Ackerman McQueen

[pickles]

I can't think of a significant and semi-reputable okc corporate entity that has had a worse reputation as a place to work in my adult life. I have literally never heard a single good thing about it from anyone who has been through there.

[Pete]

They are down to very few clients.

I've heard they may lose the Chickasaw account and if so, that will pretty much be the end of them.

What a stunning collapse.

[soonerguru]

I can't think of a significant and semi-reputable okc corporate entity that has had a worse reputation as a place to work in my adult life. I have literally never heard a single good thing about it from anyone who has been through there.

Same. I have known several. Total nightmare. Hard to imagine the culture has changed much.

[Rover]

I can't think of a significant and semi-reputable okc corporate entity that has had a worse reputation as a place to work in my adult life. I have literally never heard a single good thing about it from anyone who has been through there.

I think when Ray ran it it was fine. Angus was another story.

[Pete]

NRA paid Ackerman McQueen $12 million settlement

[Richard at Remax]

Big W for AM

[Pete]

^

In total, you have to know they lost a ton of money over this situation due to legal fees alone. The NRA spent $50 million per year and this went on for quite a while.

Both organizations are now a shell of their former selves. AM has just a fraction of the employees and clients, as like so many old-guard OKC institutions they seem to be doing a gradual fade into the sunset.

[OKCexpat]

I am writing offline my comments about AMc and will carefully review it before posting in a few days. I need to be quite careful/accurate to avoid any legal issues.

That said I began doing some specialized work when I was a youngster with them in the 1970's. From 1980 through approx 2010 I was both an employee and a contractor. Folks focus on the NRA situation, yet miss some other clients.

1. CR Anthony's. AM did their ads in the 1980's. Anthony's had multiple stores in the southwest and AM did TV and radio campaigns for years.

2. Nocona Boots. Print ads in the 80's in Playboy mag. Amazing artwork that won multiple awards.

3. Resistol cowboy hats.

4. Regional ads for Pizza Hut.

5. Six Flags Parks for the entire planet in the 1990's.

6. Williams in Tulsa, especially with WilTel Communications.

Others I need to recall in my followup.

AM paid VERY well, but was a sweatshop. 80 hrs/week was expected. Angus was smart as a whip (pun intended) but had a horrible temper. As in punching holes with his fist into the sheetrock in his office. He mellowed in later years.

If anyone is interested, I'll write up my memories offline and post them here. All I can say that in my retirement, my Social Security checks reflect many years of well-paying work with AM. It was indeed a sweatshop, but I'm not complaining in my "old age".

Expat

[barrettd]

I'd be interested in hearing any memories. My father worked for Ray (creative director for a bit, I believe) in the 60s/70s, and ultimately left on bad terms to go out on his own. I never really heard much about what it was like in those days, so I'd be curious to hear.

[Pete]

AM used to have a ton of big clients but they don't have much left, and what they do have are remnants from the OKC old guard: BancFirst (the Rainbolts), Chickasaws (I think they still have them -- by far their biggest) the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the State Fair (both date back to the days of Lee Allen Smith).

They also put Mick Cornett on their payroll when he was mayor although several former AM employees told me he was never there.

[OKCexpat]

As I mentioned, I did a variety of "tech oriented" work for Ack-Mac from the mid 1970's through approx. 2010. I am not an "apologist" for that company. Ex AMc folks may be able to figure out where I'm coming from.

But, I will state that Angus was a VERY focused thinker when it came to innovating business plans.

For one, in 1979 he convinced his Dad (Marvin McQueen) and Ray to build a high quality recording studio in order to have a captive audio platform for client jingles. etc. It's from the days when 2" tape 24 track studios were state of the art. They had a excellent staff of OKC "A list" musicians as staffers. Mark Keller. Steve Wright. Donnie Juntunen. Others.

An ad agency owning a "house" recording studio was a unique concept at that time.

Angus was also ahead of the time when he convinced Williams in Tulsa to begin a streaming video service....Williams Energy News Live in 1999(?). The internet as we know it now was in late infancy in 1999. It was an amazing struggle to make it work in an era when dial-up modems were the norm.

No apologies about various business decisions.....just observations after seeing several decades imside the beast.

Expat

[OKCexpat]

OH! Almost forgot this one. I think it was the late 1980's when AMc merged (bought out??? fuzzy memories here) Hood-Hope in Tulsa. HH was a big actor in the ad biz in our region.

Chuck Hood was the CEO while Mr. Hope had apparently retired IIRC. It became Ackerman Hood McQueen.

Inside joke from then....HH employees who knew the ruthless AMc world called the new agency the Hopeless Agency.


Expat