You were the star, right? I wasn’t wrong. Yes, that’s right. I am not sure I came out very well. I sounded like a drunken mad person.

It was really funny. So, could you tell me about yourself, where you were born, and a little history on your background? Yes, I was born in Sussex. My father was a journalist. When I was born it was the war, and he was a major in the army. Quite a large family - five boys and a girl. Roman Catholic. Two of my brothers are priests. Both dead sadly. I’ve got two brothers left. 

I went to boarding school, as most people in England like me do, in Surrey, left there, and got a job. Well, I was completely shy and hopeless at the age of 18, but my father had worked in the army with a man who went on to be quite important in media in England, a man called Philip Brownrigg. And I think—but I don’t know this—that my father must have said to him, "Can you get my son a job?" Philip, at that time, was a director of Anglo-American, so he got me a very low-level job, which I was very bad at.

Again, I don’t know this, but I think after about two years my father must have bumped into Philip and said, "How’s my boy getting on?" And he probably said, "I’ve got no idea—I’ll ask." So he probably asked, "How’s Lear getting on?" and they thought, "Hang on, if the director’s asking that, he must be interested. We’d better promote him." So it took me out of being a clerk, and I was invited to the head of PR’s office, which was on a floor with carpets. And he said, "Sit down. Would you like a cigarette?" And I thought, "I don’t care what he asks me—I’m gonna say yes." Because when you were a clerk, nobody was nice to you at all.

That’s the way to go. So, I started as a very junior clerk, and this was back in 1959, and moved into PR about 1962, or something like that. Still very hopeless—you know, really—a bottle washer.

You started in 1959 as a junior clerk, and in 1962 you went into PR? Yes, but as a very junior bottle washer. And around that time, De Beers, which had a big, very successful advertising campaign in America, had a very small, old-fashioned one in England. There were rooms full of box files, each one covering one jeweller—hopeless, hopeless.

But a man called Jeremy Pudney joined De Beers and was based within the PR department to try and set up an advertising department. Although not many people knew it at the time, he was very close to Sir Philip Oppenheimer's daughter and eventually married her. He was a very forceful, intelligent man. His father had been a wartime poet called John Pudney. His mother was a powerful woman.

Was she a writer too? I can’t remember what she did, but she did marry after she divorced his father. She married a broadcaster called Gale. But they were a powerful couple, and Jeremy was a very strong-minded chap. He set about establishing and then professionalizing a department, and when he needed help, he used me. He was good at everything except all the stuff nobody wants to do, like admin, accounts, personnel, HR, and writing sensibly.

So that’s where you came in? Oddly enough, he couldn’t write very well despite his father and his grandfather, A. P. Herbert, who was a very successful and well-known politician. I think he brought in some law to do with divorce which changed everything.

So, I began to help Jeremy, and the advertising department grew. And I think it was decided, in about 1962, to expand the markets in Europe, so we picked on England, France, and Germany. We had an agency called Everetts in England, Publicis in France, and Brose in Germany.

But as well as that, we used to meet the Americans coming over from N. W. Ayer and got on a tour with them of the agencies in Europe. So, the agencies in Europe were run by the American agency. A very odd situation, with us as observers and advisors.

Good fun, because we used to go to Paris with the Americans. The Americans always had two gin martinis before lunch. We drank them because it’d be rude not to. We always had a couple of glasses of red wine with our lunch. They joined us because it’d be rude not to.

Sure. So, lunches were quite strong. And that went on quite successfully until, I suppose, about 1967, when I was about 27. And gradually, it became clear that Pudney was good enough to run the stuff himself, and he fought like anything to take command and indeed to be in charge of the Americans, which took a bit longer because they’d been hired direct by Harry Oppenheimer before the war and had been used to working on their own with very little supervision. They didn’t want supervision by some young guy from England anyway.

What was the agency in the US? That was N. W. Ayer, which was based at the time in Philadelphia. You’d probably remember that from the "Senator", Don’s friend in America.

Odiorne.Yes, Jeff. He was based there.

So, Jeremy Pudney, he was involved from the beginning? Yeah.

And then Japan was another market? Then we decided to expand more markets, and the economists said the next ones were Sweden, Italy and Japan. Can you imagine Sweden? I don’t know what we were thinking because even if it had been very successful it would have been very small potatoes. 

So, Pudney and I set off for Japan to choose an agency. We’d been given a list of good Japanese agencies before we went, and we dutifully met them, and they were all hopeless. And what they were, they were single-issue companies that sold media for one newspaper or one outlet or magazine. They weren’t like European ones, who had a broad view of marketing issues.

So, we were having a drink in the top of the Hilton, I think, in Tokyo. We bumped into a chap who was with Reader’s Digest called Bob Klaverkamp, and he said, “How are you getting on?” And we said, “It’s hopeless. You know, they are all hopeless.”

And he said, “Well, have you tried the American agencies?” And we said, “No, I hadn’t thought of that.” So, he said, “Well, try McCann or J. Walter Thompson.”

And so we did. We made appointments with them. McCann were very slick. A little bit too clever for me, and Thompson were hopeless. A couple of guys didn’t know their bottoms from their nose.

So, we were regrouping in the pub in the Hilton, and we met Klaverkamp again and told him how we were getting on. And he said, “That doesn’t sound like Thompson to me. They’re a very good agency. Are you sure you talked to the right people?”

So, he made an appointment for us to go back and this time we went back and we met Don Thompson, who went on to be head of Paris, and Don Johnston, who went on to be head of the whole international Thompson group, and they were brilliant.

Not only were they brilliant, but they were very nice people. So, Pudney naturally wanted to hire McCann because he liked the slick, hard-bastard attitude, and I wanted to hire Thompson because I said they’d be nicer people to have dinner with. For some reason he went with me, and Japan as a market was a huge success and transformed the diamond market.

