1965: Pillsbury Doughboy

Leo Burnett creative director Rudy Perz was sitting at his kitchen table in the mid-1960s when he dreamed up the idea of a plump, dough figure that would pop out of a tube of refrigerated rolls. Since then, Pillsbury has used Poppin' Fresh in more than 600 commercials for more than 50 of its products.

     -- Summary from Advertising Age: @

     -- Image from Life magazine ad, June 10, 1966

Note: The exact date of when the first ad ran (print or TV) is unclear. In an email, Leo Burnett Worldwide says the agency won the company's refrigerated dough account in March 1965, with the idea for the Doughboy conceived in the fall of 1965, making it more likely that the character did not appear until 1966.

* "The creation of Poppin' Fresh" (General Mills): @

* Entry from "Food and Drink in American History: A 'Full Course' Encyclopedia" (edited by Andrew F. Smith, 2013): @

* Pillsbury Doughboy Collectibles: @

* Early TV ad: @

* Obituaries for Rudolph Perz, who died in 2015: @ (Advertising Age) @ (New York Times) and @ (Washington Post) 
* Top 10 icons of 20th century (Advertising Age): @
* "Memorable advertising icons" (CBS News): @

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1965: 'Things Go Better with Coke'

Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, The Who, Petula Clark, Roy Orbison, the Supremes, Tom Jones ... these were just some of the popular musical artists who recorded advertising spots using Coca-Cola's slogan "Things Go Better With Coke" starting in 1965. The artists did not perform a standard jingle; instead, the radio ads mirrored their musical styles (or their hit songs) and incorporated the slogan.

* "How Coca-Cola Invited Music's Biggest Stars to 'Swing the Jingle' in the 1960s" (from Coca-Cola Co.): @

* "Swing the Jingle!" (partial list of artists; Coca-Cola Co.): @

* "Coca-Cola Commercials" (YouTube channel): @

* Record covers (www.vinylbeat.com): @
* "Things Go Better with Coke: Sixties Coca-Cola Commercials 1965-69" (CD; www.discogs.com): @
* "Coca-Cola Commercials" (CD; www.discogs.com): @
* "Coca-Cola Uncorks Teen Radio Drive" (Billboard magazine, July 10, 1965): @
* "Coke to Aim at Ethnic Groups" (Billboard, October 15, 1966): @
* "A History of Coca-Cola Advertising Slogans" (Coca-Cola Co.): @
* "Brand Image" (Michael Austin; from "Music in the Social & Behavioral Sciences: An Encyclopedia, 2014): @ 
* "For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It" (Mark Pendergrast, 2013): @

* "As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising" (Bethany Klein, 2009): @

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Monday, September 7, 1964: 'Daisy' ad

The most famous of all campaign commercials, known as the "Daisy Girl" ad, ran only once as a paid advertisement, during an NBC broadcast of "Monday Night at the Movies" on September 7, 1964. Without any explanatory words, the ad uses a simple and powerful cinematic device, juxtaposing a scene of a little girl happily picking petals off a flower (actually a black-eyed Susan), and an ominous countdown to a nuclear explosion. The ad was created by the innovative agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, known for its conceptual, minimal, and modern approach to advertising. The memorable soundtrack was created by Tony Schwartz, an advertising pioneer famous for his work with sound, including anthropological recordings of audio from cultures around the world. The frightening ad was instantly perceived as a portrayal of Barry Goldwater as an extremist. ... The ad was replayed in its entirety on ABC's and CBS's nightly news shows, amplifying its impact.

