EARLY JOURNALISM INFLUENCES ON THE CREATIVE STYLE OF LEO BURNETT

By

ZHAOHUI SU

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ADVERTISING

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2012

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© 2012 Zhaohui Su

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To my Mom and Dr. Bernell Tripp, thank you for your guidance, tolerance, and patience. I’m eternally grateful for your help. To my Dad, I carry you in my heart, and I long for your hug

To the orange highs and blue yikes, and the messy tunes stick in my head; rhymed with joys and tears weaved with my accented sighs. What are sorrows to bear? What are memories to share?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Bernell Tripp, Dr. John Sutherland, and Dr. Cynthia

Morton for your encouragement, support, and being a part of this thesis. I’m grateful for having you on my committee. I’ve learned a lot through my years as a master’s student at the College of Journalism and Communications from you. Knowledge is empowering; it is the real towering juggernaut one can rely upon and survive on. You sent me the empowering gift of knowledge, and I am thankful for that. I’m eternally grateful for my mom and dad—they gave me birth, life, love, and everything beyond.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 7

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 9

Purpose of Study ...... 10 Significance of the Study ...... 14 Structure of the Thesis ...... 15 Intended Contributions of the Study ...... 16 Literature Review ...... 17 Method ...... 31

2 LEO BURNETT AS A JOURNALIST ...... 35

Leo Burnett’s Journalistic Background ...... 35 A Family of Journalists ...... 40 Verne Burnett ...... 41 Mary Burnett and Alvah Bessie ...... 44 Naomi Burnett and George Geddes ...... 46 Journalism at Work ...... 47 Earle C. Howard ...... 48 Arthur Kudner ...... 50 Homer McKee ...... 52 Theodore F. MacManus ...... 56

3 FEATURE WRITING AND INHERENT DRAMA ...... 64

4 FEATURE WRITING ANALYSIS ...... 78

Analysis of the Dramatization in Burnett’s Ads ...... 78 Detailed Description and Dramatization ...... 82 Narrative Storytelling...... 92 Engaging Quotes and Dialogue ...... 101 Characterization/Exposition ...... 106

5 CONCLUSION ...... 118

Discussion and Conclusion ...... 118 Family Influences ...... 119

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Work Influences ...... 120 “Inherent Drama” and Feature Writing Style in Burnett’s Ads ...... 121 Limitations and Implications ...... 122

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 126

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 133

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Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Advertising

EARLY JOURNALISM INFLUENCES ON THE CREATIVE STYLE OF LEO BURNETT

By

Su Zhaohui

December 2012

Chair: Bernell Tripp Major: Advertising

This study addresses the early influences of journalism on Leo Burnett’s career as an advertising man. Multiple factors shaped Burnett’s view on advertising, yet journalism is one of the least known and most deeply-rooted factors. The last decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century marked a crucial turning point for professional practices in journalism and advertising. This study examines

Burnett’s familial and professional connections to journalism at a period when both journalism and advertising were undergoing critical transitions in their operating practices, and each profession was redefining its role in the lives of the American public.

Burnett’s early experiences as a reporter and a 12-year-old printer’s devil, as well as his brother’s background as a neighborhood publisher/editor and the journalistic roots of

Theodore MacManus, one of Leo Burnett’s most respected mentors, during the Yellow

Journalism period, provide insight into the shaping of Burnett’s personal advertising strategies. These and other factors, such as the journalism practices of the period, will serve as the variables in this study’s contextual analysis of Burnett’s writings and advertising campaigns, which will offer insight not only into Leo Burnett’s advertising

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techniques, principles and ethics as an ad man, but also into the rapidly changing relationship between journalism and advertising in the early 20th century.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the purpose as well as the intended contribution of this study. The reasoning behind the method used in this study in order to answer the research questions is also included in this chapter.

The selling of things seldom thrives without the help from advertising, and the journalism industry is no exception. Long before the newspaper boys of the 19th century, the attention-seeking action of hollering can be traced back to medieval times, when town criers lured people to come near in order to listen to a proclamation or to read a posted publication (Sampson, 1875, p.44). What can be traced back even earlier was the act of advertising, as well as the already developed relationship between the advertising business and the journalism trade.

Yet the development of advertising as a profession may not have one traceable root, but a combination of multiple roots developed from the points-of-view of many committed advertising professionals whose advertising philosophies and trusted techniques differed and adapted as overall mass media evolved. Among all the points- of-view of what constitutes advertising, Leo Burnett was one of the individuals most influential in structuring the fundamental parts of modern advertising.

During his years as an advertising practitioner, Burnett tried his best to instill the idea that advertising could be of assistance to the business industry, in a role that transcended the 15-percent commission fee. To the world at large, he introduced the

Chicago school of advertising, along with his belief that advertising agencies had a

“business obligation,” and a reputation to secure (Burnett, 1961, p.137& 142). Rather than goad his employees to focus on the “share of market”, even though he once said

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that advertisers were “salesman first and foremost”, he made his agency employees understand the importance of the “share of mind”, which he defined as having “a pleasing personality, widely accepted—an instinctive, emotional and spontaneous expression of a predisposition to buy a certain brand” (Burnett, 1961, p.104 & 111&

135).

Burnett was one of the founding fathers of the advertising principles and philosophies that helped erect the standard of good advertising. He developed his advertising principles during a time when American journalism was adapting yet again to stay abreast of a rapidly changing audience. Fresh off the rollercoaster ride of the

Yellow Journalism period, readers retained a thirst for news that was not just informative, but also engaging, and that allowed those affected to formulate educated opinions based on well-documented facts. What Burnett chased as his advertising rainbow was a philosophy infused with integrity, honesty, creativity, and curiosity, all the significant factors he believed could actually make progress in the business of advertising—the traits that transcend the craving for a handsome paycheck.

Interestingly, the elements of his advertising presentations and philosophies bear a striking resemblance to similar components displayed in journalistic writing of the period.

Purpose of Study

To most of the tenants of the advertising world, Leo Burnett was an identity, an icon, an image, and a personality that was a hard act to follow. Yet, few researchers have examined Leo Burnett's journalism background and how his journalistic connections through various stages of his life might have had influenced his advertising prospective and shaped his views on how to advertise in the most effective way. It is 10

this study’s purpose to explore all sources of journalistic influence that the research was able to obtain on Leo Burnett, as well as to implement a contextual analysis of his personal writings and ad campaigns to determine whether journalistic traits of the period were manifested in his ad presentations. Thus, the research questions of this study are:

 RQ1: What are the early journalism influences on the creative style of Leo Burnett?

 RQ2: In what way was Leo Burnett impacted by those early journalism influencers?

Leo Burnett’s affection for journalism was deeply rooted in his personal life. Years after serving as a printer’s devil at the age of 12, he worked for the school newspaper at the University of Michigan partially because of his passion for the news business. Later, he chose to work for the Peoria Journal, a local newspaper in the state of Illinois

(Bessie, 2012, p.1235; Kufrin, 1995, p.12-14). Even though his career as a crime reporter seems to have been a short one, working for the Peoria Journal only during

1914 to 1915, journalism’s presence in his life was huge. His brother Verne had also run his own neighborhood newspaper from the family’s home during the Burnett children’s early years and then worked for the Michigan Daily after college. Similarly, Burnett’s sister Mary wrote extensively in her diaries and journals, although none of the items were published, while her husband was also a journalist (Bessie, 2012, p.1235; Kufrin,

1995, p.12-14).