It wasn’t so much in their culture to offer diamonds. No, it wasn’t, but they liked Western things, and they took to it. They had a slightly different attitude to the Americans’ diamond ‘love’ attitude. Nevertheless, they took to it. They had the money. At that time, Japan was booming. Wonderful place to go to. You could buy watches for 10 pounds that you couldn’t find in Europe. Wish I had bought more.

And Sweden, you know. So, whenever we went to Italy—wherever we went—we looked for the agencies who we were with elsewhere. So, in Italy we looked at, by now, J. Walter Thompson, plus anybody associated with Everetts, Brose, or Publicis, and again we hired JWT.

So, it began a trend where we began hiring JWT everywhere outside America. We still had N. W. Ayer, although it later changed.

And I can’t remember where I met Don (DZ). In fact, I can’t remember much about a lot of things. What I remember of Don is that, first of all, he was very cool, very laid-back. He was an American in Paris, which was kind of a wonderful thing.

This was in the seventies, I think, right? Yes, I think so, yes. He had a beautiful wife who he kept sensibly mostly away from all that. He was a wonderful advertising man, but he was also pretty good to go out with at night. But all the stories I know about him at night I probably couldn’t tell his daughter.

I am picking that up in his archives. He kept all his exchanges with his pals and colleagues. Did you know he was banned from Castel?

Tell me that if you know the story. What did he do? Story is, he must have done something quite bad. I know what I think, but I am not going to tell you. Anyway, he got banned, and the next time we went back there with him, the lady at the little desk in a typical French Parisian concierge said, “Mr. Zimmerman, you can’t come in here, you’re banned.” And he rather foolishly said something like, “You fuck off, you dyke bitch,” or something.

I saw a cartoon in his archives about this, and I was wondering about the story.
So, we went off, and he then said to us, “Well, you can go.” So, we were talking to the lady to go in, and he creeped past us on his hands and knees, and dived down the stairs. And it was a big nightclub with many rooms, so he disappeared, and they never could’ve found him.

That’s too much. What was Castel? I am not sure if it’s still there. It was a nightclub. It started off as a private nightclub. I think it had about a hundred members, and for about a year they just didn’t let anybody in. And so, when you do that, people want to go in badly, but they couldn’t go in. So, gradually, then when they did let people in, it became very popular.

Do you have memories of what it looked like? It was one of those places you go in, and then you go downstairs, and there’s bars and rooms and music. I don’t think it was a music venue. It was more like a place where you went to meet, chat. People could keep their own bottles of cognac there.

There was a designer called Jean Dinh Van who kept a bottle of very good cognac or Armagnac, I can’t remember. I think it was cognac there, or maybe whisky. And he said, “Anyone from De Beers can have a drink from my bottle.” That was fun.

So, so you would travel to Paris quite often for work? Yes, but I had a drawback. I couldn’t speak French, and I was hopeless at learning it, which meant I really couldn’t get involved with the trade at all. At least if I did, I had to be with somebody to interpret.

And I had a lot of other duties as well, kind of deputy as well as running one market. I was deputy. I think that must have been after I was married. I was married in ’74.

So, you were the Corporate Affairs Director. Is that the right title? By the time I retired, I was director of CSO, the London office, not director of De Beers—in charge of International Corporate Communications. But that was after I’d worked for, say, 30 years on marketing and went back into PR.

Partly, I must say, when Jeremy wanted to promote people, I was good at what I did, but what he wanted was someone to take over on the actual marketing, the stuff which wasn’t my place.

And I was a PR, you know, basically I was home again by then. Plus, I didn’t any longer have to work for Pudney. I loved him, but that’s a silly thing to say about a bloke, but I deeply respected and liked him, but he wasn’t easy to work for.

Yes, that’s what I heard. He was a perfectionist? Yes, he set standards, and he was also a bit like Trump. You didn’t really know what he was going to do. He might do something, but whatever he did, he was going to do it, so you may as well get behind it. Get behind it or bunk out.

It must have made it exciting. I guess. I once went to lunch with your father in Paris, and he promised to show me, I’ve forgotten the name now, when you put cheese on potatoes.

Raclette. I took to it like anything, and it was, you know, one of the best raclette places in Paris. And when we came out, I noticed that his tummy and mine too had changed shape—we’d eaten so much that we went in one shape, came out looking slightly pregnant.

That’s a nice memory. It does that to you raclette. Long lovely lunches.

Well, my father was a bon vivant, and I am sure he loved the food and the wine.
And because I didn’t have to speak French to him, and he’s just good fun to be with. Last time I saw him, I was in Florida, in a bar, and somebody asked him what he did, and he said, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” putting on his little look.

I can imagine, yeah. And there’s a lot of exchanges with aliases between all of you.
I think he pretended he was a green beret or something. There’s also the story which I’d thought of was that he’d seen O.J. Simpson in a Rolls Royce outside that restaurant, Langan’s, and had thrown himself in front of it on the basis that he wanted to be killed by O.J. Simpson in a roller, but nobody knows quite what’s true.

He had some good stories, huh. He was great fun to be with. But I think, also, at work he was pretty good, and he formed a partnership with the “Senator”, Jeff. Jeff’s also a lovely guy. It was good fun being in Florida with Jeff, and Peter Burke, and Don, and me. And I think Hubert Dagnall came along. He’s dead now.

So, you went to get some sunshine over there. Did you stay with Peter Burke?
Peter Burke has a house over there. Funnily enough, my wife and I are very close, and apart from travelling for work, we’ve hardly been apart. But I actually went on a week’s holiday by myself and went to Hooters. Have you been to America? I am sure you have.

Well, I grew up there, so Hooters rings a bell. You see that chain in all the states, yes. It’s a Trump-kind-of-place. It wouldn’t happen over here. They hire girls because they are pretty. I mean, I’m not sure it’s allowed, really. I think it’s a family restaurant.

