1.4 Pioneers of Advertising

Figure 1.2: Francis Wayland Ayer.

New-York Tribune via Wikimedia Commons.

Francis Wayland Ayer, born in 1848, opened his advertising agency, N. W. Ayer & Son in 1868. He named his agency after his father for three reasons: “he admired his father; his father agreed to work with him; and the name sounded more impressive than F. W. Ayer.”1 N.W. Ayer & Son’s business consisted of selling advertising space in magazines. They provided advertising for over three hundred publications in all 37 states. The agency later became space buyers and instead of working for the publication, they began to work for the clients. This move allowed Ayer to purchase advertising space that better targeted his clients’ customers. He became more audience centered in his space buys and that allowed him to concentrate on the needs of his clients. This is the model still used by advertising agencies today. His agency also added a printing department so he could print the advertisements before he sent them off for publication. This was the start of the agency creative department. In 1870, N. W. Ayer & Son became the first agency in the world to develop an advertising campaign based on the results of a national market survey they conducted. They later added copywriting to their agency, making them the first full-service ad agency in the country.2

Learn more about NW Ayer & Son through these links below:

• "NW Ayer & Son: The Oldest Advertising Company in the Nation"

• "Business Revolution: The Ad Agency"

Selected as No. 1 on Advertising Age’s 20th century honor roll of advertising's most influential people, William Bernbach was the cofounder of Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in New York.3 Born in 1911 and raised in New York City, he attended New York University and majored in English. After college, he took a job in the mailroom at Schenley Distillers (makers of Bourbon whiskey and Blatz beer). He took it upon himself to write an ad for Schenley’s American Cream Whiskey and, after the right people saw the ad, he was promoted to the advertising department.4

Eventually he moved to Grey Advertising where he worked as a copywriter until 1947 when he became a creative director. While working at Grey, he became friends with advertisers James Edwin "Ned" Doyle and Maxwell "Mac" Dane. The friends formed DDB in 1949, and as the creative director, Bernbach changed the way advertising was created with simple creative and offbeat themes. His greatest campaign accomplishments included the "Think Small" and "Lemon" ads for Volkswagen, the "We Try Harder" slogan and ads for Avis, and the "Let’s get Mikey" ad for Life cereal.5 If you haven’t seen these ads, you need to look them up on YouTube—they’re great.

Most agree that Bernbach was the most influential person in modern advertising. He loved the creative aspect of advertising but realized that human motivations and emotions are what drove consumers to make a purchase. He often used a soft sell approach in his advertisements to highlight the product and draw the consumer in. His ads were simple, intelligent, tasteful, artistic, and frequently humorous. Bernbach believed that “advertising is not formulaic: a successful ad campaign is not run on mathematical equations where every ad follows the same steps.”6

You can see some of the most popular ads created by Bill Bernbach, including his famous ads for Volkswagon and Life cereal, here: "Legends in Advertising: Bill Bernbach, the Original Don Draper"

Learn more about Bill Bernbach through the link below:

• "Advertising Industry Profile: Legendary Bill Bernbach"

Considered to be one of the most creative men in advertising, Leo Burnett moved away from long, copy-heavy advertisements that were popular at the time and instead created simple icons consumers could relate to. Some of his most famous icons include the following:

• Tony the Tiger

• The Jolly Green Giant

• The Keebler Elves

• Toucan Sam

• Charlie the Tuna

• The Pillsbury Doughboy

Burnett was born in 1891 in Michigan, and he studied journalism at the University of Michigan. His first job out of college was as a reporter, but he soon saw the possibilities in advertising and moved to Detroit and began working as a copywriter.7

In 1935, he founded the Leo Burnett Company, Inc., which is now one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. The agency operates 85 offices in 69 countries with over 9,000 employees His agency believes in the philosophy that “What matters is that advertising serve human needs.” Their clients include McDonald's, Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, NCAA, Nintendo, Purina, and Allstate.8

On December 1, 1967, the day he retired, Burnett delivered one of the most famous speeches in advertising history. The speech is titled “When to Take My Name Off the Door” and has been a guide for the agency’s standards for over 40 years. In the speech, he told the agency that when they started creating advertising and conducting business that was not to the level he expected, he would demand that they take his name off the agency’s door.

In his speech, he said, "You can take my name off the door . . .

