was a quarrelsome confederation which ended in bankruptcy. Credit risks Watch out for credit risks. Your profit margin is too slim to survive a prospective client’s bankruptcy. When in doubt, I always ask the head of the incumbent agency. Never pay a commission to an outsider who offers to introduce new business. No client who chooses his agency on the basis of such an introduction is worth having; and there is usually dirty work at the crossroads. Six weeks after I started my agency, I was so desperate for business that I offered a young man of my acquaintance 10 per cent of our stock if he brought in a vacuum-cleaner account which he had in his pocket. If he had accepted my offer, his stock in Ogilvy & Mather would now be worth $19,000,000. A lucky escape. Some years later, when I was older and wiser, Ben Sonnenberg, the public-relations operator, asked me what percentage of our stock I would give him if he steered the Greyhound Bus account to us. When I said zero, he thought I was mad. Avoid clients whose ethos is incompatible with yours. I refused Charles Revson of Revlon and Lew Rosenstiel of Schenley. Beware of ventures which spend little or nothing today but might become major advertisers, if all goes well. Servicing such non-accounts can be expensive, and few of them make it. Yes, there are exceptions. I once made the mistake of turning down a small company which made office machinery, because I had never heard of it. The name was Xerox. The differences between agencies are less than they like to believe. Most of them can show that they have produced advertising that increased sales for some of their clients. Most have competent media departments and research departments. Thanks to inflation, almost all of them have grown in billings. So what’s the difference between them? Very often the decisive difference in new business contests is the personality of the head of the agency. Many clients went to Foote, Cone & Belding because they were impressed by Fax Cone’s style. Conversely, many failures to win accounts are caused by the fact that the prospective