I guess with Trump that’s encouraged. I am sure, I hate Trump with such a fervour, I can’t believe it. I am about to have lunch in a couple of weeks with Joan Parker, who was the head of PR at Thompson. Or she ran her own—she ran Joan Parker, Inc.—and she comes from Florida, and her husband is a Republican. I am sure she’s going to be saying what a good man Trump is, and I just don’t know how to handle it.

You’ll have to bite your tongue, right. I don’t think I am going to. I think the time has come to say what we think all the time and all the time. 

So, you mentioned that you met my dad at creative forums. What were creative forums at De Beers? Well, as the empire expanded and we advertised in perhaps 12 or 13 countries, Jeremy believed that we should have in each country a diamond information centre, a diamond promotion service, and share the best of creative.

The Americans weren’t at all happy with that idea. They wanted to do stuff their way; they weren’t used to being told what to do.

So, the thing was, we got together all the DIC girls—I think I was chairman of that—all the promotion people and occasionally all the creative people. Can’t remember. Peter Burke helped run that.

So, they would come from all over the country. N. W. Ayer, a little bit unwilling to learn, but of course, they soon got mingling and talking and sharing and seeing each other’s work.

So, it was like a two-day conference and booze-up, partly to get people to know each other, partly to actually make presentations of each other’s work, and try and get the best, and use it everywhere.

I think they had—they could have been every two years, but I was on the fringe of those. I was more involved with the publicity side.

So, this was created by Jeremy Pudney, this diamond promotion and education of the diamond business? You are quite right. The fourth arm was education. That also fell slightly under me. The idea was that jewellers tended to be scientists. If you’re a woman who went into a jeweller’s shop, you say, “This diamond?” And they might say, “Well, if you look in, you can see this structure.” We wanted salesmen, not scientists—people who would talk about diamonds as what they could do for your emotional life, not where they came from, how much they cost, or what shape they were.

Right, that’s incredible. But for America, some of this was quite new. Eventually, they took to it quite well. These conferences would take education was every four years, I think. I remember one in Paris where, first of all, the French people went on talking for so long. Sorry, it wasn’t the French, it was the Germans, the Austrians making a presentation, that eventually the French delegate—the German paused in a sentence, and the Frenchman stood up and clapped him, and the speaker was trying to say, “Well, wait, I haven’t…” And they said, “Right, time for a gin and tonic.”

That was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the hotel there. There were always problems. One of the interpreters wasn’t right, or the French were going to denounce the Austrians as being a Nazi, or whatever. Good fun.

They were about every four years, publicity about every two years, promotion about every two years, and I think creative forums every two years. And Don would have been to a lot of those, I think.

What a monumental campaign to have been part of. Yes, there was a lot of travel. For me, when I was doing that, I was at all the consumer countries. And then when I was in PR, was all the producing countries, all the cutting countries, so I travelled a great deal.

Towards the end, mostly, I could get onto South Africa. The company was quite generous, quite wealthy, quite generous. For a long time, you know, could give you a first-class ticket and can swap it for two club classes and take your wife.

Jeff Odiorne flew the Concorde. Did you fly the Concorde? Yes, only once, when I went to America with Peter Maddick, or maybe Canada. Anyway, I went with Peter Maddick, and he said, “Put on a tie and don’t speak,” because he knew that the Concorde was never fully booked, or quite often not fully booked, so he had first-class tickets on the other plane.

So, he went up and said, very quietly to the woman, because they didn’t publicize it—they thought it would damage the image of the Concorde—“Do you want any transfers to Concorde?” And so, we were transferred to the Concorde, which then broke.

So, they sent another Concorde from London to get us. And then we got the second Concorde, which arrived in London just after our earlier plane would have arrived.

But I am glad I was on it once. I didn’t enjoy it. It’s thin. They tell you how fast you’re going, and it seems impossibly fast. When you are on a first-class lounge of a 707 or something, you spread out, you walk, you know, this was all thin. But still, I’ve been on it.

Yeah, that’s something. And it was beautiful. It could have been designed by iPhone.

Ah, slick. And did you meet Frances Garrity?
I met her once when she was very old and I was quite old, when there was a big dinner in London and she was there to celebrate, could be 50 years of relationship between N.W. Ayer and us, and Frances Garrity was invited as guest of honor, or one of the guests of honor. And I think people were very nice, but she was quite old by then.

And Harry Oppenheimer? I’ve met him a couple of times but he was scarily important so I went into brain freeze if he asked me anything. Very nice man. But once Pudney decided to make a presentation about the world for diamond markets based on an economic assessment by the agency. And he had these two economists who looked like, do you ever watch Bond films? Have you ever seen a Diamond is forever?

I am embarrassed to say, I’ve never watched one, but I can see the poster. I can imagine the atmosphere. Well, there are two diamond smugglers—or killers—called Kidd and Wint, or something. One's sort of fat with a moustache, and the other one's thin and gay. So, these two agency people were presenting the economic view of the world. One had a pink floral tie on. This was a long time ago. They made their presentation, and then they left. Harry Oppenheimer said, "It's all very interesting, but do you think we should be doing it in working hours?"Pudney got quite irritated with it and bravely showed it.

So, he didn't really stop you doing things, but he made it pretty plain what he liked and didn't like. But I mean, the Oppenheimers put people in charge and then they don't delegate—they nearly abdicate sometimes.

You worked up until the 2000s and then you retired? Yes, October 2000, when I was 60. People had to retire at 60 at that time. In a way, not everyone wanted to, but I did. It was wonderful because they paid you a salary, and we also had those old-fashioned pensions that increased without having to do anything. So, we were all much better off.

It was the heyday of advertising. Yeah, and for a company which had a monopoly and for a company which was very wealthy. Not like that now I don’t think.

