Strategy Magazine

Reinblatt an inspiration for Marketers

by Barry Base

I spent a great day with Gary Reinblatt last week.

And though this column is usually (and quite deliberately) about ads instead of about ad people, Reinblatt is such a terrific column material, I can’t help myself.

Gary Reinblatt and George Cohon were the principal players in the building of McDonald’s Restaurants in Canada, from 10 outlets to over 900.

They made McDonald’s in Moscow happen too.

Gary was senior v-p, national director of marketing, the one who talked to, inspired, cajoled, cheered, judged, threatened and otherwise motivated the ad agencies.  He was, needless to say, exceptionally good at it.

I came to meet Gary, seriously, for the first time in the early 70s.

My agency had a client named MacDonald, who owned a couple of Ford dealerships around Toronto.

I wrote a radio campaign that took off on the potential confusion between McDonald’s The Burger Chain and MacDonald’s The Ford Chain.

Voices in the spots were provided by Eugene Levy, John Candy and Catherine O’Hara, and the punchline was a ditty sung by Owen McBride, called You deserve a Ford today… at MacDonald’s!

A few days before the spots broke, a sickening feeling dawned on me that a certain Omnipotent, Relentless, and Irresistible Marketing Force was likely to go nuts when they heard some dipstick was screwing around with their good name and slogan.

I became obsessed with the idea we could be Hurt Real Bad if we didn’t play our commercials for the gods at McDonald’s before they heard them on air and went AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!! and squished us.

I made the phone call, and trotted off nervously with a Wollensack tape recorder to meet with George and Gary.  Miraculously, they listened.  They smiled.  THEY LAUGHED!  Ha Ha!

For the rest of my life I would kill for these people!  One day six years ago, Gary with The Best Job in Marketing, the best wife, the best kids, the best everything, did everything but kill himself on a ski hill in Whistler, B.C.

They helicoptered him off the hill to a hospital with a broken neck and a damaged spinal cord, a sure quadriplegic for life, however long that might be.

Gary does an impression of himself at that point, as he did it last week, standing at the podium as our lunch speaker in front of the Young Drivers of Canada International Convention at the Sheraton Hamilton.

“This was the degree of movement I had over my entire body,” he says. “Watch very closely!”

Then he gives a microscopic, half a millimeter twitch of his left shoulder.

People chuckle, and then shiver.

During his 53 weeks in hospital, he realized one Monday morning around 10:00, whilst slumped forward where he’d been placed astride the can, that Holy Cow he could straighten his back to an almost sitting position.

He reflected that in his previous life he’s often shifted a couple of million bucks from one place to another by 10:00 on a Monday but in reflection, nothing he’d shifted made him quite as happy as the rediscovered ability to lift his head.

Gary was in Hamilton to address a gathering of franchisees and of course to inspire, cajole, cheer, warn and inspire ‘em and so he did.

“In a franchise organization, you’ve got to remember that none of us are good as all of us,” he said.

“The essential thing is for the franchiser and the franchisee to know exactly how each other made their money!  Don’t try to win EVERY time!”

“We’re only as strong as our weakest link.  Don’t ever think a weak franchise in Vancouver won’t hurt your strong franchise in Halifax.”

“Execution is everything!  Hundreds of restaurant chains have been started with purloined copies of McDonald’s operation manual, yet nobody’s created another McDonald’s.”

“I don’t care if a franchisee likes our advertising or not.  The essential thing is that our CUSTOMERS like our advertising.”

Gary threw in some Ray Kroc-isms.  “Always want more!  Don’t stop growing!  When you’re green you’re growing.  Then you’re ripe… you rot!”

He talked for 37 minutes, took a standing ovation, and we unlimbered his walker and headed for the parking garage and home.

On the way back to Toronto, Gary reflected on his first year of getting over the accident, hospitalized, paralyzed, fighting back.

“There are no weak people in that hospital,” he reflected.“If you’re weak, you fall over the cliff!”

Barry Base is president and creative director of Barry Base and Partners, Toronto.