Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S10E08 - Celestial Advertising: The Art of Skywriting

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

This week, we look at one of the oldest advertising mediums - skywriting. From its beginning back in the early 1920s, skywriting was once the most sensational advertising medium in the country. We’ll look at the most famous skywriting campaigns, the most recent billboards in the sky and some of the most amusing spelling errors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good man with all teeth. You're under the influence of Terry O'Reilly. While John Lennon withdrew from public life during the late 70s, he was still writing. Not music, per se, but book writing.

He wrote over 200 pages. Part of it was autobiography, part of it was Lennon's witty observations, and all of it was punctuated with Lennon's quirky illustrations. The title of the book was Skywriting by Word of Mouth, a typical Leninesque play on words. But after he was assassinated in 1980,

the manuscript was stolen by one of his staff. Several years later, the police recovered the manuscript and Yoko published Skywriting by Word of Mouth in 1986. But John and Yoko were no strangers to creating Word of Mouth via skywriting. Back in 1969, John and Yoko hired a famous skywriter named Wayne Mansfield. He was a veteran skywriter. Earlier in August of 69, Mansfield flew over the Woodstock Festival

and drew peace signs in the air over the massive crowd. Four months later, the Lennons gave him an even greater challenge. They commissioned Mansfield to write the longest skywritten message ever done up until that time. They asked him to write a Christmas card in the sky above the city of Toronto. It was to say, War is over, if you want it.

Happy Christmas from John and Yoko. It was part of their famous anti-war campaign. The skywriting was to take place on December 17th, 1969. War is over posters and billboards appeared all over Toronto that day as well. John and Yoko had been staying at Ronnie Hawkins' farm in Mississauga at the time, but it was overcast and snowing for most of their visit. Wayne Mansfield had to wait for a clear day to pull off the longest message in skywriting history. When that day finally appeared about a week later,

Mansfield took his plane up to 10,000 feet and, using the sky as his canvas, wrote the message for all to see. The only two people who didn't see it were John and Yoko. They had left to go back to New York two days earlier. That wasn't the last time Wayne Mansfield would be hired by the Lennons. In October of 1980, Yoko hired him to write a birthday card in the sky above the famous Dakota building where the Lennons lived in New York. John and his son Sean both shared the same birthday, October 9th. Lennon was turning 40, and Sean was turning 5. So Yoko hired Mansfield to skywrite,

Happy Birthday John and Sean. Love, Yoko. Because the Lennons loved the number 9, number 9, number 9 so much, Yoko had Mansfield write the birthday message nine times over Manhattan. Crowds rushed into Central Park, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ex-Beatle. And New Yorkers everywhere paused for a moment to of creating spectacles in the sky. As a matter of fact, the very first skywriting ad took place way back in the 1920s. There was even a time when skywriting was the hottest and most exciting advertising medium in the country. Skywriting promoted products, presidents, and social issues. And to this day, it can still gather incredible crowds.

It just occasionally needs a spellcheck feature. You're under the influence. It is often said that many innovations are created in times of war. The army with the most advanced weaponry has a massive advantage, and the pressure of war leads to bursts of creativity. It was in World War I that Royal Air Force pilots discovered they could create thick white smoke by running paraffin oil through the plane's exhaust system. The oil created a longer-lasting condensation

and could be controlled by levers. That gave the RAF a tactical advantage, as they could create a smoke screen around Navy ships to hide them from the enemy. Some reports say RAF pilots could create short-coded messages for ground troops by controlling the smoke and using it as a rudimentary skywriting tool. After the war, a couple of British pilots decided to turn their skywriting skills into a commercial enterprise.

