Try Being Nice

Not being evil may be a fine goal for a certain high-tech colossus, but ambitious entrepreneurs should aspire to something less grandiose: being nice. That's the advice of Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, who credit that principle with helping turn their Manhattan ad agency from a one-client start-up in 1997 into the fastest-growing agency in America the last two years. Annual billings have risen from $80 million in 1997 to $1 billion today. Their clients include Revlon and Outback Steakhouse, and they've recently added Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug.

The agency has grown from five employees to 175, consulted on three presidential campaigns and even created the Aflac duck. But the most remarkable thing about its success could be that in an era when the leadership styles of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan get respect, the Kaplan Thaler Group has thrived not by using pitchforks and spears, but flowers and chocolates. "It's really sad that being nice seems counterintuitive," says Kaplan Thaler, 55. "I think people are embarrassed to say they're nice."

But she and Koval, 51, hope to change that. With an upcoming book, "The Power of Nice," they aim to rehabilitate a word that too many fast-trackers associate with ineffectual milquetoasts whom overachievers walk all over en route to the corner office. For Kaplan Thaler and Koval, nice is both a general principle (assume good will, be empathetic) and a set of habits (remember names, say thank you). It's also remembering that emotionally well-adjusted people earn higher incomes, live longer and have more satisfying personal lives.

Kaplan Thaler, who spent years at big agencies like Wells Rich Greene and J. Walter Thompson before starting her own (which is now an independent unit of Paris's Publicis Groupe), insists being nice can work in any business. People from Warren Buffett to Bill Clinton to Donald Trump have all gained from putting "nice" into practice, she says. Kaplan Thaler, who once appeared as a judge on "The Apprentice," recalls Trump's gratitude for the way the Kaplan Thaler team had treated his wife during the taping of an Aflac spot. The Donald dropped his crusty TV persona and lavished them with on-air praise. Kaplan Thaler notes the irony of a guy who tried to copyright the phrase "You're fired" having employees who like him.

Besides the book, Kaplan Thaler and Koval are working with a psychologist to develop a "Nice Q test" to measure social intelligence. But why spend all this energy spreading the gospel of nice in addition to the demands of running a booming business and raising families (Kaplan Thaler has two kids, Koval has one)? "We want to dispel the myth that only those who eat their young get raises." Sounds pretty nice.