Lines

It’s been twenty years since McCann-Erickson created the very first commercial for MasterCard’s long-running “Priceless” campaign. In it, we watched a dad being a dad – taking his son to his first baseball game, paying for the tickets, a hot dog, and a drink with his MasterCard.

Very few taglines express a brand’s truth – its reason for being, its driving purpose – quite as powerfully as Nike’s “Just Do It.”

The film marketer established itself as one of the great emotional advertisers with its “Times of Your Life” campaign. It captured life’s most sentimental moments.

It’s one of the most recognized car manufacturers’ slogans from around the globe, because it touches on a visceral truth: BMWs are simply thrilling to drive.

Coming off a miserable entrance into the low-calorie beer field, the Miller Brewing company needed its High Life brand to resonate when they turned to New York agency McCann-Erickson. Then art director Bob Lenz had the idea to get a retired athlete to endorse the lite beer in a commercial they shot at a bar in Manhattan.

Who doesn’t remember using their younger siblings as guinea pigs? In this classic ad from art director Bob Gage and copywriter Edie Vaughn of Doyle Dane Bernbach, it’s Little Mikey’s turn to take one for the team.

After numerous print campaigns featuring the likes of Mickey Mantle and Ben Hogan, sales for the durable Timex watch were disappointing. Things didn’t start to turn around for Timex Corps until 1956, with an idea for a television campaign from Hirshon-Garfield, the company’s agency at the time.

Diamonds haven’t been rare commodities since 1870, but for a long time they were viewed as symbols of wealth, power, and decadent romantic dreams. Too precious and expensive a stone to afford if you weren’t part of the wealthy elite.

Ask any old timer from the Mad Men era what they think of modern advertising, and there’s a good chance they’ll scoff in your face (trust us, we tried). But one brand that can’t be denied, at least in their effectiveness, is GEICO.

The ads featured a sweet, baby faced mascot named Speedy who would sing a jingle that told of the relief brought forth by the effervescent tablets.

As the feminist movement was gaining in strength and popularity, the Phillip Morris Company teamed up with the famed Leo Burnett Agency to capitalize on shifting attitudes. The campaign was for their new brand of ultra-smooth Virginia Slims cigarettes.

Back in the 1950’s, supermarkets were reluctant to stock the canned and packaged Caribbean foods produced by Goya Foods Inc. But Paula Green, president of Paula Green Advertising Inc., changed that.

Then just fifteen-year-old Shields had already risen to stardom as a young actress and model by the start of the eighties when she was infamously recruited by designer Calvin Klein to appear in a series of overtly sexy print and television ads.

In October 1979, America discovered that all “Mean” Joe Greene needed after a hard game was a Coke to make him smile.

It was a time when making a fashion statement with speed, style, and design were the top considerations for buying a car. It was also the perfect time for DDB and Volkswagen to utterly destroy the status quo.

Before he “switched to Sprint” Paul Marcarelli started his 10 year contract with Verizon as their test man in 2002.

This was the decade of the great creative Super Bowl face-off from two of the game’s largest advertisers. Overall, Pepsi won, but as the 1990s ended, Budweiser dominated.

Perhaps the most famous commodity brand campaign in history, “Got Milk?” launched its first spot in 1993. The ad featured a hilarious storyline involving a Hamilton-Burr history buff who couldn’t answer a Hamilton-Burr radio contest question because his mouth was full of PB&J. If only he had a glass of milk!

When Clara Peller first said “Where’s the Beef?” in a humorous ad for Wendy’s in 1984, the company had no idea the catchphrase would become a household expression.

The “Fast Talker Campaign” for Federal Express featured John Moschitta’s rapid fire, non-stop speaking about the fast-paced business world. Its launch is still considered one of the greatest comedy spots of all time.

An early example of innovative out-of-home advertising was executed by the brushless Burma Shave Company. They did it by creating the concept of sequential billboards. In 1926, strings of rhyming Burma Shave billboards popped up all across the US, taking the company from virtually unheard of to the number two shaving cream company in the US.

At the age of 23, young female copywriter Ilon Specht of McCann Erickson had no idea the longevity her simple line would have.