To generate new business in advertising usually takes a long time. You need to be introduced to a client, then to have a first meeting, often a second and a third. Then, when the time comes for a client to launch a new campaign, he might organise a pitch among several agencies. Only at the end of the pitch, if you are lucky to win, do you have a business. It’s not really an industry where someone walks into your office with new business.

But this did happen to me once, in the early years of the agency. I was alone in the office at about 6pm on a Friday, and the doorbell rang. I opened the door and before me stood an Asian man who said: ‘I just read on your nameplate that you do advertising. I need your help.’

A bit surprised, I said: ‘Come in please.’ The man then explained that he was about to open a Thai restaurant on the ground floor of the building where we had our office. With a smile he said: ‘We’ll be serving very fine Thai food—we’ll have a lunch buffet from Monday to Friday, and à la carte for dinner every day of the week, including Sundays.’ Then, very excitedly he said: ‘I need a poster campaign, radio advertising, an ad for the cinemas and a few TV spots. You do TV spots, don’t you?’ he said. I nodded.

‘So how many restaurants are you opening?’ I asked. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘only this one.’ ‘And how many seated places will you have?’ ‘About twenty,’ he said.

‘Aha,’ I said, and asked him to follow me to my office, which overlooked the Plaine de Plainpalais. ‘There,’ I pointed, ‘can you see this shop?’ ‘You mean the KIS key shop?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They print leaflets too,’ I said. ‘Go to the shop and tell the man at the counter to print 1,000 leaflets for you.’ I pulled from my desk a white sheet of paper and wrote on it in French: Grand Opening, new Thai restaurant in your neighbourhood. Buffet à volonté for lunch, à la carte every other evening. Open on Sundays too. Bring along this leaflet and you’ll get a 10% discount.

‘And then what?’ the Thai man asked. ‘Then,’ I said, ‘the evening before you open the restaurant, you, your friends and your family go to every building in the neighbourhood and put the leaflet into all the mailboxes you can find.’ ‘What about my TV spots?’ ‘You forget them, as well as the rest of the stuff you’ve mentioned. The 1,000 copies will cost you CHF 80—that’s all you need to spend for your launch.’

The man was speechless and left my office with an uncomfortable sigh. About six weeks later, my doorbell rang at about 10am. The office was full of people. The Thai man came straight into our conference room and, with a loud voice said: ‘This man here,’ pointing at me, ‘he’s a genius. I did exactly what he said, and our restaurant has been full every day since we launched, for lunch and for dinner. People are even standing in line outside!’ Then, turning to me, he added: ‘You can eat at my place for free for the rest of your life.’

From then on, I would often have lunch at Wooden Hut, the Thai restaurant, which did indeed do very well.  Every now and again, if we had clients over lunch, we would ask the restaurant to bring up food. Each time, the owner would personally deliver it and tell my clients the story of the restaurant’s great success, all due to this genius here.

In the early years of my business, it was difficult to generate leads. We were practically unknown and had very little work to show, so I started to do what other advertising executives didn’t: I read in depth the Swiss financial and business press. I focused on what CEOs or Marketing Directors reported about their companies’ prospects, then contacted them, saying that I had ideas to accompany the plans they had in mind. 

On one occasion, I read that Kia Motors was planning to launch in Switzerland. It was a small article, but it gave me enough ammunition to call Kia in Seoul, Korea. I asked to be put in touch with the team in charge of the launch in Switzerland. It took about eight calls to get to the right person, but eventually a Mr. Moon said: ‘Call Emil Frey.’ The next day, I was on the phone to them.

Emil Frey is one of the two largest importers of cars to Switzerland. It took five or six calls until I got to speak to the Marketing Manager, a very pleasant man of British origin. We quickly switched to English and developed a good rapport. I would call him every two or three weeks and he would update me on what was happening at his end.