While writing seems to have been a big part of Burnett’s family background, it played almost as big a part in the life of his wife, Naomi Geddes. Her father, the son of an ex-Congressman, was a Mansfield, Ohio, journalist and solicitor for the paper. Naomi had been Burnett’s most loyal and honest interviewee, whose opinion mattered greatly to him and often had an impact on many of the advertising campaigns he and his firm 11

created. In the CNBC Titans: Leo Burnett interview, Kelly Donavan, Leo Burnett’s great granddaughter, recalled that he once asked Naomi what features of an automatic washing machine she would prefer, an example of Burnett’s reliance on his wife’s opinion when it came to household products (Schaeffer, 2011). Having wanted to be a librarian early in her life, she maintained a love for books and the written word.

The journalistic influence intensified under the tutelage of one of Burnett’s most influential mentors, Theodore F. MacManus, who was a newspaper reporter during the

Yellow Journalism era and had just published his most famous advertising campaign,

“The Penalty of Leadership” right before Leo joined General Motors’ Cadillac campaign

(Kufrin, 1995, p.15). Known as a pioneer of image ads after becoming copywriter for

General Motors Corp.'s luxury cars, MacManus taught Burnett to imbue his copy with the product's "inherent drama" through the use of genuine warmth, along with shared emotions and experiences written in the simplest of phrasing.

By analyzing Leo Burnett’s advertising campaigns through the template of news writing techniques of the period, this study will try to shed light on how some of the basic elements of journalistic writing manifested themselves in his most renowned advertising technique—inherent drama. Journalism of this era, spawned by competition among the larger U.S. newspapers of the end of the 19th century, struggled with three distinctive visions for representing the news to its readers: (1) sensational journalist William

Randolph Hearst’s brand of “journalism of action” or “journalism that acts”, characterized by vivid dramatization and the reporter’s activist-style involvement in depicting the news: (2) the New York Times and Adolph Ochs’ conservative and counter-activist approach to providing a detached and impartial, though fact-based and

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heavily documented, version of news events; and (3) and noted muckraker Lincoln

Steffens’ non-journalistic, literary approach that focused on storytelling and detailed expressions of the joys and hardships in Americans’ daily lives (Campbell, 2006, p.69-

118). Steffens’ model protested against the growing emphasis on American journalism as a business, as evidenced by the paradigms of Hearst and Ochs and their followers.

The three-sided clash of approaches would take years to sort itself out, moving into the early decades of the 20th century. Ironically, the paradigm that would move to the forefront would be that of Ochs’ conservative and impartial approach, despite the appeal of Hearst’s more robust and dynamic writing style. However, the muckraking movement provided the ideal opportunity for an alternative approach to viewing the news, and magazines and many newspapers’ features sections (known as the women’s pages) absorbed Hearst’s dramatic writing style and combined it with Steffens’ literary approach (Campbell, 2006, p.106-115). The result was a writing style that focused on four primary elements: narrative (storytelling), vivid and detailed description, quotations, and background/characterization of people.

Likewise, to explore the inherent drama that each and every product possesses and to present it in a creative and refreshing way was the most important job for advertisers. To illustrate the connection between Burnett’s advertising technique and the standard practice of journalistic writing style is one of this study’s primary goals. The narrative used in ads’ copy created by Burnett, the vivid description conjured by Burnett and his team, as well as the showmanship presented by the arrangement of the ads, the clever preparation of the content, and the use of the background are all the gems of a good feature story writer.

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By examining Burnett’s personal and professional background, this study will also attempt to make a case that his ability to win accounts can be attributed to his former journalism background, based on his reporter’s eye for a thorough understanding of the product’s features and for discerning what information would appeal to the consumer. Take the famous icons designed by Leo Burnett Company, for example. In addition to the intuitive sense of which icon suited the product the best, Burnett created some of the most successful advertising campaigns in which the appeal was the graphics. He went against all odds when he decided to use a red background for raw meat in the ad campaign for the American Meat Institute, as well as the gamble that a common cowboy face could win the hearts and souls of potential Marlboro users

(Burnett, 1956).

Significance of the Study

Leo Burnett was an advertising titan whose name has become well known to generations of advertisers and businessmen alike, and whose philosophies of advertising have remained topics for discussion. Even though the Leo Burnett Company is currently the second-largest advertising agency in the United States -- with a legendary corporate culture consisting of apples, black pencils, and sayings such as

“reaching for the stars” that inspired the evolution of advertising – some of the major factors that contributed to his advertising philosophies have not been examined from a journalistic perspective (Kufrin, 1995, p.51).

From the standpoint of advertising, it is important to understand what contributed to Leo Burnett's success in the industry, and by dissecting the influence journalism had on Burnett, younger generations may develop a better understanding of the advertising trade. For media historians, the significance of the study is twofold. First, studying the 14

relationship between advertising guru Leo Burnett and journalism is beneficial to the study of the interdisciplinary historical evolution of journalism and advertising. Second, studying this apparent intersection of effective writing techniques and the philosophies for/of targeting American consumers offers insight into a previously ignored connection between advertising and journalism histories. Previous historical explanations have tended to view advertising and journalism fields as taking divergent paths during this early period of the 20th century, and studies such as these provide opportunities to examine the little-known commonalities between the two.

Structure of the Thesis

The story of journalism’s early influence on the advertising creativity of Leo Burnett is written in a narrative form, and the thesis is structured into chapters as they relate to the study argument. Chapter 1 introduces the thesis and the main argument. Chapter 2 sets the historical background and context in which Burnett’s journalistic relationships developed. Chapter 3 explains the commonalities of the basic tenets of journalistic feature writing and the “inherent drama” principles of Burnett and the Chicago School of

Advertising. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the elements of some of the ads Burnett produced, ranging from his early accounts to some of the more memorable ads of the

1950s. Chapter 5, the concluding chapter, gives an overview of the commonalities between Burnett’s ads and journalistic feature writing in the early half of the 20th century. The chapter also discusses the implications of the study and focuses specifically on how Burnett’s ad copywriting style fits into the overall picture of advertising and mass media history. Consequently, the chapter considers ways in which

Burnett’s style pointed to a previously overlooked interrelatedness between advertising,

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the evolution of mass media, and shared principles in reaching the rapidly changing needs of American consumers.

Intended Contributions of the Study

As Winston Churchill stated, "Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men.

... It spurs individual exertion and greater production" (as cited in Ogilvy, 1985, p. 150).

The birth of commerce was also the beginning of the business of advertising (McDonald

& Scott, 2007). Outdoor advertising, such as tradesmen’s signs found in Egypt,

Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, was the first documented presence of advertising

(McDonald & Scott, 2007). The closeness of the business of advertising and the industrial outlook was reflected in the rapid development of advertising triggered by the industrial revolution (McDonald & Scott, 2007). The development of technology created a need for the vast and powerful level of persuasiveness that became a signifier of modern advertising (Norris, 1980).

This study shows the importance of looking for commonalities between the evolution of advertising practices and those of the printed media of the early 20th century. The turn of the century marked an era of change for both advertising and print media, as each redefined their separate identities but necessarily cooperative financial interests. This thesis adds to the understanding of cultural factors as an influence on advertising copywriting principles and clarifies the contributions of journalism to advertising development and vice versa.

Advertising became less localized and more mobile and “mass” through the development of transportation and mass printing, as well as other social and economic transformations brought by the Industrial Revolution between 1760 and 1830

(McDonald, 2007; Norris, 1980). More production and distribution ability generated more 16

demanding customers who would prefer brands they were familiar with (McDonald,

2007). As a result of increased merchandise production, advertising was forced to adjust its practices and absorb the impact by boosting demand (Tellis, 1998; Nevett,

1982). Distinctions, such as unique packages and brand names, were used in order to differentiate between products and brands, along with the adoption of various advertising campaigns.

Consequently, studies such as this provide insight into the factors that contributed to the principles and strategies developed by advertising pioneers as they sought to meet the needs of their clients, as well as reach the more demanding consumer- oriented audience of the 20th century. A closer look at the motivational factors in the lives of Leo Burnett and other major pioneers clarifies ways that early advertising practitioners had begun to shift ad agencies’ role away from being the middleman that simply bundled and sold ad space to a business entity that conducted research among consumers and developed ads for clients based on research findings.

