Profiles of the Powerful: Advertising Exec Steve
Grasse
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.
Author Bio
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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