KIDDIE KAR - "The Dick Walsh Series"

ADVERTISING in 1919 was refreshed with this handsome, effective campaign for Kiddie-Kars. "The verses, of course," says Richard J. Walsh, who wrote them, "are frank imitations of Stevenson." Well, it takes a darn good man to imitate Stevenson, and when Dick Walsh gave up the writing of advertisingcopy for the publishing business, advertising lost one of its most gifted men.

The Kiddie Kar verses became so popular that they were published in the form of a book for children by Lippincott. Sarah Stilwell Weber did the wonderful illustrations. Richard J. Walsh is now president of The John Day Company.

B B D & O - "Brown's Job"'

B ROWN'S job, by the late F. R. Feland, former treasurer of BBDO, is one of those pieces of advertising copy that is legend up and down the industry. It floors me every time I read it - and it must a good many others, too, because requests still come into BBDO for copies or permission to reprint.

Mr. Feland wrote the text in 1920 for the BBDO house organ "The Wedge" or perhaps it was called "Batten's Wedge" then (one of the oldest house organs in the country, incidentally),and it was used later as a full page advertisement in the New York Times. In both uses, it created tremendous interest, receiving much editorial praise as an outstanding piece of agency propaganda. "Just why," Mr. Feland once commented, "is a little hard to understand, inasmuch as, beyond our signature, it makes no reference to agency operation."

Mr. Feland was indeed modest.

And, incidentally, where else in the world will you find a treasurer who thought like that!

ODORONO - "Within The Curve O f A Woman's Arm"

T IMES may change, says the JWT News, but a good basic advertising appeal does not. A J. Walter Thompson advertisement for a deodorant, which appeared about 40 years ago, used the same type of illustration - a woman in a man's arms, her one arm upraised, and the same "You may offend without knowing it" appeal as is being used in today's modern "Fresh" (JWTNY) advertising.

James Young, who wrote the 1919 deodorant advertisement says that it was so startling at that time that some 200 Ladies' Home journal readers cancelled their subscriptions and "publishers begged us to stop the copy." Times have changed, but not basic advertising appeals. (Mr. Young adds a P.S.: "Several women who learned that I had written this advertisement said they would never speak to me again - that it was 'disgusting' and 'an insult to women.' But the deodorant's sales increased 11277 that year.")

You will learn more about James WW. Young in this book but nothing more important than his copy philosophy, as expressed to me in a letter from Rancho Canada, Pena Blanca, New Mexico, written in September 1948, and I quote: "I learned to write copy as a seller of books by mail - to Methodist ministers! Hence I have always believed in two things: first, that people read ads; second, that they will respond to them if you use them to make a complete sales canvass. These convictions, in turn, have never made me afraid of 'long copy.'

"When I write an ad I first try to get in mind a very sharp conception of the kind of person I am going to talk to. Then I try to formulate, very clearly, the proposition I am going to make him or her - why he should buy something, think something, or do something.

"Then I try to think out where this person's interests or problems and the proposition come together, and from this try to work out the headline and main illustration which, as one unit, will take hold of them. I usually think out many headlines before I get the one which satisfies me. And also usually labor equally to get the one right illustration for the headline. Where possible, as in the Webb Young advertising, I test headlines for their relative effectiveness, knowing from these tests that some headlines can be twice as effective as others.

"As I write the body of the ad I keep thinking about the reader, asking myself: Have I made this clear? - What doubt will he have here? - Have I made this interesting ? - and so on.

"Some ads come easier than others, of course, but usually the actual writing process is not difficult for me. I do not begin it, as a rule, until I have clearly seen the completed ad in my own mind - headline, main illustration, format, and general course of the copy story. When that has come about, then I sit down and put it on paper, and the first draft usually stands, with few revisions."

DR. ELIOT'S FIVE-FOOT SHELF - "This Is Marie Antoinette Riding To Her Death"

THIS ad belongs in my book for two reasons: first, it worked! And second, it is probably the first important copy ever written by one of America's truly distinguished copy men: Bruce Barton.

I wrote Mr. Barton for the story and I could give you no more interesting information about this significant demonstration of his ability than this quote from his letter:

"Tom Beck, who had been sales manager for Procter & Gamble, was hired by Robert Collier to take charge of sales of Collier's Weekly and the Collier books including the famous Five-Foot Shelf of Books selected by Dr. Eliot. Beck came from a business that depended wholly on advertising into a business that never had had any advertising, a business in which the salesman did not want advertising because every salesman worked his own way and sometimes his way was open to considerable ethical debate. Each salesman pretended to be the general manager out on a special trip to consult subscribers; or an executor of the estate of the publisher who was seeking to dispose of a few fine sets at bargain prices in order to close up the estate, etc. "Beck believed that books could be advertised and sold ethically and he hired a great national advertising agency to prepare advertisements for the Five-Foot Shelf of Books to be run in Collier's Weekly. A number of these advertisements were double spreads. Their theme was the joy and satisfaction of owning and reading great books.

