Almost everything important that has happened to me has been unplanned. I have no natural inclination and certainly no talent for the art. I’m hopeless at the planning stage of a plan and I’m even worse at the execution phase. I have to rely on fate because, it’s all I have. Accidental outcomes have ruled my life.
It was an accident of fate that led me to a job interview at Heckler Associates. I was an unlikely candidate to become an advertising writer. I knew that because a couple of ad execs had pointed that out to me after looking at my portfolio, which was filled with journalism, scripts for radio documentaries, and a few ads from my stint as the copy director for KZOK FM. At that time, I was a freelance writer spending more time having lunch every day with my fellow flaneurs in Pioneer Square than I was working. This situation was racing toward its expiration date when a couple of friends suggested that I apply for a job at an ad agency I’d never heard of.
And that’s how I came to meet Terry Heckler, who hired me in 1978 and changed my life. I’ve told the story of that job interview a few times, in an earlier piece in Post Alley; in the documentary film, Rainier: A Beer Odyssey; and most recently in the forward to the book, Running Wild: The Rainer Beer Campaigns 1974-1987. If this strikes you as a little too meta, I get it. But fifty-two years after the cult of Rainier was created by Heckler Associates, there’s been a resurgence of interest about why it’s still alive and well and going strong. People want to know how it happened. The short answer is: Terry Heckler.
The core group of people in the company that was originally called Heckler Bowker included Terry, Gordon Bowker, Ed Leimbacher and Doug Fast. Terry and Gordon started the company together; Ed and Doug were the first employees. From the beginning, Terry had an instinct for spotting talent. He and Gordon met while working for the short-lived but beloved Seattle Magazine. Gordon, along with his friends Jerry Baldwin and Zev Seigl, had just started a little coffee company called Starbucks that looked like it might go somewhere. They eventually sold it to their employee Howard Schultz when they realized that mogul-dom was not their métier. Gordon’s next project was Redhook Brewery, which became another Heckler client…