steve frankfurt brought creativity to new medium: TV

RIP Steve Frankfurt, a real-life Mad Man who helped transform television advertising from the talking-head medium it was in the 1950s when radio scripts were simply read to camera to the creative playground it became in the 1960s. He joined Young & Rubicam's television department in 1957, straight out of college when most of advertising's revenues came from print and no one quite knew what to do with TV. Because of this, "kids" like Frankfurt were given a lot of freedom.

"Television was a toy then," Frankfurt said in 1983 when he was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame. He became a leader in making use of all aspects of the medium: he used the of a beating heart for Excederin ads and a strobe-lightlike effect for Band-Aids. He broke another boundary when he became president of Y&R at age 36--top ad agency execs in those days were usually plucked from the ranks of account executives or copywriters.

A New York Times article announcing his promotion in 1968 noted he kept his office on the creative floor, not the "sixth, top management's bailiwick." He spread his talent to Hollywood where he was hired by producers to create title sequences for films including Rosemary's Baby and To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1965, the BBC profiled him in a documentary series called Insights into the Lives of Individual Americans. He was billed as "The Quiet Persuader."

Here's the footage, kindly posted on youtube by Steve Emmerling, a former Y&R copywriter. It's a wealth of 60s styling details like closets hidden behind wallpaper, wrought ironed balconies, pipe-smoking in offices and men sitting around conference room tables as secretary discreetly serves each freshly brewed coffee in cup and saucer and Don Draper-esque men in three piece suits say things like "We need something pictorially to symbolize fresh!"

 

Steve Jobs, RiP

BoingBoing just posted the statement from Apple's Board of Directors. Wired put together a video montage of his Apple announcements since 1983. The New York Times laid out a grid of the 317 patents he left behind. But the most vivid image in my mind tonight is a commencement speech he gave at Stanford, talking to 2006 grads about how to live:

I look in the mirror every morning and ask myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today? Whenever the answer’s been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

He died today at just 57 of pancreatic cancer, the cancer that's killed 34,000 people this year--including my brother-in-law whose name was Steve, too. May they rest in peace.

RIP Gene Case who started an agency the Mad Men way

Mourning original Mad Man Gene Case, a founder of Jordan McGrath Case & Partners where I did a stint on Bounty paper towels aeons ago. Little known fact (at least to me): The shop was launched originally as Case and Krone. Gene Case's launch partner was art director legend Helmut Krone, who in 1969, was already a name on Madison Avenue, celebrated for Volkswagen's Think Small and other campaigns Don Draper envies.

Case met Krone at Doyle, Dane Bernbach where Case, a copywriter, was assigned to LBJ's campaign against Senator Goldwater. There, Case worked on the famous Daisy commercial , still considered the most effective political spot that ever ran on TV. He left DDB to join Jack Tinker & Partners, a noble experiment in creativity established by Interpublic under Marion Harper--its sole function was creative exploration and development. (Mary Wells was another DDB writer turned Tinkerer.) But Case stayed in touch with Krone and their frequent lunches tipped off rumors they were starting an agency.

When Case teamed up with Krone, he was just 31, one of the youngest founders of a start-up then. Because it was 1969, Ad Age made it a point of record that he was also one with the longest hair. No Don Draperly Brilcreem look for Gene Case. But, a la Mad Men, he and Krone set up shop in a hotel, taking a 7th floor suite at the Plaza. A week later, they brought in Pat McGrath, an account man from Benton & Bowles, who figured out the business end of things: McGrath put up $5,000 and loaned Case an additional $5,000, bringing the start-up capital total to $15,000. (This was when $5000 meant something: the average house cost $4600) The partners agreed to take $2,500 a month each, though no one took anything for the first five months.

After a month, the new agency moved across the street to 4 West 58th St where its modest $2 million of business included Carey Limousine, Cybernetics Inc. and Nestle Decaf coffee. After a lean couple of years, they won Mennen Skin Bracer, an $1.8 million account from J. Walter Thompson and created the series of commercials Case became most famous for: "Thanks. I needed that" a mnemonic that went viral before there was viral: men would be slapped across the face or slap themselves, as demonstrated by a still-slim John Goodman in the best (sorry) copy of this spot from the 70s I could find, posted below.

But the success of Mennen couldn't heal a growing rift between Case and Krone who displayed not only creative differences, but disparities in work habits. According to a 1994 Ad Age interview with McGrath, Krone would arrive mid-morning, have coffee, read the papers, have lunch and by the time "his furnaces were fully stoked, Case, whose day began promptly at 9 a.m, would be getting ready to go home." In 1972, Krone high-tailed it back to Doyle, Dane, Bernbach where he stayed until retiring in 1988.

Case's agency thrived due to packaged goods clients, but his heart was always in politics. He did a print campaign that helped Nelson Rockefeller win a third term as governor. And in 2002, at the age of 65, he founded a shop called The Avenging Angels, an advocacy ad agency to create campaigns for liberal causes.

Like Don Draper, he was always the consummate pitchman. "He was without a doubt the best presenter of advertising who ever lived," McGrath is quoted in today's Times. "Clients were sometimes unhappy because the ads weren't as good as the presentation." Um. Like this one?:

RIP Tony Schwartz, best ad hack in political history

from The New York Times

Tony Schwartz, a self-taught, sought-after and highly reclusive media consultant who helped create what is generally considered to be the most famous political ad to appear on television, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.

Of the thousands of television and radio advertisements on which Mr. Schwartz worked, none is as well known, or as controversial, as one that was broadcast exactly once: the so-called “daisy ad,” made for Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential campaign in 1964.

Produced by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in collaboration with Mr. Schwartz, the minute-long spot was broadcast on Sept. 7, 1964, during NBC’s “Monday Night at the Movies.” It showed a little girl in a meadow (in reality a Manhattan park), counting aloud as she plucks the petals from a daisy. Her voice dissolves into a man’s voice counting downward, followed by the image of an atomic blast. President Johnson’s voice is heard on the soundtrack.