"Part of my duties as Beck's assistant was to supervise the advertising, and I complained to the agency that, while the advertisements were very fine advertisements, they did not produce any coupons and without coupons which the salesmen could follow up we had no chance to recoup our advertising expense from added sales.

"One day the superintendent of the press room called me up and said the magazine was about to go to press and that there was one vacant quarter-page which we of the sales department might have for a book advertisement if I could get the copy through immediately. I took a volume from one of our pulled sets (sets on which the subscriber had failed to keep up his payments), opened it almost at random, tore out the picture of Marie Antoinette, had a cut made, and wrote under the picture: This is Marie Antoinette riding to her death. Have you ever read her tragic story?

"Marie pulled eight times as many coupons in that quarter-page* as we had ever received from a double-spread! She was such a good puller that she continued to run in the magazine for years after I left Collier's. "While I had written one or two pieces of copy previously, she was my first major operation.

"I don't know how you could get a'photostat of her except from the files of Collier's. She must have appeared first somewhere between 1910 anc: '913."

CAMEL CIGARETTES -First Big Time Cigarette Campaign

ONE of the heartening things about doing this book has been the interested, all-out cooperation received from advertisers and agencies-none more heartening than that from my advertising alma mater, N. W. Ayer & Son. And none more enlightening than this story about the first big league advertiser of cigarettes, R. J. Reynolds Company. Here is the story of Camels as related to Ayer Vice President, Clarence L. Jordan by William M. Armistead, long dean of Ayer executives, who got and handled the Reynolds account for many years:

The Cigarette Industry - like so many industries in the early days of the 20th Century - began its development with sectional brands.
In the South-Atlantic States Piedmonts were a big seller -and down in New Orleans, Home Runs and Picayunes were popular. Fatimas were demanded in the East and Middle-Atlantic - and out in San Francisco they were selling a brand almost exclusively which had a "mouthpiece."

R. J. Reynolds, who had just completed overcoming sectional brands in a pipe tobacco - making Prince Albert a national seller - made up his mind to attempt the same thing in a cigarette.
After a long time in studying the various sectional brands, Mr. Reynolds decided he had perfected the proper blend for a national cigarette. He bought the name "CAMEL" from a small independent company in Philadelphia for $2,500.00.
Mr. Reynolds then said to Mr. Armistead, who handled the advertising account for N. W. Ayer & Son, that they were ready to proceed and offered him an appropriation of $250,000 to introduce the Camel brand.

This initial appropriation was refused, with the following statement: "While it is true that all of those around the Reynolds Tobacco Company who have tried the new cigarette think it is a great blend, some of them may have expressed that belief because they thought it would please you, Mr. Reynolds. If you spend a quarter million dollars on that cigarette - and the public does not like it - you will kill the brand, as well as lose a quarter million dollars. Public approval is the only way to test the product. If this cigarette will not sell without advertising - it certainly will not sell with advertising."
We then went on to recommend that one carton of Camel Cigarettes be distributed to each of 125 of the best retail stores in Cleveland, with the understanding that the carton be left on top of the counter -and figures furnished on repeat orders by stores.

The cigarette immediately began to repeat.

Then, the same system was tried out in other sections of the country where various sectional brands were being sold. Again and again, the product started to repeat without any advertising.
Based on this method of testing in all sections of the country, it became clear that this new blend could overcome sectional prejudices.
Then - and not until then - was advertising recommended to introduce the brand on a full-scale basis.
This introduction was done by Sales Divisions, of which there were 87 in the United States. Each Division Manager was instructed to notify the Home Office as soon as he had perfected a complete distribution in his area.
The advertising campaign started off with teaser copy in newspapers, approximately forty inches in size.

The first advertisement was a very simple teaser display - using the words "The Camels Are Coming."

The second advertisement featured the wording "Tonrorrou' There Fill Be More Carrels in This Town Than in Asia and Africa Combined."
The third advertisement stated "Camels Are Here," and proceeded to describe the brand.
From that point on, consistent newspaper space was used on a campaign which was built around the theme that Camel Cigarettes did not offer any premiums - such as were popular with most cigarettes at the time - because the cost of the tobaccos used in the Camel blend was too great to permit anything except the quality product itself.
That was the introductory period and - as could be expected - it stung competition into quick action.

Camels started moving rapidly in nearly all sections, except for New York City. That city had been left for the last. Sales there were controlled largely by the Metropolitan Tobacco Company, who had advised the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company that if they would keep their salesmen out of New York City they would give them distribution in about 17,000 stores that were tops, in one week - just as soon as they were convinced the product would sell.

Reynolds agreed, and the last division opened was New York, through the Metropolitan Tobacco Company, using exactly the same technique - with advertising spreading to magazines and billboards, in addition to newspapers, but still using the same hard-selling theme.
Camels grew from 4th place to 1st place in five years, securing about 4057c of the entire cigarette business.
Naturally, competition switched its tactics from sectional sellers to national blends that could compete on a national basis with the success of Camels - and the big cigarette battle, which is still going on, got under way with millions of dollars of advertising being spent each year on each of the leading national brands.

