"36 Hours 'til Monday"

Last year I spoke with Lee regarding these ads. "36 Hours ‘til Monday" ran in a 1986 issue of "'M' The Civilized Man" and I wanted to know who the ad agency was. They got back to me after a couple weeks and told me they knew nothing about the ad, photographer, models... zip.

This happens a lot more than you’d expect. When it comes to ads, retailers are notorious for lousy record keeping much less having an actual archives — I’m guessing Lee wouldn’t have any trouble telling me what their EBITA was in 1986.  The ads are from the little known Tom McElligott of the long gone agency,  Fallon McElligott Rice.

I found out about about Tom  by way of this wonderful piece by Dave Dye of, "Stuff from the Loft" blog.  The ads ran in two page spreads so the impact wasn't lost then and, after almost 30 years, they're even more powerful.  While McElligott gave up the ad business and retired at age 50,  a college kid scored an interview and Tom gave him some very wise advice which  follows and which I wish someone gave me when I was starting out...

“Don’t be distracted by anything. The work is what counts. There are a lot of things that can get in your way, that take up your time and your emotional and intellectual energy; none of them account for anything. They mean nothing. The only thing, in the final analysis, at this stage of the game, that really counts, is the work. The work is everything.

The years that I spent in advertising I saw an awful lot of people who had the potential to be good lose a lot of their ability to distraction, to politics, to fear and to who has the bigger office. You’ll get the bigger office; you’ll make the money. Anything you want will happen, but sometimes it’s hard for people to see that when they’re in the middle of it.

It looks like it’s incredibly complicated. Well, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it’s amazing. All it is about is the work. Finally, if you do the work people will notice and you will get what you want. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.” Tom McElligott

The Last Season of Mad Men

Art Director's Club of NY Advisory Board, 1971

Don and Peggy start their own shop.  Both win gold medals at the 1971 Art Director's of NY Hall of Fame.  Peggy for an anti-war campaign.  Don for True Story magazine.  Their passion is their work.  Their work is what they  are.  They get married.  Don dies of lung cancer two months later.  Peggy becomes one of the most powerful and respected individuals, man or woman, on Madison Avenue.  Roll credits.

Esquire's Subliminal Seduction

When I was 12, I had a cousin who was a golf pro, somewhere on Hilton Head Island. He drove a white Porsche 912 (he wasn't that good of a golf pro) and was dating more women than James Bond.  I worshiped him. As an only child his parents kept his bedroom, just as he left it, sometime in his early 20s. Whenever we'd visit, I was lucky enough to get his room and his room taught me a lot.

A giant plastic bottle of VAT 69, holding what must have been over $299 worth of pennies, sat on the corner of a desk with a piece of glass covering snap shots of girl friends. Steel drum albums from the Carribean waited for me under bookshelves filled with paperbacks, a few dirty,  and piles of Esquire magazines.

I would sit on the edge of my cousin's bed and stare at the Esquire pages of adults living out their happening lives as steel drums danced from a Marantz receiver.  Booze ads were everywhere.  Large breasted women were everywhere. And everywhere people in Esquire smoked.  20 years later my ex-wife would rightly observe that my idea of being a man was limited to smoking, drinking and breasts.  She wrongly attributed this to Playboy. It was Esquire and... I've always been a leg man.

When I look back at old issues of Esquire, I see where my idea of manhood originated.  Those  old Esquires, smelling of dusty years that make me sneeze, still grab the 12 year old in me --still unsure of being a man.  Of having paid the right dues, made the just sacrifices and fought the good fights to hold  onto my character.   This'll  be my 55th new year.  I still don't think I write well. I know I can't balance a check book. I have no discipline.  There's an awful lot I know I can't do.

But when I look at the January 2013 issue of Esquire  -  I'm reminded of who I am. Sure, most of the smoking is gone but the booze ads are still there as are the large breast-extruded actresses who offer up what they find attractive in a man.  Happily, it's always for sale but I ain't buyin' anymore.  A watch isn't going to define me. Neither is the scotch I drink, the tobacco I smoke or pictures of girl friends under glass.

Having said all that -- I have no idea why I just bought a bottle of Old Crow. I should'a bought the White Horse.

The Illustrated London News - ER Coronation

Courtesy of ME Archives - Click image to enlarge

It Says More About Me Than I Care To Admit

Special Forces Recruitment Ad - 1976

I sat across from Army recruiter Dusty Rhodes in early May of 1976. A wooden name plate flanked by SFC chevrons was centered on his steel desk. He chain smoked Parliaments that he put out in a giant Army issue glass ash tray and two finger typed at a computer terminal.

"No, doesn't look good. You're too short."

"Too short?"

"Yeah, you gotta be five-ten to be an MP. I thought it might have changed by now but no luck."

"You mean it might change?"

"Sure. Hispanics are suing for discrimination. That sort'a thing. Could be next month or next year."

I stand. Shake Rhode's hand and head for the Air Force recruiter down the hall ignoring the Old Man's advice, "Join the Air Force as an MP and you'll be freezing your ass off guarding B-52s in Minot, North Dakota."

In the hallway is a poster. The understated graphic lends guts to the words, "It says more about you than you'd ever say about yourself." Words of comfort to a boy whose father always said, "You can't do anything right" and a mother who complained, "Nothing makes you happy." I'll be a Green Beret and everything will change.

MGB Ad - 1971

Little did I know the power and deception of Madison Avenue. Not to mention the plagiarism.

Palm Beach Life: A Box of Crackers

Where do these things come from? Actually, this one came from the Strand Bookstore but they're everywhere. Used bookstores, thrift shops, hospital consignment stores, attics and basements. Some stink of mildew or cigarette smoke but I don't care -- I love them. That non-slick patina has a homemade quality that's simple and honest.

Unique among the Life, Look and Time magazines are regional publications like Palm Beach Life. Most advertising is local and looks it. Format is simple and photography mediocre, but those small budgets result in unique images that almost 50 years later have held up better than national magazines of the era.

And then there are those rich crackers. It's always fun to look at the box they came in.

More U Boats & Turtlenecks

Smirnoff 1978

Don Draper's Work Product - My Passion

1963

1963

1965

1966

1967

I smoked Larks when I went in the Army. Sometime during basic training I bummed a Salem after a run and liked the cool after taste. Most of the young blacks I served with were Kool or Newport smokers and they opened the pack from the bottom to keep the filters clean. Whites were almost all Marlboro (box) smokers. During arguments, usually stereo wars, I remember hearing, "You Marlboro smoking, Budweiser drinking, white sock wearing mother fucker." Or, "You Kool smoking, Schlitz Malt Liquor drinking, in grown hair mother fucker."

I was sent to Canadian jump school in Edmonton where I tried, Cameos, du Maurier and English Ovals until settling on Export A's. They paired nicely with Labatts Blue. Back at Ft Bragg I found Export A's being sold at a gas station just south of Fayetteville. They also sold cigars and I tried Dutch Masters that came in a Cameron wrapper. A major, seeing my five pack of cigars on a FTX, gave me a Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur which turned me off Dutch Masters forever.

In college I cut back on cigarettes and cigars but smoked a pipe with Lane 1Q until an art professor turned me onto Mac Baren Virginia No. 1. After college I went back to cigarettes but cut back considerably by smoking unfiltered Camels then Lucky Strikes and briefly Old Golds. I dated and later married a rabid nonsmoker but found myself alone on business in London where I became a dedicated Silk Cut smoker until I bummed a Benson & Hedges Gold.

Two years smoke free (except for one). Ten pounds fatter. I like to think I had my fill while not being brand loyal. I'm not sure Draper would understand.