The Great American Build-Up

There are in America today probably fewer than 50 specialists in the art of the build-up. All of them are public-relations experts. Each of them has handled many cases, but they don't like to talk about their work. In fact, the subject of the build-up makes public-relations men nervously uncomfortable. They now have august professional societies with impressive codes of ethics, and they look upon the build-up as the first nonbarber surgeons must have regarded the old red-and-white poles.

Essentially, there are two types of public relations. First, there's the old school, whose practitioners see their function as comparable to a good tailor's-who can make your shoulders seem wider, your hips smaller, your stomach less protuberant; raise your height two inches, and generally make Tony Accardo seem a slightly unconventional but very friendly businessman. This type of PR is on the wane.

The current approach is practiced by Earl Newsom-old Henry Ford and his grandson are his two great monuments—who says, in effect: "You must do the right things; you can't fake them. As a good PR man, I will help you develop good policies and then I will talk about them." This new PR man won't tell you he can make you look handsome, but he will tell you he can make you interesting, hence newsworthy, hence promotable.

The real trouble with the old school, comments an acerbic critic, is that "just one gaffe will destroy the built-up image that's been worked on for years. When you've finally got the rich jerk looking like Cary Grant, he turns up in brown shoes at the April in Paris Ball. As a matter of fact, that's what killed Nixon. He turned up in brown shoes—figuratively—when he blew his stack during that famous TV interview in 1962. Goodbye Checkers, goodbye cloth coat, goodbye honest Dick."

"The Great Man racket, which consists of the inflation and labeling of enormous stuffed shirts, is always with us," Stanley Walker wrote in his 1934 classic, City Editor. "Some of the press agents engaged in this calling confess that it is the most soul-corroding way of making a living known to man." But it is quite lucrative, and Walker himself, fallen on rocky times after leaving the New York Herald Tribune, became part of the racket. He did puff books on Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey when they were making their Presidential bids. Later he even did one on dictator Trujillo—which must have been among the most soul-corroding work ever undertaken.

Assured of the anonymity of selves and clients, a few build-up experts agreed to talk of their exploits. Complete silence is an unnatural state for most of them, and I think several of them felt the need to pour forth their ingenuities and devices to a sympathetic listener.

The exact psychic origins of the desire for the build-up are seldom explored by the build-up experts. Once he recognizes the visible stigmata, the PR man needs only to know his client's avidity, thickness of wallet and staying power. No build-up expert would ever think of a mere one- or two-year campaign. They know—and the wiser ones tell the client in advance—that for maximum results a minimum of five years is needed. Since the cost of the campaign will be somewhere between $40,000 and $125,000 a year, stick-to-itiveness here can involve formidable sums.

"The build-up starts out," an erudite fellow who is head of one of New York's largest PR firms explained, "with a heavy hump of hypocrisy. The words 'build-up' or 'personal publicity' are avoided with the deliberateness of the great Oxford English Dictionary's excluding four-letter obscenities.

"So we start with euphemisms. The client says: 'I want a program directly connected with the corporation. If I have to make speeches and so on, you can count on me, but only if it will help my corporation and its products.' When he's made that obligatory little speech for you, he's said everything: You know now he wants a personal build-up in the worst possible way and is ready to spend good corporate funds to get it. The more he underlines only, the more the build-up must be centered on him."

The older practitioners of the build-up art used to insist on knowing in advance what goal the client had in mind: General Big Man, Governor, Senator, or even, in time, Presidential Possibility. The modern operator seldom bothers: For one thing, a serious plan would entail admission by the client that he is engaging in a long-term and expensive build-up using corporate funds. Few are that honest. One PR man insists: "You must tell the client who he is, because he really doesn't know. Once you've told him, you have to define very clearly where he wants to go and, for that matter, where he could go." This PR man is exceptional. Most of the current build-up operations are designed only to get the client aloft.

Once the intent is clear, the build-up expert must make a careful assessment. How presentable is the client? How well does he speak? Is he better with crowds or small groups? (Governor Averell Harriman and Frank Stanton, president of CBS, were built up successfully even though they are terrible with crowds; both are good with small groups.)

There are more basic considerations for the potential build-upee. How well does he register on TV? Does he have abnormal sex habits or social peculiarities that might queer a build-up? Several Hollywood male stars are good box office even though known in the trade as practicing homosexuals; so, for many years, was one of the most famous of all Americans operating out of Washington.