An amusing incident developed one of the greatest slogans in this cigarette battle.
A sign painter was painting a billboard one day and a man walked up and asked him if he could give him a cigarette. The painter said "yes" and offered him a Camel. The stranger thanked him with enthusiasm, and said "I'd Walk A Mile For A Camel."
The sign painter was smart enough to report the incident as a suggestion for a billboard and from this incident grew one of the best and most familiar slogans in advertising.

KELLY-SPRINGFIELD - The Fellowes Series

EARNEST Elmo Calkins and other advertising men whose opinions on advertising are always respected, have called the KellySpringfield Tire advertising of the era 1918 to 1931, the most outstanding tire campaign ever run in national magazines. The sample on the opposite page is typical of this series. Henry Hurd, then advertising manager of Kelly-Springfield and Laurence Fellowes, a free lance artist, did them.
"At that time," writes Mr. Hurd, "we were the Tiffany of the tire industry. We felt that for an ambitious million dollar advertising budget, we needed something more than merely a punning (Lotta Miles trade character such as we had been using in our outdoor display, and I was casting about for an idea when Laurence Fellowes walked in with a suggestion for a house organ cover. In those days Fellowes did fineline drawings without the wash which he later adopted; when it came to drawing smart cars and smart types of people he was in a class by himself. The drawing he brought in to me that day gave me the idea for the Kelly magazine series which for so many years I wrote and he illustrated. Sometimes I would send him the copy and he would do a drawing to fit the text; sometimes I would run dry and write copy to whatever picture he felt like producing. .."

CADILLAC -- "The Penalty O f Leadership"

THE list of famous advertisements selected for this book is not entirely my own. When the work began, I wrote to perhaps fifty leading advertising men explaining my belief in the need and usefulness of a volume like this and asked them to name some of the advertisements which, over the years, had made a profound impression upon them. "The Penalty o f Leadership" appeared on every list!
Much has been written about this perhaps greatest of all advertisements, the conditions which prompted it, etc., but the significant fact to me is this: the advertisement, contrary to popular belief, appeared but once: January 2, 1915 in The Saturday Evening Post, yet after more than thirty years, hardly a week goes by that either Cadillac or its agency, MacManus, John & Adams, Detroit, do not get requests for one or more copies. Millions have been distributed.
"That which deserves to live - lives." Its author: Theodore F. MacManus.

Uneeda Bakers

HERE is the young man who took crackers out of the cracker barrel, put them into neat, sanitary packages, and sold, what is still after sixty years of competition, the most famous "biscuit" in the world! Actually, of course, the story is far more significant than that. A. W. Green, Chairman of the Board of the National Biscuit Company just before and after the turn of the century, was the prime mover in an idea that was probably the forerunner of the packaged food business in this country. For this was the day of bulk selling. Crackers - and almost every other item in the grocery stores of that day - were sold from barrels or boxes. You bought your groceries and you took your chances; sometimes you got them clean and fresh, and sometimes you got them stale, fly-specked and smelling of kerosene.
Mr. Green recommended to his Board a home PACKAGE of crackers-a package containing a quantity that would be quickly consumed by the average family, that would be packed in a container free from contamination and protected from moisture, dust, germs and odors. Mr. Green also recommended a mass price of 5¢ (this was 1899, remember) and some novel method of advertising and merchandising this absolutely revolutionary scheme.
The Board was unenthusiastic. Its mind was still in the cracker barrel. With rare foresight, it pessimistically predicted failure. But fortunately
it wasn't boss. And also, fortunately, the National Biscuit Company had appointed N. W. Ayer & Son as its advertising agency.
Serving the National Biscuit account was one of Ayer's strongest men: H. N. McKinney. Mr. McKinney was just as foresighted in his field as Mr. Green in his, and the result of that combination was the name UNEEDA and a coordinated plan for reaching the public through newspapers, magazines, street car cards, posters and painted signs.
The campaign was an over-night sensation and new bakeries were built in different parts of the country to supply the fantastic demand, but neither National Biscuit nor N. W. Ayer probably realized the extent to which they were remolding our daily lives. Today's brightly illuminated markets with their neatly arranged rows of packaged foods, each with its own trade mark, had its origin in this first bold step taken but fifty years ago.
The famous boy in boots, sou.'wester and slicker, with a package of Uneeda Biscuits in his arm, was the work of Joseph J. Geisinger, an associate of Mr. McKinney's at N. W. Ayer & Son. It was Mr. Geisinger's job to illustrate the original Uneeda campaign - to give it novelty and freshness and human appeal. He did. He did it so well that the slickered lad (Mr. Geisinger's nephew, Gordon Stille, by the way) is still one of the bestknown advertisements in the world.

