Pat Fallon: Executive who challenged the 'Madmen'' of Manhattan with a Midwestern advertising agency

Pat Fallon was a teenager when, with television still relatively new to most homes, American advertising agencies became a powerful force in the land. As commercial TV kicked in, the ads often made more impression than the programmes. Fallon thought he could do better than the “Madmen” of Madison Avenue, many of whom had come to believe they were bigger than their clients or products.

He considered their work “stale and formulaic” so he set up his own agency far from Manhattan, in his home town of Minneapolis. Almost single-handedly, he turned Minnesota’s “Twin Cities” – Minneapolis and St Paul – into a Midwestern prairie competitor to the “Madmen”.

It was often said of the Manhattan admen that they would walk over their dying grandmother to get a contract and walk back over her to keep it. Fallon confounded his competitors by creating a family atmosphere among his staff. One of the UK’s best-known creative admen, Alfredo Marcantonio, told The Independent: “Until Pat Fallon and his agency partners came along, New York, and to a much lesser extent Los Angeles, had been the be-all and end-all of creativity in US advertising. The work that Pat’s agency did in ‘uncool’ Minneapolis broke that duopoly for once and for all. It was like an ad agency in downtown Newcastle outshining the top creative talents of Soho and Shoreditch.”

Beginning in the 1980s, the Fallon Agency, starting off on a shoestring, became a major global player, winning contracts from Porsche, BMW, Cadillac, Citibank, Rolling Stone magazine, Federal Express, the Wall Street Journal, Miller Lite beer and many others; at the same time it influenced agencies in the UK and the rest of the world. Many of his ads appeared during American football’s Super Bowl, the pinnacle of advertising in the US. And many of today’s most creative advertising minds came through the “training ground” that was the Fallon Agency, including executives in major agencies such as BBDO, Saatchi, Lowe and Ogilvy & Mather. The US-based but globally read magazine Advertising Age twice voted Fallon its Agency of the Year and Fallon himself was inducted into the US Advertising Hall of Fame in 2009.

Such was his belief in his staff – “the Fallon family” – that he once stopped working with an important client, Northwest Airlines, because its bosses had “treated our people poorly”. Among his most famous television or cinema ads were those for Porsche and BMW, both of them suffering from a slump in US sales at the time. For BMW, his ads featured celebrities such as Madonna; for Porsche, they came up with the punchline, under a photo of a classic 911 model: “Honestly now, did you spend your youth dreaming about someday owning a Nissan or a Mitsubishi?” Sales soared.

In 2000, the agency was renamed Fallon Worldwide. It was later sold to the French Publicis Groupe but continued with its own identity and name. Its London branch, created by Fallon and based in Great Titchfield Street, went on to successes of its own including the ad titled “Balls” for the Sony Bravia TV set. After viewers saw thousands of coloured balls bounce down the steep streets of Los Angeles, the tagline was: “Colour like no other.”

The London office also created a famous ad for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, in which a pensive gorilla suddenly plays the drums to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”. That ad, as well as Fallon London’s Create your Own commercial for the Tate Britain museum, won the industry’s coveted Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The Gorilla ad was once voted Britain’s best TV ad ever.

Patrick Robert Fallon was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1945, but moved to Minneapolis as a child. After Washburn High School he graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in the humanities and philosophy. His father was Jerome Patrick Fallon, from an Irish immigrant family, his mother Katherine. Captain Jerome Fallon had been a B-17 bomber pilot in the US 8th Air Force – “the Mighty Eighth” – during the Second World War, flying 50 missions in France, Germany and Italy.

Pat Fallon joined the advertising industry with the Leo Burnett agency in Chicago and later Martin Williams in Minneapolis before co-founding Fallon McElligott Rice in 1981. Somewhat prematurely claiming to be a national ad agency, they said they sought clients “who would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them.” Fallon formally retired in 2008 but remained Chairman Emeritus until his death.

“Fallon was, and remains one of the world’s greatest creative shops,” said Adam Tucker, a former Fallon staffer and now president of the big Ogilvy & Mather agency. “Not only was the Fallon agency recognised for their famous and iconic campaigns, but also for putting Minneapolis on the map as a creative hotspot beyond Madison Avenue. Pat was often heard saying, ‘My secret weapon is my people; great work comes from great people. It’s a competitive advantage for our people to feel part of a close family.’”

Pat Fallon died in hospital after a stroke. He is survived by his children Kevin, Duffy, Reilly, Megan and Tressa, and his grandson Leo.

Patrick Robert Fallon, advertising executive: born Columbus, Ohio 7 September 1945; five children; died Robbinsdale, Minnesota 13 November 2015.