And now we have computers replacing everything. To get the first word processor WordPress I got from the department, took up a room about as big as a kitchen unit. It really was quite a substantial thing. Took up a whole small room, and to get it I had to fight like anything. The personal department said what will happen to your secretaries, things like that that. The problem with England is we have no vision of technology really. We’re very bad at it. For instance, our Wi-Fi speeds are very low compared to some. I can get 14. What do you get down there? I bet you get more.

We have high-speed fiber optic they call it. I am not so sure how fast that is, but it works well. My friend who lives near Carcassonne, not even in a village, he lives between two villages down a farm track and he gets a thousand Mbps, whatever they’re called. I get 13 here.

Well, I am nostalgic for when ads were made by hand, and truly the advertising was poetic - really was beautiful stuff that was made. Well, right at the beginning Ayer decided that they would illustrate advertising with fine art, and the man on the account who was called Gerry - Gerold M 'Gerry' Lauck junior. His father had been well-known in the art place and had lived in Paris, I think. So, they began going to Paris and buying some seriously valuable paintings, some of which have mysteriously disappeared, by Dufy, I mean, I am not well enough up in it, but some really good paintings. There wasn’t a message so much as this is beautiful, this is woman, but it was very distinctive.

And it was a pioneering act to commission these artworks. That hadn’t been done.
That’s right. Were they all commissioned? I am not sure. Probably they would know. I mean, I imagine some of them were bought having been painted. Because I can’t imagine all those painters would simply say, oh yeah, I’ll do a commission.

I was wondering that too. Where did they go? That’s a mystery. Well, I think some of them went to director’s offices, but it was a long time before anyone realized, you know, hang on, we’d better find out where they are. There was a Dufy hanging in Pudney’s office for a long time. He happened to like it. I don’t know what it was worth. It must have been a worth a great deal, I think. 

So, the idea was to incorporate artwork, was that in the US at N.W. Ayer’s art department? Yes. Long before we came on the scene, they started in 1938. Harry Oppenheimer went to America in late 1937 or 1938. Most of the other directors of De Beers were very old-fashioned, thought advertising was beneath them, that it would lower the image of diamonds. He was the coming man, and he commissioned Ayer. Then he went back to South Africa. Ayer did up some proposals and they flew them down. To get to South Africa from America in those days it took about six weeks, and you had to hop down by flying boat. In the flying boat the Ayer people were on crashed, but no one was hurt. So, they eventually got there in six weeks, made the presentation and the board agreed. Then of course came the war. Americans weren’t in the war at the beginning so I think the campaign started back then under very little supervision. If they met once a year, probably met once a year in Kimberley for a presentation of what was going on, you know one-hours meeting and, so they’d been used to that.

You couldn’t meet in the US? Why couldn’t you have meetings there? Well, because the Americans had accused De Beers and General Electric of conspiring to set the price of industrial diamonds during the war. I don’t think that was true. And years later General Electric were exonerated, but they left De Beers’ name on the books, if you like. We can go now. When I left De Beers just at the time when Bain, the managing consultants were setting objectives for leading people. So, the guy who took over for me, one of his objectives was trying to work out how to make America a safe place for us, which he managed to do. 

Because you were in charge when there was the whole period with the conflict diamonds and that scandal? That was towards the end of my time, but I did have quite a lot to do with the people who were taking the lead, saying about conflict violence. I forget their name now. It was a kind of charity, run, in fact, by a very, very beautiful young woman. And I took a complete dislike to her, and she to me. So, we only had one meeting. I think she was impertinent. I thought we should say to them, you know, "We don't deal in conflict diamonds; you've invented it." But anyway, in the end, more sensible people than me encouraged De Beers to establish, join, and help run a thing called the Kimberley Process.

So that was hanging over us. Also, the imitation diamonds. They're not really imitation; they are diamonds, but they're man-made. That's another threat which was becoming quite big. So, by the time I got out, the world was full of terrible threats.

Right. Russians were behaving badly, Australians were behaving badly, Canadians were behaving badly. There was a program made about De Beers by an Australian woman. She had been a man, but she was a woman by then. And it was very, very negative and the BBC ran it. And then, for some reason, one of our directors told the people in Canada, in a diamond mining place called Yellowknife, that they were banned from watching it.

Do you have a copy of it? No, I don't. I went to Yellowknife to try and put right the damage that was done by someone saying you can't watch a film they clearly could watch, and which only made it more popular.

So, I remember one dinner with the local board of trade, and the person in charge, or the chairman, was a woman. Her husband didn't come because he was recovering from a gunshot wound, so I asked her about it. I was sitting next to her. He'd taken a little plane up to the frozen lakes, shooting caribou or wolf or whatever. But he himself had been shot in the bum by an Indian, but only in the bum, so he managed to get back to his plane. The Indian said it was a mistake, and he flew himself home. But I said to the woman, "How far away was it?" She said, "Well, I think it was about 500 meters." That was a bloody good shot, man. But I also saw another group of people and said, "What did you think of the person who made the film?" And they said, "You'd laugh if we said." I said, "No, I won't." "Well, he seemed to have a—or she seemed to have—an Adam's apple." I said, "I can't say." The lawyers had told me not to make ad hominem attacks. I can't speak.

But De Beers were ingenious in the way they handled that right. They had twisted the controversy to become sort of the protector of diamonds and it worked out really.
On the man-made?

The conflict diamonds, they were able to use this controversy to their benefit, to say, look we protect the market from these diamonds. That’s right, yeah. I think they did. Yeah, it still was damaging, but no, very sensible. And I wish I’d thought of it, but I didn’t.

Who was responsible for it? I think it was probably a woman called Fleur de Villiers who worked as a consultant for De Beers and a guy in my department called Bone. They also did things like try and stamp out polio in Angola, things like that. Which are fascinating and worthy, but not my cup of tea.