FISK RUBBER COMPANY -"Time To Retire"

HERE is a young man who has never had time to practice what he preaches. He is anything but retired - in fact, he has been inordinately busy since 3 o'clock one morning in the year 1907 .Burr Giffin, an agency art director, (according to James L. Collings in the March 29, 1947 issue of Editor & Publisher) who frequently did work for the Fisk Tire Company was stirring at that early hour because he had an idea and the urge to do something about it.

He sat down on his bed and made a rapid sketch of a small boy with his right arm encircling a tire and his left hand holding a candle. Then he gave his work a title "Time to Retire."

The next morning he showed the sketch to his boss who thought it good enough to present to Fisk. Fisk in turn liked it so much that a poster ad was immediately whipped into shape. Thus, one of the most human, most famous trade marks in America started its long and illustrious advertising career.

An interesting sidelight is that Edward Egleston, an artist whose son was rumored to be the first model, made the first painting in oil in 1916. Through the years, however, that original painting was spoiled by too many retouchings.

In 1939 when the U. S. Rubber Company acquired Fisk they found among the drawings and paintings an oil of the Fisk boy of apparently indifferent quality.

The new management sent the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be restored - a process that revealed many layers of retouching which probably represented the over-the-years opinions of various engravers and lithographers as to where lights and shadows should fall and how color could be improved.

After the final restoration it was found that each change had been far from an improvement because the original was a completely charming picture.

The Fisk boy has had many millions of advertising dollars invested in him. He is kept up to date by employing different models each year in essentially the same pose. Recently he was animated and given lines, but essentially the original idea remains intact.

VICTOR TALKING MACHINE COMPANY- "His Master's Voice"

THIS is our dog - yours and mine! We grew up with this beloved fox terrier listening to his master's voice. It symbolized so perfectly, so warmly that first grand instrument of home entertainment, the Vic. It gave to the struggling Victor Talking Machine Company in the early days of this cyclonic century, an expression of performance that instantly went to the hearts of young and old alike. Many great ads have appeared over the Victor and later the RCA-Victor name, but none more valuable certainly than the dog everybody knows.

The idea was the inspiration of Francis Barraud, an English painter. One day his dog Nipper - for that was the terrier's name - sat hunched before a talking machine listening quizzically to the voices coming from the horn. Nipper's pose caught the eye of his master . . . and one of the greatest trade-marks in the world was born. Barraud gave it the title which has never changed "His Master's Voice" and sold the English rights to the picture to the Gramophone Company, London. In 1901, the Victor Talking Machine Company acquired the American rights to the painting and adopted it as its trade-mark, and has featured it for more than half a century in advertising and retail display.

The moral of all this - if one is needed - is that good ideas are everywhere. But you have to know one when you see it.

SAPOLIO -"Spotless Town"

DOWN from Cornell, where he drew and wrote for the college papers while earning an engineering degree, came J. K. Fraser. "No one wanted an advertising man like me. Had to eat so made a deal with the mate and cook of a ship who had opened up a restaurant on 23rd Street. Every week I put a poster in the window inviting people to come in and eat. In payment, whenever I felt hungry I went in myself and ate on the house. I got the posters back. With these samples I landed a job with Ward & Gow who controlled street car advertising space. Mr. Ward also managed Sapolio advertising. One day I told Mr. Ward that I would like to try my hand at some Sapolio car cards. When I showed him the Spotless Town series he said: 'Fine! I am going to keep that series in the cars so long people will get sick and tired of seeing it, and when it makes you famous don't forget to give me some of the credit.' I wrote the jingles and drew the pictures. I was 24."

Spotless Town deserves a place in any collection of great ads, and Mr. Ward in any charting of farsightedness. For Spotless Town (while selling Sapolio by the ton) was parodied in many papers and one syndicated political series ran all over the country. At one time four theatrical road companies booked shows called Spotless Town ... and one community changed its name permanently thereto. Out of the Spotless Town success, rose J. K. Fraser to head the old Blackman Company (now Compton Advertising), to retire a wealthy, healthy and respected man, to take up golf and "I can still put them out beyond the 200-yards marker." And this person doesn't doubt it. JK could always call his shots. Love that man!

SMITH BROTHERS COUGH DROPS

PROBABLY the world's most famous brothers are "Trade" and "Mark" Smith! Since 1852 when the first advertisement for a "Cough Candy" appeared in Poughkeepsie newspapers over the signature of William Smith, these deftly bearded gentlemen have been selling cough drops as cough drops were never sold before - or since.

Ten years or so ago, practically an entire 40-page edition of the Poughkeepsie-New Yorker was devoted to the 100th Birthday Celebration of this famous industry which had produced enough cough drops up to that time to ease the roughened throats of all the people in the world!

Five generations of Smith Brothers have carried on this fantastically successful business which contains all the ingredients of the American dream ... log cabin beginnings, first product made over kitchen stove, sold from door to door, and then the slow ascent to great wealth and world influence. Just pull out the stops and bear down on the keys!