In 1922, a man named Jack Savage started the Savage Skywriting Company based in Hendon, England. Not long after, the company landed its first contract. A pilot named Captain Cyril Turner flew a specially equipped scout plane above a derby at a horse track. As spectators heard a rumble above them,

they all looked skyward to see the plane form the words Daily Mail in cursive, smoky letters. The newspaper boasted it was the, quote, largest advertisement the world has ever known. It was a momentous occasion. The first skywritten ad was born. Later that year, the Savage Skywriting Company crossed the pond to demonstrate this exciting new advertising medium in America. On a sunny, cloudless day in New York City,

citizens gazed skyward to see Turner write Hello, USA in thick white smoke over Times Square. Spectators were absolutely stunned at the spectacle. Traffic was paralyzed in all directions. Next, Turner's plane dipped and rolled to write the words, Call Vanderbilt 7200, which was the phone number of the hotel he was staying at. The switchboard there lit up like a Christmas tree.

A New York Times article from that day said seven hotel operators fielded 40,000 calls over the next several hours. While Captain Turner was busy in the sky astonishing New Yorkers, John Savage was on the ground chatting up George Washington Hill, the sales manager for the American Tobacco Company. Hill immediately saw the advertising potential of Skywriting and quickly signed on to become the Skywriting Company's first American client. The contract was to promote Lucky Strike cigarettes in 1923 by writing Lucky Strike across the sky in 122 American cities. You have to put all this in context.

Planes were still a novelty in the early 20s. Just the very sound of an airplane would make people run to their windows to marvel at the sight. Add skywriting to that spectacle and you've got what Lucky Strike called the advertising sensation of 1923, saying it stops all traffic, arrests all motion in the street, ties up the wheel of commerce, and keeps thousands gazing at the sky. The first city to see Lucky Strike written across the sky was New York. From the L of Lucky to the final E of Strike, the 11 letters covered 10.4 kilometers or 6.5 miles in the sky.

Each letter was the height of the Empire State Building and could be seen over a ground area of 241 kilometers or 150 miles. It was an astounding sight that had an enormous impact on the gawkers below. When Lucky Strike was written across the sky in Philadelphia, for example, sales jumped up 60%. It was a perfect marriage of medium and product. Cigarettes and smoke. Skywriting became so popular, the New York Times wondered if it was going to become a curse.

In an editorial in 1923, the Times called skywriting celestial vandalism, predicting the skies would soon become overrun with brand names for soaps, cigarettes, and pickles, generating devastating aerial battles between competing brands and so much choking smoke that apartment dwellers would have to keep their windows shut. By 1924, Savage was skywriting in 20 towns a day and had 17 pilots working for him. By the 1930s, skywriting was the biggest thing in advertising,

costing less than radio and offering way more bang for the buck. Advertisers like Chrysler, Ford, and Sunoco lined up to have skywriters scribble their brand names and slogans in mile-high letters across blue skies. But it was a young soda company located in North Carolina that really saw the heavenly potential. Pepsi-Cola was a small company with big ambitions. It was up against a much larger rival in Coca-Cola, and it needed a big marketing idea to gain a toehold.

That toehold was in the sky. So in 1931, the words Drink Pepsi-Cola were written eight times over New York City in a single day. One woman was so stunned at the sight, she called up Pepsi to announce that God had written the product's name across the sky. Pepsi didn't hire a skywriting company to do that. The soda company actually bought its own biplane and hired a pilot with skywriting experience. Not long after, Pepsi beefed up its skywriting fleet to 14 planes.

They were painted in Pepsi's corporate red, white, and blue colors and flew all over not just America, but Cuba, Mexico, and Canada. In 1940 alone, the Pepsi skywriters created more than 2,200 slogans in the skies at home and abroad. And by the way, pilots had to undertake 17 different maneuvers just to write the word Pepsi. Pepsi's skywriting was so popular, a New Yorker magazine cartoon from that year showed an anti-aircraft gun crew in Coca-Cola shirts taking aim at a Pepsi plane.

Pepsi's skywriting squadron would fly from 1931 until 1953. 53 was the year skywriting began to fall out of favor, as another exciting new medium was getting a lot of attention. That medium was called television. At any given time in the history of skywriting, there have only been a handful of pilots who could do it. That's because skywriting is incredibly difficult. First, there are no skywriting planes.