It took advertising decades to become the business and discipline it is today, as well as for merchandisers and print media owners to recognize the value of cultivating relationships with the growing number of advertising practitioners and agencies. This thesis opens the door for other media historians to recognize the value of researching the rich biographical data that offers a wealth of knowledge behind the scenes of this critical juncture in the evolution of both journalism and advertising.

Literature Review

This section examines the representative secondary source literature that is most pertinent to this study and identifies contributions this thesis will make to historical understandings of the evolution of advertising in the early 20th century. The scholarly 17

literature most directly related to Leo Burnett, advertising, and early journalistic practices is limited primarily to references found in surveys of advertising and media history texts, studies of advertising techniques (excluding books produced by major advertising practitioners of the period), or biographies and biographical sketches that depict advertising pioneers.

Much of the scholarship about advertising history up to the middle portion of the

20th century is included in general works that survey the use of ads in newspapers and magazines. These works provide a chronology of press development from the earliest use of advertising copy. Historians have been using ads as critical cultural artifacts while they make connections between history and culture, aiming to have a more profound understanding of the making of American society (Pollay, 1985). Ads in early civilizations advertised the sale of slaves that mirrored the culture at the time (Calkins,

1905).

Advertising practices have probably evolved the most among media-related professions in its time of existence. Not only did advertising as an institution have its inception at the turn of the century, but it also initiated basic tactics and strategies that were greatly influenced by the most prominent technological inventions of the century -- radio, effective photography, and television, which stabilized the advertising business’ role in the development of “industrialism, urbanization, mass literacy, and the associated mass print media” (Pollay, 1985).

Among some of the most respected and studied media history textbooks, Crowley and Heyer’s (1995) Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society, Folkerts and Teeter’s (1989) Voices of a Nation: A History of Media in the United States, The

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Significance of the Media in American History edited by Startt and Sloan (1994), Sloan’s

Perspectives on Mass Communication History, Black’s (1995) Introduction to Media

Communication: Understand the Past, Experience the Present, Marvel at the Future, and The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media edited by Emery and Emery (1992), Leo Burnett’s name is never mentioned. Only The Media in America:

A History, edited by Sloan, Stovall and Startt (1989), included his name in the book, once.

The Media in America: A History also had only one chapter devoted entirely to

“advertising”, discussing the shaping of modern advertising and presenting an outlook into advertising’s future opportunities. In its chapter 15, the authors laid out the general development of advertising from the beginning of the 20th century to 1989, although more recent editions expanded into the 21st century. Since this book had condensed almost a century’s worth of advertising history into one chapter, its generalization of advertising business fragmentary. This book focused only on one advertising giant,

Albert Lasker, which made the authors’ effort in presenting the history of advertising out of balance. Even though Albert Lasker was an important founding father of advertising, his achievements could not provide an accurate representation of advertising’s origins single-handily. According to the authors, Leo Burnett’s name was mentioned only because the agency he founded had become “one of the largest in business,” rather than out of respect for his advertising accomplishments (Sloan, Stovall & Startt, 1989, p.342).

In Introduction to Media Communication, advertising was categorized under the

“Media Support System” chapter. In this chapter, advertising history was studied

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systematically. The beginnings of some of the biggest advertising agencies and the strategies created by these agencies, as well as the impact these advertising agencies had over the market and consumers, created an interesting linear tree of advertising history for audiences’ enlightenment. However, the discussion presented by this book was not comprehensive. It is debatable whether advertising business should be deemed as part of the “media support system,” rather than a member of the media industry, or as some aggressive critics would argue, the puppet master of the media industry.

However, the fact not only that Leo Burnett’s name was not mentioned in the book, but that names such as William Bernbach, Albert Lasker, Theodore MacManus, Rosser

Reeves, Raymond Rubicam, Ted Bates, and other founding fathers of modern advertising were also neglected by the author made the book’s research value for a study of Burnett less debatable.

Emery and Emery (1992) devoted no chapters in The Press and America to discuss advertising history. The role of advertising through time was presented by scattered information among chapters when other media vehicles were being studied.

Even though the book offered little information on advertising, in various chapters of the book the authors frequently mentioned the importance of advertising in supporting the press, radio, and television industries. Some of the key facts of advertising’s development can also be found in this book, which can offer readers a clearer outline of advertising’s development.

In the edited book Communication in History (1995), only the essay “Advertising,

Consumers, and Culture,” written by William Leiss, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally, was included on the topic. This essay discussed how advertising had changed America’s

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culture during the transition between “production ethics” to “consumption ethics,” the change generated by society’s mass production ability. Since an essay focused on a specific research topic cannot render a wide-ranging and well-defined picture of the evolution of advertising, or the detailed history of advertising, the lack of in-depth advertising in this book is apparent.

In Folkerts and Teeter’s (1989) Voices of A Nation, under the chapter “The

Roaring Twenties: The Mythical Decade,” advertising history starting from 1920s was being discussed. Advertising agencies’ growth, as well as the persuasive advertising strategies popular at the time, were reviewed in the book. Advertisers’ ethics and governmental regulations on advertising industry were integrated into Voices of A

Nation’s eight-page coverage on the history of advertising. Advertising strategies and marketing techniques cannot be represented only by the persuasion strategy, one of many advertising tactics used by practitioners at the time, which made this book’s effort in representing advertising developments in the 1920s less fruitful. In addition, the book neglected the famous copywriters’ work and their contributions to the society at the time as well.

Overall, the advertising history recounted was mostly presented from a chronological perspective, offering little critical insight into any specific issues. It is reasonable to arrange advertising history in a chronological fashion, especially when the development of technology, as well as practical innovations, has been evolving through time. However, most of the textbooks on media history failed to present a comprehensive general history of advertising and offered scant to no research-based

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arguments about the correlation between actual advertising styles and principles and the media environment.

The best way to recount the development of the advertising industry and the techniques advertising adopted during a certain period of time is from the critics’ perspective, as well as from the most referred-to figures in the advertising business.

The aspects being criticized and discussed in history were often the most scrutinized, as well as the most-noticed developments, in the industry and often resulted in the most well documented facts about the business. Prior to the1960s, the most noticed sin of advertising was its role in promoting spending and expanding unwanted sales, often referred to by critics of the time as the “cult of consumerism” (Emery & Emery, 1992).

According to historians, highlighting consumers’ needs in the sense of advertising techniques and selling tactics, along with how to make the product appealing to consumers, were the key struggles advertisers had in the 1950s (Pollay, 1985). As

Pollay (1985) pointed out, the salesperson’s lingo back then was, “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle” (p.25). The 1950s superlative advertising environment was reflected by consumers’ rising level of explosive pent-up needs that were suppressed by the

Depression, as well as the war (Pollay, 1985).

Most of the advertising textbooks put a great deal of research effort into the study of advertising history. However, the commonality among advertising history textbooks was that they seldom talked about the evolution of advertising techniques and principles, the founding figures of advertising industry, or other media vehicles’ influence on advertising’s growth. They also failed to link the intellectual legacies of great

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advertising copywriters’ to the development of advertising, or put the advertising giants into perspective while the authors were trying to interpret or recount advertising history.

In Advertising Excellence, the history of advertising was discussed in three directions: the fledging years of advertising, advertising under the industrial revolution and technology’s impact on the development of advertising (Bovée, 1995, p.16-17).

Information about the founding fathers’ legacies to the advertising world or the advertising strategies most popularized by them was insufficient, to the extent that Leo

Burnett’s name was not mentioned once in this textbook.