And if you could ask either "Trade" or "Mark" or any of their fortunate descendants what one thing - beyond the product - was the big booster along the upward road, the voice that answered would undoubtedly say: "Continuous advertising, small space, plenty of insertions, simple copy.'. . "

Maybe you won't call the pictures of "Trade" and "Mark" that I've reproduced here either "great" or "famous" advertisements. You're right - technically; but I imagine more people know these gentlemen and what they make, than know the reasons why the product's good for them .. .

Even today's Smith Brothers advertising says, "Don't Let Those Beards Fool You!" And then it goes on with "Modern Science Recognizes The Effectiveness o f This Trusted Formula. .." Trying to modernize "Trade" and "Mark" are they? Is nothing sacred?

PHOEBE SNOW -"The Road o f Anthracite"

I HAVE a special interest in a girl named Phoebe Snow. I saw her first on a Clinton Street trolley back in my hometown, Elmira, New York. I fell in love with her at first sight and my devotion has remained constant through the years.

Phoebe was selling the Lackawanna Railroad then - and she still is. She used to say things like this to me as I rode to work -

Like aeroplanes
My favorite trains
O'ertop the lofty mountain chains There's cool delight
At such a height
Upon the Road of Anthracite.

Yes, Phoebe was a car card then - probably the first great railroad selling symbol in print. She has been selling the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western since 1900, and she has done so well at it that the railroad now calls itself The Route o f Phoebe Snow and an entire modern passenger train is named in her honor.
Phoebe Snow was the pin-up rage of her day, created by Earnest Elmo Calkins and first painted by Harry Stacy Benton - not Penrhyn Stanlaws, as has so often been reported. The model was a Mrs. Murray, one of the very first models to be used in advertising, long before Powers and Conover established their picturesque services.

Phoebe Snow was created to sell the idea of cleanliness in traveling on a railroad which used rootless anthracite coal exclusively as locomotive fuel. Phoebe always wore a spotless white dress - was always cool-looking, comfortable, corsaged with violets. She became so popular as a symbol of cleanliness, and lodged so surely in the hearts and minds of Lackawanna travelers and shippers, that they've printed her name on all rolling stock. Booklets with her verses and story have been distributed by the hundreds of thousands.
But I am indebted to Mr. Calkins (via Fred Kendall) for the real story behind the story of Phoebe Snow. Mr. Calkins wrote it only three years ago and I quote -
"Forty-five years ago, Wendell P. Colton, then, advertising manager of the D. L. & W., now head of his own advertising agency, prepared and ran a series of street car cards based on the nursery rhyme, The House That Jack Built, the heroine of which was a girl in white, All in Lawn." When that came to a logical end, he turned to us for an idea to continue the advertising. Taking our cue from the previous set, we gave the girl a name and produced an endless set of jingles.

"The form of the verses was suggested by an onomatopoetic rhyme in The Humorous Speaker, one of the elocution books so numerous when I was a boy - "Riding on the Rail." Its jigging meter was supposed to imitate the song of the rushing train. Rhyming advertisements were popular then. Kenneth Fraser's "Spotless Town" and Charles Snyder's "See that Hump" lilted from every street car card and boarding; constant repetition gave them currency.

"Mrs. Murray was posed before the camera in and out of cars, talking with the crew, eating in the diner,having her berth made up, as that was easier than painting in such inconvenient environments, and those photographs were the basis of the colored paintings made by Benton. The resulting pictures had little of the glamour of today's pin-up girls. The American ideal was something quite different in those double pre-war days. Phoebe was demure and circumspect, innocent as her white gown, as safe traveling alone on the Road of Anthracite as her spotless attire. Sex appeal existed, but it wasn't named, and 'pin-up' was as unknown as 'roomette'. As your story intimates, Phoebe Snow had her day, became a proverb, a symbol, and a simile in her time, and had her tribute of burlesque, parody, cartooning and allusion that were evidence of the world's familiarity.

"An amusing story could be made of the manner in which the higher criticism was applied to the apotheosis of Phoebe Snow. One of the Lackawanna's officers explained learnedly (after the fact) that Phoebe was the only woman's name that had the right psychological appeal, that this perfect name was not hit upon until after experiments with other names, that Mary was tried and failed to click, that when Phoebe was adopted the public responded one hundred percent. All of which was vastly entertaining to the man who created Phoebe, named her without giving a thought to the laws of mental science, mnenomics, or the subtle influence of association of ideas. And he realized that thus are legends made.

"It is evidence of advertising's flexibility that Phoebe Snow, her very reason for existence wiped out by wars and coal strikes, her personality dated by post-war ideas of feminine charm, is being transformed into a new symbol, that of women's advent in to the emphatically masculine industry of railroading, with hostesses on streamlined trains to add the hospitable touch that neither Pullman porter, nor conductor can supply. And it is a curious coincidence that Best Foods, which is the residuary legatee of one of the earliest flake breakfast foods, Force, is inquiring into the history of Sunny Jim, another character at whose birth I was at least the midwife.

