When he wasn’t in a board room pitching a client an ad campaign or at a restaurant enjoying his favorite activity – lunch – you’d likely find Peter Mayer sitting in a chair on Camp Street, puffing on a cigar and watching the world go by.
His death in July 2016 means the legendary New Orleans advertising executive is no longer there cracking jokes or making conversation, but his chair and cigar are, in the form of a bronze sculpture. Mayer’s sons, Mark and Josh, who now run the advertising agency he founded, unveiled the tribute to their father Friday to cap off the firm’s 50th anniversary.
“Every day after lunch, Peter would take a folding chair out of his office and he’d drag it out to Camp Street and sit there and smoke a big, black turd of a cigar. He did this for at least 15 years,” laughed Mark Mayer.
After succeeding his father as president and CEO of the agency, Mark Mayer admitted his initial reason for banishing “Pete,” as everyone called him, to the street. It was to enforce a no smoking indoors rule that was unheard of when his father founded the agency in 1967.
But Mark Mayer told the employees and agency alumni gathered at the unveiling Friday that his father’s ritual was about much more than that. “I think he knew the exact spot where he would see all of you employees at least once a day. And he parked himself right in that spot and that’s where he held court. He would greet you, he would ask what you’re working on, what you’re doing, how’s your love life, what you had for lunch.”
Even when he retired from day-to-day operations of the agency in the 1980s, Mayer was a regular presence at its Camp Street business, which had grown into one of the largest ad agencies in the Gulf South. He admitted his daily visits would usually consist of checking his mail, planning lunch and sitting on the chair on the sidewalk. The Times-Picayune profiled him in a 2008 story, calling him “The Mayor of Camp Street.”
“Mayer is the kind of man who delivers a stream of snappy patter and changes subjects at a furious pace,” Elizabeth Mullener wrote. “He has roaring enthusiasms and infinite impatience. He speaks in exclamation points -- issuing fiats, blurting opinions and making dogmatic declarations without hesitation. He also can tell a joke with the polish and panache of a natural-born stand-up comic. And when it's over, he laughs louder and longer than anyone in his audience.”
The new tribute to Mayer, consisting of a bronze director’s chair, table, ashtray and cigar, is the work of Santa Fe sculptor Bill Weaver. Though it will remain inside the lobby of the agency’s office and not on the sidewalk Mayer frequented, his son Josh, who is chief creative officer of the company, said he hopes it captures his spirit.
“It’s Pete’s chair with Pete’s table, Pete’s ashtray, and Pete’s cigar and we invite you all to sit in it because everybody can be Peter. You can’t smoke a cigar but you can sit here and be Pete for just one minute,” said Josh Mayer.