Maurice Mandell’s (1984) Advertising made more of an effort in recounting the history of advertising, including even the development of some of the current biggest advertising agencies’ history. Advertising also put the 19th century and 20th century advertising into perspective and discussed the chain of events meticulously for its readers. However, advertising tactics’ evolution and the progression of advertising principles were not mentioned in the book. Advertising founding fathers were discussed as agencies’ founders rather than as pathfinders in establishing principles and trailblazers in adopting techniques, which made this book’s coverage of advertising history less comprehensive and thorough. The author did not put much emphasis on

Leo Burnett or other noted advertising giants at the time. Most of the groundbreaking advertising campaigns were also not included in this book, including Burnett’s Marlboro

Man. The authored cited a speech given by Leo Burnett on the importance of writing for advertisers, which was the only time he referred to Burnett in this noted advertising textbook.

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Advertising: From Fundamentals to Strategies rendered rich information on advertising strategies, advertising principles, and marketing’s influence on the development of advertising. Advertising strategies were discussed from a wide-range of perspectives, but not from a historical perspective. This book served more for advertising practitioners’ learning purposes than for advertising scholars’ research intent, since the key endeavor of Advertising: From Fundamentals to Strategies was to teach advertisers how to produce advertisements, not to recount the origins of modern advertising. Unlike other advertising textbooks’ neglect of Burnett’s contribution to the advertising world, his name, as the person and the company, was mentioned nine times in this book. Though sketchy, Burnett’s advertising principles were discussed in this book, such as his “inherent drama” principle and his creation of animated figures such as Tony the Tiger. The author also cited his work on the making of advertising as a further effort to study Burnett’s advertising style.

Other non-textbook works also shed more light on the history of advertising, though more from a contextual viewpoint than from a critical perspective. Books such as

The Hidden Persuaders, written by Vance Packard in 1956, focused on the use of psychological lures by advertising professionals, a group accused of raising “subliminal anxieties” using depth psychology as main advertising techniques (Emery & Emery,

1992). The use of art resonated with consumers, and the consumers responded to the way ads portrayed the products as if they were promising that user gratification could be maximized. Glorification of the benefits of consumption was also the cornerstone of advertising campaigns’ mission. Less linear, logical, and assertive tones of product

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peddling were used, and more psychologically charged and emotionally profound ad styles were adopted in that period (Pollay, 1985).

Professor Herbert Marcuse, who believed that advertising was the channel that technology used to hammer out people’s consciousness and demolish their freedom, joined Packard with his “provokes more than it disturbs” book One-Dimensional Man

(Emery & Emery, 1992; Bambrough, 1994). Even though books such as The Affluent

Society (1969), written by John Kenneth Galbraith, put little faith in the influence of advertising at the time, advertising’s power in creating a materialistic climate during the

1950s was a well-recognized piece of fact.

The British book The Shocking History of Advertising was a crusader of all the businesses associated with mass merchandising during the time when the masses first accepted “singing commercials” (Otis, 1954). For the new sensational power of TV, most of the advertisers at the time appreciated the 30-second spot noted for selling the product, though critics had been promoting the pedantic repetitious nature of the early television commercials (Emery & Emery, 1992).

Overall, the general studies of advertising relied largely on both secondary and primary sources. However, the more expansive studies generally limited their assessment to a simple chronicling of ad usage and key persons, rather than focusing on actual analyses of advertising styles, especially when some of the well known advertising approaches were developed and popularized by advertising giants whose ideas were most sensational. Historians focused on the development of more organized and research-based strategies of advertising. However, the assessments produced by objective researchers, rather than works written by actual advertising practitioners of the

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period, fell short of providing extensive details and specifics about the origins of the different strategies.

Along with an examination of strategies, historians began to identify specific advertising agencies and practitioners that were integral to the evolution of advertising during the early half of the 20th century. By the 1950s, there is no doubt that advertising had reached a major level of success, considering all the claims and disdainful arguments made about advertising’s role of generating redundant and irrational artificial needs and desires (MacLeod, 2012). What advertising accomplished during that stage of development could also be deduced from the success of the most popular advertising giants that gleaned their fame in the business around the same time when Leo Burnett was making a name for himself.

Leo Burnett worked in the same era when David Ogilvy, Theodore Lewis “Ted”

Bates, Raymond Rubicam, Rosser Reeves and William Bernbach were arriving at the center of the advertising world. The good works of such entities as Albert D. Lasker,

John E. Kennedy, and Claude C. Hopkins, as well as Theodore MacManus, had already established an advertising industry foundation by then. These advertising minds had made copywriting the center of the advertising business for newcomers like Leo Burnett.

Burnett and his peers infused new blood into advertising, by developing fresher ideas, sounder concepts, more standardized practices, more creative techniques, and more sincere attitudes.

Biographies and biographical sketches about those who developed these new approaches to advertising, along with an understanding of the conditions and circumstances they faced, provided a more human connection to workings of the

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industry. These biographical works also helped to historical context for the advertising agencies, establishing a place for them within the evolution of mass media as a whole.

Burnett’s role as an industry leader generated a vast amount of short background pieces about his life and entry into advertising. Most of these are of little use for research purpose, except to provide starting points for more in-depth scrutiny. As a famous advertising agency harbinger, Leo Burnett made industry contributions that were well documented by trade publications such as the Advertising Age and the

Journal of Marketing. Likewise, as a successful businessman, Burnett’s economical input into the Chicago’s financial performance at the time was well documented by general news outlets such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Time magazine. Media outlets such as CNBC in its Titan series recorded Burnett’s effort as a brand developer in creating brilliant advertising campaigns that helped his clients grab a large share of their markets.

A great deal of the biographical work on Burnett was either generated by his company, the Leo Burnett Company, for promotional purposes or produced by former employees. In these instances, the works are considered a secondary source, but also a primary source because they were based on interviews with Burnett or the people who knew him best or taken from his speeches and other writings. As the founder of the

Leo Burnett Company, Burnett and his advertising philosophies and principles were revered by the advertising minds within the company. This is evidenced in the company- published books such as Leo Burnett: Star Reacher, Communication of An Advertising

Man, Selections from the Speeches, Articles, Memoranda, and Miscellaneous Writings of Leo Burnett, and 100 Leo’s, as well as the work of kindred souls outside the

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advertising practitioners’ circle, such as The Leo Burnett Book of Advertising written by

Simon Broadbent in 1984.

The book written by Joan Kufrin, a former employee of Leo Burnett Company, provides the world with a portrait of Burnett and his full slate of characters. Since the book Leo Burnett: Star Reacher was written on behalf of the Leo Burnett Company and served as an artifact of the company’s culture, many original and rare research materials could also be found in this book. In addition, Kufrin also had the opportunity to interview some of the important witnesses to Burnett’s weathering of the gloomy days of his newly formed business and his conquering and reshaping of the industry in the days of prosperity, such as the interview on Jack O’ Kieffe, who later became the CEO of the agency. Leo Burnett: Star Reacher, which offered more insight into understanding

Burnett, presented some significant and concrete information about Burnett’s upbringing, as well as his later life story. However, since this book is biographical, it does not concentrate on a specific theme or adopt a scholarly angle aimed at tackling a particular issue, such as presenting solid reasoning into what contributed to Leo

Burnett’s success or what had Burnett’s advertising techniques and philosophies centered on.

Tungate’s Adland: A Global History of Advertising (2007) devoted a small chapter to Leo Burnett. Even though Tungate provided his readers with thorough, though well- known, information on Burnett, he does not put his accomplishments into perspective by comparing Burnett’s advertising style with other advertising giants’ approaches. The section devoted to Burnett, “Life after Leo,” is under the “The Chicago Way” chapter.

Unlike many other authors, Tungate (2007) directly linked Burnett’s advertising to the

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Chicago school of advertising and provided valuable information on the development of

Burnett’s company.