What an incredible career you had. Thank you, I am probably rambling on too long and I’m always here if you want to speak again.

No, no, this is me learning about what you living through this period which is so unique and incredible. The De Beers campaign is probably the most important and successful campaign of the twentieth century, would you agree? Certainly, must be one of them. You know that book you helped with? Did they ever give you a copy?

Yes, Stephen Lussier organized for me to get a copy. And I even had my name mentioned in it, which was very kind. Well, you deserved it.

Well, I found a lot of the ads in there and I’m quite proud of the work that my dad worked on. I think they are really beautiful. They are and some of those early stuff really gets me here (points to heart). Some of the later stuff, well it was clever, some of the early stuff when I was very young. And some of the photography by, who was that guy that Don worked with in Paris?

Albert Watson? Albert Watson, yeah, people like that. They were unusually talented.

Sarah Moon. Helmut Newton. They used to do audiovisuals, wonderful presentations, slideshows, and things like that.

Who did? Well, the French agency, I think, because we used to have the Diamonds International Awards, which was often held in Paris, or in Venice. So, in Venice, we hired the Opera House and practically booked out the Cipriani in Venice behind the old opera house. Wonderful.

That must have been stunning, quite an event. We had a giant transvestite on a swing and the MC was dressed all in silver and came with a sword and cut off the champagne cork. The giant transvestite tried to sit on the chairman's lap and I was walking about in the corridors because I was supposed to go and introduce the thing and I was nervous. I met a girl dressed entirely with nothing on except a meringue.

That would make you nervous before. Now I understand the screenplay better that you were in. Well, there’s a lot of drinking and a lot of behavior which probably looking back on it wouldn’t be acceptable now.

Jeff: First of all, I think it’s wonderful what you’re doing. And I’m so glad that you’ve discovered all of these wonderful treasures that Don squirreled away over these years. Amazingly, he’s saved a lot of stuff.

Caroline: And it really was spurred on by your email as well.
I remembered that he probably at least had a portfolio of stuff. And when the De Beers guys were saying they couldn’t find many ads for the book they were putting together about the 100 years of DeBeers advertising, I took a chance that you might have them stored at your place.

I found a lot of them. Yes. And I’m trying to recondition and scan them - it’s a big journey. So you are from Pennsylvania? I read this morning that you went to The Haverford School.
Correct.

And that’s where you started? Was that a Quaker school?
Actually, it was founded as a Quaker school in the late 1800s, but it was not affiliated with any religion when I was there. I actually didn’t start there until ninth grade. As a young boy, we lived in rural Chester County near the village of Paoli. The school that I attended back then was an elementary school in Berwyn, if you are familiar with that area.

The name, yes.
When I was 12, we moved to Ardmore, a suburb of Philadelphia, where I spent two years in junior high school before transferring to The Haverford School, a private school for boys, for the four years of high school.

Wonderful.
From there I went to Cornell University, and I studied Fine Arts. After three semesters, I felt that I really wasn’t getting what I wanted at Cornell. I was looking for more of an advertising/graphic design program. That’s when I transferred to the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (PMCA), the same school that your father had attended. He was a few years older than me, so he had graduated before I got there. I didn’t actually meet him until many years later in New York when we were both working at N. W. Ayer. I had started my career in New York City in 1964, but moved to Philadelphia and joined Ayer in 1968. After about five years, they closed the Philadelphia office and transferred us all to the New York office. Don had come in from Chicago and was working on the De Beers account. Around 1980, I was promoted to Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director and assigned to run the creative work for the DeBeers account. Don was the senior art supervisor in my group.

Sadly the University of the Arts is now defunct, isn’t it?
Yes. PMCA became the University of the Arts in 1987. Unexpectedly, on May 31, 2024, the school administrators announced that the school would be closing. They just weren’t managing their money well. I felt sorry for all the students who had put their education in their hands. I am not sure where they all went, but apparently, other schools were willing to take some of the students in.

My friend in Pennsylvania received a letter from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, that are now in charge of the archives for the University of the Arts. I found it interesting that they are in charge of the memory of the school, the students, and their work. I thought maybe some of the work that I’ve discovered—the advertisements - even though they were made post-graduation—could interest them.
Many very good graduates of that school had successful careers in advertising and in the arts. The chairman of Ayer, Jerry Siano, was a guy from South Philly who went to PMCA and worked his way up the ranks to become the chairman when Ayer was a big company. There were many others.

Going back to when you were a little boy again, you grew up in a fascinating place. I also grew up in a farmhouse and love farmhouses. But yours was particularly interesting. Remind me, please, who it belonged to?
Wharton Esherick. A sculptor and woodworker who lived from 1887 to 1970.

Incredible.
Yes, we were really lucky. I was actually born in Rochester, New York. My father, who was from suburban Philadelphia, had taken a temporary job up there. I was born in May, and I think he was anxious to have me arrive so he could escape the brutal winters of Rochester. We moved to Narberth in suburban Philadelphia. When I was about two, my parents decided to move out to a more rural setting. They found a farmhouse, which was owned by Esherick. It had been his studio for many years until he built a new studio on the property and put the farmhouse up for rent. It was a fascinating place.

He put it up for rent, and your family was the first to rent it?
Exactly. We were his first tenants, and we lived there for about 11 years before moving to Ardmore, a suburban town near Narberth. But many years later, long after Wharton’s death, the Esherick family decided to sell the farmhouse. My son, Peter, bought it. He and his family lived there from 1999 until 2003, and I went back to visit my old boyhood home many times as a grandfather. It hadn’t changed very much; it was still a magnificent place.

And do you have memories of the artist?
Yes. We would visit his studio occasionally. The entire building was a work of art. It’s now the Wharton Esherick Museum and is open to the public. I’ve visited it many times over the years. He was extremely creative. It was just a short walk from the farmhouse to his studio, so as young kids, it was fascinating to see what he was making. He carved beautiful sculptures, designed wonderful furniture, and household items.