"When you start seeing a lot of pictures in the press and magazines of the build-upee surrounded by his loving wife and family," I was told, "it can often be a way of squelching a rumor that the guy's a queer. But if everything else is right with the man, he can get away with murder. After all, Thomas Jefferson was once (continued on page 112)American Build-Up(continued from page 79) publicly accused by the president of Yale of being a rapist and John Quincy Adams was publicly tagged with procuring a young American girl for a Russian nobleman."

Today we live in an even easier age, and build-up men don't worry unduly about a client's private life—as long as he conducts himself with some discretion.

"What often happens is that the search for power and fame by these men," points out a leading PR expert, "replaces the sex drive to a great degree. Oh, they fool around a little, but hell, who doesn't? As long as he stays out of the tabs and the company profits don't disappear, it's not a major problem during the build-up."

One man who has handled many build-ups employs a simple litmus test in fixing his fee. "In order to find out how tough a job it's going to be, I first suggest the man as a possible speaker to the New York branch of the Security Analysts Association. If they're enthusiastic, I know he and his company have possibilities. If they have trouble catching his name, I know I have a tough one and I raise the fee or beg off."

There are other basic items to uncover by talking to his associates: What papers and magazines does he really read? All of them say The New York Times and Fortune, but that's what they think is expected of them.

Another expert discussed the methods employed by most of them in making their client bigger than life-size:

"I will first arrange to have him invited as a speaker or a panel member at a meeting of the American Management Association; or, if his interest is in getting to be a big man on international or foreign trade matters, we would try for a spot at a Council on Foreign Relations or a Pan American Union meeting. Those first speeches we write for him are the key ones. They're designed to create a stir, to be eminently newsworthy. Of course, we want clips as a result of his speech, but more important, we want his comments to be remembered by other trade-association executives and heads of various national organizations. When they cast around for speakers for future meetings we want them to think of our man. Once you've got a man launched right, there's a big self-generating factor at work for you. Fortunately, there are many national organizations in the country that need speakers at their annual conventions—preferably speakers they don't have to pay for."

Occasionally the build-up men have a staffer who writes most of the speeches needed for clients, but more often they're assigned to professional ghosts—who get anywhere from $750 to $1500 a speech.

"There are a hundred headaches here," a build-up expert said. "Usually the client comes to us having heard a smattering about Washington ghosts and how Eisenhower won the election with a line written by Emmet J. Hughes ('If elected, I shall go to Korea'). Or how John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that great line for Kennedy, 'Let us never negotiate out of fear; but let us never fear to negotiate.' So he tells us: Get me somebody to give me some great lines like that. Or he decides that President Johnson's style of short, choppy sentences is for him and why can't we get someone like George Reedy or Jack Valenti to write the stuff. We nod amiably and react as if he's come up with great penetrating insights and then when we figure we've allowed him to impress us enough with his inside knowledge, we get down to business. We discuss possible subjects for his speeches and inevitably we find that he wants to talk about something that's of interest only to his branch of the industry, or he really doesn't have a thing to say. So we usually start from scratch. There's always the temptation to give business audiences the things they want to hear over and over again: attacks on big government and wasteful spending or rising taxes. But those things won't get space for our man. Everyone says those things. We have to find a new approach for him and even a new way to say it. The month we're getting up his first few speeches is when we really earn our keep."

Basically, the speeches the client makes will depend not so much on style or delivery, or even on the groups he talks to, but on content: What does he say that's newsworthy or quotable or worth repeating? These qualities will get him space, fame and further invitations to speak. And that's what he's paying for.

One veteran business-speech ghost who has participated in several build-ups said: "Before I do any writing, I study the client closely: What kind of voice range, inflections and speech problems does he have? Everything has to be tailored pretty much to his current equipment, because once you start talking of 'voice training,' you're in a ticklish area; it's pointing out an imperfection to a man who has a few million bucks. So to save time all around, you give him simple words that he can't mispronounce and you hope he really practices his speech so that he's just not going to read it word for word without ever looking up."

In the early stages the build-upee goes through his speeches carefully, changing a word here, a line there and occasionally adding a funny story he once heard in someone else's speech. "These guys usually don't know how to handle humor or deliver a funny line, but they hear other people get yoks and want some, too," one expert said. "But then, he's no worse than some of the Washington characters a month before the Gridiron Dinner: The honored guests are expected to keep them rolling with special quips. Once even President Kennedy had the whole White House staff producing gags for a short, funny, off-the-record speech at the Gridiron Dinner. But at least Kennedy knew how to handle a funny line."