"The last jingle I perpetrated in the Lackawanna series was:
Miss Phoebe's trip
Without a slip
Is almost o'er.
Her trunk and grip
Are right and tight
Without a slight.
"Good bye, old Road of Anthracite!"
- Earnest Elmo Calkins

I have a very special interest in Phoebe Snow, not alone because of her classification as a great ad, but more because she led me into advertising. I was so entranced by her rhymed selling that I did a little rhymed selling of my own ... in the form of an application for a job! I sent out sixteen letters, got five favorable replies, one by telegram. Those were the good old days, weren't they ?

IVORY SOAP – 99 44/100 % Pure - (1882)

BACK in December, 1882 this advertisement for Ivory Soap appeared in many newspapers throughout the land. Nobody remembers the exact schedule or the writer's name, but it was unquestionably among the first of the famous 99 44/100 percent pure series. Copywriters please note the substantial reason-why "sell" all the way through this compact "reader" copy. Pretty solid stuff. Few ads in that 1nn --gone day were any better. Few soaps either; and that was a combination hard to beat. In my book, it rates as among the great ads of all time because it is truly representative of an imaginative and resourceful advertising policy that has led Procter & Gamble from small beginnings to a very distinguished place in the sun. They had a good idea, and they stuck to it, varying only its interpretation as the years went by.

CAMPBELL'S SOUP-"The Campbell Kids"

ALTHOUGH the Campbell's Soup advertisement shown here appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, April 6, 1935 the famous Campbell Kids appeared on car cards as long ago as 1899. Certainly no book of great advertisements would be complete without an example of this truly outstanding series beloved by young and old alike for more than half a century - already.

There seems to be no exact record, (which is unfortunately true of so many great advertisements) as to who wrote the original jingles. Miss

Grace Drayton was the first illustrator and her style has been faithfully followed by different successors.

Nobody knows how much soup the Campbell Kids have sold, but you might take a look at the huge kitchens down in Camden, New Jersey and at the first advertising page following reading matter in countless years of The Post. The red and white Campbell label is a familiar landmark in American advertising history, and the Campbell Kids have been a lively, human, endearing part of your growing up, and mine.

EASTMAN KODAK - "You Press The Button - We do The Rest"

OVER the years the Eastman Kodak Company has published many advertisementsthat would unquestionably rate as "great", but probably none greater than this. "You Press the Button - We Do the Rest" is one of the greatest of advertising ideas.

It was literally edited-out of a long piece of copy by George Eastman himself. In a day when glass plate cameras enjoyed but limited and difficult use, Mr. Eastman's Kodak Camera, emulsion film, and advertising sense opened a market as rich as any in the world.

The advertisement shown here appeared in 1890 and was among the first to shake loose the homepicture-making instinct of the nation. Lovers of short copy will find here strong backing for their arguments, and ah yes, that's a testimonial (and a good one in italic type.

The famous Eastman "Brownie" Kodak, "Kodak As you Go" and other variations of the buttonpressing idea were much later developments. And

who of us old enough to remember the first war to end wars, will ever forget the Kodak advertisement that appeared in full-page rotogravure in 1917: the illustration was of course a photograph, showing an Army officer sitting in front of a field tent gazing raptly at a sheaf of snapshots fresh from a letter. There was but one line of copy, and only one line was needed. It read: "Pictures from Home."

The late L. B. Jones, famous advertising manager of the Eastman Kodak Company, wrote it, and it is one of the shortest and most effective pieces of human-interest copy ever written. Mr. Jones didn't write it that way at first. In fact, he wrote it quite the other way, for it was three hundred words long to begin with ! Three hundred words of very fine copy no doubt under the headline "Pictures from Home." "The longer I looked at it," Mr. Jones told me years later, "the more I realized that the picture told the story, so I began cutting, and finally cut the text out altogether!"

WANTED: Volunteers For The South Pole

THIS advertisement, written by Ernest Shackleton, the famed polar explorer, appeared in London newspapers in 1900. In speaking of it later, he said: "It seemed as though all the men in Great Britain were determined to accompany me, the response was so overwhelming."

Of course, the lure of adventure had a great deal to do with the success of this simply written copy. So did the power of deadly frankness.

Foreword by RAYMOND RUBICAM

As Julian Watkins intimates in his dedication of this book, anyone who attempts to name "The 100 Greatest Advertisements" is not settling the matter, but is merely starting something. Because I think Mr. Watkins is starting a good thing, I am glad that he asked me to write the Foreword to his book.

When I began as a copywriter, a book likethis would have been worth more money to me than I owned. A week's salary would have been a bargain price. Possession of such a collection of ads, and insight into how they were produced and what they accomplished, would have paid dividends on the spot - and would have continued to pay them for years afterwards while I was a developing copywriter,and for many more years during which I hired, taught, trained and tried to inspire other copywriters.