     -- From The Living Room Candidate (Museum of the Moving Image): @

     -- Also see "Ice Cream" from same site: @

* "Daisy: The Complete History of an Infamous and Iconic Ad" (conelrad.com): @

* "Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad That Changed American Politics" (Robert Mann, 2011): @

* "The Responsive Chord" (Tony Schwartz, 1973): @

* Entry from "Encyclopedia of Politics, the Media, and Popular Culture" (2009): @

* Entry from "Encyclopedia of Political Communication" (2008): @

* Passage from "Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising" (Kathleen Hall Jamieson, 2nd edition, 1996): @

* Passage from "The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television" (Edwin Diamond, 3rd edition, 1992): @

* "Revisiting the Daisy Ad Revolution" (New York Times, 2011): @

* President Johnson's April 17 remarks (source of LBJ quote used in ad; The American Presidency Project): @

* "LBJ: Issues and Roses" (St. Petersburg Times, April 18): @

* Memo from White House aide Jack Valenti (September 7): @

* "LBJ Rips Barry's A-Arms Plan" (Associated Press, September 7): @

* "The Difficulty of 'Being Fair' to Goldwater (Life magazine, September 18): @
* "Campaign is Boosted Via TV" (UPI, October 10): @

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December 1963: Smiley face

In 1963, State Mutual Life Assurance Company in Worcester, Mass., faced a problem. The firm had purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio the previous year to work with Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a State Mutual subsidiary. Low employee morale in the merged companies prompted State Mutual Vice President John Adam Jr. to suggest a "friendship campaign." He asked Joy Young, Assistant Director of Sales and Marketing, to develop something. Young turned to Worcester freelance artist Harvey Ball, requesting he create a little smile to be used on buttons, desk cards and posters. Ball drew a smile but, not satisfied with the result, added two eyes, making a smiley face. The whole drawing, he recalled later, took ten minutes.
     -- From Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation; link: @

     -- photo from Smithsonian.com
* Summary from Worcester Historical Museum: @
* Summary from Toonopedia: @
* "Who invented the smiley face?" (from The Straight Dope): @
* "Who Really Invented the Smiley Face?" (from Smithsonian.com): @
* English-language website from Japan: @
* Harvey Ball obituary (2001): @ 

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October 1963: Ronald McDonald

In 1960 the McDonald's franchise in Washington, D.C., decided to sponsor a local children's television program called "Bozo's Circus." Bozo was played by Willard Scott, who later gained fame as a television meteorologist and write. Scott subsequently was asked to play Bozo at the grand opening of another McDonald's outlet in the area. Sales in Washington grew by a whopping 30 percent per year during the next four years. In 1963 the television station decided to drop "Bozo's Circus," which lagged in the ratings. The local McDonald's franchise chose to produce their own television commercials starring another clown. Previously McDonald's franchises had not independently developed television commercials. The owners of this establishment wondered what to name the clown, and an advertising agency proposed "Archie McDonald," which offered an allusion to McDonald's golden arches symbol. But there was a sportscaster in the Washington area named Arch McDonald, so another name had to be found. Using a simple rhyme, Willard Scott came up with the name Ronald McDonald. Scott played Ronald McDonald in the first television commercials, which were broadcast in October 1963.
-- From "The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink" (2007)

* Video of ad (from www.vintageTVcommercials.com): @

* Excerpt from "Chew On This: Everything You Don't Want To Know About Fast Food" (Eric Schlossler and Charles Wilson, 2006): @

* "The Sign of the Burger: McDonald's and the Culture of Power" (Joe L. Kincheloe, 2002): @ 

* McDonald's website: @

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Monday, July 1, 1963: ZIP codes

     
     The Post Office Department put into effect today its program to give every mailing address a number.
    The new system is called "zip code" and is designed to help speed mail deliveries.
     The department planned to mail 72 million cards to every mailbox in the country. The card informs the addressee of his five-digit "zip code" number and provides a brief explanation of the system.
     The Post Office Department wants everyone to put the number after the name of his city and state when writing his return address. The number also should be used in addressing mail to persons who have included it in their return addresses.
     "Zip code," or zone improvement program, has been invented for the day when all letters will be pre-sorted by machines. The Post Office Department said that it is easier to develop a machine which reads numbers because there are less variations of numerals than there of letters.
     -- United Press International, July 1