“When you lose your itch to do the job well for its own sake—regardless of the client, or the money, or the effort it takes.

“When you stop reaching for the manner, the overtones, the marriage of words and pictures that produces the fresh, the memorable, and the believable effect.

“When your outlook narrows down to the number of windows—from zero to five—in the walls of your office.

“When you stop building on strong and vital ideas, and start a routine production line.

“When you start believing that, in the interest of efficiency, a creative spirit and the urge to create can be delegated and administered, and forget that they can only be nurtured, stimulated, and inspired.

“THAT, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door.”9

Every advertising student should listen and take notes of Leo Burnett’s speech. Watch a video of his full speech here: Leoburnett.com.

Learn more about Leo Burnett through the link below:

• "The One Club: Leo Burnett"

Born in 1939 in Chicago, Tom Burrell was the first African American to work at an advertising agency–in the mailroom. Using his position in the agency mailroom to his advantage, he pitched several ideas to the agency directors, which earned him a position as an advertising copywriter. From 1964 to 1971, he worked as a copywriter for some of the top advertising agencies in the U.S., including Leo Burnett and Foote, Cone & Belding. After spending a decade working in the advertising industry, he opened his own agency, Burrell McBain Advertising, with his partner Emmert McBain. His agency was later renamed Burrell Communications Group which still operates today out of Chicago with major clients such as McDonald’s, Comcast, Toyota and Coca-Cola.10

Known for his famous statement, "Black people are not dark-skinned white people," Burrell was one of the first to develop “targeted” or “niche” advertising. He began “producing ads that were aimed at black people and that incorporated elements of black culture.”11 Burrell said, “Black people rarely saw themselves portrayed in a realistic, positive way. The mass media was missing the whole group of blacks who lived normal lives and had emotional, poignant kinds of events happening to them.”12 By successfully using television advertisements he was able to create advertisements that targeted black Americans without “turning off” white Americans.13

Burrell has received many awards, including being inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2004. In 1995, Advertising Age named him one of the "50 Who Made a Difference," and in 1999, one of the "Top 100 Advertising People" who have shaped the course of advertising history.14

Learn more about Tom Burrell through these links below:

• "Tom Burrell"

• "The One Club: Tom Burrell"

Born in 1804 in Wisconsin, Fitz-Gibbon worked as an advertising executive and pioneered retail advertising. Her accounts included Marshall Field’s, Macy’s, Gimbel’s, and Wanamaker’s. She is best known for coming up with the Macy’s tagline, “It’s smart to be thrifty” and Gimbel’s tagline “Nobody but nobody undersells Gimbel’s.” She was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1982.15 One of her most famous quotes that is still relevant today is “A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted, it also must afflict the comfortable.”16

Learn more about Burnice Fitz-Gibbon through the link below:

• "The One Club: Burnice Fitz-Gibbon"

Ogilvy was born on June 23, 1911, in West Horsley, England. In 1938, he emigrated to the U.S., and began working for Gallup’s Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. It was there that he developed his skill as a researcher and talent as a writer. He founded the advertising agency Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather in New York City in 1948, and in 1965, the agency merged to become Ogilvy and Mather.17

Ogilvy’s advertising philosophy stood on four pillars:

1. Great research—everything starts with research

2. Professional discipline—look after your clients and teach young advertising people to be great advertisers

3. Creative brilliance—he preached, “Unless your advertising is based on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night”

4. Get results for your clients—make the cash registers ring.18

He believed that a product’s success hinged on the ability to create a strong brand image and that “every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.” His theory of advertising was simple: Put the product front and center and “make your product the hero of the commercial.”19 When you look at the products in a particular category (deodorant, dish soap, hot dogs, and so on) there really isn’t that much difference between them. According to Ogilvy’s brand image theory, the most successful brand would concentrate on creating a sharply defined personality and brand image. “It is the total personality of a brand rather than any trivial product difference which decides its ultimate position in the market.”20

Ogilvy & Mather is a full-service advertising agency still in operation today. They operate 450 offices in 161 cities in 120 countries throughout the world with over 18,000 employees. They follow the philosophy of their founder, “We sell or else.” That means they believe in both creativity and effectiveness.21 Their clients include American Express, Kraft, Nestles, Six Flags, Cabela’s, and Unilever.

