus-response paradigm in the basic psychology courses I might not have cottoned to marketing as early as I did. Somehow consumer psychology, from that point on, was going to be my greatest interest. How people are persuaded to act and why they act the way they do, is of great interest to me.

What do you do when you're not president of Einson Freeman?

I love to have a good, competitive game of tennis, and not-so- competitive game of golf. I love to lapse into reveries when I lap swim, hopefully every other day either indoors or out. I think of raising my family as a wonderful sport as well as a responsibility.

"To unwind, it's the pool at the Yale-Dartmouth Club. Then there's our house in Madison, our family retreat for every season except winter."

And traveling. Judy and I have been on most of the continents and seen some great highlights of the world. We love that part of our life. The connecting point, for us, is people. We love meeting new, and interesting people, as well as keeping up with many terrific friends that we really treasure.

How about connecting points to your professional life?

Absolutely, because I've enjoyed making friendships out of business relationships and occasionally business relationships out of friendships. Because of my interest in a broad range of people in my life, the personal flows naturally into the professional, in both directions.

You're a singer aren't you?

Yes, I used to sing. I toured the country with the Dartmouth Glee Club and before that I was in the high school chorale. In fact, one of the highlights for me was singing one summer in a Connecticut choral group which had Aaron Copeland as its conductor.

How did you meet your wife?

The funny thing is that Judy was a client of Einson Freemanxs, indirectly, for a number of years. But I never met her back then. She was Director of Field Marketing for Pepsi USA, in the Food Service Division, from 1979 to 1985.

Einson was doing business with Pepsi, both bottle and can and foodservice, and Judy was one holdout who was apparently doing business with another agency. But the rest of her colleagues were using Einson Freeman, so she was a kind of a tickler name on conference reports, as far as my desk was concerned.

As fate would have it, Judy left Pepsi to start an entrepreneurial venture. Then she went to FCB Impact to manage their New York office, whereupon she hired Gundersen Partners, the executive search firm. I was recently divorced at the time and Steve Gundersen decided that it would be interesting to have Judy meet me on a personal level.
And we did , but we didn't start dating for another 6 months. We were each involved with other people at the time. I called her 6 months later for a professional reference on someone, we ended up talking for an hour and meeting for dinner. We were married about a year later.

Judy is the most easy going, just stress-free, relaxed person to be with that I've ever known. Just a perfect complement for me. She really understands the balance of a partnership. Shexs a great people person and gets a kick out of our many friendships, raising the family and living an enlightened marriage, that is a full and balanced partnership.

Kids?

Two teenage boys -- Bill, 18, who just entered college and Pat, 15, who isin prep school -- and Joanna, a beautiful 2-1/2 year old girl whom Judy and I adopted. Funny that both sons are both really artists of a different sort. Bill has developed into quite a musician. Hexs written over 50 original compositions for the guitar. Both music and lyrics. He performs those in his own band, called PSilence. Hard rock and heavy metal.

When he plays acoustic guitar on his own he gets into ballads that are really great to listen to. His chambers singer group performed at Carnegie in April. Pat has become a visual artist. Hexs a painter, a sculptor, a photographer. One of his first serious paintings was a self-portrait. No challenge is too big for him. He's been attending prep school, specializing in visual arts. Some of my greatest moments are seeing their love of people and love of life.

"My favorite vacation singularly was Africa. The place I most want to go is the Middle East, specifically to Jerusalem. We go back to Aspen and St. Thomas a lot."

Joanna is a self-assured, hand-grabbing, let me take you to my house and show you around kind of a girl. She could give a tour of the Met five minutes after walking through it once. Shexs just very verbal, energetic, extremely social and our leader of the pack. Since Joanna has come into our lives, Judy has applied herself and her marketing skills to the adoption movement. So Joanna has not only been an inspiration as a daughter but to give some of our time to the adoption movement in general.

Do you see your kids following in your footsteps?

They always ask about the business, but I don't think they're going to pursue marketing careers. Pat wants to be the next Disney and conceive a great entertainment business, particularly theme parks of a different ilk than Disney, possibly create the 21st century version of Disney or Six Flags.

Bill is interested in the music business. He's got it all figured out that he wants to either run a record company or enter the music marketing field in one form or another. Both are very goal directed, which is an interesting surprise to me.

Looking forward, into the future, do you harbor any ambitions for professional success outside marketing?

Boy, that's a dangerous one.

In the abstract.

I think there are so many things that can be done with marketing that I will never tire of applying marketing skills to other aspects of life -- whether that be a social movement, a charitable cause, an educational endeavor or helping a friend's business get started.

There are just so many ways that I haven't yet applied my passions that I look forward to doing that and still remain generally in the marketing enterprise.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you couldn't be in marketing any more. You were banished from the marketing community. What kind of a career might you carve out for yourself?

Education. What I have fantasized about, in terms of another life, is being the president of a great university.

The reason for that, I think, is that there isnxt any aspect of life that isnxt represented at the crossroads of a university. So running that kind of a complex organization would be the ultimate challenge for me. It's not one I expect to have at this point.

How about ten years from now? Where do you imagine you might be?

I think I would somehow like to transplant my knowledge and experience to the next generation of marketers and become involved in training and education. Not the conventional transference of knowledge, but to create new ways for people to learn business and how to solve business problems in novel ways.

Einson Freeman's p.a. system cackles in the background, but Jeff McElnea doesn't seem to notice as he beams at some questions and squints at others.

In a way you can think of life in three phases. The first to learn, the second to earn, the third to return, to give something back. The return part is creating your own continuity by educating others.

In the much shorter term, the real challenge for me is to think about ways to globalize what has historically been a very localized business and we're seeing signs that that's possible now, and that in itself is a very exciting challenge both personally and professionally.

What drives Jeff McElnea?

The one thing that ties it together is being part of changing people's behavior. Not in a manipulative sense, but through hopefully good communication and the right motivators. Ironically, what motivates me is motivators. And thatxs the business I'm in.

And that's part of what our job is as parents, and certainly in community service. And even our other extracurricular life, avocational life. The ability to motivate myself and then to be in a business that's designed to motivate others. And then to take that into other walks of my life and use it constructively to help another cause or to help develop my personal and family life.

If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?

It would say, "The greatest treasure that one can give to themselves, as well as others, is love and peace of mind."

Did I miss something big here?

This is easily the most vapid interview I've ever done! (laughs) I would only re-phrase one of your questions from what was your greatest accomplishment to where do you feel you made the greatest difference? I would say re-defining our business from sales promotion to behavior-change marketing. In so doing, the mission of our enterprise is clearer. Our accountability is fuller when you define our business that way.


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