Note: To help explain ZIP codes and encourage their use, the Post Office Department also introduced the character Mr. ZIP.
* "Mr. Zip and the ZIP Code Promotional Campaign" (from National Postal Museum): @

* "You'll Be Seeing Lots of Mr. ZIP, Courtesy Of Post Office Dept." (Associated Press, June 29, 1963): @

* "ZIP code song" by The Swingin' Six and ZIP code explainer: @
* Other public service announcements: @ and @
* Earlier post on Mr. ZIP (October 1962): @ 

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Tuesday, February 19, 1963: 'The Feminine Mystique'

Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" is published by W.W. Norton and Co. From the Jewish Women's Archive:

   The book highlighted Friedan's view of a coercive and post-World War II ideology of female domesticity that stifled middle-class women's opportunities to be anything but homemakers.

   A survey she conducted of her Smith College classmates indicated that many felt depressed even though they supposedly enjoyed ideal lives with husbands, homes, and children. Enlargin her inquiry, Friedan found what she called "the problem that has no name" was common among women far beyond the educated East Coast elite. ... She showed how women's magazine's, advertising, Freudian psychologists, and educators reflected and perpetuated a domestic ideal that left many women deeply unhappy. In suppressing women's personal growth, Friedan argued, society lost a vast reservoir of human potential.

   Friedan's book is credited with sparking second-save feminism (see note) by directing women's attention to the broad social basis of their problems, stirring many to political and social activism.

Note: "Second-wave feminism" is defined in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s "when feminists pushed beyond the early quest for political rights to fight for greater equality across the board, e.g., in education, the workplace, and at home."

Photo from Corbis Images, dated October 1963; caption reads, "Betty Friedan attends to Abraham Lincoln bust in her home."

* 50th-anniversary edition: @

* New York Times review (April 1963): @

* Advertisement in The New York Times Book Review (June 1963): @
* "The Skeptical Early Reviews of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique' " (The Atlantic, 2013): @

* " 'The Feminine Mystique' at 50" (New York Times, January 2013): @

* C-SPAN programs: @

* Entry from "Encyclopedia of Leadership" (Berkshire Publishing Group, 2004): @

* "Betty Friedan and the Making of 'The Feminine Mystique' " (Daniel Horowitz, 1998): @

* "A Strange Stirring: 'The Feminine Mystique' and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s" (Stephanie Coontz, 2011): @
* Episode of BBC's "Witness" series (2013): @
* "The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory" (edited by Linda Nicholson, 1997): @ 

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February 1963: Burma-Shave signs

Burma-Vita Company, the shaving-products company behind the Burma-Shave rhyming signs that dotted U.S. roadways, is bought by Philip Morris Inc. The signs would gradually be removed in the coming months, as Philip Morris goes with a different advertising strategy. (Philip Morris noted in its 1963 annual report: "Burma Shave represents a bit of Americana coincident with our country's automobile age. A Sunday drive in the family car has, since 1926, been pleasantly 'interrupted' by the catchy signs that rhyme along the highway. ... But progress has passed them by; super highways, turnpikes and a nation in a hurry have doomed their bright doggerel.")

Note as to date of sale: A newspaper story dated January 30 stated, "Philip Morris Inc. announced today it had agreed in principle to acquire Burma-Vita Company of Minneapolis, for cash." The book "The Verse by the Side of the Road" (linked below) said the sale "was announced publicly" on February 7, while a New York Times story published February 23 indicated that it had taken place the previous week.
* Burma-Shave.org: @

* "The Verse by the Side of the Road" (Frank Rowsome Jr., 1963): @
* Story by Rowsome for American Heritage magazine (1965): @

