Detroit Fireball

In 1928 a big, genial, moonfaced, pug-nosed, tireless ball-of-fire named Lou Russell Maxon, just turned 28, set up his own advertising agency (Maxon, Inc.) in Detroit. One by one, Adman Maxon bagged such big accounts as General Electric, Heinz "57 varieties," Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Gillette Safety Razor, by last year had a dozen whose total billing (about $9,000,000) was enough to rank Maxon, Inc. in the first flight of U. S. agencies.

No secret is it that Lou Maxon got most of his big accounts by first soliciting only the nickel-and-dime end of their business: direct-mail advertising. The rest of the account followed. Today, word that Maxon's is doing a direct-mail campaign for another agency's client is enough to send shivers up and down that agency's spine. For Philadelphia's austere, venerable N. W. Ayer & Son, the shivers materialized last week. From Ayer, which handles the rest of Ford Motor Co.'s national advertising, (McCann-Erickson has the branch advertising) Lou Maxon took the $500,000-or-more-a-year Lincoln-Zephyr account. He had done a direct-mail job for Ford in 1935, had been gunning for the advertising ever since.

First dealings of Adman Maxon and his new client occurred 25 years ago. At that time young Maxon was proprietor of a lunch wagon outside the Ford plant in Highland Park. One of his best pint-of-milk customers was Henry Ford. After a try at pro football with a pickup team of former Carlisle Indians, Maxon spent a year as advertising manager of Detroit's R. H. Fyfe & Co. ("America's Largest Shoe Store"), then became assistant city editor of the old Detroit Journal. He was fired for palming off a phony story on the city editor.

Maxon learned the tricks of direct-mail copy with a small Detroit advertising agency before he started his own. His unaffected down-to-earth approach charmed manufacturers accustomed to the polished patter of big-city admen. When an exasperated Pittsburgh Plate Glass executive asked him what he would do first if he got the account, Maxon replied: "First thing I'd do would be to thank you profusely. Then I'd rush outside, throw my hat in the air and yell. Beyond that I haven't any idea." He got it.

Apple of Adman Maxon's eye is his summer home, the Cabin, in the Northern Michigan town of Onaway (pop. 1,492), where he was born. The Cabin is a modest estate of eleven buildings equipped with every comfort. Items: two tennis courts, stables, a large playhouse complete with full-size soda fountain (because Maxon could never afford to buy enough sodas when he was a boy). He can and does bed & board 72 guests at a time, sometimes entertains up to 400 guests a week. Often as not they include overalled members of the six-team Onaway softball league which Maxon finances. He is the league's leading slugger.

Last week a third of the staff of Maxon, Inc. was working on new Lincoln-Zephyr copy at the Cabin. But their boss was busy putting up preserves. By week's end he had put up 36 pints of raspberry jelly, 16 pints of huckleberry jam, 144 pints of strawberry jam. Last year he sent a sample quart of his tomatoes to his client Howard Heinz. Heinz wired back for another quart. Rewired Maxon: "Demand so great we put up only in gallon lots."

Five years ago Lou Maxon hired bright Theodore Kinget Quinn from General Electric, made him president of Maxon, Inc. Protesting that he was too young to become board chairman, Lou Maxon has had no title since. Keeping 53% of his firm's stock, he sold 5%, gave the rest to old employes. Although his agency is now the Middle West's biggest, he has no new business department (except himself). Wary of prima donnas, he makes all of his executives write advertising copy, writes all of the institutional copy himself. Sample: the current Heinz campaign, which is based on Maxon's boyhood reminiscences. Last year Adman Maxon drew $98,000 salary. In the personal income-tax figures for the whole U. S., he was 53rd on the list.

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