David W. Reid was creative director working directly with Borden’s in New York. His client was Borden’s dairy and “Elsie” the cow was ‘born’ at that time.
When David was drafted into the US Air Force, he was told he would get out after adding up “points”. The Borden Company also promised his job back.
Around the world Elsie was being used as a good luck charm by airmen, soldiers and sailors.
Before the war ended, Elsie helped to sell $10,000,000 worth of War Bonds and Stamps. They raised nearly $500,000 for charity. This money was sent to war victims and hospitals in foreign countries.
David painted “Elsie” on his plane, a B‑25 Mitchell, (or a B‑26 Martin). After each mission, he painted a new milk bottle on the plane — -“The Milk Run
He flew 63 missions! He was shot down. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart and the Air Medal with Eleven Oak Leaf Clusters.
Back on Madison Ave., David continued the promotion of Borden’s products. During that time, David Reid had the opportunity of a three hour lunch, with Martinis, and the challenge of the water tower on the roof of Borden’s location.
The following is a report from February 11, 1982 in the ‘North Country Journal’ — with additional photos.
(Cover artist: John Hunt of Petaluma, CA.)
Elsie… A Local Family’s Tradition
by Lynn Ostling
Think of a national corporation identified with an animal symbol, not just any animal, but a very personable, individualized, attractive animal. Chances are your thoughts will turn rather quickly to Elsie, the Borden Cow, one of the most enduring advertising symbols of our time.
Elsie’s continuing level of recognition is all the more remarkable when we consider that Borden milk products have not been sold under that name in the western states since Knudsen bought out Borden over a decade ago. Even in the ‘east Borden does not use Elsie’s famous “daisy” logo except on milk and ice cream: the Borden Company chose twenty years ago to adopt a more” abstract” corporate logo, to present an image of itself as much more than just a dairy company. But Elsie’s image lives on. She was a cow with real personality.
What does Elsie the Cow have to do with Design Lab, a sleekly modern shop dispensing advertising and packaging art from an office in downtown Petaluma’s classic McNear building? Design Lab is operated by Dewey Reid and Richard Moore, with a certain amount of advice from “creative director” David Reid, Dewey’s father and Richard’s father: in-law. No one knows more about Elsie than David Reid. He practically invented her for the Borden Company 42 years ago. (Note:This written in 1982.)
The cartoon Elsie was created in 1936 by a team headed by advertising creative director David William Reid. Elsie first appeared as one of four cartoon cows (with Mrs. Blossom, Bessie, and Clara) in a 1936 magazine advertisement series featured in medical journals. By 1939, she was featured in her own advertisement campaign that was voted “best of the year” by the Jury of the 1939 Annual Advertising Awards. Named one of the Top 10 Advertising Icons of the [20th] Century by ‘Advertising Age’ in 2000,[2] Elsie the Cow has been among the most recognizable product logos in the United States and Canada. (From Wikipedia)
It’s true, David admits, that Elsie did exist in a rather rudimentary form, as a sort of cartoon cow in some early Borden pharmaceutical ads, when he joined the company in 1939. But it was under his guidance that Elsie burgeoned into the sweetly feminine personage we remember. David himself designed and drew the logo with Elsie’s face smiling from the center of a golden daisy.
“It all really took off at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939 – 40.” David recalls. “Elsie had just begun to be popular. We really knew we had something when we heard how often people came into the Borden dairy barn where the cows were being milked and asked, “Which cow’s Elsie?”,
Seizing this perfect public relations opportunity, Reid and his colleagues in Borden’s advertising department chose a beautiful live purebred Jersey named You’ll Do Lobelia, re-christened her Elsie, and put her in a lavish “boudoir” complete with four-poster stall, portraits of her family, bookcase, dressing table, and four little round white leather “shoes” by the side of the “bed.” ·
“We had more visitors than Genera! Motors”, David remembers. Elsie was the hit of the Fair.
Photo at the Reid Design Lab, above McNear’s Mystic Theatre
Now, as David looks back on an exciting and successful career in advertising art, his son Dewey looks forward to a similar career. Dewey’s office at Design Lab is sprinkled with Elsie memorabilia, and Dewey him· self is currently working on a modest resurrection of Elsie in the form of side panels for Borden milk, featuring Elsie’s own household hints.
Elsie is probably the only cow we could imagine as having a “household”, From her earliest beginnings that World’s Fair boudoir, she has always been at least as much human as bovine. With her light delicate face, large eyes sparkling with lashes, dainty hooves, frilly apron, and feminine demeanor, she fit perfectly the 1950’s image of all that was ‘best in womanhood.
