Mary Wells Lawrence, 92, is about to be named the new “Lion of St. Mark” by Cannes International Festival of Creativity. She will be honored through the LIONS Live platform on Friday 26 June.
Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, founders of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, were honored with the Lion of St. Mark Award at the 2019 Festival. For what it’s worth, the advertising lifetime award has nada to do with Mark the Evangelist. But it is an esteemed honor and one Mary Wells Lawrence well deserves for her legendary accomplishments and monumental achievements.
In 1971 Lawrence was named Advertising Woman of the Year by the American Advertising Federation, and in 1999 she was inducted into the American Advertising Hall of Fame. Her autobiography, A Big Life (in Advertising), was published in 2002.
Mary said, “Awareness of the time you are in is at the core of any business of persuasion, but I think my particular strength is my belief in passion – caring obviously and emotionally about how IMPORTANT what I am selling is.” In other words, to create believers you must first be a believer.
Mary was also an emotionalist. “I want to leave you FEELING about it – nervous if you are doing something else. Like falling in love,” she said.
The Lady from Youngstown Took No Prisoners
Mary is one of nine Ad Legends featured in my Ad Legends Workshop, which I first delivered at Signal Theory in Kansas City last December, and again the next day at the agency’s Wichita office.
Illustration by Jason Walton
Mary started working in advertising at McKelvey’s department store in Youngstown, Ohio—her hometown, and a city known for producing tough-minded people (and football coaches). She wanted to move to Manhattan and join the big leagues, which she did. She became the advertising manager at Macy’s. Like Leo Burnett, Mary started as an in-house creative.
She then jumped over to McCann before joining DDB, where Phyllis Robinson was the copy chief.
She was a powerful and sometimes controversial woman. Mary admits to using her looks to open doors to new accounts and using her charm to sell. She also has received criticism for failing to promote women or socialize with women. I can’t speak to the accuracy of those claims. I’m not sure anyone but Mary can do that, at this point. What we do know is she was the youngest person ever inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame at the age of 40. Many of us also know through experience and observation that strong, successful women are often targeted on the job by both men and women.
Fifty Years Ago, Braniff Was Flying High (Largely, Because of Mary)
Mary knew how to make relatable advertising or advertising that people can easily relate to. She also knew how to appeal to the customer in a way that could not be ignored.
The following ad would never be made today. It’s blatantly sexist by today’s standards. Nevertheless, 50 years ago when airplanes were full of men on business jaunts, this campaign lifted the client from its doldrums.
https://youtu.be/TmPLgv7TVOA
The client at Braniff, Harding Lawrence, credited “the end of the plain plane” and its “air strip” philosophy—where flight attendants changed their Pucci-designed uniforms in flight—for the airline’s revitalization. He also married a recently divorced Mary Wells.
With the Braniff account in tow, Mary left Tinker, the creative boutique where she worked to open Rich Wells Greene on April 4th, 1966 in New York City. Within six months the new agency had $30M in billings and its glamorous female creative head was considered the highest-paid woman in the world.
When Legendary Campaigns Flowed Like Wine…
Mary and her team made legendary ads for many companies and her lines continue to resonate in today’s culture.
“Flick your Bic” is Mary. “Trust the Midas Touch” is Mary. “I love NY” is Mary. So is, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”
Mary’s advertising career was truly incredible. Like Helen Lansdowne Resor before her, Mary worked her way to the top of a man’s world, on her terms.
I think today’s ad makers can learn to appreciate her ambition and drive. Her need to love the product is also hugely instructive. When a brand blows smoke, the ads stink. And a brand will blow smoke when the people who make their ads care more about their next trip to Cannes than they do about seeing the client succeed.
Mary rocked many boats. There’s a fearlessness in this woman that I admire and a fierceness. Getting clients on board with a difficult idea that might make them famous is tricky business. It’s a business for magicians who can hold a room of powerful execs spellbound.
How did Mary do it? She got her clients to imagine more, and to dream bigger. When we do this today, everyone wins.
