I have probably made hundreds of ads myself and been responsible for hundreds more, for some reason this one is my favorite.
I did it in Chicago in 1964 with a great copywriter I worked with, Shari Lee Mason.
We had the Marshall field account (a famous department store), we didn’t have the retail business but we did have the image account, which ran in the New Yorker magazine once a week.
For the Christmas season we had to do an ad for the toy dept. No way were we going to do the traditional corny ad of happy kids with tons of toys.
We worked on it for a while and came up with the normal junk, kids and toys.
Shari suddenly asked, “What about the toys?” She wrote the line, “Every toy should have a child.”
We knew we had something special. For me, the only visual was a crying teddy bear.
I decided to do it in black and white like a charity ad…no color, everything non Christmas.
The client loved it and even had plastic tears glued on the teddy bears, when they were sold the tear was removed.
Loved that ad! I have done more famous ads and certainly bigger and more elaborate ads for bigger clients; this still is my favorite ad. I think we made the perfect balance between picture and words.
We made people see something they knew in a different way, which I think is the definition of creativity.
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The idea that every toy animal needs a child is certainly a great idea and I can easily why it's your favorite ad.
ReplyDeleteDon't take this the wrong way, as I didn't think this way in the 60's and most people didn't, but these animals were made from real fur so obviously many animals had to be killed to make one. When this ad came out I am sad to say I probably would have bought one. Glad we think about these things today.
I thought it was important to say at the rate we are losing so many animal species.
It's still a great ad.
Beautiful!
ReplyDeleteOne of the most touching ad's still!
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