Notice that I put ‘good psychologist’ at the top of the list. Albert Lasker, who made the largest fortune in the history of the advertising business, once told a group of copywriters, ‘You think managing copywriters is a snap? You have taken some hairs out of me. I had a breakdown that kept me five and one-half months. I couldn’t talk for five minutes without starting to weep.’ Women in advertising Feminists are doing dreadful things to the English language. I refuse to write spokesperson, chairperson, househusband or womanhole cover. Like most boys of my generation, I started life believing that women belonged in the home, until I noticed how much happier my mother was when she went out to work. My first woman Vice-President was Reva Korda, a brilliant copywriter who later became head of the Creative Department. For all her brains and ability, even Reva encountered male copywriters and art directors who felt uncomfortable working under any woman. But there are now 52 women Vice-Presidents in the New York office of Ogilvy & Mather, and there appears to be no resentment of them among the male staff. The majority of people now being recruited by advertising agencies in the United States for so-called ‘professional’ jobs are women. Firing and hiring Agencies used to fire people at the drop of a hat. Stirling Getchel’s otherwise admirable agency had a turnover in staff of 137 per cent in one year. Another agency fired a copywriter because he dared to talk to the boss in the men’s room. Today the boot is on the other foot. The people who work in agencies are lamentably nomadic. I recently hired a 40-year-old copywriter who had already changed jobs eleven times. You might suppose that a business which depends entirely on the talent of its people would take recruiting seriously, but that is not yet the case. In most agencies, the recruiting is still sloppy and haphazard. Even today, it is rare for any agency to ask an applicant’s former employers what they think of him. I know two men who were hired and fired as Presidents of three agencies – without their references being checked.