Howard Luck Gossage is a cult figure. He is considered by some of today’s practitioners, myself included, as one of the greatest creatives of all time.
He converted an old firehouse in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco and began to “hold court” therein. Gossage was friends with Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, and Tom Wolfe, among others, and he liked to entertain his heady friends at the agency.
Given the company he was keeping, it’s no surprise that he famously said, “People don’t read advertising, they read what interests them and sometimes it’s an ad.”
Illustration by Jason Walton
Gossage understood that you can’t bore people into liking you or buying from you. He shared this understanding with Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy. Here’s where he diverged—Gossage believed you need to entertain. You need to be a showman. You need to invent things that were not there before. In this he is more like Leo Burnett.
Kim B. Rotzoll was an author and dean of the College of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He wrote the Gossage chapter in the excellent book, The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising by Edd C. Applegate. Professor Rotzoll notes that Gossage graduated from the University of Kansas City, he served as a fighter pilot during WWII and worked as the promotions manager for KLX in San Francisco before he got into the agency game.
“All of the jobs I have had since the navy (and three before) have either resulted in firing or in leaving the dungeon, save two, I think…I am not a very good boss, but a damn sight better than any other, for me,” Gossage said.
Fill Up on Pink Air
This is “Pink Air” for Fina by Gossage’s firm, which never grew beyond 13 staff members. Note the press clipping inside the ad. Gossage understood PR better than most and he used it to get wider distribution for his clients’ messages, and in the case below to lend added credibility to the message.
There’s no such thing as pink air, is there? But Gossage makes it sound believable, even though he wasn’t after believability. He wanted to capture the interest of motorists, and his ads for Fina did that.
The call to action in this ad is also a thing to behold: “…so the next time you see a Fina station you’ll recognize it. And if it’s on your side so you don’t have to make a U-turn and there aren’t six cars waiting and you need gas or something, please stop in.”
It’s hard to say if Gossage is poking fun at the hard sell or the soft sell here. Maybe it’s both. What’s not in question is that he’s created a lane for himself and Fina with Pink Air.
Gossage Helped the Sierra Club Save the Grand Canyon from Flooding
“If they can turn the Grand Canyon into a ‘cash register,’ is any national park safe? You know the answer.” Gossage liked to champion good causes, and when the Bureau of Reclamation wanted to flood the Grand Canyon in the 1960s, Gossage went to work making sure the pencil pushers in D.C. did not win, and thankfully, they did not win. Gossage, common sense and the American people won.
This campaign for the Sierra Club helped to save the Grand Canyon from being flooded. This is advertising at its highest use. At the same time, this is both direct response and interactive advertising. For Gossage, the ad was not an end in itself. The ad was a vehicle for change.
His Legacy and His Work Continue To Fascinate
As the Fina ad illustrates, Gossage saw the benefit of integrating PR into his communications plans. The ads he wrote were usually just the starting point for a campaign message that would then be amplified by the press, television and radio, and any number of different media.
Gossage called it his ‘ad platform technique’. We might call it “amplified advertainment” but whatever we call it, let’s remember to entertain our client’s customers.
In 2012, Dan Goldgeier interviewedGossage biographer, Steve Harrison, for Adpulp.com. The following video interview from Dominik Imseng goes even deeper into Gossage lore and Harrison is the man to ask. He mentions in the video that Gossage was a promoter more so than an ad maker, and that’s a keen insight.
Gossage also made ads for Qantas Airlines, Rainer Ale, Paul Mason, Blitz Brewing, Land Rover, and others, all of which we continue to study today. Jeff Goodby has called Gossage’s work the best advertising ever made.
Professor Rotzoll asserts that Gossage believed that marketers fundamentally misunderstood advertising.
They regard the audience incorrectly—as individuals gathered by the media to read or watch something else, the non-advertising content. Thus advertisers never think of the assembled as their audience and, hence, feel no particular obligation to them—as, for example, does the actor. Given this erroneous premise, Gossage asserted, all sorts of sins are permissible—mind-dulling repetition, vapid messages, every conceivable abuse of taste. (p. 160)
Do you and your team need more knowledge of and insights from the legendary figures who shaped the modern ad industry? I started providing a half-day live workshop on this material last December.