He is called the Dean of American Craftsmanship. 
Right. His work was exhibited in the New York World’s Fair in 1940 and in many other venues over the years. More recently the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, had a Wharton Esherick retrospective.

And do you have any visual memories of his work or things? 
Yes. In 2010, Wharton’s son-in-law, Mansfield Bascom, wrote a book titled “Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind”. It is a large-format, “coffee table” book published by Abrams with 276 pages filled with pictures of Esherick’s creations. Also, there are a couple of his original woodcut prints in our family. My two brothers each have one. I have many memories of what his work was like. And if you go to visit his studio now, it is just the way he left it, all these wonderful things around. Some of his work is in the The Philadelphia Museum of Art also. He was really quite a talented person.

That was your first inspiring introduction to art in your life? 
Absolutely. The environment in the farmhouse was so creative. There were paintings on the walls. Not hanging — literally paintings on the walls of the farmhouse of crazy things and characters that he invented - lots of beautiful colors.  He had named the property “Sunekrest” and designed a logo for it. It was sort of a sunrise-shaped logo that he carved in the doors, and he had a metal one on the side of the house. The creativity was everywhere, and it was a beautiful wooded property and a lovely farm. He had a large garden where he grew peonies, which he sold to the flower shops in Paoli.

That must have inspired all the beautiful colors in your paintings. 
Well, I'm sure it all came from there. I mean, there's no question in my mind.

Magical.
Yes, it was definitely magical.

So then you grew up and found yourself at N. W. Ayer in New York City. Is that where you met my father? 
Actually, after I graduated from PMCA in 1964, I went to New York City and worked at two other advertising agencies before joining Ayer. My first job was working in the mount room at an agency called D’Arcy. I don't think they even have mount rooms anymore. That was like one step up from working in the mail room. 

What did you have to do? 
I did all the matting and the mounting. I had to do mechanical layouts, stuff that I can do now with my computer in seconds. Back in those days, you had to cut type and paste it down and all that. That was quite menial work. 
After a year of that, I got an assistant art director job at my second agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt. I worked for Ron Deluca, a Senior Art Director who was an excellent mentor. He eventually became the chairman of the company. 

I gained a lot of good experience at K&E. But we were living in Connecticut in a tiny little house, and we had two young children, and I wanted to get out of the commuting routine and go back to Philadelphia. Ayer was the biggest agency there, and I was fortunate to get an offer. So we moved there at the end of 1968. That was the beginning of a very interesting and rewarding career. Over the years, I worked on some of the world’s most iconic brands: AT&T, Avon Products, Burger King, Club Med, DuPont… to name a few. My longest tenure on an account was ten years as Group Creative Director for DeBeers.

What an account that was. 
It was amazing. The DeBeers people were really terrific to work with. We met with them about every five weeks, mainly in London, but also in Bermuda, Canada, or Mexico. Even Japan and South Africa. It was hard work but also great fun. And it certainly was a long way from that little farmhouse in Pennsylvania!

Yes, and I bet that was a wonderful adventure. 
Yes, it was.

I spoke with your friend Tarquin the other day, which was very amusing. 
Tarquin de la Force is a former market director for DeBeers, author, poet, and good friend.

And he said to me that you and my dad were a creative dynamo responsible for some of De Beers’ most memorable advertising.
Well, he always had a way with words. 

I think that's quite a compliment.
It certainly was. 

And the DeBeers campaign was considered by many to be one of the most significant campaigns of the 20th century. 
It truly was. Your dad started working on the DeBeers account when he was in Paris with J. Walter Thompson. So he had a lot of experience, which was very helpful to me when I came on. He knew all of the DeBeers people and how things worked with them. And, of course, your dad was an immense talent.

N. W. Ayer was the first agency for De Beers. They started advertising in the U.S. in 1939. They chose Ayer because, at the time, it was the largest agency in the country. In the 1940s, they had famous artists, including Picasso, Dali, and Dufy, do illustrations for De Beers ads.

That really piqued my interest. I didn't know that until I saw my father's old slides, which I hadn't looked closely at, but Tarquin told me about this, and when I read about it, I discovered that Ayer was the first agency to integrate fine art into the ad campaigns, which was another pioneering feat. 
Absolutely. 

And they created the first art department. 
Plus, the theme line, “A Diamond Is Forever”, was written by a copywriter in 1947. I was only seven years old at that time, but when I eventually got to Ayer, she was still there. 

Yeah. I wanted to ask if you had met her?
Yes, I did. I worked with her. Her name was Frances Gerety. As she tells it, after working on the account for a few years, her creative supervisor assigned her the task of crafting a tagline that would unite diamonds with notions of love and permanence. After struggling late into the night, she eventually scribbled down four words that would become one of the most famous taglines in advertising history.

Incredible. Absolutely.
Yes.

What are your memories of her? 
She was considerably older than I was. But she was a very good copywriter who, in her free time, loved to play golf. She also enjoyed a martini or two on the terrace of the iconic Merion Golf Club where she was a member. In 1989, we organized a party in London to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the relationship between DeBeers and Ayer. It was a big event, and Frances came and spoke. She was a little frail, but she was terrific. Many of the guests had never met her, but they had certainly heard of her. She was wonderful. I'm glad I knew her. 

And when you were working on the campaign, did you feel that it was unique and special, or was it just another campaign like any other? 
I always felt that it was an honor to be the creative director for the De Beers account. It truly was unique and very special. Before I was assigned to it, there had only been five other creative directors in the history of the account. The head of De Beers' advertising department was Jeremy Pudney, and he inspired excellence. Every idea was measured by. “Is it up to Diamonds?” We all worked very hard to maintain the highest of standards.

