advertising practitioners

Inspiring Advertising Practitioners

Waste Not, Want NotRSA Student AwardsLucy Bryan-Smith

Classic Ad Men


William “Bill” Bernbach August 13, 1911 – October 2, 1982

Bernbach was an American advertising creative director. He was one of the three founders in 1949 of the international advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). He directed many of the firm’s breakthrough ad campaigns and had a lasting impact on the creative team structures now commonly used by ad agencies.Bernbach was noted for his devotion to creativity and offbeat themes, a legacy that has credited him as a major force behind the Creative Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. His work often was characterized by simplicity. He also is credited with being the first to combine copywriters and art directors into two-person teams—they commonly had been in separate departments—a model that still exists in advertising agencies today (Ag age, 1999).


Leo Burnett(1892-1971)

Taught by Theodore MacManus at General Motors Corp., Burnett, a Michigan native, imbued copy with the product’s “inherent drama” through warmth, shared emotions and experiences. He left Erwin, Wasey, Chicago, in ‘35 to open an agency that spawned a distinctive “Chicago school,” i.e., sentimental ads drawn from heartland-rooted values. He created such evocative icons as the Jolly Green Giant, Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna and Tony the Tiger. His Marlboro campaign, a legendary example of advertising’s power to build a global business, ultimately became a magnet for legislative crackdowns on tobacco marketing (Ag age, 1999).


David Ogilvy(1911-1999)

A self-described “advertising classicist” influenced by Claude Hopkins, John Caples and Raymond Rubicam, Ogilvy emphasized fact-based, long copy to advance Albert Lasker’s salesman-ship-in-print philosophy. Ogilvy’s agency, opened in 1948, created clean, powerful ads marked by graceful, sensible copy and a palpable respect for the consumer’s intelligence. His post-war creative bursts memorably served Hathaway shirts, Shell Oil, Sears, KLM, American Express, International Paper, IBM, Schweppes tonic, Rolls-Royce and Pepperidge Farm. Ogilvy pioneered a fee system, as opposed to commissions. During the “creative revolution” in 1961, the Copywriters Hall of Fame selected him as one of its first inductees (Ag age, 1999).


Maurice and Charles Saatchi(1946- ) and (1943- )

With the award-winning London agency they opened in September 1970, “the” brothers went on a 16-year acquisition spree that created the world’s largest marketing conglomerate and permanently altered and redefined the U.S. advertising landscape. The Saatchis’ unprecedented U.S. invasion and acquisition frenzy, essentially driven by a compulsion to be No. 1, involved dozens of companies, including Backer & Spielvogel, Compton Advertising, Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample and Ted Bates Worldwide, as well as research, PR, sales promotion and consultancy firms. And the brothers’ financial officer, Martin Sorrell, would split off in ‘86 to create WPP Group, acquire J. Walter Thompson Co. in ‘87 and build a rival marketing network. In 1995, Saatchi directors rebelled against the brothers’ lavish spending and ousted them from the troubled multibillion-dollar publicly held company. The brothers Saatchi thereupon created M&C Saatchi - a small London-based agency - while Saatchi & Saatchi survived, and WPP Group grew to be one of the top three holding companies (Ag age, 1999).

Helmut Krone(1925-1997)

Doyle Dane Bernbach, New YorkThink Beetle ads, those charming Volkswagen print ads of the ‘50s and ‘60s headlined, “Think small” and “Lemon.” Clean, uncluttered, witty, alive, tasteful, intelligent, contemporary masterpieces from Doyle Dane Bernbach, with Julian Koenig’s copy, art directed by Helmut Krone, the legendary “less is more” disciple. Krone sweated print details and advanced professionalism among creatives in his relentless pursuit of perfection. He joined DDB in his native New York in 1954, rose to creative director and was a perennial award winner as he revolutionized advertising’s “look.” His devoted following keeps his work and standards alive (Ag age, 1999).


Current Role Models


Jenifer Willig

Partnering with iconic brands including Nike, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Starbucks Jenifer most recently led (RED), the organization founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to fight AIDS in Africa, to momentous growth over her four year tenure. Through her leadership (RED) raised $185 million and became a global brand with a social following of over 2.5 million active people who advocate on behalf of (RED).Prior to joining (RED), Jenifer spent her career in advertising on global brands including AT&T, Levi Strauss & Co, British Airways, The Financial Times, ran the New York office of M&C Saatchi and developed the dot com business at TBWA/Chiat/Day SF during the tech boom of the late 1990′s.She has recently been named one of the 10 Most Generous Marketing Geniuses by Catch a Fire’s Generosity Series featured on Fast Company and recognized as one of the 40 women over 40 to watch.Jenifer is also the co-founder of WHOLE WORLD Water, a social enterprise raising money to provided access to clean and safe water around the world (Clendaniel, 2013).


Richard van der Laken

Born 1970, Richard van der Laken together with Pepijn Zurburg is the founder of Dutch graphic design studio Designpolitie (“Designpolice”), based in Amsterdam. Their studio is celebrated for its fresh, deceptively simple and direct approach to graphic design. Among other projects, they are the designers behind the review column ‘Gorilla’ in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and weekly magazine Groene Amsterdammer. In this they react to current affairs with word-and-image graphics. Van der Laken and Zurburg are also the initiators, curators and designers of What Design Can Do, an international conference about the impact of design (AGI, 2015).

Sources -

Ad age Advertising Century: Top 100 people: (1999) Retrieved 15 December 2015 from http://adage.com/article/spe-cial-report-the-advertising-century/ad-age-advertising-century-top-100-people/140153/

Morgan Clendaniel.(2013). Bringing The Power of Advertising To Giving Back, Retrieved from http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682273/bringing-the-power-of-advertising-to-giving-back

AGI Open Biel. (2015) Retrieved 18 Decemeber, 2015 from http://2015.agi-open.com/speakers/richard-van-der-laken