Learn more about David Ogilvy through these links below:

• "The Famous People: David Ogilvy"

• "The One Club: David Ogilvy"

Considered by many to be the first advertiser, Palmer started his agency in Philadelphia in 1841. His work experience included running a coal business, a real estate office, and operating a family newspaper, The New Jersey Mirror and Burlington County Advertiser, in Mount Holly, New Jersey all before starting his career in advertising. By 1849, he had established a list of clients that included newspapers from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Alabama. He provided his clients with the space rates for each newspaper, advertising production, and some copywriting.22

Palmer was a space broker, meaning he would buy up large amounts of advertising space in newspapers and then resell it at a much higher rate. Palmer believed that the satisfaction of his customers was key to his success. As his business continued to grow, he later opened offices in Boston, New York, and Baltimore. In 1850, his agency became Volney B. Palmer & Company. After his death in 1864, the agency became Coe, Wetherill & Company, and in 1877, it was incorporated into N.W. Ayer & Son.23

Learn more about Volney Palmer through these links below:

• "Early Advertising"

• "Business Revolution: The Ad Agency"

Born in 1919 in Virginia, Reeves cofounded the Ted Bates & Co. advertising agency in New York City where he pioneered the television commercial. Reeves advertising concentrated on what he called the Unique Selling Proposition (see Chapter 7), or the belief that every product has a single benefit that makes it unique and more superior than all the others. Using this philosophy, Reeves created memorable taglines for Colgate, Bic Pens, Minute Maid Orange Juice, and the most famous one still used today for M&M’s “It melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”24

Learn more about Rosser Reeves through these links below:

• "Advertising Hall of Fame: Rosser Reeves"

• "Scientific Advertising: Rosser Reeves"

Born in 1847, Thompson took his first job out of the military in New York as a bookkeeper at Carlton and Smith, an agency that bought advertising space in religious magazines. He believed the agency should expand their services to women’s magazines because he believed women controlled the finances in the home and purchased most of the household products, making them an ideal advertising market. Thompson became successful at selling space in women’s magazines and later bought the agency for $500 and renamed it the J. Walter Thompson Company.25

Learn more about J. Walter Thompson through the link below:

• Wikipedia: "James Walter Thompson"

Born Mary G. Berg in 1928, Lawrence started her advertising career in the early 1950s working as a copywriter at McKelvey’s department store in Youngstown, Ohio. She moved to New York City in 1952, and joined the advertising team at Macy’s department store as the fashion advertising manager. In 1957, she went to work at DDB where she worked under Bill Bernbach and Ned Doyle on General Mills and Max Factor. She left DDB in 1964 and went to Jack Tinker & Partners where she introduced Braniff Airlines to the world and wrote the iconic slogan “Plop plop fiz fiz” for Alka-Seltzer. After two years at Tinker, she founded Wells Rich Greene (WRG) in 1966 and became the agency’s president.26

She was the youngest (at age 40) person inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame and by 1976 was making $300,000.00, making Lawrence one of the highest paid female executives in the U.S.27 Under her direction WRG was the 15th largest agency in the U.S. with heavy hitting clients like Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris, Bic Pen Corp., Ralston Purina, and Midas. WRG created some of the most famous advertising slogans of the time, such as "I love New York" for New York City and "Try it, you'll like it" and "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" for Alka-Seltzer.28

At a time when men ran Madison Avenue, Mary Wells Lawrence took on the male-dominated industry of advertising to become one of the most powerful advertising executives in the business. Her strong suit was, in her words, her ability to “[theatricalize] life with dreams.”29 She ran WRG like a motion picture studio and made theater out of the advertising business. Her employees were her cast of characters and she gave each one a part to play, then she “whispered in their ears, cajoled them, hypnotized them, overpaid them, cradled them, tickled them, soothed them, or terrified them into turning out exceptional work.” In her book, A Big Life (in Advertising), she states, “I dared everybody to be bold, to be thrilling, and I dared our clients to be bold and thrilling as well. I kept saying that our goal was to have big, breakthrough ideas, not just to do good advertising. I wanted to create miracles.”30

Learn more about Mary Well Lawrence through these links below:

• "The One Club: Mary Wells Lawrence"

• "Biography of Mary Wells Lawrence"