In the big agencies the boss was a group of executives called the creative-review board. The advertising business, like America itself after the war, had built up the fiction of safety with its hierarchies and armylike respect for the boss. When he really got going he would say things like “The big agencies are turning their creative people into mimeograph machines!,” and all the frustrated creative people in town would stamp their feet and cheer, “Yea, Bill!” Their pitiful research reduced advertising to, basically, one poor tired ad that was repeated over and over again. But Bill claimed they were either liars or stupid. The big agencies defended themselves they said they made advertising scientifically, with sophisticated research. Worse, they didn’t sell anything to anybody. Ads, he said, had become dishonest, boring, insulting, even insane. He challenged all the big agencies that had become important since World War II, saying they had killed advertising. He was the talk of the town because he was creating a revolution in the advertising business, which was a glamorous business at the time. In the 50s in New York if you talked about “Bill” you meant Bill Bernbach. I was working at McCann-Erickson for the money, for little black dance dresses that showed off my Norwegian legs, for my baby daughters’ smocked dresses from Saks, and for an apartment larger than I could afford, but then I met Bill Bernbach, and he made a serious woman out of me.
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