Free Dethroning the King by Julie MacIntosh Page A

waited expectantly for word from their bosses on what August thought.
    â€œSome people came out of there and it was beyond bad,” the executive said. “But you’d get it straight from the top, good or bad.”
    The Third tended to concentrate his demands within his sales and marketing staff and the company’s advertising agencies, which, with their ability to touch tens of millions of American consumers, were the lifeblood of the company’s success. Marketers bore the brunt of the pressure around Christmas and New Year’s, which always fell just a month before the make-or-break advertising spectacle of the Super Bowl.
    â€œI felt bad for some of the marketing guys, because they really did get a lot of scrutiny,” said a top executive from another part of the company. But no one was immune when The Third wanted something. He had been known to pick up the phone and call Henry Kissinger with requests.
    In an attempt to inject The Third with some holiday spirit one year, a few executives from ad agency DDB Needham in Chicago hatched a plan. The Third had been flying them down to St. Louis every Friday for months in the early 1990s to hear new advertising pitches, and they were stuck traveling to meet with him in the company’s airplane hangar just days before Christmas. To lighten The Third’s mood, they decided to hire a trio of carolers—two women and a man dressed in full Dickensian garb—to hop on Anheuser-Busch’s private jet for the trip to Missouri.
    Once the group had settled on the plane, John Greening, DDB’s worldwide account director for Anheuser-Busch, turned to address the carolers. “Listen, this guy has a 30-second attention span, so I want you to sing 30 seconds of three different songs and that’ll be it,” he said. The carolers nodded and contentedly nestled back into the jet’s comfortable seats, wondering how they had gotten so lucky. Once the plane taxied to a stop at the company’s hangar in St. Louis, Greening hurriedly shoved the singers into a closet.
    â€œLet’s get to work!” The Third said in a booming voice as he strode in moments later. After a few joking protestations about being dragged down to St. Louis just before Christmas, the DDB staffers told August III they had brought him a gift. Out from the closet popped the carolers, who launched into the first 30 seconds ’ worth of “Silent Night” as they had been instructed. As the trio quickly inhaled before moving into the next song, The Third sensed an opening and politely but firmly cut them off.
    â€œThat’s great,” he said. “Now let’s get to work.”

    August III commanded a combination of arms-length admiration, respect, and terror from many of his underlings. As one former staffer in the company’s marketing department liked to tell his colleagues, he had only two moods: pissed off and suspicious. It was tough to decide which was better.
    He was adept at putting people on the spot—he actually seemed to relish it. He had an eye for detail and facts and he was usually right, which was incredibly intimidating. When he fixes his stare on executives, “their biggest concern is that he knows more than they do, even though the topic is in their area of expertise,” former chief financial officer Jerry Ritter told BusinessWeek .
    â€œIf you weren’t as well-versed in his business as he was, you didn’t stand a chance,” said Charlie Claggett. “You couldn’t bullshit the guy. He was on top of everything. There wasn’t a single, tiny aspect of the business he didn’t know. You had to do your homework. If you didn’t, or you were insincere, he could sniff you out and snuff you out. There was always this element of fear that permeated the place.”
    August III had a reputation for asking pointed, probing questions during meetings and presentations, targeting not just the person