geezersgallery.com

In 1964 we (Y&R, San Fran­cisco) had Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. John Emmerling, Ralph Price and I were assigned the Racing Tire Division, because it was a small budget. We were in San Angelo, Texas at Goodyear’s Oval Test Track with A.J. Foyt hoping to set an oval track speed record on Goodyear Double Eagle Passenger Tires. In those days, we had news­paper and magazine ads at every major paper and magazine in the country with one piece of infor­mation missing…The exact speed if the record was made. Foyt succeeded at 204.6 mph, but called from a two way radio when he was out of sight. Soon, a pickup truck left to tow the race-​​car back, as we were told the car had broken down. Soon it appeared and the Double Eagle Tires were in excellent shape, and the record had been set. All the national media folks went imme­di­ately to phones to give their publi­ca­tions the correct speed record, and the next day the ads ran all over the country. The next evening (the day after the record was set) we were told over setup drinks at a San Angelo Bar that we should go out back and look in the pickup truck bed that was covered with a tonneau. We did and there were four Double Eagle Tires in shreds. They had been destroyed at the speed Foyt was driving. It was too late to stop the ads, as they had already run in all the major news­papers. That year Double Eagle Tires blew out all over Texas where people drove their Cadillacs and Lincolns at very high speeds on the back roads.

Richurd Somers

Well, there was this time in the late 1960’s, when I was in Omaha, Nebraska doing a T.V. commercial for that renowned product Bux Corn­rootworm Insec­ticide. This was part of the array of bene­ficial farm products that were being produced by Chevron Ortho products (and we wonder why the Autism rate increase so dramatically).

I was there with Larry Duke (a genius art director and later Levis Poster, etc. Illus­trator). Our chosen actor for our commercial was Pat Buttrum (Gene Autry’s former movie side kick). Mr. Buttrum was currently appearing in a T.V. series called Green Acres (starring Ava Gabor, etc.). It was about city folk who buy a farm. Their neighbor was Pat Buttrum. So we figured he was perfect to sell Bux to the farming community.

We went to dinner the night before the “shoot” and across the restaurant Mr. Buttrum spies an old friend, singer “?” Robert Goulet — who was appearing at that great Omaha venue, The Aksarben Theater (that’s Nebraska spelled back­wards, get it?). So the two of them wander off to partake of way too many drinks.

Cut to the next day, when we stop to ask some farmer on a dirt road for direc­tions to one particular corn field in an area of corn­fields as far as you can see in any direction. As the farmer is pointing, Pat Buttrum opened the back door of the car and puked on that poor farmer’s shoes. We could only imagine how proud the farmer must have felt when he went home tracking vomit into the house and proudly announcing that Pat Buttrum from Green Acres puked on his shoes not more than10 minutes ago.

I won’t go into the video cameraman’s concern with color adjustment saying, “there must be some­thing wrong with this equipment.…I can’t get that green cast out of Mr. Buttrum’s face”. It was that green of someone who’d been up drinking all night. And I won’t elab­orate further by discussing how many chickens Mr. Buttrum sat on when making himself comfortable sitting on those bags of Bux Corn­rootworm Insecticide).

Todd Miller

Here’s a little story about the creative process, back in the days when such a thing was possible.

One day in the 1960s Jack Allen and I were having one of our periodic, vinous, Friday lunches at Venetos, near his studio. After copious amounts of red wine, I mentioned the agency’s (Johnson & Lewis) urgent need to come up with a savings ad for Bank of America. our largest client.
Savings ads were noto­ri­ously and inher­ently boring, but I had the glim­mering of an idea.

Ad: “Jack, what if we had the reading of a will, with all the rich uncle’s household gathered in the lawyer’s office? Maybe we could use Belli’s office.”

Jack: “We could cast it right now. Let’s get a phone.”

Between us, we came up with the cast:
The lawyer: Wally Brazeal, an ad rep, perched on the edge of Belli’s desk, looking lawyerly.
The widow: a very proper older model from Ann Demeter’s agency, with lorgnette and fox fur.
The heir: A young nephew, played by Tom Rice, an art student, in preppy horn rims.
The butler: Mr. Lancaster, formerly of the French Opera Company, tall, white haired elderly gent in full butler’s regalia.
The chauffeur: Homer Welch in proper livery, carrying the widow’s Pekinese dog.
The mistress: Pat Mahan, model from Al Duartís agency, ravish­ingly sexy in bouffant blond wig, black dress, pearls, cigaret holder, and a fabulous fur from Roberts Brothers.
Everyone except the lawyer and the heir looked pissed off, including the Pekinese.

