one show, one body type

Frank Rose did an excellent roundup and analysis of the One Club's fun fling at MOMA last night celebrating their picks for best of the Digital Decade. So I won't try to reiterate here. I'd just like to add that my own observation was how very few women mounted the stage. Most acceptances were from teams in skinny ties and dark suits, like those shown here for BMW's The Hire. (9 out of 10 on stage, interestingly, no longer work at the agency, Fallon.)

I have no beef with the many talented guys who gathered last night to accept their due. But I suspect that consumers might be better served if the ad world was led by more than a smattering of creatives like Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin of Ogilvy/Toronto, who were among the few females honored, for Dove's Evolution.

Why do so many fewer women than men manage to prevail in creative fields like Adland? I'm convinced it's not just that guys want to play with their kind. It's that often women's drive gets deflected before the game is over. Their priorities shift, their goals are realigned by lifechanging events such as having a child (or trying to), their focus is splintered by encroaching demands inherent in juggling a worklife and life. I'm a perfect example of this. Twenty-four years ago, the then-hot shop Scali, McCabe, Sloves granted me a generous six month maternity leave. But a baby proved the toughest boss I'd ever had, and to preserve flexibility in meeting her needs, I went back as a freelancer.

Times have changed, happily, in that men are assuming more active roles in bringing up baby. (See alpha dads.) Being relieved of 100% responsibility for raising a family is essential if women are to achieve workplace success. But what's also essential is that they manage not to relinquish the drive and passion that launched them as interns.

There's a lot of talk lately about the necessities and benefits of cross-pollinating disparate brains around conference room tables. Yet, too often, the brains are of homogenous gender. Attendance at the table requires time and exertion and acknowledgement that it's important to be there. Belly up, ad broads. Yes, we can.

more mad women

Having been called out for omissions in my last post, by readers as authoritative as David Ogilvy, I'm adding a few names to my ad hoc compilation of Ad Broads Who Made History:

Paula Green began her career working as a copywriter for Seventeen magazine. After two years helping boost the young magazine's image and trying to change stereotypical perceptions of young women, she moved to the LC Gumbinner Agency. Then, noticing the work coming out of Doyle Dane Bernbach, she applied there and was hired as a copywriter. She was assigned to Avis and was appalled by their current campaign. It was, in her words, "a three-page logo." At the time, rental cars were shoddily cared for and maligned by customers who had to use them. Her first "We Try Harder" ads "were really creating an operating manual for the company saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas." When she extended the campaign to "Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us?" many in the agency objected, feeling that No. 2 was a put-down. Green sent the research department to airports, etc. with the ads on 3 x5 index cards. Researchers came back to report that 50% of the people thought that No. 2 meant "not as good as." Bernbach asked, "What about the other 50%?", thus saving the campaign which, based on research results, they were able to sell to the client.

Green went on to become group head at DDB and its first woman creative management supervisor. By the end of 1969, having reached the highest position available to her there, she left to start her own agency, Green Dolmatch, partnering with her husband Murray Dolmatch. After eight years, the agency became Paula Green advertising, responsible for campaigns like "Goya Oh Boy-a!" for Goya foods in the 1980s. Her ad philosophy? "Girls smiling seductively from bathtubs appeal to art directors, not women customers."

Mary Fillius, a copywriter at the Weintraub agency wrote the Maidenform campaign that, over at Sterling Cooper, is getting knickers in a twist. The campaign was launched in August 1949 and ran for decades. It was instrumental in transforming unmentionables into undergarments.

One of David Ogilvy's key copywriters was Riva Fine who worked with art director Bill Binzen on Schweppes in the 1950s. They used the company's colorful chief executive in the ads--Edward Whitehead, a former Royal Navy Officer from WW2.