Every plane has to be retrofitted to be able to skywrite. Pilots have to write these floating billboards while holding perfectly steady at 10,000 feet so the smoke behind the plane becomes cold enough to freeze. It's a roller coaster ride of complicated flying maneuvers like loops, rolls, and dives. Pilots have to turn the smoke on and off at exactly the right moment

to form the letters. And if that weren't impossible enough, pilots have to write the words backwards and upside down from their perspective so that it's readable

from the ground. Each letter must be created at a slightly different altitude, like stepping downstairs, so the last letter isn't blown away by the plane itself. And did I mention pilots have to accomplish all this while going 160 miles an hour or 257 kilometers per hour? It goes without saying that it takes meticulous planning

and detailed diagrams before any skywriting assignment even gets off the ground. Over the years, skywriting improved technologically. By 1949, skywriting gave way to sky typing. Here's how it works. Instead of the old-fashioned one-plane penmanship, seven planes fly in a tight formation, not unlike what you would see at air shows. The team commander would fly in a mother plane

at the center of the formation. The commander would send out short radio signals to the other planes that would trigger short puffs of smoke when required. Think of sky typing like dot matrix printing. Each letter is made up of dots of smoke. Moving at about 180 miles per hour or 290 kilometers per hour, a team of seven planes could print a 21-letter,

15-mile word across the sky in just five minutes. The same time it takes a solo plane to create one single letter. And we'll be right back. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook born in Vegas.

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Then, in 1973, Pepsi was celebrating its 75th anniversary. It hired one of its original pilots to search for an old biplane that could be put on display at Pepsi's headquarters. That pilot not only found one, he managed to find the actual 1929 biplane Pepsi had first used in its fleet. Rather than put it on display, Pepsi modified the plane and put it back into use for the next 27 years. In 1979, Skywriting and its nemesis, television,

combined to create one of Pepsi's most memorable commercials. As a group of people gather to watch an old Pepsi Skyrider plane take off, we see one younger couple in particular watching the fun. There's a feeling deep inside you, a spirit you just can't hide. Just before the Pepsi plane takes off, the young man runs up to say a few words to the pilot. He nods, and the plane takes off. As the small crowd watches,

the plane begins to write words in the sky. The first word is marry. The young girl glances at her boyfriend with a questioning look on her face. Boyfriend shrugs his shoulders. Then the plane writes the word me. The girl mouths the words marry me with a quizzical look on her face. Again, her boyfriend shrugs his shoulders, only this time with a slight smile on his face.

Then, up in the blue sky, the plane completes the floating sentence. Marry me Sue. Sue looks at the sky, looks back at her boyfriend with wide eyes, and says yes. Corny as it may sound now, it was a huge commercial hit for Pepsi back in 1979. Marry Me Sue became the second most remembered commercial in Pepsi's history. With that Pepsi commercial, skywriting had a bit of a renaissance. Skywriters were back in demand again, and heavenly marriage proposals were at the top of the list.

Of course, nobody's perfect, and that goes for Skywriters. One pilot had two marriage proposals on the go at the same time. The first was to say, Marry me Diane, love Norman, to be done over the city of San Bernardino, California. The second proposal was to say, Marry Me, Kathy, Love, Dennis, over Santa Monica, California. Unfortunately, the pilot mixed them up and signed Dennis' name to Diane's proposal.

10,000 feet below, Diane wondered who Dennis was. The pilot felt terrible, then went back up into the air to correct his mistake and sign Norman's name to the proposal. Meanwhile, the residents of San Bernardino all wondered why Diane was getting so many marriage proposals in one single day. Other skywriting mistakes have had hilarious results. One pilot wrote AirSau in the sky above the New York Air Show.

The aforementioned Wayne Mansfield was hired to promote the band Jay and the Americans at the Rocks, which was a venue at Cape Cod. But the wind blew some letters away, leaving only America on the Rocks, which was a venue at Cape Cod. But the wind blew some letters away, leaving only America on the Rocks. People phoned the local airbase to complain. Another pilot was hired by Rolex to write its brand name splendidly in the air. Unfortunately, the pilot wrote the name right side up, which looked great from his perspective,

but spelled Exelor to the people on the ground. Another Skywriter was hired to write the word boom! over an air show in Addison, Texas, which unnerved an entire plane of Southwest passengers who flew over it a few minutes later. An artist who was closing her gallery hired a Skywriter to help promote a going-out-of-business sale. As the words, last chance, floated in the sky over the Hudson River, anxious residents thought it was terrorism.

