In the last installment of The Biz, I recalled origin stories about my life in the New York ad agency world, including Schelp-Rock, copywriters, and would-be vampires. In the continuing saga of agency life, here’s an ode to a shirt ad that inspires even today…

*Read the copy below…

Back at the agency I was buddies with one of the creative directors. Martha was in her forties and I was in my twenties. She was tough as nails, but also had a glow of a beauty pageant queen. She hated her name because it wasn’t glamourous and some would brand her as “old” before even speaking with her. I could see her cut down a vendor at the knees and then strut down the hallway like she was working the catwalk. She was amazing when it was the 11th Hour and a campaign was due. Together, we never missed a deadline. She gave all of the credit to her Creative Director Kit that sat on her rickety bookshelf that sat opposite her drafting desk.

What was in that Creative Director Kit, you ask?

The kit was a curated collection of childhood memories: bobbleheads, vintage cameras, Charlie Brown lunch boxes, industry awards, Star Wars action figures, a View-Master in its original packaging, and Pez dispensers. While other non-creative departments often gossiped about how the kit was an overreach, i.e., a middle finger to the non-creatives, inside the department, we used it as the springboard to the Mendoza Line of the minimums of greatness.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that the greatest advertising creatives I worked with give their Creative Director Kits deep thoughts and carefully ensure that additions and subtractions to these shelves aren’t taken for granted. While their desks are disorderly messes, their muse art grease the wheels of capitalism and advertising art. I chronicled my kit a while ago here.

In Martha’s case, on the right partly hidden by her three Clio Awards and wilted bamboo leaves were a few classic print ads—some hers and some clipped from the pages of Life Magazine or Sports Illustrated. One ad that always caught my eye was powerful image of a man with an eye patch that rested upon five chunky paragraphs of copy: “The man in the Hathaway shirt.”

This legendary ad, conceived by David Ogilvy in 1951, is arguably one of the most inspiring pieces of advertising copy ever conceived and the pre-curser to non-sequitur campaigns such as Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man in the World” and all of the Geico mascot ads. On eBay, there are dozens of framed reprints for auction with sales reported as “brisk.” The origins of the ad are a lesson in serendipity mixed with thinking outside of the box.

The man behind the Hathaway Shirt: Ellerton Jette

Ogilvy was on the way to his Hathaway shirt photo shoot when he stopped at a Manhattan drugstore and was struck by the jar of 50-cent black eyepatches. He bought a few and became a trailblazer for a brand new style of rogue advertising. Ogilvy was under a tight $30,000 national advertising budget set forth by Maine-based CF Hathaway, a new client who had never advertised before. He knew something out of the ordinary was called for but never expected that the eye patch would become part of advertising lore. He suggested to his photographer, “Just shoot a couple of these to humor me. Then, I’ll go away and you can do the serious job.”

The eye patch became the talking point, the buzz of the fashion industry. Without it, the Hathaway campaign was simply another shirt ad with a fit, well-dressed man in an upscale tailor shop. With the eye patch, the ads had a hidden story that made the reader wonder what really happened to this man. Where was he? What did he get into? It appealed to both women and men. The perfect ad.

The first media placement was in the New Yorker, clocking in at over 10 per cent of the total ad budget ($3,176, or the equivalent of $31,288 today). The impact was immediate. Seven days later, every Hathaway shirt in the city was sold out just seven days after the ad appeared.

“The man in the Hathaway shirt” is a master course in copywriting. It’s an ad for a short but created a myth and a legend in one fell swoop without ever deviating that the shirt is the primary reason that three thousand dollars was being dropped on a single magazine ad that reached approximately 350,000 people in 1951. Even more startling is that this 247-word advertising manuscript is almost impossible to put down. Try finding an ad now this long in our short-attention-span world. Even today, the copy flows like a novel would, conjuring instant pictures of the finest that a shirt company could offer:

The man in the Hathaway shirt

At long last American men are begging to realize that it is ridiculous to buy good suits and then spoil the whole effect by wearing a cheap, mass-produces shirt. Hence the growing popularity of Hathaway shirts, which are in a class by themselves.

Hathaway shirts wear infinitely longer — a matter of years. They make you look younger and more distinguished, because of the subtle way Hathaway cut collars. The whole shirt is tailored more generously and therefore more comfortable. The tails are longer, and stay in your trousers. The buttons are made of mother of pearl. Even the stitching has an ante-bellum elegance about it.

Above all, Hathaway make their shirts of very remarkable fabrics, collected from the four corners of the earth—Viyella and Aertex from England, woolen taffeta from Scotland, Sea Island cotton from the West Indies, hand-woven madras from India, broadcloth from Manchester, linen batiste from Paris, hand-blocked silks from England, exclusive cottons from the best weavers in America. You will get a great deal of quiet satisfaction out of wearing shirts which are in such impeccable taste.

Hathaway shirts are made by a smaller company of dedicated craftsmen in the little town of Waterville, Maine. They have been at it, man and boy, for one hundred fifteen years.At better stores everywhere, or write C. F. Hathaway, Waterville, Maine, for the name of your nearest store. In New York, telephone MU 9-4157. Prices from $5.50 to $25.00.

Ogilvy on the campaign: “For some reason I’ve never known, it made Hathaway instantly famous. Perhaps, more to the point, it made me instantly famous.” It also made the eye patch famous.