One way to overcome the obviously prepared and read speech is to make spontaneous departures from the text. This, of course, is also prepared and rehearsed in advance. No one wants a repetition of the inadvertent frankness that overtook former Secretary of Interior Douglas McKay when he was campaigning for a Senate seat in Oregon. After bumbling through a prepared and routine oration, he put his manuscript aside and spoke up with renewed timbre: "And now I'd like to say a few words of my own."

Not only the first speech, but the first impression the client makes on the press is of great importance. The build-up experts tell and retell the lesson of the Hubert Humphrey haunt. When Humphrey first went to Washington as a Senator in 1948, a press-association reporter interviewed him and wrote that he was a "glib and gabby freshman Senator." For the next decade those adjectives inevitably found themselves in almost every interview with Humphrey—because most newspaper writers look at the clips before writing. Some experts believe the haunting reiteration of those words helped keep Humphrey from getting the 1960 Presidential nomination.

Recently the builder-uppers have been cultivating the national advertisers (such as Blue Cross, Northeastern Insurance and Bell Telephone) who key their programs around some leading corporation president who favors their product or actually uses it. "It's like the movie cross plug," an ex-Hollywood flack pointed out. "We lend the prestige of our man and they provide the space and the copy. If you shop around you can find a lot of tie-ins for your client and they don't cost you a cent. Great stuff."

Many of the tricks are not quite as straightforward. One expert has used what he calls his "fire alarm" gimmick for several build-ups. "The trick," he smiled, "is to create trouble and then have your man solve it. How? OK, in this industry we have a friendly union leader—I do favors for him and he reciprocates—and we arrange a little quickie wildcat strike in our client's industry but not at his plant. Things look very black, but our man goes in and smooths the waters magically. The wildcat strike is over—and who gets the credit? Of course. You don't even always need a solution. Just have your man create well-publicized alarms and fears and he'll make the headlines."

The build-up men usually have a Washington office or associate. A chance for a client to testily before a House or Senate committee hearing is avidly sought.

"This serves several purposes," one expert pointed out. "We can work up a pretestimony statement that's handed out in advance to the press. We try to get in a really newsworthy comment that will make news and build up our man. But even if it doesn't make the papers big, our client loves to be able to tell his pals at the country club: 'Oh, the Senate asked me to come down to Washington to testify on the widget industry.' Real casual, of course."

The Johnson administration's encouragement of American exports to improve our balance of trade has helped the build-up men.

"It's become quite a thing, this big E for Export which the plant can fly from its stack and the president can frame in his office," I was told. "Since a lot of smaller firms, say with $10,000,000–$ 15,000,000 or less in production, seldom have any foreign markets, it's no great trick for them to build up some foreign sales. The beauty of it is, since they start with almost nothing, any increase is apt to be a very high one percentagewise, and that's what they're making these E awards for. So, my man, following our advice, gets an E in Washington and with a little luck we'll have him to the White House for a handshake. Automatically he's a big man in his state by this time."

The build-up man knows that after he's run through his preliminary bag of tricks he has to shift gears—because his client will be interested in more than just space-grabbing. By the second year he wants more substantial confirmation that he is becoming a big man. He wants honors—plaques and awards that he can display in his big private office. If he's become too controversial in his grab for fame, these approved executive graffiti may be difficult to come by. "The first year's gone fine," one of the builder-uppers explained. "Now in the second year he wants solider recognition. Since he may not be quite ready for the higher accolades such as being invited to lunch in the private dining room of Time Inc., with Henry Luce, or getting invited to the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, or being a dinner guest at the White House—and I'm not ready to have a book ghosted for him-we have to seek out a flock of lesser substitutes: awards, prizes and honorary degrees."

First come the simple preliminaries: a low license-plate number in the states that still go in for this nonsense. Several have made the low-number plates a source of extra state income by putting special assessments on them, but still they are desired as a symbol of status. The build-up man can get these without too much trouble: Over the years he has built up allies in strategic state capitals. His annual $18,000 Christmas gift list is quite genuine.

The leading flight clubs—United's 100,000 Mile Club, American's Admirals Club, TWA's Ambassadors and Pan American's Clipper Club—are no great hurdle for a top executive. Mostly they enable you to use special waiting rooms at leading airports and to put their membership plaques on your office wall. Membership requirements for all "clubs" are quite elastic, calling for "personal interviews" or "contributions to aviation" and, of course, lots of flying.

