Bill Novelli, a great man, a super man!

By Gary Slack
Saturday November 7, 2009

As many of us see Bill (an image created and used by AARP COO Tom Nelson during his roast remarks).

We all have people in our lives we consider ourselves extraordinarily fortunate to know.

For me, one of these people is Bill Novelli, the newly retired CEO of AARP, former president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, former executive vice president of CARE, co-founder of Omnicom-owned global public relations firm Porter Novelli and my boss from 1977-1985 and a lifelong mentor.

I’m one of many who admire and revere this man, and 300 of them showed up this past Thursday at the Washington Wardman Park Marriott in Washington, DC, for a “roast” Bill agreed to subject himself to on behalf of KidSave International®, a charity near and dear to his heart run by two former Porter Novelli colleagues and contemporaries of mine, Terry Baugh and Randi Thompson.

The five designated roasters were retired ABC News reporter and anchor Sam Donaldson, AARP fitness ambassador and tennis great Martina Navratilova, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern, AARP Chief Operating Officer Tom Nelson and (unpictured) former Porter Novelli CEO Robert Druckenmiller. (Bob, did you have P/N alum Eric Dezenhall make all photos and bios of you unsearchable on Google? He does know how to make people disappear.)
Photos: Donaldson, Navratilova, Stern and Nelson

The (at times) surprisingly irreverent roast was emceed by Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal. In his opening remarks, Murray kidded AARP for refusing to admit what the “R” in “AARP” stands for and faux complained about its relentless pursuit of him and other 50+ers in serious age denial, saying “If AARP owned the CIA, it would have found Osama Bin Laden the day he turned 50″ and “I used to think the worst thing about turning 50 was a colonoscopy.”
Photo: Alan Murray

The roast, which grossed around $250,000 for KidSave, was 10 months in the works, and I was privileged to be part of the organizing committee and play a small role in planning the event. Huge kudos go to former “PorNos” (yes, that is what we called ourselves in an earlier, less PC age) Merrill Rose and Pattie Yu as well as AARPers Sharyn Sutton and Judy Glanz. Our firm’s primary contribution (thanks, Michael Cole!) was the event theme, “ Roast Bill, Save a Kid,” and the graphic for the email and KidSave Web site. Photo: Roast email

Bill co-founded Porter Novelli with Jack Porter, Bob Druckenmiller and Michael Carberry in 1972 as a “social marketing” firm, a term that has been hijacked of late by the social media people just as “b-to-b” or “b2b” was co-opted in the late 1990s by all the VC-funded online industry exchanges. As the story goes, after successful early careers on Madison Avenue and then a short stint together running public affairs for the Peace Corps in the late 1960s, Jack (who was not able to attend the roast) and Bill saw a great need (and opportunity) to help federal agencies apply commercial marketing principles to social issues, causes and concerns.
Photo: Bill and yours truly at the roast.

Over the years, they built the world’s premier social marketing agency, though its 1981 acquisition by Needham Harper Steers (now Omnicom) and its subsequent repositioning as a mainstream PR firm gradually eroded that crisp marketplace position and led in later years to one office handling the federal government’s smoking cessation work and another handling the Cigar Institute. In my opinion, these (to put it politely) inconsistencies were a major factor in Bill eventually leaving his namesake firm to join a succession of leading NGOs in senior roles, ending (thus far) with AARP. Now Bill is ensconced (for good?) as the “Distinguished Professor of the Practice” at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, not far from the lower Georgetown location on Prospect St. where Porter Novelli had its formative offices from 1977-87 and where I very fortuitously started my career.
Photo: Randi Thompson and Bob and Bennie Druckenmiller.