Rod Bradley: the man of advertising: he made Ds in high school, but handled million dollar business deals out of college.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Rod Bradley is the proverbial ad man. He's got an every-two-week haircut and a year-round golf course tan. He's as comfortable elbowing up to a farmhouse dinner table as he is sashaying through a penthouse cocktail party and is known as much for his back-slapping boyish charm, as he is for negotiating million dollar business deals from the head of the conference table.

Although semi-retired and splitting his time between Anchorage and Todos Santos, Mexico, to talk about the advertising industry in Alaska without talking to Bradley would be like having a discussion on the history of software development and not including Bill Gates. The founder of Bradley Reid + Associates--originally Murray Bradley & Rocky when it started in 1978--Bradley, 61, grew up in Anchorage after his wanderlust father sold everything and drove the family up the Alaska Highway from Los Angeles. Although not particularly inspired by academics--he graduated from West High School with a D average--when he enrolled at California State in Fullerton, he took an introductory advertising class that led to earning a degree in communications in 1969 before returning to Alaska to apply for his first professional job.

BRIGHT BEGINNINGS

"A bright young guy just out of school walked into the office and announced he was an Alaskan who had a degree in advertising," Con Murray, Bradley's first boss and owner of what was then Murray Alaska says almost 40 years later. "He had no experience, but what the heck--nobody else did either and he at least had theories and knew how things were suppose to work." Murray, who added Bradley as a partner in 1978 and later sold the agency to him, hired the young ad man on the spot where Bradley did a little of everything to help get the start-up agency going.

With a state contract and a few retail accounts, the team laid the foundation for what is today the largest and oldest continuous operating agency in Alaska, developing a portfolio that grew to include powerhouse clients, such as Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., ARCO Alaska and RCA Alascom. Although Bradley briefly returned to California in 1973 to try his talents in a big market, it...