* "How Burma-Shave Saved the Family Farm" (from www.grit.com, 2007): @

* Entry from Legends of America website: @

* Entry from Advertising Age: @

* Entry from Edina (Minnesota) Historical Society: @

* Print advertisements (from Duke University Libraries): @

* "Everyday Reading: Poetry and Popular Culture in Modern America" (Mike Chasar, 2012): @ (Chasar's blog, Poetry & Popular Culture: @) 

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October 1962: Mr. ZIP

From the U.S. Postal Service website (about.usps.com):

The cartoon figure, Mr. ZIP, was adopted by the Postal Service as the trademark for the Zoning Improvement Plan or ZIP Code, which began on July 1, 1963. However, the figure originated several years earlier. It was designed ... for use by Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in a bank-by-mail campaign. ... The figure was used only a few times, then filed away. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company acquired the design and made it available to the Post Office Department without cost. The new figure, dubbed Mr. ZIP, was unveiled by the Post Office Department at a convention of postmasters in October 1962.

* "Mr. Zip and the ZIP Code Promotional Campaign" (from National Postal Museum): @

* "U.S. to ZIP mail through" (Scripps-Howard article, November 1962): @ 

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April 1962: 'The Image: Or What Happened to the American Dream'

The book by professor and historian Daniel J. Boorstin is published. (It was also published under the title "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.")

From the book "Nixon's Shadow: The History of An Image" (David Greenberg, 2004):

Boorstin observed that the rise of mass media, including the attendant apparatuses of advertising and public relations, had helped create an alternate sham reality, where celebrities replaced heroes, credibility superseded truth, invention eclipsed discovery, and personality was vaunted over character. Coining a term that would increase in use over the years, Boorstin identified a new phenomenon he called the "pseudo-event": a staged happening that becomes not for intrinsic reasons but because those who cover the news deem it so. ... These changes undermined democratic politics, Boorstin argued. Television and media manipulation had become so pervasive that "more important than what we think of the presidential candidate is what we think of his 'public image.' "

In the book, Boorstin also originated this often-repeated line: "The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."

* Entry from "Encyclopedia of Political Communication" (2008): @

* New York Times book review (April 9, 1962): @

* Boorstin obituary (New York Times, 2004): @

* Boorstin obituary (The Guardian, 2004): @

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Thursday, January 4, 1962: Broadway stunt

From the website www.theatermania.com:

Faced with negative reviews for the musical "Subways are for Sleeping," (Broadway producer) David Merrick invited individuals who happened to share the first and last names with the major drama critics of the day to see the show, then reproduced the favorable comments of those laymen in print ads.

* Account from www.museumofhoaxes.com: @

* Account from the book "David Merrick, the Abominable Showman: The Unauthorized Biography" by Howard Kissel: @

* Merrick obituary, New York Times, 2000: @

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December 1961: Pampers

The disposable diapers are test-marketed in early December in Peoria, Illinois, by manufacturer Procter & Gamble. However, shoppers considered the cost -- 10 cents per diaper -- too expensive, and the product did not achieve nationwide success until P&G could sell them for about half that, thanks to advances in production.

* Excerpt from the book "Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter & Gamble": @

* Excerpt from the book "Strategic Marketing Management: A Means-End Approach": @

* "Disposable diapers are 25 years old now" (Associated Press article, 1986): @

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Undated: Volkswagen's 'Lemon' ad

One of the most successful campaigns in advertising history gets under way as Volkswagen begins publishing a series of witty, droll ads for the Beetle. "Lemon," part of what came to be called the "Think Small" campaign (after another famous ad), pointed to this car as failing VW's rigorous inspection system. The ad ended with the line, "We pluck the lemons; you get the plums."

* More pictures of ads: @ and @

* VW videos and enlarged "Lemon": @

* More about "Lemon": @

* More about the campaign: @

* "Think Small": @

* VW advertising in The New Yorker: @

* "Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?" (book): @

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Undated: Ford's 1960 line

Not included in this ad: the Comet, Fairlane, Ranchero and the Country Squire station wagon, among others.

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