The ’60s was a Golden Age of Opportunity for Everyman and Everywoman, sparked by a homely little car shaped like a beetle. Thanks to its incredible performance and affordability as documented in Reader’s Digest and Popular Mechanics, the Volkswagen was beginning to make its presence known to the American car-buying public by the late 1950s.
Beginning in 1959 and throughout the 1960s, incisive, mind-engaging, product-endearing advertising created by New York’s Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency made the VW the hot new cool car to own, introducing the formula ad-constricted advertising industry to a whole new breed of consumer: human beings with brains and even a sense of humor. (Sample Doyle Dane VW headlines: “Think small.” “Lemon.” “Ugly is only skin deep.”)
Stepping off the elevator into the Ingalls Advertising agency at 137 Newbury St. in Boston on Oct. 22, 1964, strode an amazingly lucky rookie copywriter by the name of me. The first of many lucks was finding out that Ingalls was the only agency outside of Doyle Dane allowed to create Volkswagen ads.
As told to me, the Hansen-MacPhee Volkswagen Northeast distributor in Brookline had some-miraculous-how been granted permission to create ads for such as Boston Pops and Boston Symphony programs — to the tune of maybe half dozen ads a year. The media commissions would have amounted to only a pittance, of course, but the opportunity to quietly include a few VW ads in pitches to prospective clients? Pop the corks.
This news was exciting to hear of course, but did me no good. The only one writing Volkswagen was copy chief Ray Welch. So I plugged away, enjoying the lively environment, brainstorming and swapping hoots and hollers with the sparkling multi-flavored crew the Doyle Dane inspired Mad Men era agency biz attracted.
I stumbled at the beginning, trying to write even the most straight-on Charlestown Savings Bank ad or Stowe-Woodward rubber-coated rolls for the paper industry ad as if it were a Volkswagen ad. I was getting a lot of blue-penciled copy back from Ray.
Finally, the light bulb went on, and I realized I had to be a “method actor”: Write to each target audience in its own identifiable voice. My copy streamed through. I was assigned top accounts, got raises, won some creative awards and recognitions.
March 1967, I get a call from a guy named Jay Hill, who’s seen some of my work and who’s recommending me for his job as copy supervisor at the Bresnick agency. He’s leaving to go to BBD&O (and soon thereafter he’ll depart BBD&O to become a founding partner of one of the greatest agencies that ever lived, Hill, Holliday, Connors & Cosmopulos). Given a move up in title and huge jump in salary, I make the move.
Just 13 months (no kidding) later, I go back to Ingalls as copy chief because Ray Welch is leaving. In the course of the next just 16 months before I go to the K&E agency in October ’69 as creative director, I get to do four VW ads (one of which, headlined “Runabout,” says the price for the Beetle then was all of $1,639.)
The wonderful wacko-crazy-turvy-topsy world of the ad agency biz in the ’60s continued for me with three top creative awards, a first-of-its-kind title (concept director), one more creative directorship and a firing (“creative” is my soul; “directing” — meetings, pitch-making, memos, firing people — not for me).
Luckily, I had a letter of agreement in the last place, with three months’ severance to decide what next — stay in the agency box, or risk going out on my own.
In August 1974, Luck with a capital “L” took form in a man named David Herzbrun, who just happened to create the legendary VW “Snow Plow” ad — “How does the man who drives the snow plow get to the snow plow?” — voted Best Television Commercial of the Century at the Cannes Festival of Creativity. This same David Herzbrun just so happened to be the new creative director at — where else? — Ingalls!
Needless to say, I showed David my portfolio, figuring maybe I’d get some freelance and buy time to decide my next move. David seemed impressed with my work and said he’d keep me in mind.
Just a week later, he called and said Ingalls had just been assigned the Dukakis for Governor campaign — would I be willing to freelance the writing, working with art director Paul Regan on it?
Long story short, I had a ball working with Paul on the campaign. Mike Dukakis was easy to work with, he won the election, and with the money I earned I made one of the best decisions I ever made in my life: I went out on my own in business in the greatest place in the world, Marblehead, on Nov. 4, 1974.
Added bonuses were my wonderful friendship with David Herzbrun and the surprise continued reference to the VW “family” when, in 1978, Dukakis’ campaign manager, Joe Grandmaison, now head of the New England Regional Commission for Travel, invited Baker Advertising to compete for the federally funded $650,000 tourism account for all six New England states!
A fascinating roller-coaster case history… to be continued.
Bob Baker is one very lucky guy.
Bob Baker
Bob Baker is a creative resource in Marblehead whose memoir-in-progress is “Outlucking Gatsby: From Greenwich to The Green Light.”