Spin of the Compass

"A man either knows where he is going. Or he don't. And if he don't, he has to think, to chin-chin with himself and with his associates, to spin the compass and find North."

Thus in Frederic Wakeman's novel The Hucksters, Soap Tycoon Evan Llewelyn Evans boomed out advice to a deferential huddle of ad-agency men. Last week Veteran Adman Emerson Foote, 50, a prototype for one of the leading characters in Wakeman's fiction, took the advice in real life, chin-chinned with himself and with his associates and spun the compass. He thereupon quit as executive vice president of McCann-Erickson, world's second largest ad agency (after J. Walter Thompson), surrendering a salary "well up in six figures." Said he: "Last year I flew 64,000 scheduled airline miles and found myself concentrating on meeting problems. I got tired of spot-welding jobs. I wanted to do the whole job. We also had honest differences of opinion on doing advertising and how to run an agency. I want to return to the personal practice of advertising rather than help administer an advertising corporation."

At McCann-Erickson (36 offices in 16 countries, 3,600 employees, 1956 billings of $219 million) Foote had functioned largely as a troubleshooter since joining up in 1951.

Foote has no definite plans yet, but says: "I lean toward my own business or a piece of a medium-size agency." No stranger to change, Maverick Foote in 1948 startled Madison Avenue by giving up American Tobacco's $12 million account--the fattest ever voluntarily relinquished--over a policy disagreement with its management, two years later left Foote, Cone & Belding, which he had helped found, and in 1951 joined McCann-Erickson.

Other change of the week:

P: General William Morris Hoge, 63, will become board chairman of Cleveland's Interlake Iron Corp., nation's No. 1 independent pig-iron producer (sales: $125 million), filling a post vacant since 1951, when Leigh Willard died. A West Pointer ('16) with a civil engineering degree from M.I.T. ('22), topflight Army Engineer Hoge served under MacArthur as first chief of the Philippine Corps of Engineers (1935), built the Alcan Highway (1942), was a member of the group that planned and operated Omaha Beachhead on Dday. He also commanded the armored division that captured the Remagen Bridge (first Allied bridgehead over the Rhine), went on to command a corp in Korea, finally served as commander in chief of the U.S. Army in Europe (1953-55) before retiring and joining Interlake's exectutive staff.

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