Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S3E11 - Advertising Alumni

Episode Date: March 16, 2014

In this episode, we look at famous people who began their careers in advertising. Many of the people who have gone on to shape popular culture cut their teeth in the world of marketing. From Dr. Seus, Salman Rushdie and Bob Newhart, to Sir Alec Guinness - yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi himself - they all spent their formative years writing copy.Each learned some valuable skills on their way to the top. And their stories are remarkable. 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. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 3, 2014. you're not you when you're hungry you're under the influenceluence with Terry O'Reilly. Right now, ladies and gentlemen, Bob Newhart.

Thank you. Thank you very much. The album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, was recorded before a live audience in Houston in 1960. It was the first time Bob Newhart had ever been in front of a live audience. When the record company gave him a recording contract, they wanted to hear the laughter of an audience as he performed. So, a nervous Bob Newhart got up in front of an audience for the very first time that night and recorded that now classic album. Here is a one-sided phone call between Abe Lincoln and his press agent.

All right. Listen, Abe, I got the note. What's the problem? You're thinking of shaving it off. Abe, don't you see that's part of the image? Right, with the shawl and the stovepipe at the string tie. Where's the shawl, Abe? You left it in Washington. What are you wearing, Abe? A sort of cardigan? The button-down mind of Bob Newhart was the first comedy album to ever reach number one on the Billboard chart,

a feat even more amazing when you realize that it nudged out somebody named Elvis Presley. It would go on to receive Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best New Artist and would sell over 1.5 million copies. Born just outside downtown Chicago, Bob Newhart attended Loyola University and graduated with a degree in business management in 1952. He fought in the Korean War, then returned to civilian life as an accountant.

But his route to fame would take a turn when he changed jobs and became an advertising copywriter. While working at a company writing copy, he and a co-worker named Ed Gallagher would amuse themselves by making extended gag phone calls to one another throughout the workday. Eventually, they would record those funny phone calls and use them as demo tapes trying to get airplay at radio stations. One day in 1959,

a Chicago DJ heard the material and introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Brothers Records, who signed the 30-year-old Newhart to a recording contract. And the rest is button-down history. Bob Newhart's timing, his forlorn looks, and his comedic touch have led to a long and distinguished TV career.

He even won an Emmy last year for a guest spot he did on The Big Bang Theory at the age of 84. I was fortunate to direct Bob in over 30 commercials, and I can tell you, he's as nice and wonderful as you imagine. Mr. Newhart is not the only celebrity who started his career in advertising. There is actually a long and interesting list of famous people who are advertising alumni. Some of them spent a decade or more writing ads, some passed through briefly, and all of them went on to wildly successful careers in other fields.

But each of them learned a little something while in the ad biz, and that list of famous people may surprise you. You're under the influence. Many famous authors, producers, movie directors, and comedians began their careers making ads. Many of those famous people have helped shape our culture, our views, and even our collective sense of humor. And many of them, as we'll soon see, credit their start in advertising with instilling work habits and philosophies that carried them through their subsequent successes. The first one on our list of advertising alumni is a man named Theodore Geisel.

In 1904, Theodore Ted Geisel was born to German-American parents in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was an average student in high school and entered Dartmouth College in 1921. There, he studied English and edited the college humor magazine called The Jack-O-Lantern. While at college, he threw a rowdy drinking party

one night. It was the height of the Prohibition, and when the college brass shut the party down, Ted was ordered to curtail his extracurricular activities, and as a further punishment, was terminated as the editor-in-chief

of the college magazine. But Ted quietly continued to write for the magazine, using a nom de plume, so his superiors wouldn't know. He chose to use his middle name, which was Seuss. His first job out of college was as a cartoonist for a New York magazine. He began signing his cartoons as Dr. Seuss,

the doctor part being a nod to his father's unfulfilled wish that his son earn a doctorate at Oxford. One day, the wife of an ad executive saw his cartoons and convinced her husband to hire Dr. Seuss to create advertising campaigns. Dr. Seuss would go on to produce wonderfully inventive advertising for Ford, Esso Motor Oil, NBC, and Schaefer Beer, but his most famous was for Flit Insect Repellent, which ran for 17 years. Interestingly, many of Dr. Seuss' characters made their first appearance in those early ads.