The heir was beaming, he was getting the money!
When we called to get permission to use his office, Belli was enthu­si­astic.
We scheduled the shoot for Saturday morning, the next day. Milt Halber­stadt signed on as lighting consultant. Belli came with his infant son, Caesar.
The shoot went well. We got the film rushed to processing. We took Pat, still in char­acter, to the Temple Bar where a boyfriend tended bar. He didn’t recognize her at first.

Sunday I wrote the copy.
Monday morning I sent out for a rush C-​​print and spec­ified the type. Monday afternoon, I pasted up of the finished comp.

Bright and early Tuesday morning, I took the ad into Dan Lewis’ office.
Dan: “Where the hell did this come from?”
Ad: “Jack Allen and I ran it off over the weekend.”
Dan: “How much are you in for on this?”
Ad: “I figure about $3,000 in expenses.”
Dan: “I better take this up to the Bank myself.”

He did and presented it to Charlie Stuart, BofA vice pres­ident for adver­tising.
Charlie loved it. (Thank God!)
It ran a long time, won an award in the L.A. Art Director’s show, and I think everyone got paid.
Ad Taylor

A RE-​​BIRTHDAY STORY

In the 1950’s I was the Creative Director for Botsford, Constantine and Gardner, San Fran­cisco office. My favorite account was Japan Air Lines. We had a very sound creative strategy to market the airline to Amer­icans, based on research from Doctor Dichtor (an early social researcher). Simply put: don’t talk about equipment, even though it was from Boeing and McDonald Douglas); don’t talk about the cockpit crew (even though they were mostly Amer­icans); don’t talk about Japanese effi­ciency. Do talk about Japanese arts, crafts and culture. And by all means, remind the Amer­icans that Japanese women were the most charming, well mannered and helpful in the world.

Japan Air Lines, through the influence of Mike Sloan (the Botsford Japan Air Lines Account Super­visor), sent me on an Arts and Culture tour of their (then) desti­na­tions including Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Japan. I concen­trated on Kyoto, Nara and Nikko – three cities that did not suffer too much bombing that also are important reli­gious and cultural centers in Japan. What I learned on this trip had every­thing to do with my design of the Japan Air Lines logo.

In 1957. Japan Air Lines asked Botsford, Constantine and Gardner to create a new logo and livery. It was unusual that a large corpo­ration would go to their adver­tising agency for this kind of design work. This type of assignment was usually the purview of design firms like Raymond Lowey or Walter Landor. Many airplane manu­fac­turers offered logo deign as part of their contracts (Japan Air Lines used MacDonald Douglas as well). I was doubly pleased that it landed in my lap because I had a design in mind.

When I trav­elled in Japan I was impressed that the branding business had been going on there for hundreds of years, espe­cially for the Samurai families, whose crests adorned prac­ti­cally every­thing the family owned. The one I chose for Japan Air Lines was a crane attributed to the Mori family. Working with my designer, Reg Jones, we modernized it and created a handsome presen­tation book with hard cover and French paper. The content of the book was the art of the logo and its appli­cation to aircraft, ground equipment, stationery, docu­ments, point-​​of-​​purchase, etc. – twenty-four pages in all.

A meeting was scheduled to show our stuff. I wish I could remember the month and day – all I recall is that it was very hot and humid in Tokyo. The meeting place was on the fifth floor in a rather dingy office building. The conference room was in a corner of a large room packed with people, many women. When the door was opened, we saw a 12’ x 16’ room domi­nated by a long table at which sat about a dozen men who looked at us as if we had inter­rupted them. I remember there was a group hiss. The most striking feature, though, was the mass of logo sketches, drawings, paintings and even some plaster bas reliefs covering the walls and table, ending instantly our belief that ours was the only logo being considered.

Seats were found for us as the discussion continued, giving us a chance to study the designs. None of them were in any way outstanding. They mostly seemed to be versions of the Lufthansa speed bird. Finally the Japanese conver­sation ceased and our contact asked us to show what we had done. It took about ten minutes. It all had to be inter­preted and I didn’t know anybody in the audience or what their interest in the project was. Their expres­sions were, of course — inscrutable. Mike Sloan finished with thanks. We sat down — I was soaked!

The discussion continued for the rest of the that day into the late afternoon of a second day when the Japan Air Lines Pres­ident came into the room with a small entourage. There was much bowing. He seated himself and our book was laid before him and the inter­preter turned the pages for him and rendered the expla­nation. It took about eight minutes though by then I was unable to measure time. When the Pres­ident finished he said some­thing, stood up — more bowing — and walked out. The meeting was over. Everyone gathered their papers to leave.

