The Little Agency That Could

For Keye, Donna & Pearlstein, an ad agency that consists of three partners and one secretary operating out of a rundown Los Angeles hotel, nothing succeeds like public service. In 1968, the chiefs of the then fledgling agency produced, without fee, some highly effective regional ads for Richard Nixon's presidential campaign and made some fast friends in the future Administration. Now the firm, which has billings of only $1,500,000, has in one large leap taken over the Peace Corps account, replacing giant Young & Rubicam. The account pays nothing, apart from roughly $150,000 a year from the corps to cover ad-production costs, but it could give the little agency valuable exposure in major media.

Peace Corps advertising is part of a public service program coordinated by the Advertising Council Inc., to which agencies volunteer their services and media donate space and time. It is usually left to the council to recruit agencies for accounts it considers "major." When Peace Corps officials, on their own, dropped Y. & R. for Keye, Donna & Pearlstein, council members observed that the new agency was too small for an account that had been given $25 million worth of media placements. The council thereupon shrank Keye, Donna & Pearlstein's new plum by reducing Peace Corps advertising from "major" to "bulletin" status, on grounds that the council had higher-priority campaigns to handle. This action meant that the account was no longer eligible for space or time from the council's pool and that the agency would have to scratch out free media placements on its own. The agency's president, Paul Keye, 40, a political veteran who once was an adviser to New York Senator Jacob Javits, remains enthusiastic about the project.

At the direction of Peace Corps officials, Keye and his partners, Art Director Mario Donna and Media Specialist Len Pearlstein, are at work on a new campaign aimed less at college idealists and more at mature craftsmen. (The corps has no age limit.) "The need now is to attract middle-class working America," says Keye. Accordingly, one ad in the agency's proposed new campaign proclaims, "The Peace Corps is looking for people who can speak two languages--American and plumbing." Another ad, aimed at Negro newspapers, says, "If the Peace Corps is lily white, it's your fault."

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