This advertising work would support Ted and his wife throughout the Great Depression and well into the early days of his budding writing career. Dr. Seuss wrote his first book in 1931. It was rejected by 27 publishers, a theme we'll hear quite often today. He persevered and eventually did get published, but didn't sell many copies. It would take another 26 years before he became a success. In response to a 1957 article in Life magazine that said most primers used to teach children to read were dull and boring,

Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat. The book used 220 vocabulary words all children needed to know in order to read. Look! A cat! In a hat! You will note, I am neat. Wiped my feet on the mat. It was an instant bestseller, showcasing Dr. Seuss' singular drawing style, his remarkable verse rhymes, and his vivid imagination.

Within three years, The Cat in the Hat had sold over one million copies. From a career that began in advertising to a body of work that inspired millions of children, Dr. Seuss proved

embracing one's uniqueness was the secret to success. As the great doctor once said, Today you are you that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you. Meanwhile, across the pond around the same time,

another soon-to-be famous person was getting his start in advertising. A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Yes, Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi

was once a copywriter. Sir Alec Guinness was born in England in 1914. After finishing school in 1932, he began work as an apprentice copywriter at a London ad agency. He earned 20 shillings a week and wrote ads for a variety of products, enjoying his biggest success with a product called Rose's Lime Juice. Though working as a copywriter, his real goal was to become an actor. So Alec Guinness would spend all his copywriting salary on theater tickets. One day, he bumped into theater great Sir John Gielgud and asked his advice.

Gielgud suggested he take acting lessons. So Guinness diverted his copywriting salary to acting class. But after the second lesson, his teacher told him he would never be an actor, saying he had no talent at all. Alec Guinness didn't listen to that teacher, switched acting classes, and went on to win an acting scholarship the very next year. He made his first film in 1940 and would win a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal

of the unyielding British POW commander in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957. He considered that role his best work ever. He felt differently about another film. Obi-Wan Kenobi was a part that vastly overshadowed his other work, and he came to resent it, saying, I shrivel every time someone mentions Star Wars to me. But, needless to say, it is a role that has gone down in history.

Way back in 1969, Solomon Rushdie was out of work and ran into a friend who was making shampoo commercials at the London office of ad agency J Walter Thompson at his friends urging At his friend's urging, Rushdie took a copy test there, the main question of which was, how would you explain the concept of toast to a Martian in 100 words? Salman Rushdie thought, how hard can this be? He failed the test. But he was intrigued with advertising and eventually found a job as a copywriter at a smaller firm.

At night, he would work on his novel and eventually quit the copywriting job to concentrate on the book. But he was turned down by every publisher he contacted. So Solomon Rushdie returned to advertising and landed a job at Ogilvy & Mather. While there, he worked on a long list of accounts, including the Daily Mirror, American Express, and Aero Chocolate Bars,

and had a knack for writing slogans. One day, a panicked fellow copywriter asked Rushdie to help him come up with a line for Aero Bars. Just then, the client called asking for a progress report, and the nervous copywriter started stuttering, trying to say that the deadline was impossible. In that moment, Rushdie had an idea and coined the word Irresistibubble, which has remained the UK slogan for A Arrow to this day. While copywriting at Ogilvy & Mather, he finished his breakout novel called Midnight's Children,

which would eventually win the Booker Prize in 1981. That success led him to leave the advertising business and go on to write many bestsellers, including The Satanic Verses, a book that led to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa in 1989, a death sentence he would live under for more than 10 years. While Salman Rushdie was now among the world's most famous writers, he has gone on record saying he never lost the habits he first formed as a copywriter. I now write exactly like that, says Rushdie. I write like a job.