Writers and artists do not learn best from textbooks, but by doing and by absorbing through their pores, from the work of others, the particular qualities which appeal to them and stimulate their own potentialities. It is harder for teachers of advertising in schools and colleges to know and obtain the great advertisements, or even the successful ones, than it is for teachers of literature to know and obtain the great or successful books. We in the advertising business have not been adequately cooperative in providing teaching material, particularly information which willhelp teachers and students distinguish between the superlatively effective, the fairly effective, and the ineffective, in copy.

There are many successful ads, few great ones. A great ad by virtue of the very adjective applied to it, must be not merely successful, but phenomenally so. Yet phenomenal results alone - whether in number of readers, or inquiries, or even sales, do not make people feel that an ad is great unless its message is made memorable by originality, wit, insight, conviction or some other notable quality of mind or spirit. And even those qualities do not make it great if its claims are dishonest, if it impairs the good will of the customer toward the advertiser either before or after the sale, or if it impairs the good will of the public toward advertising. The best identification of a great ad is that its public is not only strongly sold by it, but that both the public and the advertising world remember it for a long time as an admirable piece of work.

A single agency or advertising department cannot as a rule do much better than the schools in putting before the beginner enoughads that can be called great. The agency or department may produce much excellent work, but seldom does that work span the wide variety of tasks that advertising can perform, or the widely varied styles and methodsby which similar goods and services can be and have been sold.

Of course, there is always on display in current media the daily and weekly grist of all the advertising mills, but current advertising style can be as monotonous as current automobile style, and pre-occupation with it merely sets up the need for a strong antidote, lest the pressure of standardization ruin the youngster for life.

Advertising is no exception to the rule that superlative work has an unequalled thrill for the craftsman. The great ads will contribute mysteriously but potently to any beginner who has a spark that can be struck. And, let me add, Mr. Watkins' Combination Panorama and Close-up of the Ads that Folks Remember can be just as enlightening and even more profitable to the Boss himself.

Preface to Dover Edition-1959

NEARLY ten years have passed since the first edition of this book (long out of print) came off the presses and literally startled me, and many others, with its instant acceptance, controversy, and success.

This was more than I expected, and more than I deserved. As a matter of fact, the book would never have been attempted, or completed, without the encouragement and assistance of Fred Kendall, long-time editor of the old Advertising & Selling which was a sort of bible to us struggling copywriters in the thirties and forties. Fred kept me at it when my spirits sagged - and sag they did, especially when some un-blithe spirit would tell me with great candor (and truth) that nobody but nobody could possibly pick the 100 greatest advertisements.

Of course not. As I wrote in the original Author's Preface " . . . the purpose of this book is to provide those who make, buy, sell, teach, or study advertising with a comprehensive reference work which can serve as a new, and I hope, exciting, stimulus to the continuing search for advertising effectiveness."

Lofty aims, and I apologize for my inability to make them loftier. But they seemed to work, ably supported by Raymond Rubicam's wonderful Foreword.

And that is why this second edition, with 13 new additions to the original "100 Greatest" came to be.

JULIAN L. WATKINS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. JANUARY 19, 1959

Author's Preface-1949

As I sit here in my office on the twelfth floor of the Statler Building in Boston, Massa chusetts, I can see across the rooftops some sixty different advertisements:

Three gasolines, two beverages, a school of dancing, a newspaper, a public utility, and a mayonnaise, are among them.

They look good to me! And in this upset, trembling world too few of us realize that these familiar clarions of commerce are actually the last strong line of free enterprise.

If you switched on your radio this morning or your television last night-you heard and saw them. And in your newspaper or magazine, you face repeatedly some of the finest salesmen in the world.

Jack Cunningham, a distinguished copywriter and executive for Cunningham & Walsh in New York, made a snapshot of an average New York cross-street. He said this about it to a group of advertising men last year:

"I want you to notice the following things - all within forty or fifty feet of the camera: there staring up from the sidewalk, is a handbill announcing that brakes will be relined nearby for $16.90. Next to it is a discarded matchbox telling you to insist on Gillette Blue Blades. Tucked under the man's arm is a newspaper which presents to view the current Macy offerings in furniture. Nearby on the sidewalk is the torn half of the familiar brown Hershey chocolate bar wrapper. The windows on the left are full of advertising. Hanging signs reach out to intercept the vision. A railway express truck goes by with a passing reminder to chew Wrigley's.

"Even the cars parked alongside the curb flaunt their familiar advertising trademarks.

"Here, in a few square yards of city street, are many corporations, big and little, striving and crying for success through their printed voicesadvertising."

Well, out of the rumble and thunder of the millions of presses-out of the billions of whispering, shouting, exhorting, cajoling advertising words that have been written over the years - which ones stand out?

And what are the stories behind them that will help you appraise their stature and their power?

Now the peculiar thing about advertising is that nowhere do personal opinions differ more widely than in the estimation of advertising copy, and this is especially true among advertising men themselves.

Many a man has challenged me already with this sixty-four-dollar question: "What makes an ad 'great'?"

