In 1989, I left Dailey & Associates to become Executive Creative Director of the Los Angeles office of Hakuhodo Advertising America, Inc.

A year later, we made it to the finals of the $20 million Suzuki pitch which basically was put into review as the result of some extremely bad press the manufacturer was getting from the Samuari roll-over problem along with the heat that was generated by a number of dissatisfied dealer groups. To better our chances, we began pitching the California Suzuki Dealer groups independently from the national pitch.

We won three dealer groups prior to the conclusion of the review.  We did not win the national account.

That didn’t stop us. We took our creative presentation we pitched the national account with and set about pitching as many Suzuki dealers as would meet with us.  At each presentation we showed them our national work and they immediately wanted to know why we didn’t win the national business.  We continued to win additional dealers until Tokyo called our office and told us to stop making waves and told us not to pitch or show any additional work to any other Suzuki dealers. We were creating problems for the new national agency and they needed the opportunity to sell the dealers their approach — basically bull shit.

A year later their new ad agency fell apart, was merged, sold, re-merged, then stripped in a fire sale.

These are some of the print ads we had created for the dealer groups which immediately increased their sales and cut their production costs. One of the ways we were able to control costs and increase reproduction quality is that we (the ad agency) paid to have the model cars drawn in a traditional stipple-style with a photographic slickness to them. This guaranteed the best quality reproduction even in the worst newspaper reproduction circumstances.

And, of course, all of these ads were created on an Apple MacPlus and the materials were printed on a 600 dpi LaserWriter.  That was the true beginning of Desk Top Publishing and the end of immensely profitable businesses like typesetters, stat houses and production services. And it all happened over night.

Along with the newspaper print ads, I also created a series of outdoor boards that would be placed across the street from each other. One billboard one show the Swift and the other would introduce the new Swift GT.