The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and its Creators, written by

Stephen Fox (1984), concentrated on the media buyers and advertising agencies, as well as key advertising copywriters from the 19th century to the 20th century. Burnett’s contribution to the advertising world was discussed in this book, especially his creative impact on the advertising world. Burnett was categorized as one of “the three leading figures in the new advertising,” together with David Ogilvy and William Bernbach (Fox,

1989, p.218). Starting with Burnett’s physical description, Fox (1989) studied Burnett extensively, even some of the Burnett’s most successful advertising campaigns. He also examined the stories behind those successes, information that few had the opportunity to know. However, Burnett’s advertising approaches, as well as his principles in advertising, are not mentioned in the book, which renders Fox’s effort in presenting the creative genius of Burnett less successful, since the advertising approaches and principles held by the advertiser are the best mirror to reflect this person’s true identity.

Books written by other advertisers on advertising during 1950s also inevitably included mention of Burnett’s advertising approaches, as well as principles, if not in great depth, into the discussion. What Burnett’s rivals, such as David Ogilvy, thought of him as an advertiser can be found in Ogilvy’s Confessions of An Advertising Man, as well as Kenneth Roman’s The King of Madison Avenue (2009). Both of these books make tribute to the giant-like figure of Leo Burnett, his work ethics, as well as his successful advertising approaches that helped his clients in building brands, the Leo

Burnett Company’s growth, the mushrooming of the agency’s clientele, and the

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company’s own fame. Materials presented by these books can serve as rare and valuable peer review of Burnett, even though neither David Ogilvy nor Kenneth Roman put much effort into reconstructing the giant persona of Leo Burnett.

In general, biographers took the “Great Man” approach and provided a narrow perspective of key advertising executives, often repeating much information that was already known about the individuals. Much of the information used originated from the companies’ public information departments, scattered research materials from trade journals and mainstream media, interviews given by the advertising gurus on certain issues that interested the interviewer, or previously published press releases. This approach limits the level of thoroughness biographers were able to achieve in delving into the origins of the strategies these advertising pioneers used. Although these types of studies provide a starting place for establishing the personal identity of each of these pioneers, the writers’ goal was to act more as a chronicler than an interpreter.

It is this thesis’s aim to use historical research methods to present a brand new perspective in understanding the impact of Leo Burnett’s journalistic experience on his ability to create effective advertising. This thesis will also offer a preliminary examination of the creative style of the advertising giants at the time that no scholars had studied before. An analysis of the origins of each of these early pioneers is critical to researchers’ understanding of how and why advertising techniques evolved as they did.

Works in this area of research have been more descriptive than detailed, choosing to define the individuals’ preferred approaches rather than seeking to provide answers to questions of origin. Delving into the background of one of the leading advertising minds

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of the period starts the process of filling in omissions from these previous historical accounts.

This present study adds to the literature of advertising history by building on previous works, providing a more introspective examination of the connection between the development of personal philosophies and professional practices. Identifying associations between Burnett and his mentors, as well as his family members, will offer greater understanding of the motivations behind some of the most influential advertising techniques of the period. An aspect of that evolution was journalism’s role in influencing these advertising techniques and extending the relationship beyond just a symbiotic financial arrangement, which helped to cultivate a new type of corporate advertising identity that prospered through the remainder of the 20th century.

Method

This study examines journalism’s influence on Leo Burnett’s advertising career.

Since people are the product of their environment and their relationships, it is important for scholars studying Burnett to consider his personal environment, as well as the various relationships that instilled journalistic values and techniques in him. To accomplish this, the researcher will employ a combination of methods, including: biographical analysis, historical reasoning, literary style, and contextual analysis.

To understand Burnett’s personal relationships, the researcher will collect primary source biographical data using Allan Nevins’ “forces vs. hero” concept of a four-level characterization of a personality. Autobiographical materials from Burnett and his closest relatives and colleagues/employees were scrutinized to create an accurate picture of a biographical subject and of historical events. In Burnett’s case, the elements/entities most critical in his personal life were his wife Naomi and his mentor 31

Theodore F. MacManus, as well as his own experiences -- including his work as a printer’s “devil,” as school editor at University of Michigan, and as a reporter at the

Peoria Journal – and those experiences of his closest relatives. The primary resources used in this study were collected from a variety of autobiographical works, interviews, and newspaper and magazine articles on Leo Burnett, including works he produced, in addition to those produced by and from interviews with immediate family members and close colleagues.

News reports from publications such as Time magazine, the New York Times, the

Washington Post and Advertising Age were analyzed as secondary resources to support the argument made in this study. Articles and opinions presented in the Wall

Street Journal, the New Yorker, as well as assorted trade publications such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Economic History and Journal of Advertising were also a main sources of reference used in this study. The content of these writings and personal writings, as well as a number of Leo Burnett’s videotaped speeches, were analyzed using historical reasoning and literary style approaches. Based on contextual information and primary evidence, historical reasoning uses adductive reasoning

(establishing proof or explanation) to respond to a specific research question or questions. It allows for reconstructions based on the researcher’s informed judgment of the time period and the entities involved, and it permits generalizations on a small scale.

Literary style analysis allows for the use of anecdotal material and for the determination of high probability, if not direct causality, that events transpired in a certain manner.

The most important primary source used in this study is the ads created by Leo

Burnett, such as the “Red-on-red” advertising campaign Burnett created for American

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Meat Institute, the Marlboro Man for the Philip Morris Company, and the Jolly Green

Giant for the Minnesota Canning Company (later known as the Green Giant Company).

In order to present a better understanding of Burnett’s advertising career’s connection to journalism, his early advertising campaigns were examined using contextual analysis.

Contextual analysis allows an assessment of text within the context of its historical and cultural setting and circumstances. The researcher basically situates the text within the environment of its times, while assessing the roles of the author and the intended or actual readers.

Depending on what is being gleaned from the analysis, contextual analysis combines features of basic historical reasoning with a form of cultural archeology, which considers such aspects as social, political, philosophical, economic, or aesthetic conditions that might have existed in the time, place, and circumstances of when the text was created. Key components scrutinized in this study included: what the language and rhetoric reveal about itself as a text; apparent intended audience(s); author’s intention or purpose for producing the text; what the author wishes the readers to do; and what non-textual circumstances might have affected the creation and reception of the text.

Secondary sources used included advertising and media history studies, feature writing style strategies, biographies, and historical studies. These were used, along with primary source information, to help establish the background and historical context in which Burnett operated, as well as to collect, evaluate, and interpret evidence gleaned from primary sources.

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Two types of evaluative techniques were used to authenticate all primary sources and to establish credibility of content, as well as reliability of interpretation. Where necessary, external criticism determined appropriate authorship and dates through analysis of content and comparison of various texts from the original record. Similarly, internal criticism was used to establish credibility of the sources, as well as the literal and real meaning of words, based on concepts from the period of study. Other materials from the time period were used, along with the researcher’s knowledge of the historical context, to cross-verify the evidence.

In summary, this chapter explained the research questions of this study, why the researcher intends to study Leo Burnett, as well as his early journalism influences.

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CHAPTER 2 LEO BURNETT AS A JOURNALIST

Leo Burnett’s Journalistic Background

This chapter illustrates Leo Burnett’s journalist background, as well as the context in which Leo Burnett’s journalistic relationships were unfolded. Not only was Leo Burnett himself influenced greatly by journalism, but his close family members were also connected to journalism significantly.

From Burnett’s childhood to his undergraduate years at University of Michigan, most of his career goals and experience gained were based in journalism, rather than the realm of advertising. Born to Noble and Rose Clark Burnett of St. Johns, Michigan,

Leo Noble Burnett was the oldest of four children. His early “classroom” was the family kitchen table, where he grew up watching his brother Verne put together his neighborhood newspaper and where he watched his father lay out ads for the store.

