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Adman
Philip Schwartz turns to magic in retirement
Miami
Herald - December 2002
By Mary E. Sutter
Special to the Herald
After a 30-year career in marketing and advertising, Philip Schwartz
still has quite a few tricks up his sleeve.
Literally,
in fact. The long-time adman, most recently the president (and
founding partner) of local agency Turkel Schwartz & Partners,
can pull his business card out of thin air and perform a sleight
of hand with two innocent-looking playing cards.
Having made official his retirement in October –three
decades, almost to the day, after his first day on the job at
General Foods (today, General Mills) back in 1972,
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SOMETHING
UP HIS SLEEVE: Having made official his retirement in October,
Philip Schwartz has more time now to devote to magic. MARIKO
CROWE / For The Herald |
55-year-old
Schwartz has more time now to devote to magic, a sideline he has
pursued since he was a child.
He had already been thinking about his retirement from agency work
for some time, and the timing was especially good in 2002, given
the confluence of professional and personal milestones.
"Thirty years is enough time to do anything," Schwartz
said.
He had made the decision to hang up his gray-flannel suit and shortly
thereafter, Turkel Schwartz once again was awarded the Miami Visitor
& Convention Bureau account.
With that win, Schwartz could step down on a high-note. "It
was a secure time for the agency," he said.
A penchant for good timing — perhaps it's the magic practice
—seems to be a hallmark of his career.
While studying business at the University of Florida, Schwartz was
intrigued by product management, now known as brand management.
Upon graduating, he discovered that his dream jobs required an advanced
degree, so the Philly-born, Miami-reared Schwartz returned to his
alma mater to earn an MBA.
Then he interviewed with the largest consumer products companies
in the country: Scott Paper, Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive,
General Foods. "I got hired by the one I had like best,"
Schwartz said, and he was off to Minneapolis and General Foods.
During this phase of his career, he worked on products like Gold
Medal Flour, a pancake mix, and the launch of Nature Valley Granola.
"It was one of the most successful new product franchises of
the second half of the 20th century," Schwartz says.
He returned to Florida for a stint in Orlando as vice president
of marketing at Six Flags when ad agency Campbell Mithun came knocking.
It was a chance to return to Minneapolis, a city he had grown to
love despite the cold winters, and to work on accounts like Nature
Valley and NorthWest Airlines.
The agency was a large independent shop where all the employees
were given a stake in its success, so when it agreed to be acquired
by New York-based Bates, Schwartz sensed its family-like culture
would not likely survive.
"I was still single, so I had the flexibility to consider other
options," he said.
One fall day, he noticed an article mentioning that admen Jay Chiat
and Mike Sloan were planning to open a Chicago shop, Chiat Day Sloan.
He wrote Mike Sloan a letter expressing his interest.
Unexpectedly, he was offered a position at Sloan's Miami shop, Mike
Sloan Inc. In order to make the move, Schwartz demanded to be a
partner. Sloan proposed a 10 percent stake with no equity on Schwartz'
part.
"I could not turn that down, and I didn't," he said.
So in 1979, he returned to sunny Florida to run accounts for Eckerd
Drug and Florida Tourism (now FLA USA).
OUT ON HIS OWN
Schwartz and two other partners bough tout Sloan in 1986, but he
soon became disenchanted with the set-up and struck out on his own,
establishing his own shop in a mere 535-square-foot of space at
the Omni Shops. He rented it for the bargain rate of $4 per square
foot.
Seven years later, the agency moved to Coral Gables and by 1995,
its billings had grown to more that $12 million annually. Still,
Schwartz was keen to compete with the bigger boys.
He knew Bruce Turkel, who ran a similar-size agency, from meetings
of the Greater Miami Ad Federation, and the two decide to join forces
as 50/50 partners. Schwartz was the self-described "suit"
and Turkel was the creative one.
Once the merger went through, on April Fool's Day 1995, "we
could compete against the large galactic agencies," Schwartz
said. "We were no longer considered, as we had been before,
the small local place."
The agency cultivated business from all quarters. "We didn't
define ourselves as Anglo or Hispanic or anything — we welcomed
all comers," he said. One of the first clients was the nascent
Discovery Networks Latin America/Iberia.
"We go into places we couldn't have before (by combining forces),"
Schwartz says. During the seven-year partnership, billings more
than doubled to about $60 million with clients like the Beacon Council,
Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, Partnership For
a Drug-Free America — Miami Coalition, the Peabody HOtel Group,
and Sony Latin America.
PARTIAL RETIREMENT
Now Schwartz is redirecting his energies.
"I only retired from advertising," he says.
A long-time real-estate investor, he's actively managing his rental
properties and his other investments. And he continues to work with
groups with which he has a long-standing relationship: the University
of Florida Advertising Advisory Council, the Miami Coalition for
Safe & Drug Free Schools, and the Advertising & Marketing
International Network, for which he'll be finishing out his term
as chair.
On the leisure front, he has added a second game to his 20 years-running
Thursday night poker. "The game itself is 40 years old —
people have died and we've had to get new players," though
Schwartz is resolutely mum on their identities.
He's also hitting the lecture circuit — not wearing his ad
hat, but as a magic collector and historian.
Schwartz has developed a fascination with the history and products
of Thayer Magical Manufacturing, founded in Pasadena, Calif. in
1902. The company was later sold and renamed Owen Magic Supreme.
For his research, Schwartz has combed through hand-written documents
at Pasadena City Hall and poured over old catalogs and magazines.
He has written articles and given talks to groups like the Conference
of Magic Historians and The Magic Collectors Association International.
With all the material and information he has compiled, "I may
just write a book," he says.
He's also toying with the return to the workforce — as a trade-show
magician, which would allow him to combine his gift for product
presentation and marketing with his passion for magic.
"I would do it for the travel, and I think I would be good
at it," he says.
And he may even resuscitate his old stage name, the moniker he had
adopted in his youth well before multiculturalism was cool: Señor
Felipe.
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