Rita Selden was a copywriter in Phyllis Robinson's group at Doyle Dane Bernbach. One day she was walking past the office of art director Helmut Krone and saw him staring at a photo of a VW. He told her that, somehow, it would make a great ad. Although the car (which wasn't called a Beetle until 1967) looked perfect to the naked eye, it had been rejected by VWs strict inspection team. "Why don't you just say 'Lemon'?" Selden suggested.

who is the real @peggyolson? look it up in the library

The Ad World depicted in AMC's Mad Men (and recently extended, in a brilliant move, to Twitter) depicts a world in which men were the only masters of the universe (clients don't count; sorry Rachel Menken…er, Katz.) That depiction is largely accurate; however, there were a few women who climbed out of the steno pool, who managed, like Peggy, to make their marks as copywriters. The New York Science Library pays a tribute to them in an exhibition through September 26, Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue. The show highlights the achievements of creative ad legends, including women working just across town from Peggy, fighting their way up ladders at Sterling Cooper's competitors.

Reva Korda began her career in the 1940s by writing copy for Bernice Fitz-Gibbon who ran the art department at Gimbels. "Fitz" was a stickler for good copy, having created an empire with enduring lines like "It's smart to be thrifty" for Macy's and "Nobody, but nobody, undersells Gimbels." Seeking to hire only the best, Fitz had placed an ad for "Phi Beta Kappa English majors" which Korda, a Phi Beta from Hunter answered. In 1951, David Ogilvy, noticing Korda's work in The NY Times, stole her away and by 1962 she was a creative director at Ogilvy and promoted to senior vice president. She made her mark on ad history with the "Schweppervescence" campaign for Schweppes Tonic, putting crowns on the heads of Imperial Margarine eaters and her work for Dove and Pepperidge Farms.

Phyllis Robinson began in Grey's promotions department in the 1940s writing fashion for Bill Bernbach, and moved with him to be a staffer at Doyle Dane Bernbach when he opened the doors in June 1949. Bernbach credited Robinson with helping to professionalize advertising and lauded her ability to differentiate between "creative work" and "creative acrobatics." At DDB, Robinson teamed up with another Bernbach acolyte from Grey, Bob Gage, to form what is believed to be the first official copywriter/art director team. (Prior to this, art directors were thought of as mere layout men.) Robinson's work for Ohrbach's, Levy's bread and Polaroid won her a spot in the Copywriters Hall of Fame. One of the cub writers she supervised was Mary "Bunny" Wells.



Mary Wells spent time writing fashion copy at Macy's, then as copy supervisor at McCann, before moving to DDB in 1957 where she rose to associate copy chief and head of new-products development. There, she made her mark with copy for the French tourist office ("The Basque and his beret are never separated") and a Warner's girdle ("Slip into something comfortable and take two inches off your waistline.") In 1963, Marion Harper hired her away to Jack Tinker Partners which she helped transform from a think tank into a functioning creative shop. When Tinker had a heart attack, she expected to succeed him as president, but two male partners threatened to resign rather than work for a woman. A few months later, Wells left with the $6 million Braniff account and in 1966 started her own agency with two other Tinker renegades: Dick Rich and Stewart Greene. They shocked the airline industry and jolted Braniff sales by painting their planes pastel and putting their "stewardesses" in Pucci uniforms. ("End of the Plain Plane.") A year later, Wells married Braniff's president, but soon dropped his $10 million account to take on TWA's $14.6 million business. (Perplexing many in the industry, they remained happily wed.) Wells also did groundbreaking work for Benson & Hedges and Alka Seltzer. By 1969, Mary Wells was reported to be the highest-paid executive in advertising, making $250,000 a year. (And what will Roger Sterling and Bertram Cooper think of that?)



Shirley Polykoff grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. "It was from magazine advertisements that we learned how to be truly American", she said and began her career by writing copy as a teenage secretary at Harper's Bazaar, then for a series of department and variety stores, including Bamberger's and Kresge. In 1955, she became Foote, Cone & Belding's only woman copywriter and was assigned to a tiny Bristol-Myers division known as Clairol. (Like Peggy Olson, she got the account because it was felt that only she would understand the product.) At the time, only 7 percent of American women dared dye their hair, mainly actresses, models and other "fast" women. When her line "Does she…or doesn't she?" was first presented at the agency, her male colleagues tried to kill it, claiming the line was too suggestive. Polykoff added the reassuring tag, ''Hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure.'' The headline soon became a national catchphrase and dyed hair went from déclassé to de rigueur. Miss Polykoff went on to become FCB's lone female executive vice president and the 1967 Advertising Woman of the Year.

So, hang in there, Peggy. The future looks promising.