Leo Burnett studied journalism at the University of Michigan. His dream was to become the publisher of The New York Times. He graduated in 1914 and his first job was in Peoria, IL, where he worked as a newspaper reporter on the crime beat.
Burnett soon thereafter moved to Detroit and went to work on the client-side at GM. Burnett edited a publication for Cadillac dealers called Cadillac Clearing House. His mentor and boss at Cadilac, Theodore McManus, a fan of long copy, was a legend in his own right.
Burnett eventually joined the agency business in Indianapolis where he worked at Homer McKee on the Lafayette Motor Car Company account for most of the 1920s. The Great Depression disrupted all that. Homer McKee lost accounts and Burnett moved with his wife and three children to Chicago to find work.
He found work and new creative partners. On August 5, 1935, Leo Burnett, who was 42 years old at the time, opened the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago. The agency started with eight creatives (no account people) and $12,000, which Burnett raised by selling his house and hocking his insurance policies.
He took BIG risks to open his agency. He was brave.
Burnett Wisely Used Narrative Archetypes and Agrarian-Based Myths in His Work
Burnett was trained as a storyteller. First, as a journalist, then this practice was furthered at GM. It was this framework that naturally led Burnett to create his own timeless characters for packaged goods brands—Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Charlie the Tuna, and the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Yesterday, I pulled up an old tv spot from Burnett’s reel. Push play and hear me discuss the elements of this ad, and why they continue to matter today.
The friendly giant overseeing the safety and well-being of the farm is also an effective means to a difficult end: getting kids to eat their vegetables.
Burnett Was A Good Boss
Leo Burnett left an amazing legacy and the agency with his name on the door continues to be a powerful force in the industry.
Significantly for the time, Burnett put women into creative positions of power and let them fight it out with the “boys.” He also railed against ageism in advertising. He once wrote a memo to the staff about it, declaring that the business was not the prerogative of the young. Instead, it belonged to those who worked the hardest.
He Knew Where To Look and How To Solve
Burnett worked hard to see inside the problem. He looked deep inside the product, the company, and the experience that customers had with the company. He searched for the inherent tension in the product story. It’s something he learned years earlier from McManus and continued to deploy throughout his career.
To look inside the product counters the idea that the creative solution is out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. Burnett believed that the magic was inside the product and that advertising’s job was to magnify the product benefits in a larger than life way. I find this approach comforting because it helps immensely when you know where to look for answers to creative problems.
Apples All Day
Since the start of Leo Burnett the ad agency, a bowl of red apples has been part of the welcome that staff and guests receive upon arrival.
Speaking of arrivals, Chicago in 1935 was not the perfect place for a future Ad Legend to be. Or so said a Windy City journalist at the time. “It won’t be long ’til Leo Burnett is selling apples on the street corner instead of giving them away,” the man wrote. Journos can be such windbags sometimes.
I love that Burnett’s bowl of apples is both a vehicle to express generosity and a symbol of defiance.
His Name Remains
When Burnett retired, he also left his agency teams with a speech to top all speeches. In the speech, Burnett specifically calls for his name to be removed from the premises, if/when the place no longer cherishes ideas and the people who have them.
The man describes several conditions of decay that could ruin everything he’d built. This is the core of his concern right here: “When you begin to compromise your integrity, when you lose your humility, and when you stop building on strong and vital ideas and start a routine production line…”
Based on those three conditions, one might argue that Leo Burnett’s name should have come off the door years ago. Burnett’s agency and all agencies with a global footprint are, at least in part, routine production lines.
The “lonely man” who Burnett wanted to see protected from the incessant and unrealistic demands of today’s clients is not. Today’s lonely men and women have Tweets to write, influencers to influence, and so on, so there’s little time to build on strong and vital ideas. There’s just time to produce more content for the always-on content parade.