In January 1996, I called to wish him a happy new year. I added that I would come to visit him in March at Emil Frey’s stand at the Geneva Motor Show, a major annual car show, where everybody who is anybody in the Swiss car industry appears. ‘Well,’ said the Marketing Manager, ‘by then it will be too late to talk about your advertising agency.’ ‘What do you mean? I asked. ‘We’re planning to launch Kia just before the Geneva Motor Show.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘and have you already appointed an agency?’ ‘No,’ he said, but it’s not me who’s deciding, it’s my boss, the General Manager.’ ‘Could I speak with him? I asked. ‘I’ll pass you through,’ the Marketing Manager said.

The General Manager was as Swiss German as it ever gets. He said that he had indeed heard of our agency through his Marketing Manager, but that things didn’t look good for us. ‘Your agency has no car experience,’ he explained, ‘and you don’t have an office in the Swiss German part of Switzerland, where we are located.’ ‘And what’s the third problem?’ I asked him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Mr. Frey, the owner of the business, doesn’t know you.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s look at your issues one by one. It’s true that I personally have no car experience, but my partner and Creative Director has been doing all the creative work for Fiat for the last five years. And before that, he worked on Peugeot and Volkswagen. As for an office in the Swiss German part, we are about to open our business in Zurich.’ ‘When?’ the General Manager wanted to know. ‘In five days,’ I said. ‘And as for Mr. Frey,’ I added, ‘when are you seeing him next?’ ‘In one hour,’ came the answer. ‘Would you mind asking him how his father would have responded in 1930 to a car manufacturer who said that he preferred to work with one of the other Swiss car importers, those that had been established since the early 1900s?’ (I knew that Mr. Frey’s father had started his business in 1926, and that his early years had not been easy)

The next day, it was a Thursday, my phone rang about lunchtime. It was a Swiss German lady. She introduced herself as Mr. Frey’s personal secretary and asked if I could come to see Mr. Frey on Monday at noon. ‘Of course,’ I said.

I hung up the phone and called Christof Knuchel, a Swiss German Creative Director who I had been working with on and off over the past few years. We got along well and I knew that he was unhappy at the agency he was working at.

‘Can you talk?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You and I will start an agency in Zurich.’ ‘What??’ he said. ‘Yes, and we already have our first client, it’s Kia Motors. Our first meeting is on Monday at noon with Mr. Frey. We need an office by then. Can you arrange it? I’ll arrive on Monday morning and we need a signed lease before we meet Herr Frey,’ I said before hanging up.

Christof was more than startled, but recovered from his shock quickly, and somehow found an office overnight. He was especially amazed about the meeting with Mr. Frey, a local business celebrity who had become a well-known politician. Everybody tried to reach him, but few people could. 

Christof and I met the following Monday at 11am in the centre of Zurich at the address he’d given me. I hardly looked at the place—just signed the lease and off we dashed to Emil Frey. Herr Frey received us in his immense office. He was smoking a cigar and asked: ‘Who of you is Mr. Simko?’ ‘It’s me,’ I said. He pointed his finger at me and said: ‘You have a big mouth. You want to know what my father would have said to a car manufacturer who didn’t want to work with him because he wasn’t known at the time? He would have said: “Give me a chance.” So, here’s your chance, Mr. Simko. But I have to tell you, it’s not looking good for you. You have no car experience and you have no office in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.’

‘It’s true that I personally have no car experience,’ I said, ‘but here is Herr Knuchel, my partner and Creative Director, he’ll tell you all about his car experience. And here is the signed lease of our office in Zurich.’ Mr. Frey took a look at the freshly signed contract, noted that we were nicely located in the centre of the town, then exchanged a few words with Christof in Swiss German and awarded us the Kia account, our first large and very visible national advertising account. 

Kia turned out to be a horrible experience. The General Manager liked to put his fingers into every imaginable detail, his views on advertising were totally backward and we produced work that we were embarrassed to show to anyone. But, as usual, I had secured excellent commercial terms. We were handsomely paid and the contract was firm for three years. Importantly, Simko now had an office in Zurich, from which we could expand the business into the Swiss German part of Switzerland. The press duly reported on how the ‘highly entrepreneurial’ Pedro Simko had succeeded to establish a second office in Zurich, something that very few agencies from the French-speaking part of Switzerland had ever achieved.