He was happy with your work, I'm sure.
I had a great team. And Don, of course, was outstanding. We had different copywriters coming in and out, but Don was there for the longest time. Of course, working on something as beautiful as diamonds was an art director’s dream. 

What a wonderful, wonderful experience. And the memories you had with your colleagues and the friendships. Tarquin told me about a big event you organized in New York City for De Beers.
Yes. We organized a reunion of DeBeers and agency people on May 6, 2025, in New York. About 30 people attended. Many were in the New York area, but several came from London, California, Brazil, and four of us traveled up from Florida. It was a very successful reunion and a lot of fun!

I really appreciate your support of my project. 
It's great. I mean, you know, it's just amazing what Don had saved there. 

It's just the beginning. 
You found his list of names of famous people titled “For my memoir.”
That totally amused me, because he was the ultimate “Star-chaser.”

And you really have a lot of the background on these clues that I'm finding. So your insight and contribution mean a lot to me.  
Well, I don't mind doing it because he was such a good friend. And his stories are legendary. I mean, it's a shame he didn't actually write a memoir.

Yes, so we're left with a list. But some of the anecdotes you told me are so funny.
The David Lynch story! 

David Lynch, the Rolling Stones, and Peter Burke have a couple from Langan's Brasserie. Did you go there? 
Yes. I went there many times, but I was not there for Don’s encounter with O.J. Simpson. And I don't know what happened there. One thing about Don, he would tell these stories over and over. And at first I wasn't so sure about them. And then I found out they were all true. He was a great storyteller!

Yeah, he was a star chaser, right? He pushed for those encounters.
Definitely. As I said, I wasn't there for the O.J. Simpson thing, but apparently Don was leaving the restaurant at the same time as O.J. was being picked up by a Rolls-Royce. Don claims O.J. bumped into him with his Rolls. Personally, I think Don was leaning in and trying to chat him up. But, hey, you never know!

Don once spotted David Lynch in a restaurant in LA and “chatted him up”. By the time the evening was over, he had convinced David that they had gone to art school together, even though Don was eight years older than David Lynch and went to a completely different art school in Philadelphia, and they had never crossed paths!  But since Don knew everything there was to know about David Lynch, it was fairly easy for Don to convince him that they were old pals from their days of sketching cadavers in the morgue in Philadelphia! 

What a character. 
Yes, he was.

What are your memories of my dad? You first met in NYC, right? 
Yes. As I mentioned earlier, when they closed the Philadelphia office and sent us all to New York, I wasn't working on De Beers, but he was. He had come to Ayer, NY from Chicago. I would see him around, and we sort of knew one another, but we really became friends once I was on the account. And it was great fun. I mean, aside from his talent, which speaks for itself, as an art director and creative person, he was, you know, he was extremely bright. I’ve never seen him without a book on the train or on the airplane or wherever. He was a person who was interested in many things that I happened to also be interested in. 

Absolutely. 
He was a very good artist himself.  As was your mother. I love your mother's paintings. I think they are spectacular! 

Oh, thank you. I just had them shot by a professional in town. 
Good.

Yeah, so we can develop prints, and I can send them to family members.
They're great. 

So little by little, working through this legacy of art that they've left me. My dad didn't organize his things like you're doing with your book about your life and art- and that's wonderful. So what inspired you to do this book you're doing? 
What inspired me to do it was turning 85 years old!

It is so wonderful.
I decided that it was time to explain to my three children and eleven grandchildren how and why I spent my life in art and what I created along the way.

Incredible. 
I wanted to make a permanent record of what I did. Fortunately, I have photographs of almost everything. I also have photos of some works that I know I painted over, and I have no idea why. I have photographs of some paintings that I know are lost. I don't know where I lost them, or some kid has them someplace. But I wanted to put together a gallery in a box, if you will. It's now up to 325 pages, and there must be images of over 200 paintings in there, along with stories explaining why I did them. It’s a daunting process, and I have been working on it for about ten months. I make changes constantly.

You'll have to press publish one day. 
Pretty soon. I do have a very good printer here in Sarasota. He’s given me an estimate. But I still want to reach out to a few publishers to see if anyone might be interested in it. I don't know if they will. It's my story, and I'm an unknown artist. It's about an emerging artist who's been emerging for 85 years. 

I think it's wonderful and your participation in one of the most important campaigns of the 20th century!
I've had some people say that would be a plus when describing my career to anybody who might want to publish this book, because I do talk about it in the book.

It's massive.
Among other things, I have a spread where I'm explaining that I flew from New York to London on the Concorde with Princess Margaret. That came about because I was a British Airways frequent flyer. My company paid for a business class seat, but I would frequently get upgraded to first class. And on five occasions, I got upgraded to the Concorde. One day, Princess Margaret was on board. Flying with royalty from New York to London on the Concorde. Wow! That’s a great story!

Was she close to you on the plane?
No. The plane was all one class, 100 seats. There were probably 70 people on board. My seat was towards the back. She was up front. Once we got up to cruising at 50,000 feet at twice the speed of sound, I thought I should try to find her. I walked up the aisle and eventually spotted her sitting in an aisle seat, smoking cigarettes, drinking, and playing gin rummy with her seatmate. I just looked, she didn't even look up, and I went back to my seat. Now your father would still be sitting there talking to her!

I'm sure, leaning into the seat, right. 
He would be sitting right there. I know he would. Yeah, but that was great. 

What a wonderful life. 
That was fun. 

And where did you find your inspiration as a creative director? 
I started as an art director and became a creative director. I had worked on other accounts before De Beers. Ayer had the US Army recruiting account for many years, which was another big account, and I was creative director on that for a few years. Club Med, Avon, and The Bahamas were also among my other assignments before I moved to De Beers. 

So what went into the creation process? Where would you find your inspiration? 
For the De Beers account? 