I sit down in the morning and I do it, and I don't miss deadlines. I do feel that a lot of the professional craft of writing is something I learned from those years in advertising, and I'll always be grateful for it. And we'll be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. Felix connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. If you're enjoying this episode, why not dip into our archives? Available wherever you

download your pods. Go to terryoreilly.ca for a master episode list. Hey, Ronnie, look at me. You have a piece of a movie, that's all, not a piece of Harry. If he wants to do another movie this year, that's how it's going to be. The author of Get Shorty was born in New Orleans in 1925, but was raised in Detroit, Michigan. As a teenager, Elmore Leonard got hooked on a serialization of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front that ran in the Detroit Times and decided he wanted to be a writer.

He graduated from the University of Detroit in 1950 with a dual degree in English and philosophy. He landed his first writing job at advertising agency Campbell Ewald, which just happened to be the agency where I got my first big-time copywriting job. Elmore Leonard worked on the Chevrolet account and wrote tight, smart copy for Chevy trucks. He would get into the office early in the morning so he could

pound out his pulp western stories on his typewriter. He sold those cowboy tales to magazines for two cents a word, and got lucky when one of his short stories titled 310 to Yuma was made into a movie starring Glenn Ford in 1957.

After 10 years as a copywriter, Leonard left the advertising world in 1961, when his novel Ombre was chosen as one of the best westerns of all time by the Western writers of America. But the western genre was starting to dry up, so he switched to dry up, so he switched to crime writing, a decision that would

pay off handsomely. His breakthrough came in 1985 when the novel Glitz became a bestseller. Elmore would go on to apply his tight, gritty dialogue to 46 novels,

including Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, Maximum Bob, and Rum Punch, many of which were turned into films. He wrote all his novels on canary yellow writing pads, a habit he picked up at the ad agency.

A habit I picked up at the same agency and still use to this day. Elmore Leonard credited his time as a copywriter as a formative stage in his career he said that an ad copies need for compression and simplification served to develop his skills as a writer helping to thin out and tighten his prose a few years before he died at 87, in 2013, he listed his 10 rules for good writing.

Number 10 was, try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. I'd say that's good advice. Time for a quick list of some other famous people who started in advertising. Helen Gurley Brown, editor-in-chief of Cosmo magazine. She was once the highest paid copywriter on the West Coast. Walt Disney was an advertising illustrator

who had been fired from a newspaper cartoonist job because he, quote, Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, learned the art of promotion as a copywriter to make Playboy one of the most famous magazines of all time. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a copywriter at the Baron Collier Ad Agency in New York, who wrote novels at night, but was turned down by 122 publishers. He finally published

a book titled This Side of Paradise and eventually The Great Gatsby. Bob Barker and his wife had a small ad agency that would write radio commercials for the advertisers on his first radio show, a gig that would lead him to hosting The Price is Right for 35 years. The hilarious Phyllis Diller began her career as a copywriter, writing funny ads and radio commercials before her husband convinced her to perform that funny material on stage, and the rest is history. Lawrence Kasdan was a copywriter at Donor Advertising in Detroit. He would go on to direct The Big Chill

and write the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. Dick Wolf was a copywriter at Benton & Bowles Advertising for many years, long before he created Law & Order. And Grant Tinker also worked for Benton & Bowles. His biggest client, Procter & Gamble, sponsored the Dick Van Dyke Show, where he met, and later married, Mary Tyler Moore. Tinker would go on to create MTM Enterprises, which produced the landmark Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, the Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati,

Hill Street Blues, and St. Elsewhere. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest.

And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Recently, there was a full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline, Who will save our books? The ad stated that the government had stepped in to save banks and the automotive industry, but where were they on the important subject of books? The ad raised an important question,

but who paid for the ad was just as interesting, as it was signed by author James Patterson. Patterson took a job as a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson in 1971. He went from being a writer to creative director to running the ad agency in only two and a half years and was later named CEO at the age of 39. While there, he penned the slogan, I'm a Toys R Us kid for the toy retailer

and Aren't You Hungry for Burger King Now? for the fast food giant. He wrote his first book on the side called The Thomas Berryman Number in 1976, but it was turned down by over 30 publishers. When it was eventually published, it would win Patterson the Edgar Award for Crime Fiction. But his breakthrough book came in 1992 when he published Along Came a Spider. Against all opinions in publishing, Patterson insisted the book be promoted with television commercials. He wrote, produced, and paid for the commercial himself and aired it in the three most influential book cities in America, New York, Washington, and Chicago.

