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. .."
