Growing into One of the World’s Largest Agencies

In 1967, Morris Jacobs retired and handed the agency over to his son-in-law, Chuck Peebler. Peebler was determined to see the agency grow, and he wasted no time in setting Bozell & Jacobs on a path of aggressive growth—he acquired his first agency, Emerson Foote, Inc., that same year.

Dynamic and sociable, Peebler was just the man to lead the company through the series of mergers and acquisitions to come.

“I’m not hesitant about meeting people,” Peebler said in a 1972 profile in The New York Times. He attributed this trait to the fact that he attended five different high schools. “Since the ninth grade, I’ve been going up and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Chuck Peebler. Can I play with you?’”

David Bell, a Bozell & Jacobs employee who joined the company in 1974 through a merger, said Peebler’s openness to new ideas and talent made him a good leader during acquisitions.

Following the 1967 merger with Emerson Foote, Inc., Peebler relocated the agency’s headquarters to Foote’s New York office. With a solid base of clients on the East Coast and no longer dependent upon Midwestern customers, Peebler implemented one of the most aggressive campaigns to increase billings in the advertising industry.

By 1971, Peebler’s efforts had been rewarded with billings amounting to approximately $50 million for the year. Soon after, he purchased Glenn Advertising Agency, a firm located in Dallas, Texas, whose clients included American Airlines and Quaker Oats Company. In 1975, he purchased Knox Reeves Advertising Agency, a Minneapolis-based company that had a large account with General Mills. With these acquisitions and the new accounts they brought to the company, Bozell & Jacobs reached the $100 million billing milestone by 1975. By 1979 billings had skyrocketed to $287 million, making Bozell & Jacobs one of the top 20 advertising agencies in the United States.

In the early 1980s, Peebler arrived at the conclusion that Bozell & Jacobs had grown as much as it could in the U.S. market. He began to look for a candidate with worldwide contacts and foreign accounts to merge with. He found Lorimar Telepictures. Lorimar Telepictures was a holding company that produced television shows including “Knots Landing” and “The Waltons.” It also owned advertising agency Kenyon & Eckhardt.

Peebler happily agreed to a merger with Kenyon & Eckhardt and, in 1985, Lorimar purchased Bozell & Jacobs the two agencies merged into one. Together, they formed Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt, later changing their name to Bozell Worldwide, the 14th largest advertising agency in the world.

During this period, Bozell & Jacobs created some of the most well-known campaigns of the era. These include “Pork: The Other White Meat” for the National Pork Producers Council; the Milk Moustache ads featuring celebrities for the National Milk Processor Board; Verizon’s “Can you hear me now?”and many more campaigns for companies including Chrysler Jeep, Excedrin, Old Home Bread, Pace Picante, Merrill Lynch, Mutual of Omaha and Union Pacific.

After three decades of leading Bozell & Jacobs into the big leagues, Peebler retired in April 1999. In 2001, he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. When he passed away in April 2009, Bozell noted the many ways that Peebler’s reign was still alive in the agency’s culture today. Among them were Bozell & Jacobs’ culture of collaboration, an attitude of solving problems, rather than selling services, and embracing change.

“He loved this business and this company.  And it showed.  I was lucky enough to have worked with him on a few things in the ‘90s.  And I still have several notes and memos with kind words from him in my files. They meant a lot to me then … and now,” said Kim Mickelsen, who was with Bozell & Jacobs nine years under Peebler’s leadership.

In 1997, the company grew again with a merger with TrueNorth, and then was acquired by Interpublic Group in 2001. Later that year, Mickelsen, Robin Donovan, John Bauer and Scott Moore bought the company, re-privatizing it and taking it back to its employee-owned, Omaha roots.