{"id":37259,"date":"2021-10-18T08:16:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T13:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/?p=37259"},"modified":"2024-08-15T17:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T22:17:09","slug":"tom-burrell-ad-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/tom-burrell-ad-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Burrell, Ad Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Burrell was born in 1939 and he grew up on Chicago’s South Side. When he entered the advertising agency business in 1961, he was one of the first black people in the entire city of Chicago to work in the field. Vince Cullers<\/a> may have been the first. To say that Burrell is a maverick is too tame. He’s a trailblazer who climbed the highest mountains in American business and then learned to thrive in that thin white air.<\/p>\n

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Burrell began his career in advertising while still attending Chicago’s Roosevelt University, where he graduated with a B.A. in English. His first job was in the mailroom at Wade Advertising. He wore a suit to work every day because he wanted to signal that he belonged at the agency but not in the mailroom. \u201cMy strategy was to look and comport myself as if I didn\u2019t belong in the mailroom,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cI walked around looking like an executive even as I changed the towels in the towel machine and changed the Cokes in the Coke machine and ran errands. That way, when it was time for me to make a move, it didn\u2019t meet with incredulity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrell quickly worked his way from the mailroom into the position of Junior Copywriter assigned to the agency’s Robin Hood All-Purpose Flour and Alka-Seltzer accounts. He recalls, \u201cI had no contact with the client. It was radical enough for a black person to be working in an agency. Presenting that person to a client was another three or four steps ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, he went on to work as a copywriter at Leo Burnett, Foote, Cone & Belding, and Needham, Harper & Steers before launching Burrell McBain Advertising in 1971.<\/p>\n

Burrell’s Black Consciousness<\/h2>\n

Tom Burrell came of age during the civil rights movement, which was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The main idea at the time was integration. But Burrell understood that assimilation into the white culture was never the desired end. With the rise of black nationalism and black pride in the late 1960s, the door cracked opened and he began producing ads that were aimed at black people and that incorporated elements of black culture.<\/p>\n

Burrell used the power tools that he had in his toolbox. He isn’t an organizer or speech giver. He is a mass communicator seeking to change the public discourse.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had to convince clients to understand that black people are not dark-skinned white people,\u201d Burrell explained.\u00a0 \u201cSometimes when you start talking to people about race and differences, implied in that is some kind of subordination, so I had to convince them that you can be different and equal and that there are cultural differences that should be part of advertising aimed at a black cultural group, such as music.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Marlboro Wasn’t the Man<\/h2>\n

Burrell’s new agency first attracted notice with a national campaign for Marlboro. \u201cMarlboro ads had a line, \u2018Come to where the flavor is,\u2019 and it was all about white cowboys \u2013 talk about a stretch,\u201d Burrell recalled. \u201cSo we chopped off \u2018Come to,\u2019 and that referred to the cool way of saying this is where the cultural flavor, the richness, is in the black community. We got rid of the cowboy and we had the coolest guys that we could come up with going through their daily activities, smoking. That was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Network TV for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola<\/h2>\n

Replacing the Marlboro Man with urban black men was a big win for Burrell. A win that helped bring McDonald’s and Coca-Cola\u2014two of the world’s largest advertisers\u2014to his agency. Network television ads offered unique visibility and influence to Burrell Communications<\/a>. A collection of Burrell\u2019s Advertisements for Coca-Cola is now archived at the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.<\/p>\n