Yes, in general.  
Well, you know, it's always a group effort. I mean, as creative director, I supervised a team of copywriters and art directors. DeBeers was, pardon the pun, a multi-faceted account in that there were different diamond products that we were selling. There were Diamonds for Men, the Diamond Engagement Ring, the Diamond Anniversary Ring, and so forth and so on. There were different directions that you could go with your with your assignments, and it was a collaborative thing. I mean, we had a really good team, and my role as creative director was to not only provide an environment for getting the most creative ideas, but also to make the major presentations when we would go to London.

Yeah, I think that was probably my dad's least favorite aspect. He never told me that, but I don't think he enjoyed the presentation part so much. 
Well, he was good at it. I was told by people who knew him in Paris that he was very good at presentations, and he himself admitted that. In later years, he was a little more, I wouldn't say nervous, but maybe a little bit, because the stakes were bigger. The account had gotten bigger. But he was very good when he was doing it. And he was a key player. He came to many of the meetings. He was very important to the account and the relationship with his knowledge of it, and his creativity. So, yes, if he wasn't as good as maybe some other people on their feet, he was certainly, you know, solving the problems and sealing the deal on the sidelines.

Yeah, what a big campaign with so much behind it, so much at stake. 
Yes, really. 

And a success for NW Ayer.
Well, it was until they lost the account. About six months after I left the agency, DeBeers moved the account from Ayer to J. Walter Thompson in New York. JWT had the account in virtually every other market in the world. Ayer had it in the U.S. since 1939. DeBeers had become unhappy with the way Ayer was managing the business. They did invite some of the Ayer people to go to JWT, including your father. And he went. But Ayer had hired a new creative director who liked Don, and he offered him a big salary increase to come back. So he went back. Sadly, a few months later, that guy was fired. Don told me the greatest mistake he ever made was leaving JWT to go back to Ayer, because Ayer was just crumbling at that point.

So you started painting in 2007? 
Painting full-time in 2007. But actually, as far back as PMCA, I spent more time painting and drawing than I did in the Graphic Design aspect of things. Towards the end of my final year there, there was a prestigious painting prize given to the best painter in the senior class. A friend won it. He told me that I was rumored to be in the running for the prize, but he got the award for the best painter because he had chosen Fine Arts as his major, as opposed to Advertising Design. And I can understand that. He had chosen fine arts, and he was going on to Yale. He deserved it.
 
I didn't start painting full-time until I left the business world. I started taking classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at local art centers.

That was after advertising? 
Yes, after advertising. Around 2007 or 2008, thereabouts. I started taking courses and doing a lot of painting on my own, and getting into shows and things, which has been fairly rewarding. During COVID, I started submitting work to online shows. One of my huge paintings won best in show. That was a surprise to me, but it was quite an honor. 

Yeah, I saw some of your beautiful work, and you've been rewarded along the way. 
Yeah, it's worked out, but I'm not on any top galleries' lists yet. You have to find your own pace, and I have some very good friends who have been collectors: Peter Burke and his wife have eight of my paintings of various sizes in their house down here. Other friends have six; some are in Brazil, some are in the UK, and one is in Seoul, Korea. My work has been exhibited in Miami, New York City, Palm Beach, Paris, Princeton, and Philadelphia, and is in many private collections.

Wonderful. Your art has been described as lyrical, symbolic, and full of joyous color. 
Yes. Thank you.

Indeed. Incredible. And your artwork that's on fashion, I'm very intrigued. I would love to find out how I can get a pair of those beautiful Vans sneakers. I want to wear them around France and get you some clients because they're so beautiful. 
Yes, I had created a series of sunset designs that I put on the sneakers and various other items. I'm exploring resources that may be interested producing more of those.

So do you paint as much as you'd like every day? 
Normally, yes. But for the last ten months, my creativity has been devoted to my book project. There are many paintings in my studio waiting for attention, and I am inspired by all of the amazing artists whom I follow on Substack, Instagram, and Facebook. 

Wonderful. 
Yes, really. I have a lot of ideas, and I have some large untouched canvases out there.

Do you always work on large-scale canvases? 
It varies. 48”x60” is the largest. Sometimes I put two or three of those together as diptychs or triptychs. But I also have many paintings that are 24”x 24”, 36”x 36”, and 48”x 36”.

Well, the ideas are brewing - that's great. And you're inspired by all sorts of things, from nature to cityscapes?
Yes. I'm as interested in the gritty textures of the city as I am in the calming beauty of nature. Here in South Florida, I find the tropical colors, foliage, and weather very inspiring. I have recently updated my website. I try to do that as often as I have new work to show.

Yes, step by step. Well, this has been great. Thank you for taking the time.

Find out more about Jeff and his artwork here: www.jeffreyodiorne.com 

How did De Beers capture the market through its advertising? 
It was a two-prong approach. There was on-the-day advertising, which is basically the responsibility of the jeweler, using De Beers material, which is 'buy this today because', and then there was image advertising, which is the responsibility of De Beers, which is ‘ buy a diamond because’- it’s the ‘ultimate gift of love, it’s the meaning of romance, etc…’ ‘says more than words ever can.’

You had to be very romantic?
Yes. So, De Beers’ advertising was essential because in the hierarchy of need, the more people hear about you, the higher you are on the hierarchy of need. So, De Beers was basically at the very top for many years in terms of luxury goods because the advertising was constantly there, telling consumers that they needed the diamond as the ultimate symbol of love and seal on their relationship; that a diamond was the only meaningful way to mark, to celebrate, the key ‘rights of passage’ in the consumer’s life. And then when it stopped, of course, we have a situation today, where I don’t think diamonds are regarded as anything like as popular as they used to be. I mean, things like sapphires and other precious stones have jumped up the ladder of desirability. I’m convinced, and that’s only me, that it’s because De Beers no longer has impactful and emotionally seductive image advertising.