Where Will Bravery Take You?
Burnett was a bold thinker, but unassuming in his demeanor and ruffled in his appearance. Today, we think of him as a standard-bearer, but I want us to stop doing this. He was a rogue, a troublemaker, a questioner, and a never-settler. When breadlines wrapped around city blocks in Chicago, and things looked bleak in every direction, Burnett brought optimism and a new vision forward in advertising. By doing so, he changed the business forever.
With Leo B. as a guide, let me ask, what will you help to create in this new economic downturn?
What needs to be disrupted that you and your team can properly fix? My bet is there’s something right in front of you to rework.
The year was 1956. The city, San Francisco. The agency, BBDO. The job, Mailroom clerk. The future advertising legend, Hal Riney.
Riney was born in the depths of The Great Depression in Washington, a fact of his life that influenced his later work, including “It’s Morning Again in America” which helped re-elect Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Riney majored in art and minored in journalism and advertising at Univ. Of Washington. He served as a press officer in the U.S. Army and then joined BBDO. At first, he wanted to be an account exec. “I wanted to be an account man,” he said. ”I thought these were the guys who were the real ad people.”
Thankfully, Riney became an art director at BBDO, and within 12 years was promoted to vice president and creative director.
In 1976, Riney opened the San Francisco office of New York agency Ogilvy & Mather. Legend has it that Ogilvy “found” Riney at Reno’s, a bar in San Francisco, where he was sipping Jim Beam while writing ads for Oregon’s Blitz-Weinhard Brewing.
Nine years later, in 1985, Riney purchased the Ogilvy & Mather office and renamed it Hal Riney & Partners.
Riney’s Place-Based Brand Narratives Are American Folk Tales
If this was an art history class, what would we call this ad? How would we classify it? Pastoral realism.
Here we also have personal identity wrapped around a brand pitch. Like “The Hathaway Man” and “Commander Whitehead” the brewer is seeking a certain type of person, in this case, a blue-collar Pacific Northwesterner. No product is for everyone, and Riney understood this.
This beer ad is lifestyle marketing with an emphasis on place. The tagline is, “The best country in the country deserves the country’s best beer.” So much pride.
Along with DDB’s “Daisy” for LBJ, this ad is considered to be one of the best of all time for a political candidate. Unlike “Daisy,” this ad is not scary. For Riney, reality was scary enough. He sought to offer his client’s customers another, more comforting, vision of America.
Hal Riney created the Saturn campaign, centered on the town of Spring Hill, Tenn., where the car was manufactured. This car was not made in Detroit, and the commercials wouldn’t be made there either.
The tagline was “A different kind of company. A different kind of car,” and it was the most successful new model introduction in GM history.
What’s the inherent tension in this story? Riney identified a key moment of truth in the car buying experience—all the way at the end of the narrative arc’s downslope—and he successfully dramatized it.
Hal Riney’s Legacy Continues To Play Out Today
Hal Riney started something in San Francisco that continues to play out today in a big way. Andy Berlin, Jeff Goodby, and Rich Silverstein all worked for Riney before heading out on their own.
Riney liked to use pop music in ads, not just jingles. He painted a complete picture for viewers, one that they could imagine themselves in, and happier in. And like Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy, he created brand characters (Bartles & James) endowed with cultural relevance.
Lee Clow said, “Hal Riney was one of our fiercest competitors and, personally, one of my greatest inspirations. The man was truly a genius. His voice for storytelling and his art changed the way we think about advertising. His work will continue to inspire us.”
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Hal Riney is one of the ad legends featured in “The Ad Legends: The People, Creative Movements, and Legendary Work That Shaped the Modern Craft of Advertising,” a live workshop I first presented at Signal Theory in Kansas City and Wichita, on December 11 and 12, 2019.
There’s no such thing as pink air, is there? But Gossage makes it sound believable, even though he wasn’t after believability. He wanted to capture the interest of motorists, and his ads for Fina did that.