Watching his father design ads was his only early advertising influence. Burnett also served as a helper in his father’s dry goods store, during which time young Leo did drawings meant only for commercial purposes. As Burnett had remembered,

I looked over my dad’s shoulder as he layed out ads for his store at home after super, on big pieces of wrapping paper spread out on the dining room table, using a big black pencil and a yardstick. (Kufrin, 1995, p.7)

During this time, he took a correspondence course that allowed him to help design advertising placards while he also did some random clerking work for the store (Kufrin,

1995, p.7). For Burnett, clerking was a lackluster task, and he longed to be rid of it.

Perhaps, watching Verne put together his neighborhood paper was what gave Leo the idea to consider journalism. After getting his father’s permission, Leo went to work for

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the Clinton Democrat as a printer’s devil (Bessie, 2001, p. 67). A much older Leo later commented:

I was practically brought up under a printing press. I started in as a printer’s devil and learned to set type and had my own little press at home. I would print little things. I took pied type home with me from the barrel at the newspaper shop, and sorted it out, and had my own case of type at home. (Higgins, 1965, p.26-47)

Despite working with the printing press, young Leo seemed to be more interested in the written word than in handling the technical aspects of printing a newspaper. While at the Clinton Democrat, he wrote obituaries and interviewed people at the local train station (Bessie, 2001, p. 67).

(T)hey sent me down to the station to see who was coming in, who was leaving; and I used to chase all over the country on my bicycle – for obituaries – and started writing little stories for the newspaper at a very early age. And when I was in school, I worked during the summers at a newspaper. So, I always thought I was going to be a newspaperman. (Higgins, 1965, p.26-47)

Later when he enrolled in the University of Michigan, he worked for the

Michiganensian, the university yearbook, The Gargoyle, a monthly humor magazine, and the Michigan Daily (Kufrin, 1995, p.12). However, Burnett admitted that he received little formal education in journalism. He confessed:

Oh, [there wasn’t much offered in journalism] not in a formal way, but we had some very knowledgeable professors, one of whom was a particular influence, Dr. Fred Newton Scott. And he encouraged all of us to subscribe to the New York World, which in those days was a brilliantly written newspaper. This was back in 1911, 1912, 1913 – along in there. (Higgins, 1965, p.26-47)

At this point, Burnett later confided, his dream was to become the editor of the

New York World (Higgins, 2003, p.27). His enthusiasm intensified after working as an editor of the Michigan Wolverine the year he graduated from college (Higgins, 2003, p.29; The Michigan Alumnus, 1915, p.61). He admitted: 36

And so right after my graduation – that summer after my graduation – I worked as editor of the Michigan Wolverine; the summer paper for the University. I got 300 bucks for that – which was pretty big money in 1914. And after that, after the summer school was over, I intended to come to New York and say to the New York World, ‘Give me a job as a reporter!’ And I was all steamed up and the New York World didn’t know what they had coming. (Higgins, 1965, p. 29)

Burnett’s lack of full-time journalism experience failed to dampen his enthusiasm for the profession, even though his part-time work seemed to fit the role of an assistant rather than as the person that others could not function without. That role changed when he joined the Peoria Journal after he graduated from the University of Michigan. A friend, T. Hawley Tapping, who was working on the Peoria Journal at the time, persisted in urging Burnett to apply for the available spot at the newspaper (Kufrin 1995, p.12;

Higgins 1965, p.29-30). Burnett later remembered:

So, I just happened to run into Tap on the campus on my way home, and he asked me what I was going to do. I told him I was going to New York and get a job on the New York World. "Don’t be silly," he said, "I just came from Peoria yesterday." He’d been brought up on a Peoria newspaper, the Peoria Journal. And he said, "There’s a job open down there, and you’d get 18 bucks a week. Don’t be silly and go to New York, because on a paper the size of the Journal you can cover all the bases and this is a hot little paper and a wonderful editor." (Higgins, 1965, p.29-30)

Burnett finally gave up his dream to work for the New York World, the newspaper his University of Michigan English professor, Dr. Fred Newton Scott, had encouraged him to subscribe to, and moved to Peoria, Illinois, a six hour drive from Chicago

(Higgins, 2003, p.29; Kufrin, 1995, p.12; The Michigan Alumnus, 1915, p. 61&169).

Burnett was sent to city hall to “see what's going on” after he arrived at the newspaper

(as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.12). It turned out that Burnett’s first report as a professional journalist was a piece of breaking news, “Lynam Confesses Murder of Wife,” that took almost all of the Peoria Journal back page’s space (Kufrin, 1995, p.12). Paid only $18 a

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week at the Peoria Journal, Burnett was forced to live at the local Y.M.C.A. (The

Michigan Alumnus, 1915, p. 169). Thus, he would sell occasional freelance pieces to make ends meet, such as his short story “Twenty-five Dollars to Go” to Black Cat

Magazine, (The Michigan Alumnus, 1915, p. 387), until he eventually got his promotion article published, which earned him a raise and a lifelong lesson.

In 1915, Burnett was sent to cover the embezzlement trial of a former Peoria schools officer, who was defended by the famous attorney Clarence Darrow (Kufrin,

1995, p.14). When Burnett was covering the trial, he noted that the defendant always had a book with him. Curious about the nature of the book, with the help of “the best cigar in town,” Burnett was able to bribe the bailiff and get the book’s title, Henry

Esmonds (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.14). He then went to the library during the court recess and connected the dots between the trial and the plot of the book and later wrote a report that resulted in a raise of $2 (from $18 to $20 a week) and a position in the rival newspaper, Peoria Star (Kufrin, 1995, p.14; Higgins, 2003, p. 31-32). Burnett later recounted this experience, emphasizing its importance:

I recognize that this was a very small thing, and would have been routine for any experienced reporter, but it had a big impact on me at the time and I have been looking for ‘Henry Esmonds’ ever since.” (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.14)

In the process of searching for the “Henry Esmonds” in his advertising career, Leo

Burnett grew to become one of the most famous ad men in the advertising world, with the help of his unique background as a journalist, which helped shape his perspective on advertising. He had patterned much of his writing style after the writers he had idolized in the World. He explained:

It was a brilliant paper, where Heywood Broun and a lot of top writers were working. Their writings and Franklin P. Adams’ column, "The Conning 38

Tower," was running in those days. And so I read the New York World every day and studied the style. (Higgins, 1965, p. 29)

Perhaps, what he admired the most about the World writers’ work was the creative flair—men who he believed knew “the power of words and pictures and how to use them”; this admiration for expressive writing, especially in magazines, would continue to fascinate him into his later years. In praise of magazines, he commented:

Among all forms of communication, magazines are the greatest single hope this country has for provoking thought, advancing culture and improving taste at a time when the country needs to read and think as it never did before. (Burnett, 1959b)

Burnett easily adapted what he loved about the World writers’ style into a new style of advertising that combined elements of both professions (Higgins 2003, p.27).

His cost-conscious lifestyle in Peoria probably also imbued him with a deeper understanding of the consumers’ mind-set, as well as what rewards they were looking for in an ad, consciously or subliminally. Realizing he could make more money writing advertising copy, Burnett was lured away to work for Cadillac Motor Car Company as the editor of an in-house publication, Cadillac Clearing House, later becoming advertising manager (Kufrin 1995, p.15). In 1919, he moved to Indianapolis as advertising manager for a new automobile company, Lafayette Motors, until he was hired by a local advertising agency, the Homer McKee Company, as head of creative operations (Kufrin 1995, p.17). This would be his first job at an advertising agency. In

1930 he was hired by Erwin, Wasey & Company of Chicago to assume the position of vice-president/creative head (Bessie 2012, p.3208).