The fifties, Elsie’s heyday, was the great era of the “homemaker”. Naturally, Elsie had a spouse (didn’t everyone?) — the magnificent Elmer, a bull who was just macho enough. And Elsie had children (didn’t everyone? an average-sized fifties family had four children). Beulah, her firstborn, was followed by a highly publicized pregnancy and, in a great PR coup, a calf-naming contest. The winning name, Beauregard, was chosen because, according to David Reid, “Beauregard was the name of the general at the Battle of Bull Run”.
Elsie was active in World War II selling war bonds; she appeared in a movie; she was the first cow on TV. Countless novelty items-toys, games, keyrings, crockery — appeared sporting Elsie’s smiling face; all these were licensed through the Borden Company in exchange for 5% of the wholesale price. “All this helped develop Elsie’s personality,” David observes. “Her personality gave her creditability”.
But as the fifties waned, so did Elsie’s popularity. She received fewer fan letters, each to be answered on her own monogrammed lavender stationery with her inimitable sign-off, “From moo to you”. Even the birth of twins (and a new calf-naming contest — -Larabee and Lobelia were the winners) could not bring Elsie’s popularity back to former levels. The Borden Company was diversifying; certain top-level management figures wanted a newer, more abstract corporate image. “They put Elsie out to pasture”, David Reid sighs. When David left Borden in 1961 to come west and work on wine advertising and packaging, first with E. and J. Gallo, then with Seagram, Elsie’s days were ’ already numbered. “From milk to wine”, chuckles David. His highly successful career with the wine industry includes the invention of the reusable wine carafe as a package for Paul Masson wines, and a number of extremely success· full promotional packages. “It was great fun, working with the wine industry. We went to Europe every summer … ” But Reid doesn’t miss it now. “It’s great to be able to do what you want”, he says. Doing what you want, if you’re David Reid, means painting now just for yourself- the advertising (or “commercial”) artist freed to follow his own personal vision.
Here is the small plastic prototype designed by Davie Reid. Here from Etsy: Vintage Paul Masson Wine Carafe Doves & Grapes, Signed Norman Kosarin 1988.
Can Elsie be revived? It’s a challenge for Dewey Reid, a 26-year-old graduate of California College of Arts and Crafts and College of Marin. Is there a place for this sort of human animal creation in the corporate world of the 1980’s? David Reid thinks so – -“look at Miss Piggie!” But he also points out that “you have to have a pixie-ish attitude about it. That’s what is rare in corporate management today. There’s less emphasis on non-commercial PR events, more on pure selling.”
Whatever the results of Dewey’s modest revival of Elsie the cow, it seems certain that Petaluma’s Design Lab has a promising future. Dewey keeps busy designing wine labels and packaging, with David only a few miles away and ready to offer a benign word of advice now and then. Dewey has been especially pleased to join forces recently with Richard Moore, a highly acclaimed watercolorist with a current show of 45 works at the Nut Tree gallery. Dewey studied painting with Richard in Hawaii, and considers this his most valuable learning experience. “lt’s important to work with someone who is 30 times better than you are,” Dewey comments.
“Callas” by Richard Moore from a Watercolor Exhibition at Nut Tree. January 6 thru May15, 1982, Nut Tree, California 95696
While Richard’s vibrantly colored flowers and landscapes grace the gallery of the Nut Tree, and Dewey hones the skills of his craft in his studio at Design Lab, David enjoys his retirement in his spacious, light-filled studio at his seaside home. There he struggles, as all artists must, to express his own personality, his view of the world.
While confessing admiration of such diverse figures as the contemporary artist Richard Diebenkorn and the turn-of-the-century Albert Marquet, Reid has a horror of anything derivative. He need not worry. His paintings reveal echoes of his favorite artists, especially the brilliant, sometimes clashing colors of Marquet (Marquet was a member of the group known as the Fauves — the Wild Beasts — for their, at that time, outlandish uses of color; Matisse is perhaps the best known member of this group). But Reid’s paintings are emphatically his own. ln them we see an artist defining his own style, striving to create not what Borden or Gallo or Seagram wants, but what David Reid wants.
“It’s difficult,” he admits. “But the solution lies in working.” David Reid will be having his first one-man show this spring, and that gives him added incentive. The show promises to be a revealing look at Reid’s search for self-expression.
“I think that there are more talented artists working today in commercial illustration than ever before”, says David. “At least they have more ability technically, if not creatively”. It’s Reid’s great strength that he has ability in both areas, and has put it to use throughout a long life devoted to art, both commercial and non-commercial. Dewey Reid has certainly inherited a degree of his father’s creative energy, and he has the necessary training and technical skills. As he combines these abilities with those of his associate Richard Moore, an artist of great strength and potential, the future of Design Lab looks bright.
