The Women Before Me: A Tribute to the Women of the AAF Advertising Hall of Fame
Chapter 3:
Jobs in Advertising — And How to Get Them
“Like all trades and professions, advertising has its establishment. You will find the names in the roster of 84 men and four women who have been elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame since its foundation 32 years ago.”
Four women. I’ll let that sink in for a moment.
FOUR women. In 32 years.
The paragraphs following Ogilvy’s previous statement mostly contain his lamentations over the fact that out of those 88 members, there are merely 13 copywriters. But as a woman living in 2016 and not a man in 1983, I’m going to back up a bit and linger on this whole FOUR WOMEN thing.
This stat intrigued me immensely and so started my deep dive into the current state of women’s membership in the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Fame.
According to the official site, “The Advertising Hall of Fame recognizes and celebrates the most accomplished and legendary figures in advertising, and in doing so inspires the next generation of advertising leaders to reach the highest heights of excellence.”
As opposed to Ogilvy’s 1983 numbers, today there are 191 members in the AAF Hall of Fame — which includes 22 women.
I understand that there are literally less women in advertising (particularly in creative leadership positions) and expecting 50% women and 50% men would be wildly inaccurate to the industry. However, I truly believe that it is tragic that an industry so focused on appealing to the entire population is not demographically represented in the most basic form of male and female distribution. It is a tragedy in terms of equality, but to those who scoff at the equality war, think of it in terms of the quality of advertisements. Without diversity — or rather SOME variation — in an agency, targeting demographics other than white males surely will prove to be less successful than an agency with a more diversified staff.
On a personal level, going through the Hall of Fame became a truly meaningful and insightful experience and so I would like to honor a handful of these 22 women that have been inducted into the Hall of Fame and highlight at least one of their major contributions to the industry.
If you are not remotely interested in advertising history then the following may be boring as hell, but let me reiterate: the fact that I can briefly list 70 years of recorded female all stars is a tragedy. This is not the fault of the AAF. This is the natural way that many industries have developed and progressed. It is simply how the times were, but now is the time to make up for those lost years — if not for the women of the past who could not have their voices heard, then for the future of advertising and for the sake of diverse perspectives.
1952: Erma Perham Proetz
In the fourth year of its existence, Proetz was the first woman inducted into the Hall of Fame — just before it reached 20 members.
Her work was instrumental to the advertising industry as she was a pioneer of what I think greatly impacted the way that we view content marketing.
At the height of the Great Depression, Proetz created a test kitchen for her client PET evaporated milk and, under the pseudonym Mary Lee Taylor, she created a radio broadcast in which she shared economic cooking tips, recipes, and stories — all while cleverly tying in the sponsoring product. Her multimedia campaign proved wildly successful for sales and her radio cooking show ran for 21 years(~). She essentially created programming and content out of a product otherwise dull and boring. She accomplished a modern content marketer’s dream and generated an empire out of her product.
1967: Helen Lansdowne Resor
My intrigue with Resor as a complex and barrier-breaking copywriter and suffrage activist is shared by many.
Widely credited as being the first person to introduce sex into advertising, Resor penned the below ad for the Woodbury Soap Company that left both the advertising industry and society with mouths agape as she positioned soap as a sensual product. Her ‘scandalous’ ad might not receive many double-takes today, but her risk was truly revolutionary for the time.(~)
In addition to her bold pioneering of introducing sex to advertisements, Resor is frequently credited with being the first to create editorial-style ads that resembled feature articles in both copy and illustration. Today’s native advertising largely resembles Resor’s strategy for copywriting.(~)
1980: Shirley Polykoff
Polykoff is proof of how a couple of words can change an entire market.
Her famous slogan for Clairol hair dye “’Does she . . . or doesn’t she?’’ and accompanying tagline “Hair color so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure” are both frequently referenced today as phrases that completely altered the hair product market. According to her NY Times obituary in 1998, “within a decade nearly half of all American women were regularly coloring their hair, and sales of dyes, tints and rinses had soared from $25 million to $200 million a year, with Clairol accounting for more than half the total.” (~)
1981: Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
1989: Jean Wade Rindlaub
1996: Jo Foxworth
1997: Gertrude Crain
1998: Janet L. Wolff
1999: Mary Wells Lawrence
Mary Wells Lawrence is widely recognized as one of the most impacting figure in advertising history.
Consistently referred to as “the real life Peggy Olson” and “the Queen of Madison Ave,” Wells and her agency Wells Rich Greene were responsible for the iconic “I ❤ NY” slogan that has been utilized to boost NY tourism from the late 70’s through today.
Wells is also held accountable for the famed Alka Seltzer TV commercials that caused the advertising industry to rethink television campaigns. Her Alka Seltzer TV spots include the “Plop Plop Fizz Fizz,” “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” and “Try it, you’ll like it” campaigns.
2000: Patricia Martin
2001: Katharine Graham
2008: Andrea Alstrup
2009: Charlotte Beers
2010: Geraldine B. Laybourne
2011: Laurel Cutler
2012: Tere A Zubizarreta
2013: Shelly Lazarus
It’s pretty appropriate to feature Shelly as my final spotlight (for now) since she began working at Ogilvy & Mather in 1971 and was named worldwide CEO in 1996.
Without fangirling too hard, I’m just going to say that Shelly is an absolutely incredible asset to the advertising world. Her thoughts on advertising and being a women in the earlier days of the industry are so thought-provoking and inspiring that all I can do is urge anyone even slightly interested to seek out her words. (You can start here.)
Shelly furthered women’s leadership in a way that echos a Sheryl Sandberg effect on women in the workforce. Being one of so few women in advertising leadership, Shelly’s following statement reinforces my initial proclamation of the tragedy that is the lack of diversity in advertising:
“I had this enormous power because there would inevitably come this moment in a meeting. It would be me and fourteen men, and we would be talking about something — like tampons, which was the case once — and they would all turn to me and go, ‘Well, Shelly, what do women think?’ And I would be talking on behalf of all women everywhere in the world.” (~)
2014: Jane Newman
2015: Linda Kaplan Thaler, Catherine L. Hughes
2016: Carla R. Michelotti, Peggy Conlon
The Advertising Hall of Fame website states the following regarding those inducted:
“Upon induction into the Advertising Hall of Fame, each honoree receives a ‘Golden Ladder’ trophy signifying membership in the Advertising Hall of Fame. This trophy, designed by the late Bill Bernbach, carries an inscription created by the late Tom Dillon, both of whom are members of the Hall of Fame.
The inscription, inspired by a quote from Sir Isaac Newton, reads: “If we can see further, it is because we stand on the rungs of a ladder built by those who came before us.”
These 22 women have built the rungs of my ladder, and for that, I truly and sincerely thank them.
