Back to the future-or-Never burn a bridge
In 1969, just before Cindy was born, I joined JWT in Cape Town. I gave up my company car and we bough a second hand LH Drive VW with a half a clutch. I remember borrowing the JWT Ford Escort station wagon to take Mom to the Booth Memorial hospital and again to fetch Cindy and Mom. When I applied for the job, Asst A/E on exciting Pepsi, I was rejected for lack of experience. But they said I could work on the boring Old Mutual Insurance account which had given JWT 90 days notice, and if they kept it they would keep me. Young and foolish, I took the job and the risk. We kept OM and they gave me all the booze business at Sedgwick, which was bought later by SFW, Stellenbosch Farmer's Winery. 6 months later they fired the Pepsi guy and gave me his Account Executive job handling Pepsi which was based in JHB. Within a year they transferred me to JWT as a senior Account Executive. There they gave me the Beecham new business assignment which I had begun working on in CT. We got the Beecham a...