Five years later Leo Burnett left Wasey & Company to form his own agency, what

Burnett referred as his “idea agency” in Chicago in 1935 (Kufrin, 1995, p.53). In a bold move in a struggling economy, Burnett borrowed $25,000 from his life insurance and 39

another $25,000 as an investment from Lazure Goodman, one of the founders of

Realsilk Hosiery Mills, Inc. Even though he was guaranteed three accounts’ loyalty --

Minnesota Valley Canning (later Green Giant), Hoover Vacuum Cleaners, and Realsilk

Hosiery -- his plan was still considered a risky bet (“New Advertising Agency, Burnett

Co., Is Organized Here,” 1935). The agency’s first-year billings were around $60,000, yet when Burnett passed away in 1971, the Leo Burnett Company was the biggest advertising agency in Chicago, and the fifth largest in the world (Bessie, 2001, p.184;

“Leo Burnett, 79, Ad firm's founder,” 1971).

A fervent supporter of using emotional appeals in advertising, he believed “an accurate emotional appeal transcends cost and all other appeals”; he also stressed that the future of the advertising industry relied upon advertising professionals’ ability to

“give our clients that kind of interpretation” that exists in a good feature story and “not by preaching, but by using the skills you have developed as good journalists and good editors” (Burnett 1961, p.103 & 238). For Burnett, these skills would be honed by his interaction and involvement with others who shared similar journalistic experiences or an appreciation for what a good news story had to offer.

A Family of Journalists

Because she had received only an eighth-grade education, Leo Burnett’s mother ensured that Leo, as well as his siblings, were offered the best educational opportunities. Nobel Burnett eventually went bankrupt, and his store was sold at auction. However, Rose Clark Burnett managed to sell their house and work as a realtor to support all four of her children through college (Bessie, 2001, p. 68).

Verne Burnett made a name for himself first in journalism, then in advertising and public relations. Gladys May Burnett hated the name “Gladys,” and changed it to “Mary” 40

soon after she left home. Many of the details of the life Leo Burnett, as well as his siblings, had led was recounted by Gladys, and later recorded in her son’s book, Rare

Birds: An American Family.

She remembered the time her mother threw a carving knife at fourteen- year-old Leo; She remembered the cross her mother always bore…. (Bessie, 2012, p.1127)

Harry Burnett was the youngest son of Noble and Rose Clark Burnett. Harry’s life was centered in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and he was well recognized for his artistry in puppetry design, including his work with celebrity lookalike puppets.

Charlie Chaplin, one of Harry’s clients, had been fascinated by his work and “lingered long after a show to carry on an animated discussion about puppetry and pantomime”

(Bessie, 2012, p.719). Harry Burnett led a gay life, figuratively and literately. However,

Harry’s private life, “odd” by early 20th-century standards, was readily accepted in the

Burnett family and overshadowed by his acting talent, as well as his puppetry ingenuity

(Bessie, 2012, p. 851).

Verne Burnett

Burnett’s brother Verne provided some of his earliest exposure to journalism.

Verne “turned out his own neighborhood paper on hand press” or to sell the Ladies’

Home Journal and McCall’s magazines to households door-to-door (Bessie, 2001, p.66). After graduating from college and serving as managing editor of the Wolverine in

1916, Verne worked as a reporter on the Michigan Daily (Bessie, 2001, p. 70), where he became a major attraction at the paper. He worked on the Michigan Daily staff for three years, winning the national college paper editorial contest in 1916 (The Michigan

Alumnus, 1920, p. 611). Before Verne’s tenure as managing editor, campus leaders had already begun to notice the paper’s apparent value to its readers. “The size of The Daily 41

was increased from five to six columns and the page was made one inch longer in

1911, and new type and headlines were authorized;” then, under Verne, the Association of Eastern College Newspapers awarded The Daily its first prize for an editorial

(Donnelly, Shaw & Gielsness, 1958, p. 1910).

During the war and in the fall of 1917, Verne served in the advance Motor

Transport Corps. He later served in the advance Motor Transport in France, and for several months after the armistice he worked on Stars and Stripes, the independent news and information service for the U.S. military community, in Paris (The Michigan

Alumnus, 1920, p. 611). Verne later worked on the editorial staffs of the Detroit Free

Press and Detroit News at different times (Carter, 1921, p.13).

Like Leo, Verne eventually moved to Detroit, where he wrote “institutional ads for

General Motors” (Bessie, 2001, p.73). A staunch advocate for institutional ad campaigns, he also wrote articles to encourage others of the benefits to using ads produced by in-house teams. For example:

General Motors and American Telephone and Telegraph are two of the outstanding examples of the practical value of institutional advertising . . . The success of the General Motors campaign on used cars and the idea of two or more cars per family cannot be overlooked. In reality it was a job benefiting the entire automobile industry, of which the corporation represents one-third .... The test of practical sales value of other General Motors institutional work lay not so much in constant studies and check-ups as in an activity of President Sloan. In his travels he asked many car dealers personally if they would rather have the institutional money split up and added to the various divisional campaigns. The result was almost unanimous for continuing the institutional campaign. A test like that cannot be laughed off. (Burnett, 1930, p. 116)

After his stint in advertising, Verne began to show more interest in the public relations industry. His book You and Your Public: A Guide Book to the New Career --

Public Relations “lays down all the basic principles and outlines various methods that he

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has found essential in determining and analyzing public thought” (“Books for the

Businessman,” 1944). According to Verne Burnett, understanding public thought also requires “creative thinking,” as well as sincerity. He argued:

You want people to feel that your heart is in the right place . . . You make the people feel important by asking their advice. But don't ever let the public down. Live up to its expectations. (as cited in Cleaves, 1943, p. 8)

Despite his lucrative career in public relations, Verne continued to write for various publications about such topics as the economy, the auto industry, and home front productivity during World War II. In “Manpower Reserves,” his anecdotal lead reads as though it were ripped from the pages of Pulitzer’s World. It read, in part:

A MIDDLE-AGED blind man is assembling motors. A 72-year-old veteran is running a glue wheel on a night shift. A housewife is operating a bridge-type overhead electric crane. Women and children are working in the fields, in stores and at almost every other kind of job.

Stories like these are pouring in from all sections of the country. They paint a picture of our tremendous wartime needs. It looks as though we are scraping the bottom of our manpower barrel. President Roosevelt has called for a national service law to “make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in the nation. The national war program requires the employment of more people in 1944 than in 1943. (Burnett, 1944)

Burnett’s nephew Dan Bessie, Mary’s son, made the point that the Burnett brothers and their sister “hung together.” They respected each other’s judgment, and they were always supportive of each other in troubling times (Bessie, 2001, p. 76). Leo

Burnett valued his younger brother’s opinion and business sense a great deal. In many instances, the two brothers seem to have shared a similar set of business principles.

Leo’s view in regard to providing consumers with all the information necessary to make the most knowledgeable decision bears a striking resemblance to Verne’s view. Verne

Burnett advocated:

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Tell the customers what they want to know—what they have a right to know and ought to know about what is offered so that they may buy wisely and obtain the maximum satisfaction from their purchases. (Burnett, 1950, p. 12)

In a speech on house publications, at a meeting of the Chicago Industrial Editors,

Burnett explained how much he valued his brother’s views on communication. Verne’s views on honesty and sincerity with employees were almost the same as dealing with the consumer.

My brother, Verne Burnett, who is in the business of public relations, makes an interesting point.

