A few gems from A Big Life In Advertising by Mary Wells Lawrence, the head of the agency that came up with “Quality is Job One” for Ford and “I Love New York.” I want to meet her, have tea, and ask her about a zillion questions about everything.
"In some subtle way, every ad, every commercial should produce a feeling of love between the product and the potential buyer."
"Alchemy plays a big role in creative businesses. In the advertising business a writer and an art director are assigned to one another by agency management and they have to toss ideas at one another until they establish an intimacy and a trust, at which point a psychic marriage of their talents takes place and they are magically able to produce advertising that sings. Sometimes. Sometimes alchemy doesn't happen and you have to find them different partners. It is a mysterious process."
"...I've had my eye out for romantics in this business, they are full of ideas, and I am crazy about people who are happy in their work."
"Agencies and clients learn to live with each other, sometimes with enormous success, until, over time, one or the other loses interest or there is a disaster. It is a lot like getting married."
"I wanted a heroic agency, I dared everybody to be bold, to be thrilling and I dared our clients to be bold and thrilling. I kept saying that our goal was to have big, breakthrough ideas, not just to do good advertising. I wanted to create miracles."
"That, I realized, is what [advertising] and marketing are supposed to do—enlarge someone's life through her or his imagination."
"You could tell when a company had a great leader and guide; you could sense his presence in the halls, and the heart of him was evident in every development at the place."
1 comment:
Uagh, she was I (L) NY WOW!!! I did not know that.
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