All I Ever Wanted to Be Was an Ad Man by Anthony Eglin
What's It About?
From a childhood growing up dodging bombs in wartime Britain to an award-winning career in advertising and marketing, Anthony Eglin’s story is a heart-warming romp and a captivating portrait of a life well lived.All he ever wanted was to be an ad man. Who ever would have imagined that he would get his first inkling of that career path hiding under the family’s dining room table in suburban London while avoiding the Nazi air raids during World War II?
Beneath that sturdy table, supplied with books, magazines, pads, pencils, lemonade and biscuits, young Anthony Eglin started drawing and visualizing, developing skills at an early age that would lead to a decorated lifetime career in advertising, marketing and design.
And that was how it started for Eglin, as documented with extraordinary passion and detail in his new memoir, All I Ever Wanted to Be Was an Ad Man.
Fascinating and Touching
Whether it was really all Anthony ever wanted or not, it was hardly all he ever got. His curiosity, drive, ambition and lust for life spread to many other fascinating vocations: rock band manager, filmmaker, bike racer, antiques collector/dealer, New Orleans Jazz clarinetist, accomplished gardener, wholesale bakery owner, and an award-winning author of six mystery books.
It’s all here in this story filled with touching anecdotes and the people who influenced him — from the climb to the top of his profession back to his first job in advertising at a small commercial art studio in London, reminiscent of an atmosphere you’d find in a Dickens novel. There, he was tasked with designing hundreds of postage-stamped ads for newspaper travel sections.
“I soon became adept at the challenge,” he writes, “which was abundantly obvious but not so easy to achieve: to make your ad stand out from the clutter of competition.”
Entertaining and Informative
Eglin tracks his career with great precision, taking readers through every interview, interaction, strategy and decision. The book is filled with entertaining and informative anecdotes and case studies, such as miraculously finding the unique selling proposition in Roger Wilco markets and saving the account after their president seemed intent on dropping his agency for good.
Whether it’s going to clothing stores to study the clientele to help save a large account or orchestrating the first-ever fashion show on the island of Alcatraz Prison, Eglin lets us into many sides of the world of advertising and promotion.
He peppers his narrative with on-the-job business challenges and the thought process behind solving them with advertising and marketing solutions. He does it by showing as much as telling. This will be helpful, he says, to those who might be considering a job in the field someday — or simply those readers intrigued by a good story. And there are many, with a few well-known names thrown into the mix.
Eglin drops a bit of philosophy and analysis along the way, noting that every advertising dollar has to be constantly reassessed and that most clients have no idea of the effectiveness of their campaigns. “A few may admit that half of their advertising dollars are worthless,” he says. “Problem is they don’t know which half.”
Captivating and Inspiring
When he is asked at parties what he thinks of the current state of advertising, he is not shy about how he feels — and it’s enlightening to get his take.
Any reader will be able to identify Eglin as a man of irrepressible optimism, deft insights and dry wit. But there’s more to his life story. That comes through loud and clear in this well-written tale.
In one telling anecdote, when Eglin is learning to ski from a particularly high mountaintop, he recalls making the mistake of looking down, observing people looking like ants from that treacherous vantage point. But he makes the harrowing, “teeth-clenching” descent all the while slipping, falling, rolling and eventually having to walk it for a bit.
There wasn’t much looking back for Anthony Eglin. And being willing to stretch the envelope, take risks and pursue life to its fullest is what makes All I Ever Wanted to Be Was an Ad Man a captivating and inspiring memoir.
About Anthony Eglin:
English-born Anthony Eglin, former owner and partner of two award-winning San Francisco advertising agencies, is also the author of six British mystery novels, including The Blue Rose, judged France’s best mystery novel of 2006, and The Alcatraz Rose, an International Book Awards first-place winner. After his long career in the ad business, he wrote and directed seven award-winning documentaries featuring British Gardens, Roses, and how-to gardening shows. His former Northern California garden was winner of Garden Magazine’s Golden Trowel Award, for best U.S. Rose Garden. At home, you’ll most likely find him in his garden; if not, in the kitchen, with his talented wife Suzie, cooking up a gastronomical dish under the officious eye of their cat, Feral Frankie.
