The Ad Man Cometh
pat fallon, the man who put the Minneapolis advertising scene
on the map, looks back on it all. // In TERvIEWED By DAvID GEE
Emotion in business: I’m emotional. I have
rigor, but this an emotional business, this is
an emotional company, and I deal with emotional people, both on the client side and on
the agency side. This place in general, and me
in particular, isn’t for everybody.
transitional things that have changed over
time, but the bedrock values and the cultural
imperatives are in place.
ning people’s trust. My legacy also includes
employees and people who have chosen to
follow me, which is the greatest compliment
you can have, and clients who have been willing to believe in me.
Loyalty: I am very loyal. Sometimes to a fault.
Which I am very aware of. To a fault.
Being an entrepreneur: It’s just what I am.
I didn’t know what the characteristics of an
entrepreneur were necessarily when I entered
the workplace, but I certainly was restless, felt
as if I could do things better and bristled under the supervision of people who I felt didn’t
work as hard as I did or whatever.
Being named Agency of the Year in 1983:
It felt like a mistake! We didn’t believe it. Up
until then, literally without exception, the
winners of those awards were the Ogilvys and
the Burnetts; the international agencies. So I
think it really said as much about Advertising
Age wanting to shake the industry up as it said
about us. We just happened to be there. They
obviously made a decision to take people’s
breath away and they felt we were worthy of
that. What it did was legitimize people coming to Minneapolis for creative.
How to build trust: Passion and alignment
between what you say and what you do. That’s
what builds trust. The gasbags get found out,
although sometimes it takes a while. I’ve never
read a single leadership book, though I feel I
do know a something about it.
The ethics of going it alone when starting Fallon: We made a pact that we would
not take any of our clients with us, another
unusual thing in the ad world. If at the end
of a year a client still wanted to work with us,
then that was okay. So we did things ethically
and we did things with a lot of passion and
started to recruit and grow. We started in a
recession with a strong point of view and did
well. There are a number of people who have
been with us for 25 years and we work hard
to maintain the same culture and the same
values. Businesses need to change and evolve
and reflect their client’s needs, so we have had
Knowing what works: I want to say something
that I really hope doesn’t sound arrogant, because I truly don’t mean it to be. But I don’t
need the affirmation of outsiders. I have a very
solid sense of creative and know when we do
well and when we don’t do well. We’ve won a
tremendous amount of recognition for things
we shouldn’t have and conversely didn’t receive recognition for things we should have.
Awards are good for clients and they are good
for our parents and our families, but I never
lived and died by them.
The pleasure in business: I would say my
biggest pleasure in the business has been win-
Paying credit where credit is due: I grew up
in a little apartment and went to grade school
at 14th and LaSalle. Being in a place like this,
an office like the one I have been lucky enough
to work in, is not anything I would ever have
dared to imagine. I was basically raised by the
Minneapolis downtown public library. But
somewhere along the line, around the late
1970s, a wonderful guy by the name of Gordy
Ritz put his arm around me and said, “You can
be something special.” I don’t really know why
he believed that, but he did. And in turn, he
introduced me to his friends Wheelock Whitney and Walter Bush. Those three were an
inspiration and my mentors into a life I never
knew. As I look back and think about all of the
articles that have been written about me somehow I forget to mention them. Their role in my
life has never been publicly acknowledged.