There are some awards almost openly for sale. One for businessmen given every year, and fairly well publicized, has a telltale stigmata. The top three of the ten awards are to obvious Somebodies. But the remaining seven are to "Who-he?" types whose build-up men have kicked in a modest $1000 or $1500 for the kitty, plus an indeterminate larger sum publicizing the fact that the awardee has received the prize. By this extra promotion on the part of the seven unknowns, the value of the prize should be even higher the following year. It isn't always logical, but PR often isn't.

De Gaulle has become one of the build-up men's favorite Frenchmen. When he publicly instituted a thorough overhaul of the French Legion of Honor awards, making their distribution much more restricted, he created a ready-made excuse for the build-up men who are invariably pressed for it along about the second or third year of the client's rise to fame. Nowadays the build-up artist can say: "The way things are, I don't think it'll help you to have an award from De Gaulle when we are ready for Washington." And Washington almost always figures prominently in the client's plans. Still, a French award is valued and the build-up boys can work out an Honorary Citizen of Paris deal when the client goes to France. At a small but impressive ceremony he gets a beautiful medal and an engraved certificate: Parisian charities are always grateful to foreign donors.

Inevitably, the next step for the hooked addict is the honorary college degree. This calls for some finesse, considerable time and usually lots of money. One build-up man, adept at the art of what he calls "snagging the H. C. crap"—the degree is labeled honoris causa—detailed his most recent success:

This client was a self-made man who built up a large business connected with a certain engineering item. When he came to me, he said that he had decided a build-up would be cheaper than psychoanalysis, and if I did my job right he'd have something to show for it. In his second year he decided he was ready for an honorary degree from an engineering college.

"I knew this couldn't be one of those cockamamie mail-order colleges. It had to be real and reputable. I looked around and got in touch with the department head in a certain Eastern engineering school. I talked vaguely of my client's benevolent tendencies toward engineering. How he's dying to do something for engineering students. We discussed the possibility of his coming down for a talk on his specialty to seniors ... of his doing a piece for the college's engineering journal. It was quite vague, but all through it I kept stressing the great benevolence that welled up in my man. Finally, at the fourth session with the dean I decided it was time for T-O-T." (He explained quickly: "Tochus oyf tish," Yiddish for buttocks-on-the-table. Since the PR man was a genuine white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, I could only marvel at how certain Yiddish expressions had become a lingua franca among New York "communicators.")

"I did it with a throwaway line. 'You know, it would be wonderful if we could get him an honorary degree.' There was a pause. If the pause went beyond ten seconds I was in trouble. But after no more than five, the beautiful words came: 'That's worth looking into.' I was in. Later I found out how much: $20,000. It was worth every tax-deductible dollar to my client."

Other build-up men I spoke to work through the college vice-president in charge of development, a higher-learning euphemism for fund raising. Some had worked deals for as little as $5000, but the average seemed to be in the $25,000-to-$75,000 range, often spread out over a few years of giving. About half of the 3000 honorary degrees awarded each June are obtained this way. Of course, when you're a certified big man, things are much easier.

Benevolence has always been a sure route to prominence in America, but direct gifts—unless they run into the millions—are hardly likely to rate a front-page story. However, with some imagination, even far smaller gifts are likely to be remarkably effective.

"We had this client who wanted to give away $50,000 to charity," I was told. "But he wanted the money to bring the kind of results that a million bucks should bring. A real challenge. So we decided to use an old, useful technique: If you can't get a prize, give one.

"We worked out an annual prize award for outstanding work in his field. We give two awards of $1000 each and the administration and presentation luncheon and judging costs run to another $10,000 a year. But for his $12,000, look what he gets: First, his name is on the award. The award gets reams of good publicity every year. A lot of businessmen try to get on the judging committee, so that gives my man a lot of trading leverage for any favors he may want from them. Then finally, we have a reputable college administering the awards—which means, of course, that the least they can do for my man is give him an honorary degree, because the college gets a lot of publicity each year when the award is announced. Any time we want to switch colleges we can easily pick up another honorary degree for him."