North Country Journal February 11, 1982
David Reid — creator of Elsie the Cow
By Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer Dec 19, 2003
David William Reid, an advertising marketer and creative director who was the lead member of the team that created Elsie the Cow, one of the top advertising icons of the last century, died Saturday at his San Rafael home.
Mr. Reid, who spent the last 43 years of his career in California, was also a decorated World War II bomber pilot and a major figure in marketing for the California wine industry.
He was best known for his creation of a pleasant-looking bovine who became the symbol for the Borden Company’s line of dairy products.
Elsie the Cow was voted one of the 10 top icons of all time by Advertising Age magazine and was so famous that marketing surveys in the 1940s found that 98 percent of the American public recognized Elsie. At one time, she was better known than such imaginary figures as Mickey Mouse, and a 1952 poll found that Elsie was better known than such real life celebrities as Robert Taft, a candidate for president that year, and Van Johnson, the actor.
Elsie’s image appeared in 107 countries, and Elsie helped sell $10 million in war bonds during World War II, appeared in a movie with Jack Oakie and Kay Francis, received several tongue-in-cheek college degrees (doctor of ‘bovinity’ was one) and received the key to over 200 cities.
Though Elsie’s image and the Borden name were sold in 1997 to the Dairy Farmers of America, Elsie is still the symbol of several cheese products. Elsie’s creator was born in Detroit, trained as an illustrator and attended the Grand Central School of Art in New York. In the late ’30s, he was working for Borden in advertising.
Most advertising symbols are the work of a number of people, but Mr. Reid was the lead designer on Borden’s project to find a trademark animal. Mr. Reid developed Elsie’s look, including her big eyes and the daisy necklace she wore around her neck. Elsie made her debut in 1938 on Borden ads and was an immediate hit. She led a whole family of mystical cattle and was part of a number of spin-offs including ceramic products, books, posters and other Elsie images.
By 1939 Elsie the Cow’s picture was in magazine and newspaper ads, on billboards and in dairy cases everywhere. Elsie was a celebrity, right up there with Joe DiMaggio and other heroes of the day. She was the star of Borden’s exhibit at the New York World’s Fair. According to Mr. Reid’s son, Dewey Reid, Mr. Reid designed a barn for Elsie as part of Borden’s “Dairy of the Future” show and then helped pick a live cow to represent his creation.
The animal selected — a Jersey named “You’ll Do Lobelia” — made regular appearances at the fair and then went on the road on promotional tours in a specially designed truck.
However, she was badly injured in a traffic accident in 1941 and was euthanized. Forty nine other live Elsies have followed. In 1940, Mr. Reid designed a husband for Elsie, a brawny bull named Elmer, who had his own career as an icon for Elmer’s Glue. There were several offspring, including a calf named Beauregard, for P.T.G. Beauregard, the Civil War general.
World War II had broken out in the meantime and Mr. Reid joined the Army Air Corps. He flew 63 missions in the Mediterranean in a B‑26 and his bomber’s nose was decorated with a picture of Elsie. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart and the Air Medal with 11 Oak Leaf clusters.
After the war he went back to work for Borden but was recruited in 1960 to work for the E. and J. Gallo Winery. Here he helped design and market labels and other material for Thunderbird, Ripple and other popular wines. He later worked for Paul Masson, where he developed the concept of selling wine carafes, now widely copied.
In the late ’70s, Mr. Reid worked on one of Paul Masson’s most famous campaigns — which starred actor Orson Welles, who announced that Paul Masson “sold no wine before its time” in a voice that sounded like God. Mr. Reid ended his corporate career at Browne Vintners, as vice president and creative director marketing a variety of European wines.In his last years, he took up painting and creating art on computers.
The above report was written by Carl Nolte.
Carl Nolte is a fourth generation San Franciscan who has been with The Chronicle since 1961. He stepped back from daily journalism in 2019 after a long career as an editor and reporter including service as a war correspondent. He now writes a Sunday column, “Native Son.” He won several awards, including a distinguished career award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a maritime heritage award from the San Francisco Maritime Park Association, and holds honorary degrees from the University of San Francisco and the California State University Maritime Academy.
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With an eye to his future, David turned to his son, Dewey, when determining the destination for some of his future ashes. With no lack in original thinking, they worked a plan — -where Dewey would fly back to NYC and don a pair slacks that had been altered at the bottom cuffs with pockets, to drop David, as Dewey would walk along Madison Avenue! David loved the concept! The original “Madison Avenue Men!
Dewey Reid’s story, next month.
Ann Thompson