Mike asked the inter­preter what the pres­ident had said. It was some­thing like, “America is our most important market. Amer­icans know best what Amer­icans like, so tell the men from our American adver­tising agency we accept their design”.

The crane (Tsurumaru in Japanese) flew for over forty years — almost a record. It was replaced in 1989 by a Walter Landor design, modified radi­cally in 2002, again by Landor.

The big news was announced by Japan Air Lines’ pres­ident on January 19,2011, “ The JAL Group today will adopt a new corporate policy and announces its decision to change its logo from April 1, 2011” going on to say, “The motif that will be used is of a soaring red crowned crane with its wings extended in full flight, an auspi­cious icon repre­senting the high spirits of the Japanese people and their sensitive attention to detail.”

Funny thing. The date they said the crane/​logo returns would start on April 1st, 2011, my 84th birthday.

Jerry Phillip Huff
August 25, 2011

Illus­tration from The Way of the Samurai. Note the Crane design.

The original Mori Samari family creast the inspiration

The Japan Air Lines Logo design presented by Mike Sloan & Jerry Huff in Tokyo in 1957.

The final version used for 40 years –dropped for 13 and rein­tro­duced in 2011

A double page magazine ad appeared in Look, Life, Time, Newsweek and featured a real hostess in full Kimona.

In the 1970s’, I was a Creative Director for Scroggin, Reed Adver­tising in S.F., and we acquired a new account called West­coaster Golf Carts. Later, Otis Elevator Co. bought West­coaster, and suddenly the ad budget skyrocketed. We created an ongoing national ad campaign, including brochures and spec­i­fi­cation folders requiring a multitude of photographs. We decided that with a substantial annual budget, we could now approach a dynamic golf star to endorse the golf cart, and photo­graph him with the product.  Lee Trevino was one of most charis­matic and popular golf stars the sport had ever seen, and he was our first choice. After an hour of nego­ti­a­tions, myself and the account exec­utive cut a $400,000. deal with Lee Trevino Enter­prises, which was his endorsement ventures, separate from his golf profession. Lee was actually the last to know about it, since his manager did all the endorsement nego­ti­a­tions, and had authority to okay the deal. Lee signed it, and we had our man in the bag, so to speak. Tech­ni­cally, we had our man in an Otis Elevator golf cart, with a different beau­tiful model each time we scheduled a photo session. The photo sessions had to dovetail with Lee’s pro-​​am tour­nament schedule, where he didn’t have the pressure of playing against the top pros. I had to follow a star golfer around the various courses, with a photog­rapher, a beau­tiful model and an Otis Elevator golf cart during the pro-​​am tour­na­ments. Well, someone had to do the tough assign­ments! When he had a spare 30 minutes or so, I would find a scenic location for the cart, pose the model and Lee inside or outside the cart in various situ­a­tions.. while fans looked on with interest. Lee was amiable, cheerful, told jokes and would flirt with the model, who eagerly flirted back. He lived up to his repu­tation as a ladies man and a fun loving, easy going guy.

Lee had been in the Marine Corps, and had the Marine Corps symbol of an eagle and globe tattooed on his arm. In most of the photos, part of the tattoo showed. The owner of the agency became concerned, and wanted to have the tattoo airbrushed out, before the client saw the photos. My dad was a “leath­erneck” Marine as a young man, and I knew the pride and inde­pendent attitude that is typical of a Marine. I knew that tattoo was probably a source of pride to Lee, and he wouldn’t under­stand airbrushing it out. It was a part of who he was. I took the photos to be approved without removing the tattoo, hoping the client would not find it a problem. As it turned out, not only was it NOT a problem, but the client had also been in the Marine Corps, and thought it added char­acter to the endorsement. So, “Trevino’s tattoo” remained, and appeared throughout the campaign. Later I found out that Lee had a tattoo of his first wife’s name removed from his forearm, but appar­ently that was before. Getting approvals from the client was “a walk in the park” after that, and Lee gave up a total of about 20 (twenty) hours of his time to earn almost a half a million dollars, which his manager requested be spread out over a four year period ($100, 000. per year) for tax purposes. Lee’s 20 hours of time fell within the first six months of the contract, and then his oblig­ation was essen­tially over. Not bad for a guy who started working in the cotton fields of Texas, at age five.

