{"id":37081,"date":"2021-08-17T15:39:34","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T20:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/?p=37081"},"modified":"2021-08-18T18:11:26","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T23:11:26","slug":"raymond-rubicam-ad-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/raymond-rubicam-ad-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Raymond Rubicam, Ad Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raymond Rubicam was born on June 16, 1892, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the youngest of eight children. His father\u2014a trade journalist\u2014died of tuberculosis in 1895 and young Raymond was sent to live with his older brothers and sisters. By the age of 15, he was working full-time as a shipping clerk’s helper for $5 per week.<\/p>\n

Rubicam liked to read short stories written by O. Henry. The author inspired him to get to know the people of America, so he worked a series of jobs as a bellhop, an usher, a movie projectionist, and a door-to-door salesman. He also wrote about these experiences and used the stories to land a reporter’s job at The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At the age of 19, Rubicam left the reporter’s bullpen and joined the F. Wallis Armstrong Company in Philadelphia as an apprentice copywriter, earning $20\/week, which was a marked improvement on the $12\/week he was paid by the newspaper. Three years later in 1919, he was able to secure a better position at N.W. Ayer and Son, the largest advertising agency in Philadelphia. Ayer paid him $125\/week. To keep him, Ayer soon doubled that.<\/p>\n

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At Ayer, Rubicam honed his craft and wrote ads for Rolls Royce, Steinway Pianos, and Squibb. Significantly, he also helped John Orr Young, an account man he’d worked with at Armstrong, make the move to Ayer. In the spring of 1923, Young and Rubicam (Y&R) started their own agency in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

The First Creative Revolution<\/h2>\n

Rubicam’s experience working at Armstrong and Ayer helped him shape his ideas about how to run an ad agency (and how not to<\/em> run one). At the time, the business was dominated by account men. Young and Rubicam decided at the birth of their agency that the writer, art director, researcher, merchandiser, and production expert would all be equal to the account executive.<\/p>\n

Y&R was also one of the first agencies to offer ownership percentages to its employees, and the first to adopt profit sharing.<\/p>\n

It’s clear that Rubicam was intent on honoring the makers of the ads. To call his moves and his thinking ‘revolutionary’ is insufficient. He broke the old mold and made a new one. The new model he championed was infused with honesty and integrity, as well as business intelligence. The combination worked wonders.<\/p>\n

Research Informs Strategy<\/h2>\n

The year after Young & Rubicam was founded, it landed General Foods Corporation as a client. When the General Foods clients asked which brand the agency would like to work on, if chosen, Rubicam replied, “Your toughest one.” Y&R got their wish and the agency started making ads for Postum. It wasn’t long before, General Foods added Grape-Nuts, Jell-O, Sanka, and others to the agency’s responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Y&R was the first agency to use comic strips as a medium for advertising, creating “Mr. Coffee Nerves” for Postum and “Little Alby” for Grape-Nuts.<\/p>\n

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In 1926, Y&R moved from Philly to Madison Avenue. In 1932, the firm hired Dr, George H. Gallup away from Northwestern University. With the help of Dr. George Gallup, the agency pioneered new methods of consumer and media research. They were the first agency to use scientific telephone sampling, and the first to test audiences to measure the success of commercials and advertisements.<\/p>\n

The Mirror Maker<\/h2>\n

Raymond Rubicam felt that it was essential to not only know more about the customer but also to say more<\/em> about the customer.<\/p>\n

He believed that an advertisement should mirror the reader. \u201cThe way to sell,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201cis to get read first. The way to get read is to say more about the reader and less about yourself and your product. Mirror the reader to himself, and then show him afterward how your product fits his needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decades later, ad legends Bill Bernbach and Phyllis Robinson, would perfect this approach. DDB would never have asked drivers to “Think Small” on behalf of Volkswagen had they not clearly recognized the dramatic shift in demographics and consequent beliefs of a car shoppers. In Rubicam’s terms, they mirrored the car buyer to himself, and then showed him afterward how the product fit his needs.<\/p>\n

Make Programs that Clients Want to Sponsor<\/h2>\n

Advertainment. Content marketing. Call it what you will, Rubicam understood that brands don’t just react to the culture, they have an opportunity to drive it. Thus, his agency was one of the first to produce their own programs, which Y&R’s clients and others then sponsored.<\/p>\n

Y&R made some of the most popular commercial radio fare of the time\u2014\u201cThe Aldrich Family,\u201d<\/a> \u201cMystery Theatre,\u201d \u201cBulldog Drummond,\u201d “Burns and Allen,” “We, the People,” and many more.<\/p>\n