{"id":37018,"date":"2021-07-15T06:56:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-15T11:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/?p=37018"},"modified":"2021-07-29T09:58:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T14:58:18","slug":"phyllis-robinson-ad-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/phyllis-robinson-ad-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Phyllis Robinson, Ad Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phyllis Kenner Robinson was born in New York City on Oct. 22, 1921. At age seven she declared her desire to become a poet. A few years later, she updated her ambitions. Unlike her peers, she knew she wanted to write advertisements from an early age.<\/p>\n

“I can remember that as a kid I was influenced just by the vitality of some of the retail store advertising that was going on,” she said. When other little girls in P.S. 50 were dreaming of growing up to be Ginger Rogers, I wanted to be Dorothy Parker, and I looked constantly for excuses to write jingles.”<\/p>\n

In 1942, Kenner graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in sociology from Barnard College. During World War II, she was a statistician for the federal Public Housing Authority. After the war, she married Richard G, Robinson, a student at Harvard. She also worked on the college newspaper at Barnard, wrote for a society publication called ‘Park East’, and was a reporter at ‘Women’s Wear Daily’ before becoming a copywriter.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was in Boston in 1946 that Phyllis Robinson first worked for an ad agency. She was hired to write women’s fashion ads by Bresnick & Solomont in Boston. After returning to New York, she joined Grey\u2014where Bill Bernbach<\/a> was the creative director.<\/p>\n

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Copy Chief at DDB<\/h2>\n

When Bill Bernbach and Ned Boyle of Grey jumped ship and formed a new agency with Maxwell Dane in 1949, Bernbach asked Robinson to join Doyle Dane and Bernbach as copy chief. She agreed.<\/p>\n

At the newly formed DDB, Robinson partnered with the art director, Bob Gage<\/a>, and together they produced ads for marketers like Orbach\u2019s department store, Polaroid instant cameras, and Levy\u2019s bread. Working as a creative team was a new construct\u2014one invented and perfected by the creative professionals at DDB.<\/p>\n

\u201cPre-DDB,\u201d Ms. Robinson said in an interview with Adweek in 2000, advertising was \u201cartificial, sleepy and sometimes pretentious and schmaltzy.\u201d Robinson and the DDB crew she managed and inspired helped to chart a new pathway for ad makers. Thanks to their trailblazing contributions to the form, the best ads then and now are endowed with intelligence, and their makers take risks and have fun doing so.<\/p>\n

Levy’s Jewish Rye<\/h2>\n

Levy’s, a Jewish bakery in Brooklyn, hired the newly formed DDB in 1949 to promote its packaged ryes, pumpernickel, and raisin bread. The brand thrived under DDB’s guidance, as the agency expertly expanded the audience for their bread to “New York’s Army of Wonder Bread eaters.”<\/p>\n

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Polaroid<\/h2>\n

DDB introduced Americans to a new kind of bread, a new kind of car (Volkswagen), and an entirely new kind of camera. They did so with an emphasis on price, which was a common approach. They also injected sass or attitude into the Polaroid campaigns, which was not common.<\/p>\n

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Robinson and her DDB colleagues managed to position Polaroid as a low-cost alternative to traditional cameras. They also made ‘The Polaroid’ into a lifestyle choice, and the combination of pedestrian selling tactics with dreamy and youthful lifestyle imagery worked like a charm.<\/p>\n