In the mid 1970’s to the early eighties, I coör­di­nated a very inter­esting docu­mentary art program for the National Park Service. The program had been going on between the New York Society Of Illus­trators and the Park Service in Wash­ington D.C. I had received word that they wanted to include a profes­sional art society on the west coast into their program “Artists In The Parks.” A parks official flew out from Wash­ington D.C. To meet me, discuss the program and their needs. Fortu­nately our Society Of Illus­trators was having an annual exhibit in the lobby of the Crown Zellerbach Building at the same time. After having wined and dined him I took him to see the illus­tration exhibit. He was very impressed with the caliber of talent in the San Fran­cisco Society Of Illus­trators. Two days after he flew back I received a phone call. “We were now part of the program.” I was asked to assign those artists willing to travel and partic­ipate in the program to a national park or monument in the U.S. Upon their return an artist would produce one or two paintings with complete freedom to express their inter­pre­tation of the park visited. One assignment I had included trav­eling to Glacier Bay National Monument, Alaska and Klondike National Historic Park in Skagway. Skagway Alaska in 1976 was a quiet village, tourism was minimal. In a conver­sation with one of the resi­dents upon my arrival, I told him my purpose for being there. He imme­di­ately suggested an afternoon excursion to my wife and I. Our guide offered to take us to a ghost town called Dyea, site of the starting point for the gold prospectors in the 1898 Yukon gold rush. We accepted his offer and found ourselves bouncing over an old dirt road in his truck for miles. We climbed up and over a mountain until we came to a spot where the road ended. ” Now we have to hike in the rest of the way”,Our guide said. My wife and I looked at each other with appre­hension. The only thing visible was thick brush and heavy timber ahead. I told my wife I would fall back behind her and our guide as we hiked in, as a safety measure. Was this guy for real or had we accepted a ride from a possible Klondike mass murderer? The thoughts went through my head. After about a half mile hike through mosquito infested brush we suddenly came into a clearing. There before us were a number of old deserted cabins from the 1898 gold rush. Many cabins still contained remains of furniture and some utensils on the tables. We saw an old grave site with sixty head stones This was at the base of the steep Chilkoot ice steps that the miners climbed on their way to the gold fields of the Yukon. As the story has been told the miners waited for days to climb the ice steps single file burdened down with all their gear. On one occasion one slipped and fell bringing the others down with him resulting in the deaths of sixty miners, All now buried in that grave yard. After safely returning that afternoon to Skagway, we reflected on what we had expe­ri­enced. I now had much reference material to complete my commission for the park service. It was truly a walk into history . Many illus­trators that traveled to various national parks and monu­ments had their own adven­tures and completed a wonderful series of paintings for the U.S. National Park Service.

Norman Nicholson

Murray Hunt

Oh yeah! One story about my tie: I was repping artists in Chicago, with a studio. Some of the guys grabbed me and put me on the big paper cutter and cut my tie off. I left it on and got a lotta laughs from art directors that afternoon. Things like this happened often. They were a crazy bunch.

Murray Hunt

Pack­aging worms!

Recently, my 23 year old cousin in Finland was asking me to help her with her English for her scien­tific paper on (of all things) “Gene-​​by-​​environment inter­ac­tions and pheno­typic effects of temper­ature on the immune defense and life-​​history traits in Tenebrio molitor”...the mealworm!
I was about five years older than my cousin, when I, too, was handling meal­worms. I was prompted to dig up these samples to show to you.

Here’s the history:
After only the one year that I was employed by Butte, Herrero and Hyde (I would have stayed at that job forever, had they not split their part­nership), I instantly became self-​​employed.
As a free­lance designer/​illustrator for thirty-​​five years, I accepted every chal­lenge that came my way.
The most wiggly (and giggly) assignment was to package and to design stationery, promo, and point-​​of-​​purchase pieces for live meal­worms (!), for fish bait.
The job came to Graphics* (the asterisk is part of the name…it, now, goes nowhere), a design studio in the Wharfside Building, that specialized in designing annual reports and other corporate promo­tional pieces. The “fish bait” job was tossed my way.

The assignment also included naming the product…so I asked for the help of Rex Simmons, who sat at his drawing board in front of me. He helped “brain­storm” for the “genetically-​​enhanced, pumped-​​up” critters: Monster Meal­worms, Mega Meal­worms, Massive Meal­worms, Mighty Meal­worms, Big-​​Worms, Big-​​Bait, Rambo-​​Bait, Bonanza Bait, Monster-​​Bait, Master-​​.…! We (and later, the client) agreed on “Mighty Mealys”.