When the ads went on, the book jumped onto the bestseller list immediately. In 1996, James Patterson would leave the advertising world and focus on novel writing full-time. Unsatisfied with the publishing industry's informal approach to marketing, he handles all his book advertising, from the design of covers to the timing of releases to the placement in retail stores.

And he demands to see market share data and sales trends. Stephen King once called James Patterson a terrible writer. Patterson just shrugged it off, saying that thousands hate his stuff, millions like it. He has written over 100 novels in the past 30 years, 47 of which topped the New York Times bestseller list, making him a Guinness Book of World Records holder. And he has sold more books than Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dan Brown combined. John Hughes began his career in Chicago as a copywriter.

Later, he was hired at ad agency Leo Burnett. Not based on his portfolio of ads, but for the jokes he sold for $5 a pop to comedians like Joan Rivers. His creative director thought they were hilarious and hired him. Hughes had an off-kilter sense of humor and quickly rose to associate creative director.

He was prolific and would sit at his typewriter banging out an endless stream of scripts. It was a discipline that would eventually serve him well in Hollywood. On the side, he was writing comedic material for National Lampoon magazine

in New York. Often, he would come into the ad agency in the morning, buy a steaming cup of coffee, and leave it beside his typewriter. So, when his creative director came looking for him, he would assume Hughes was in the washroom or something.

Meanwhile, John Hughes was flying to New York for a meeting with National Lampoon. Clearly, a move Ferris Bueller would be proud of. His boss finally figured out the trick and made a deal with Hughes. He could write Lampoon stuff in the mornings with his door closed, but he had to write ads in the afternoon. Soon, Hollywood beckoned, and John Hughes resigned from Leo Burnett in 1979. Over the next few years, Hughes would revolutionize the teen movie genre, writing

and directing Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, as well as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and, one of my favorites, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. John Hughes said his time in advertising taught him valuable presentation skills, which helped him pitch stories to studio execs. He always remembered two things. One, tell them what the idea was in a one-sentence elevator pitch before going into details.

And two, make a joke about a studio exec's tie to break the ice and make everyone relax. While John Hughes passed away too soon at age 59, he left us with a treasure trove of films that looked at life through the prism of memorable characters.

I think Ferris Bueller summed it up best when he said, Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. There are many talented people who spend time in the advertising business. Some love the puzzle of marketing and stay.

Some hate it and move on. And some use it as a formative way station, pick up valuable skills, then leave to pursue a different goal. Advertising is an industry that has much to teach. First, it is notoriously difficult to break into because there is so much competition. So, by breaking in,

you'll learn the first lesson of marketing, how to get noticed. It is an industry that pivots on creativity and strategy, so you'll learn to crunch problems in a three-dimensional way. It is an enterprise that demands brevity and clarity, so you'll learn to distill ideas down to their very essence. It is a career of long hours and sacrifice, so you learn discipline and perseverance. It's a team sport, so you learn collaboration. It is an environment built on presentations,

so you learn to be a compelling presenter or your ideas will never see the light of day. And it is an industry of rejection. For every ten ideas you generate, nine get shot down. So you learn to roll with the punches.

In the end, advertising people stay invisible and try to make brands famous. While some other people leave advertising and become famous

when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. Thank you. Hi Terry, found your show interesting today about people who started in advertising and went on to become famous. I noticed you went from being the captain of the Boston Bruins to being in advertising. You're either a rebel or you have a really bad sense of direction. Under the Influence was produced at Pirate Toronto. Sound engineer, Keith Ullman.

Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Series coordinator, Debbie O'Reilly. Research, Tanya Moore-Yusuf. Okay, I won't beat around the bush. I like the cut of your jib. And your jib would look even better in an Under the Influence t-shirt. You'll find them on our shop page at terryoreilly.ca slash shop. See you next week.