James H. Faulkner: Early Rejection Produced A String Of Successes

Editor’s note: This story, written by Eric Francis, appears in the latest magazine edition of Talk Business Arkansas. Faulkner will be inducted in the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame on Friday night.

There was a time when Malvern native James Faulkner thought he could be the next Edward R. Murrow. But the manager of the Little Rock television station where he worked had a different opinion.

“I told them I wanted to work into the news thing but they used me mostly as a weekend weather type,” recalled Faulkner. “After about a year of doing that, the station manager called me in and said, ‘Jim you’re a nice young fellow, you’ve done fine, but I have to let folks go and you’re the last one I hired in the creative department. But you should know, I don’t think you’ll be a success as a television news man because with that crew cut, you look too young and nobody will believe you.’”

Not what he wanted to hear at the time, but in the long run it turned out to be quite the favor. That’s because Faulkner, who had a wife and a baby (the first of five) to support, had to figure out quickly what to do to make a living – and though he’d studied journalism at the University of Arkansas and worked in newspapers and radio, he noticed something as he looked around Pine Bluff, where they were living at the time: There were no advertising agencies there.

Thus, James H. Faulkner Advertising was born, the first of several businesses he would found and lead to great success, including Faulkner and Associates and Falcon Publications. Along the way he became a pioneer in many areas of business: Building marketing campaigns for state banks; establishing Arkansas Grocer magazine for the retail food trade; starting the state’s first video production firm; forming one of the nation’s first videotape distributers for the brand-new home movie rental market, and founding the industry standard magazine, Take One (which had 1.6 million monthly subscribers when he sold it).

Some of his advertising campaigns became the most successful in the state. One of the most nostalgic is probably Little Sue, a talking cheerleader doll that would call the Hogs. In lieu of a toaster, Sue was given to customers of Worthen Bank when they opened new accounts and was so popular Faulkner licensed it to banks all over Arkansas and even into Oklahoma and Nebraska, ultimately having some 60,000 of the dolls built by Mattel. He considers it a signal success, given the risk they were taking when they first proposed the idea.

“We took a chance on the doll; if that had failed, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to me – I might’ve gone broke,” said Faulkner. “You have to take a chance on some things, and some might not work out, but you’ve got to have an attitude of, ‘Let’s go back and do something else.’”

Faulkner said good clients were one key to his success: Among them Worthen Bank, Simmons First Bank, transformer manufacturer Central Maloney, the Ben Pearson Co. of Pine Bluff, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. The other key was good, talented, creative people, like former Arkansas Gazette outdoors writer Eddie Best, legendary political cartoonist George Fisher, and George Friedrich, a Mattel representative Faulkner liked working with so much, he hired him away.

Now 81 and living with his wife Joyce in Little Rock, Faulkner will admit to having “semi-retired, except I really didn’t.” He has invested in real estate ventures around the state with friends he’s met over the years and sits on the board of trustees for First Security Bancorp.

Reynie Rutledge, chairman of First Security and a fellow University of Arkansas alumnus, first heard Faulkner’s name when he went to work at Worthen right out of college some 40 years ago.

“I didn’t personally know him, but I was familiar with his advertising agency and the work they did for the bank,” said Rutledge. “They did the Little Sue doll, quite a bit of things, and Worthen was very aggressive with its marketing at the time.”

Years later, around 1989, he got the opportunity to get more closely acquainted with Faulkner during a banking venture in Mountain Home.

“I’ve known him and worked with him since,” Rutledge said. “I really appreciated his business acumen and advice, both from a business perspective and a marketing perspective, as we progressed.”

Faulkner’s focus on customer service, his attention to detail, and his mind for financial matters have all served the bank well, he said.

“Jim is just a great, great guy,” said Rutledge. “He’s been, I think, a tremendous business leader for Arkansas.”

These days, the Faulkners do a lot of traveling – they’ve been to 127 countries and even met Halie Salassie, the last emperor of Ethopia, a year before his death. They also once visited a shrine to Buddha where Joyce left a note under a rock saying she wanted grandchildren.

“All of a sudden, they started and didn’t stop,” he laughed – now they have eight, ranging in age from 12 to 22. “That’s been a fun deal.”

So, what insights does Faulkner have to offer the up-and-coming generation of Arkansas businesspeople?

“Don’t be afraid to take a chance on something,” he said. “Not everything will work out but if you don’t try, you won’t get it.”

Thinking back to his early years in Pine Bluff, Faulkner recalls wondering if he could make it work or if he needed to get out of the marketing business. Instead, he did some research and realized Arkansas didn’t have a food magazine, so he started Arkansas Grocer to fill a need he realized nobody else was filling, a move that established the agency as a success. There are still opportunities to do that today, he said.

“Look for a niche,” said Faulkner. “I think there’s still things out there that cane be done or done a little differently – then work like hell to make it work.”