Pannell lifted his head, revealing the bleary eyes of a man who had had enough. "I didn't feel as if I had a whole lot to lose," Pannell recalls.
And there seemed to be so much to be gained. The extroverted Eisenberg "related to the business side," concentrating on the flamboyant art of luring clients. Pannell showed an intense passion for design. Their work seemed to jibe, Pannell's cartoony freehand style complementing Eisenberg's clever wordplay. It didn't take much soul-searching for them to agree on their goals when they launched Eisenberg + Pannell, in 1975. "We wanted to see how much work we could do, how famous we could become, and how much money we could make," recalls Pannell.
Their firm grew right from the start. As a grand going-away gift, their boss handed them a client, the third-largest home builder in Dallas. From there, Eisenberg worked hard to lure others; the secret, he always preached, was in projecting a glitzy image. So Eisenberg + Pannell's first digs featured an atrium and a conference room with sliding doors. The work -- brochures, print ads, and even a few TV spots -- lived up to the company's glossy surroundings. Eisenberg + Pannell's efforts were exhibited at the prestigious New York Art Directors' Show and published in such magazines as Communication Arts. By 1979, notes Pannell, "we were growing pretty quickly," with nearly 20 employees and revenues of close to $1 million.
There was a healthy friction between the partners. Pannell cast himself as the purist, the artist with little tolerance for commercial considerations; Eisenberg wanted to satisfy a customer's every whim. Their noisiest conflicts would occur when Eisenberg returned from making a presentation. They liked everything but the color, he'd report, or they wanted a different typeface. Then he would break the news that caused the normally restrained Pannell to erupt: instead of arguing that the design was best as it was, Eisenberg had simply caved in to the client's wishes. How could you do this? Pannell would explode. Why didn't you explain our rationale for choosing purple? "Most of us never saw their disagreements, but we heard them," recalls Jim Olvera, then a designer with the firm. Adds Ron Hudson, also a designer: "They seemed to know each other inside and out. They were like brothers."
As with brothers, there was tension between them. Eisenberg thought that Pannell didn't take his creative ideas seriously enough; Pannell resented that Eisenberg's drive for sales was turning him into a manager. Over time, each began to think the other was preventing him from doing the kind of work he truly wanted to do.
Ever the talkative one, Eisenberg became the first to articulate that frustration. Late one day in February 1979, he knocked on Pannell's office door. "Cap," he said, leaning in awkwardly, "I think we ought to split up." Pannell agreed on the spot. "It was beautiful," says Eisenberg, "I felt I had relieved us both of a heavy burden."
Neither really explored the exact nature of that burden. "I wanted the very best for Cap," says Eisenberg. "I just figured I could do better without him."
And he could, it seemed. Both, in fact, flourished after some start-up glitches. Eisenberg Inc. often nudged its name into Adweek and wooed high-profile clients. "The money was rolling in," recalls bookkeeper Marie Brinkman. By 1983 Eisenberg's revenues were almost $600,000, and he had 10 employees.
Pannell, who worried most about scaring up work, managed to build Pannell Creative into a $250,000 business by 1983. He worked mainly with start-ups and other lesser-known companies. At night he sometimes paused as he took off his watch, a final gift from Eisenberg. He would flip it over and read the inscription again: "Partners for years, friends forever."
It was hard to see how anything could change that.
Like any personal relationship, a partnership that works achieves a mysterious -- and tenuous -- balance. Who can explain why two people click? Concerns coincide; needs match; expectations mesh. It's not likely to happen twice with the same people.
Nevertheless, by the summer of 1988, Eisenberg and Pannell had agreed to become partners again.
Eisenberg claims that he initiated contact a year earlier because he had lost a key employee. "I wanted to recapture the best of what we had before," he admits. A series of calamities -- in addition to the oil glut and overbuilding -- had left Eisenberg Inc. in serious trouble. "We were losing money," recalls Brinkman. "It was scary." John Jones, a local businessman who helped Eisenberg with his strategic plan, recalls, "Arthur was lost. He needed help."
He wasn't alone. Pannell, who in 1984 launched Pannell/St. George, a design firm he ran with his wife, also had a bad case of the jitters. "I got pregnant, and Cap got scared," recalls St. George, a copywriter who had been Eisenberg + Pannell's first employee. Pannell couldn't be sure his wife would want to return to copywriting full-time after their child was born. "I started thinking that maybe it was time for me to build something bigger," says Pannell.
Suddenly, in the summer of 1987, Eisenberg was on the phone again, bouncy and cheery as ever. "Hey, Cap!" he yelled, "I want to do something."
They met at a local business club. With Jones beside him, Eisenberg yakked about creating a $10-million operation, of developing 10 new Fortune 500 clients in the next three years. Pannell's role? "You'll run the shop and report to me," said Eisenberg. No thanks, said a proud Pannell. "I was not about to be his employee," he says. Less than a year later, though, Eisenberg was back with a new proposition: he talked of a merger and even offered to make St. George head copywriter. Pannell would serve as creative director; Eisenberg would handle the business end. Whatever separated them before didn't matter. "They said, 'We're wiser now, we can make it work this time,' " recalls St. George. "I could see that I couldn't stop this train."