What it sells? Certainly - in most cases that's what the man who paid for it had in mind, believe me. And as an instrument of sales, advertising has fulfilled its first glowing promise fabulously. Many an advertisement - especially in the mail order field - has produced enough traceable sales to be rated "great" in anybody's book.

But as advertising comes of age, even the diehards of the rockum and sockum school of hardselling copy, are beginning to agree that there's much more to it than sending you to "your favorite store." Charles C. Mortimer, Chairman of the Advertising Council, and vice president of General Foods Corporation, measured advertising soberly and intelligently when he said recently that "advertising has acquired new and sometimes frightening responsibilities . . . we have discovered in the last few years that advertising can literally accomplish miracles ..."

What Mr. Mortimer referred to was advertising's power in the realm of ideas . . . "that in advertising there exists one of the most effective means for inspiring and informing the people that the world has ever known ... "

Great advertising, like sublime happiness, is a lot of little things. Sometimes these things hang together and sometimes they don't.

Great advertising is not always the most beautiful. In fact, the reverse is often true.

Great advertising, however, does have one or two things in common: an idea, or concept, that can't be buried regardless of presentation, and a sincerity, or belief, that reaches right out from the page and into your heart.

It is not the purpose of this book to dissect and lay bare the many little things that are undoubtedly responsible for the generally accepted success of these one hundred choice examples of our craft. I doubt if anybody on earth could do that. It is the purpose of this book to provide those who make, buy, sell, teach, or study advertising, with a comprehensive reference work which can serve as a new and, I hope, exciting, stimulus to the continuing search for advertising effectiveness.

If advertising is to accept and cash-in on the broader challenge of its responsibility as a growing social and economic force, it can well review, study, and apply, some of the best that has gone before.

The term "great" as I have used it in my title and must use it throughout this book, is both a matter of personal opinion and a matter of record. As to whether my opinion is any better than yours - I don't know. I offer only my fifteen years with N. W. Ayer & Son, Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson Company; and sixteen years as a principal with the H. B. Humphrey Company, Boston. As to the matter of record, I offer more; the one hundred advertisements recorded here have been chosen, primarily, by two kinds of exceptionally well qualified experts - one, the people who read, (or do not read) advertisements - who act, or do not act, upon them ... and two, time.

While compiling my list I wrote to many of the leading advertising men in the country for suggestions, and it is amazing how many of our ablest stand solidly behind Cadillac's "The Penalty of Leadership" - Squibb's "The Priceless Ingredient" - Jordan's "Somewhere West of Laramie" - Book of Etiquette's "Again She Ordered Chicken Salad" - Listerine's "Often a Bridesmaid but Never a Bride" etc!

It is amazing, and significant, because even these few differ so widely in concept and execution that their classification as "great" ads is indeterminable by any rule or method, save by these two: that they are remembered, and the ability behind them respected.

Persuasion is still the destination of any advertisement, and you can reach it from almost any point on the creative compass if you've got an idea worth traveling in.

Some of the stories behind these selections have never been told before. Some are fascinating examples of far-sightedness. Some are Algeric. Some are immensely American. Some are sheer inspiration. Some are downright funny; with a lot of horse-sense laughing through! Some are intensely human. Some will fill you with the fine old wine of nostalgia.

All are useful as demonstrations of skilled advertising performance. The ability to think, to analyze, and to work like hell for clarity and conviction.

I think, as you go through these pages, you will feel a new pride in the business of advertising, for you will realize again what it has meant to the building and to the preservation of American free enterprise ... and how little its surface in that direction has been scratched.

You will differ perhaps with some of my selections. That is inevitable. My hope is that my list is truly representative of the first hundred years, let's say, of advertising progress.

And if I have helped create in you that solid gold incentive which great performance invariably arouses, then I shall be exceedingly glad.

We have books of great short stories, great plays, great poems, great trials, great paintings, and so forth, but so far as I know, this is the first attempt to marshall the great in advertising, and to present it in compact and convenient reference form.

To Raymond Rubicam, with whom I once had the great privilege of working; to George Cecil and Ken Slifer of N. W. Ayer & Son, where I first saw the light of copy day; to James W. Young, with whom 1 never worked but always wanted to; to Hayward Anderson, an old and valued friend, and to the Curtis Publishing Company for almost endless photographs from issues long buried in the files - I owe particular thanks for gracious, thoughtful and enormous help.

And, of course, if it hadn't been for Fred Kendall, the astute and friendly editorial director of the Moore Publishing Company, publishers of Advertising Agency, (better known to our generation as Advertising & Selling), the book probably would never have been published at all. Fred liked the idea from the start and encouraged me to do it - supplying both valued data from his files and genuine enthusiasm from his heart. In fact, the book's title is his. He admits that I may know a good ad when I see one but that he knows a title that will sell books!

My files are filled with wonderful letters from other men and women about whom you will hear later, and who, in turn, have filled my heart with a very special quality and quantity of gratitude. This is really their book; I've simply put it together.

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS OCTOBER, 1949