Our contact for the job told us that one night, when he arrived home, he set the small prototype plastic tub with the meal­worms packed with their cornmeal diet…on a small bed that was in his garage. Days went by. He said that the meal­worms had chewed their way through the plastic and were crawling between the several blankets on the bed…and were in various stages of becoming beetles! We heard this story, but assumed that the lid of the tub had popped open…how could those tiny teeth chew through heavy plastic?
The following summer, I was up in Jackson…in “gold country” and I stepped into the town’s bait shop. The promo­tional material was displayed and the Mighty Mealys were being sold in the designed plastic tubs…after they and the cornmeal were scooped from a large glass jar.

I look back at my printed samples of my past work for so many busi­nesses: investment, tech, restau­rants (and even the San Fran­cisco Ballet)…and so many products: foods, wines, computers, drugs (phar­ma­ceu­tical) …and worms!

Ann Thompson

click on an image to view larger and see the whole thing

Grey Adver­tising fire San Francisco.…early 1980’s

Does anyone remember the great “towering inferno” at Grey Adver­tising on the 27th floor of 50 Cali­fornia Street in San Fran­cisco in the early 1980’s? I was working there at the time as an office admin­is­trator but had majored in drawing and painting in college so I was thrilled to be part of the “ad biz” surrounded by creative types. I was first alerted to the fire by my boss who called me at 6 AM on a weekday to tell me there had been a fire on our floor, (Grey’s offices comprised the entire 27th floor at 50 Cali­fornia), so I was to dress casually in jeans and bring a bucket, rubber gloves and a whisk broom if I had one. OK.….My boss had no idea what the damage was.…she had not been into the office yet to see. So I boarded BART in the East Bay carrying my bucket, gloves and whisk broom and got off at the Embar­cadero Station in San Fran­cisco and ascended the esca­lator to the street level and walked past La Boulan­gerie on the corner of Cali­fornia St., (where I didn’t stop for my usual latte and croissant) to our building. As I got closer I saw 4 — 5 fire engines parked around the street, fire hoses going in and out of the building including up the elevator shaft and firemen every­where. As I entered the building and tried to board an elevator for the 27th floor, I was stopped and ques­tioned by the Fire Captain to whom I explained “I work here. I was told to come into work to help clean up”. I was allowed to proceed, and as I stepped out of the elevator on the 27th floor, the smoky wet smell of burned plastic from melted computers and other toxic mate­rials I couldn’t identify, nearly overcame me. The double doors that were normally open to our lobby area where “GREY” could be seen on the facing wall were shut. I opened the doors and began, at the direction of my direct report, Claudia Ebert, Office Manager and Henry “Hank” McWhinney, General Manager, (who later became Pres­ident of the San Fran­cisco office in 1987) what was what I recall to be a nearly 6 to 12 month reno­vation project. It was deter­mined that the fire started in the media department (the “pink ghetto “as it was called) in the office of the VP. She kept a space heater near her desk and appar­ently it had either been left on or some­thing went wrong with the circuitry. It was fortunate a night janitor discovered the fire soon after it started or all may have been lost. As it was, the Media Dept. was totally destroyed and had to be relo­cated to temporary offices sub-​​let from the B of A — a major client at the time. The rest of the office space suffered mostly smoke and water damage– fortu­nately none of the art work was harmed in the fire. Reno­vating the office over the next several months was both exciting and exhausting. The “new look” at Grey was sleek and classy employing grey and burgundy tones throughout the office. And new, burnished silver “GREY” signage was installed in the lobby. Though the bucket, rubber gloves and whisk broom I was asked to bring in the morning of the fire were woefully inad­e­quate to even begin to clean up the devas­tating effects, there is a humorous footnote about the whisk brooms. It was Robert “Bob” Humphrey, then Grey Adver­tising Western Offices Chairman and CEO, who suggested in his ever up beat demeanor and lickety-​​split manner of speaking that we all procure whisk brooms and just “whisk a little bit here and there every day” and it would all be back to normal in a jiffy. Seri­ously? He was also a firm believer in the “solid tie, solid guy” motto. No striped ties for Grey’s A.E.‘s.…..at least not when Bob Humphrey was in town. The fire also inspired the creative types in our office to come up with a new motto: “GREY Advertising…the hottest agency in town”. Black t-​​shirts were silk screened with the word “GREY” on the front consumed by orange and red flames. They were a “hot item”. Everyone wanted one, even some of our competitors.

Note: some of the other names I recall of people who worked at Grey then are:

Jerry Baker — creative director

Lars — creative director?

Mimi — creative dept. secretary

Gail Rouleau Sherman