Nondeductible, but even more potent in the build-up process, can be the political donations. As everybody knows, in the old days the party fat cats could snatch an ambassadorial or ministerial post. The Kennedy Administration put more professional foreign-service officers in the posts. And for the first time in American history, three magazine writers—John Bartlow Martin, William Att—wood and Edward M. Korry, who had helped write speeches in the 1960 campaign—were rewarded with embassies. Today a certain number of posts are still earmarked for the big givers who want the honor of being called Mr. Ambassador long after the ceremonial return from Timbuktu or Kabul.

A leading New York PR man, who does a lot of work for foreign governments, spelled out the requirements:

"Naturally, it takes a lot less money and work to make a man ambassador to Venezuela, Liberia or Cambodia, say, than to get him appointed to Rome. The essential requirements are that he possess a reasonably clean record, most of the social graces and a lot of money. For the lower echelon he will need at least three- to five-hundred thousand dollars to be spent on the endeavor, with about a fourth of that going to campaign contributions. For London, the Court of Saint James's—the diamond—studded brass ring on this carrousel—several millions are needed. In addition, the honor will run into several hundred thousand of his own money in entertainment costs once he gets it. Rome is next in line for social position and prestige, though not as demanding financially. Paris, which used to be on a par with Rome, has recently become less glamorous and more the spot for a professional."

Increasingly, men whose build-ups are aided with sizable political contributions seem to be less interested in the foreign posts. "If power and prestige are what you're after," one commented, "taking a foreign post is a form of exile. The power center is here, never there. They can forget who the hell you are real fast when you're holding the fort in Dar es Salaam."

For these party contributors there are many positions of prestige and some importance right in the U. S. These posts are particularly desirable, because they do not require the full time of the appointee. There are chairmanships of various commissions, Presidential committees, posts as consultants to cabinet members and various kinds of memberships on U. S. committees working with and in the UN. Nearly all of these are served without pay, but are much sought after. Many of these entail interesting social obligations; others call for a yearly foreign trip in which the Presidential appointee is treated with great care by the embassy staff. The best Washington estimate is that there are 500–700 of these desirable part-time appointments.

There is a more important consideration even if the build-up candidate has money to spurn. "The most likely business type to go into politics is an executive who is over fifty," I was told by an officer of the Effective Citizens Organization, a nationwide bipartisan group in Washington whose purpose is to get American businessmen involved in politics. "He has certain disabilities: He is usually friendless in either party and is ignorant of issues, ill-informed and disinterested. Once he has decided that it might be nice to go into politics, he is convinced that it can be bought via public relations build-up, and that all pols are a stupid bunch anyway.

"When his build-up experts finally persuade him that elective office is another game entirely, he can start playing. First he has to get the support of some twenty people in the party who really count. And before he can get their support, his voting record is going to be taken apart. If he's been an independent, he's dead, plain dead. No independent has ever made it on the state level or higher.

"His minimum qualification for further consideration is likely to be a minimum of two years of hard work inside the party—plus campaign gifts in accord with his ability to give. He supports the party's candidates, programs and platforms and gets around to the hundred-dollar dinners. Once he has been eased in, then the PR build-up job is in order. But even here he has to coordinate it with the party and be careful not to dislodge men who have worked in the party for years and perhaps don't have the money he does. He starts low: assembly candidate, state senator maybe, or even mayor. These are natural jumping-off points for higher offices. When elected, he can put on all the build-up steam he can afford. After that, anything is possible."

• • •

Perhaps because there are so few of them, the build-up men often speak with great respect of the men in public life who do not allow themselves to be sucked into the build-up vortex. Their attitude is akin to that of the sporting-house madam who bowed with respect when the town's last virgin passed her door.

They point to Frederic G. Donner, chairman of General Motors, the world's largest manufacturing corporation, who genuinely eschews any publicity and almost never grants press conferences. Juan T. Trippe, president of Pan American World Airways, is also known for his refusal to take part in the build-up psychodrama. Admittedly, these men don't need it; they are already big men.

The build-up is likely to remain part of subterranean and subliminal America for a long time to come. It obviously fills a great psychic need in a land that spurns formal honors and titles. (A recent Gallup Poll showed that 70 percent of all Americans favored some kind of official honorary system.) Perhaps, though, as the mechanics of the build-up become more transparent to a more sophisticated public, fewer men will want to endure the expensive five-year ritual. Such steadfast abstainers should themselves be rewarded. Instead of adorning their office walls with dubious honors—American and foreign—they should hang there the works of some of the better French impressionists. These have had their own great build-up—and they're still going strong.