Skywriting has also taken on social and political issues. Back when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was running against Wendell Willkie in 1940, a message appeared in the sky saying, No third term, as Roosevelt was running in his third election. He won and was the last president to serve three terms. On January 1, 2016, just after the U.S. election, 700,000

people watched as a message appeared in the sky over the annual Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena, California. That message said, Trump is disgusting. In Australia, supporters of Donald Trump hired skywriters to write his name in the blue expanse above thousands of people

who had gathered in Sydney to protest against his inauguration. During the 2017 marriage equality debate down under, it became a headline when a skywriter wrote, Vote No Above the City. It raises an interesting question. Who has a right to have a voice in the sky? Skywriting is very tricky to regulate. For all intents and purposes, it's kind of like graffiti.

Not really legal and not really illegal, but always the result of guerrilla marketing. Plus, messages only last for about 20 minutes, then disappear. Or do they? New year, new me. Season is here, and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix gets it.

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It's Instagrammable. Uber created a Valentine's Day promotion where it teamed up with Mastercard to offer customized skywriting. Uber users in four cities were invited to go to Uber's website, pay a $500 fee, and enter a 12-digit message. Then, an Uber representative would call to tell customers when and where to look skyward with their valentine. And their cameras.

Not long ago, a huge art project in New York City launched called Pie in the Sky, where sky typers wrote the first 100 digits of pie above the city in a circle just before sunset. Photos flooded social media. When Lady Gaga promoted her new album titled Judas

over the sky at Coachella, over 150,000 attendees with large social media followings took photos of the sky writing and posted it to millions of people around the world, all within minutes.

Lest you think Pepsi was the last brand to boast a squadron of skywriters, Geico now has its own fleet of six airplanes. With over 600 airshows across the U.S. and Canada, the Geico Skytypers perform for over 12 million people a year, most of which are young families, one of GEICO's prime target markets. Most of those airshows get front-page newspaper coverage plus television and radio publicity. Skywriting isn't inexpensive. But here's the thing. Half of what you pay for is the message. The other half is simply the thrill of disrupting an entire city's attention. Wayne Mansfield believes old-fashioned skywriting is still the best skywriting. He says watching a plane slowly reveal the message

over 20 minutes makes more of a lasting impact than a sky-type message created in two minutes. It has been said that the mere act of looking up at a blue sky causes a rush of dopamine

in the brain. If that's true, it could partially explain the enduring fascination with skywriting. Where skywriting was once an ephemeral message, they have become permanent with the arrival of social media. There is nothing more Instagram-worthy than a tiny plane looping letters in the sky.

There are challenges, of course. 9-11 has left people wary of planes circling cities. There have been a handful of skywriting fatalities, and there are very few skywriters left in the profession. Plus, the increasing air pollution over big metropolitan cities

is making it difficult to create a billboard in the sky. There is also the very idea of skywriting as a medium. A pencil of smoke on the walls of heaven was a great advertising phrase, but that also offended people, as the sky is difficult to untether from religious connotations. The future of skywriting may belong to drones as soon as someone figures out a way to emit smoke from its tiny

fuselage. England has recently overturned a ban on skywriting. It had been outlawed 60 years ago over concerns of safety and the potential for political propaganda. Ironic, as England was the birthplace of skywriting. But the medium has survived for nearly 100 years for one very specific reason. It has the unique ability to elevate a product high above the competition when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terestree Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Allison Pinches. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Terry O'Influence. See you next week. Warning, looking skyward may cause pupil dilation. Protect your pupils. Wear pupil protection at all times.

Pupils are people too. Offer only valid in Pinscher Creek, Alberta.