The patch started popping up in other company’s ads featuring eye patches on cows, babies, and dogs. Ellerton Jette, Hathaway’s president, was laughing all the way to the bank having being the genius of deferral, allowing Ogilvy to dream up a campaign unencumbered, promising never to change a word of his copy or fire the agency.

Over the years, I’ve convinced colleagues to take a deeper dive in the Creative Director Kit found in every creative’s office because ads like Hathaway truly puts things in perspective. As the old golf saying goes, you “drive for show and putt for dough. And while it is true that the big drive off the tee brings the oooooooooooo’s and aaaaahhhhhh’s, the short game is the hard work just like the Big Idea is the hard work and when you land it, it makes you indispensable.

So yes, “The man in the Hathaway shirt” sets a very high creative bar. If you find the ad sitting in the in a creative director’s office, rest assured this is someone who aspires to greatness. Someone who realizes their duty is much more than their desk or their paycheck. Someone like Martha. A nod to the diligence and creative energy of yesteryear.

–>

The post The Biz: Art Director Kits and The Man in the Hathaway Shirt appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

I’m at the beach pondering life. Some days call for what I call “Metaphorical Empty Chair Mondays.” These are deep days were I watch the sun rise or set above the California coast.

The sound of the sea lets me close my eyes and look for clarity. My soul evolves to feel the light rising. I set the chair out next to me to release the burdens that life injects into my inner core blocking the light of intelligence. My prayers are less spiritual, but more metaphorical. They act like white sage, first creating a fog and then burning away the negativity the blurs the vision. The empty chair creates the strength on the days I’m weak and broken. It’s a place in my head where my thoughts can move and find life. Imagination is restored and roams free in the din of dusk. The empty chair provides the inspiration that connects with the sound. The sounds of meditation – the filter which allows the greatness I expect and demand.

Yeah, yea, pretty new agey. But what do you expect from a Media Guy who was forced to memorize astrological signs and moon and sun relations instead of watching Charlie’s Angels in 1977? Honestly, meditation is a key factor from creative genius. Clear your mind of the B.S. and you can fill it with much better hubris; the kind that drives you to a higher place. That’s what I needed today.

So what got me here? I suppose it was this spot that I wrote back in my misogyny days where sexiness sold:

It took almost four years, but it made it to the airwaves and my long-awaited $1,000 royalty check was finally released. Hallelujah(!) and apologies that my past commercials keep creeping into play. These days, my campaigns are tame and kid-friendly. That being said, the spot has already gained fertile ground in the Land of the Rising Sun and there’s talk of a sequel. Jeez, what took them so long?!

But the euphoria of small-time cash didn’t last long as I fantasized about creating that perfect advertising character and campaign that would put me in the lore of legend. Setting the bar high is not a new thing. I mean, I’ve won Clio Awards, Emmy Awards, Telly Awards and the like, but what’s escaped me is that truly transcendent idea. My mind was clouded. I needed a refresh. That’s where the beach came in. What a revolution it turned out to be.

He is the life of parties that he has never attended…

All of this got me thinking about staying thirty in my career. Of course, if you you’re going to start thinking about staying thirsty my friends, you’re going start thinking about Dos Equis. And, if you’re going to think about Dos Equis, you’re definitely going to think The Most Interesting Man in the World, their iconic spokesperson.

It’s been over a decade since we first heard, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Does Equis.” It was at the beginning of the quirky ad campaign era, leading with an arrogant and unorthodox endorsement of the beer with pedestrian US sales. Unflinching, the phrase was delivered by the Most Interesting Man in the World, a Hemingway-esque bearded man who chronicled his unique adventures in globetrotting.

The campaign led the way to replace young and anonymous characters with a completely approach. Hemingway doppelgänger Jonathan Goldsmith embraced the role, confidently laughing his way through a canon of pithy short spots incredibly written and told through the prism of antiqued video footage. It was met with raised eyebrows and critic bashing. The campaign continued, found a following and the now Heineken-owned brand’s sales rocketed up shot up 22%.

Now, in true Lord of the Flies form, Dos Equis has become the exact thing it didn’t want when it started the campaign. Goldsmith has been replaced by (you guessed it) a younger, millennial-friendly 41-year-old Frenchman, Augustin Legrand. Goldsmith made his final appearance in a commercial that sent his character on a one-way mission to Mars and just as quickly, Legrand took up the campaign’s banner.

Andrew Katz, Dos Equis VP of Marketing explained, “The meaning of ‘interesting’ has evolved over the past decade, and this campaign features a new character and look and feel that opens the door to a world of interesting possibilities for today’s Dos Equis drinker.”

The news release explained it another way, stating it was “reinvigorating and modernizing ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World’ with a fresh face to showcase a character who reflects what is interesting to today’s Dos Equis drinker and to millennial beer drinkers 21 years and older.”

It remains to be seen how the next iteration of this character plays, out but the geniuses from the worldwide marketing firm Euro RSCG have their iconic character that I’ve dreamed of having on my resume. I can only guess that came from many mornings at the beach.

CLAIMS TO FAME


Here’s some of my favorite claims to fame from “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” a decade long compilation of Dos Equis ads:

The post Metaphorical Empty Chair Mondays appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.