He says there are two outstanding forms of communication between employer and employee. One is the group meeting. The other is the house publication. (…) Verne Burnett feels that the editor of the house magazine can borrow a great deal from the meeting technique, creating an atmosphere of personal contact, plus honest and clear answers to questions in the minds of employees and giving him the bad news as well as the good. (Burnett, 1961, p.100)

Mary Burnett and Alvah Bessie

Perhaps, the most accurate picture of Leo Burnett’s early family life appeared in the writings of his sister, Mary, and her second husband, Alvah Bessie. Although Mary never published her journals or personal writings, Alvah Bessie, a noted writer and war correspondent, used her family stories and recollections as the basis for his first book,

Dwell in the Wilderness (Bessie, 2001, p. 59-76).

According to Alvah and Mary’s son, Daniel Bessie, Mary’s writing provided an avenue of escape from her early home life. He explained, “My mother, whose world was never financially comfortable but was filled with raising David and me, found an outlet in her writing, in an ability to treasure the smallest things: a friendly windowsill plant, the sound of country crickets, or a fat water bug scuttling under the sink when she’d surprise it by flicking on the light” (Bessie, 2001, p. 65). 44

Her childhood diaries were filled with impressions of her small town, ranging from climbing trees to walking barefoot in mud to taking part in funeral rituals. Topics during high school switched to poetry and drama. By the time she entered college, she majored in English and education, while trying her hand at creative writing. She later sold at least one magazine story about life with her children after her divorce from Alvah

(Bessie, 2001, p. 155). The dramatization and vivid description in her stories were reminiscent of the writing style present in Burnett’s later advertisements. In one of her unpublished stories, she described:

The October sunshine, the thrill of autumn leaves that sparkled and danced over the countryside, the thought of tomorrow being Friday when I would take the ten-mile ride by interurban back to Ann Arbor for a weekend date, the war, the thoughts of one brother overseas and the confident desire to conquer the world; all these churned and swirled as I sat on the stoop and took the last bite of an apple. (reprinted in Bessie, 2001, p. 65-70)

After briefly holding a job in Paris at an English-language newspaper, Paris-Times,

Alvah returned to America and worked his way through a series of writing-related jobs— publishing house office manager, editor of another publishing house, proofreader and fact-checker for The New Yorker. He and Mary married in July 1930, and Alvah took odd jobs to make ends meet, along with selling the occasional short story and book reviews for Scribner’s magazine.

Alvah Bessie’s style of writing became known as “experimental writing,” described as “the new and fresh use of style, the clean seeing, the interrelation of mood, atmosphere and event to create a unique interpretation of those circumstances” (Appel,

1936, p. 12). According to Appel (1936), experimental writing developed out of a resistance to the “straight declarative sentences” used in “realistic writing” (p.12). Much

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like Mary’s journal entries, Alvah’s work is laden with sensory details and dramatic wording.

SHE turned on her side and watched her husband sleep. It was light outside and she could hear the crow calling imperiously from his perch beside the front door. Wide beams of clear light fell through the window, and the bee that had been imprisoned in the room so many days was still buzzing feebly against the panes. She marvelled at its tenacity. Watching him sleep she wondered at the faculty he possessed for complete relaxation—the faculty that enabled him to sleep like a child no matter what had been harassing him the evening before. (Bessie, 1932)

By 1935, after Alvah’s retelling of the lives of the Burnett family, Dwell in the

Wilderness, was published, he was given the job of assistant editor on two Sunday magazine sections of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Bessie, 2001, p. 99-100).

Naomi Burnett and George Geddes

Naomi was often the person Burnett turned to when he was working on campaigns featuring household products, as Phoebe Burnett said in her interview with Joan Kufrin,

Leo Burnett “used to come home and discuss business with mother a lot” (Kufrin 1995, p.98). She once described herself as “a shadowy, somewhat veiled figure in the remote background of my husband`s ephemeral but notable career. . . . I can’t shine alone. I need a star to light me up” (as cited in Houston, 1990).

In the speech that Burnett thanked 45 members of the Leo Burnett Company who had been the “warp and woof” of the agency, Naomi Burnett was one of the privileged group members Burnett referred to; Burnett said in his speech that “many of the ideas I take credit for are actually hers,” and that Naomi loved and was proud of the agency (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.242; as cited in Gentile, 2009, p.45).

When Burnett first met Naomi, she was studying library science while moonlighting at her mother’s restaurant (Gentile, 2009, p.43; Kufrin, 1995, p.16). Books and the

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written word played an important role in establishing Naomi and Burnett’s relationship.

Instead of using flowers and other classic tokens of romance, Burnett courted Naomi with books, something he knew would appeal to her (Gentile, 2009, p.43). Naomi and

Leo eventually married on May 29, 1918, in Detroit (The Michigan Alumnus, 1918, p.

643).

In the CNBC Titans: Leo Burnett interview, Kelly Donavan, Leo Burnett’s great granddaughter, recalled that he once asked Naomi what features of an automatic washing machine she would prefer, which was an example of Burnett’s reliance on his wife’s opinion when it comes to household products (Schaeffer, 2011). Not only did

Naomi offer her opinions to Burnett about what she felt about the washing machine, she also wrote Burnett a memo listing all the merits she believed a washing machine should have. On “Why I haven’t an automatic washer,” Naomi said,

[Y]ou would have to guarantee that the machine wouldn’t need servicing for at least two or three years and not just one year. You would have to convince me that my present hot water could supply enough hot water for 5 consecutive loads.” (as cited in Gentile, 2009, p.44-45)

Naomi was the daughter of George Geddes, the son of an Ohio congressman

(Gentile, 2009, p.42-43), who died of heart failure when she was 8. A real estate salesman (Gentile, 2009, p.43), George Geddes had earlier worked for the Richland

Shield and Banner in Mansfield, Ohio (“Obituaries,” 1901). Even though George passed away when Naomi was eight, she shared his love of books and his keen news eye for what would interest readers.

Journalism at Work

Leo Burnett’s advertising/journalism interconnectedness was not limited to his family’s accomplishments. Burnett once said that his newspaper background taught him

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the importance of curiosity—the curiosity to thoroughly research every product and to learn everything he could from the experts around him (Higgins, 2003, p. 35). From his bosses at Cadillac Motors, Lafayette Motors, and Homer McKee to colleagues at Erwin,

Wasey & Company, Burnett collected words of wisdom that undoubtedly influenced the development of his advertising principles.

Automotive advertising was the “bellwether of the field” from 1905 to 1940, until wartime restrictions intervened. This period witnessed a wellspring of dramatic new-car promotional campaigns from such companies as MacManus, Ewald, Nort Brotherton, and W. A. P. John in Detroit, Homer McKee in Indianapolis, Ward Canaday in Toledo and J. M. Cleary in Chicago (Bird, 1947, p. 339). Cadillac was where Burnett first glimpsed the workings of the advertising world. There he met Earle C. Howard, sales manager, and Theodore F. MacManus, the creator of probably Cadillac's most memorable print ad "The Penalty of Leadership."

Earle C. Howard

Burnett’s first boss at Cadillac Motor Car Company was Earle Howard, an advertising man with a keen instinct for human nature. Howard joined Cadillac in 1906 after working for the National Cash Register Company. Working in the Cadillac sales department under William E. Metzger, Howard eventually advanced to sales manager in

1912, succeeding Ernest H. Benson (“Cadillac Official Dies in Hospital,” 1926).

Despite Howard’s lack of a newspaper background, his institutional ad copy maintained the dramatic and passionate tone of turn-of-the-century news journals.

Howard added human interest to the copy by connecting with the consumers on a personal level through nouns with positive connotations, analogies, and anecdotal explanation. 48

There is latent in all of us a desire to have those things that are above the average and have the spark of originality and individuality that men have long searched for and deeply cherished. . . . Mass production is the greatest aid the average man has had since the invention of the printing press, which after all is nothing more than the means for mass production of writing. It has given to the artisan and farmer comforts and the power and glory that a Caesar or Napoleon could not buy. (Howard, 1924) A similar piece relies on spurring a sense of “pride of ownership,” as well as pride in good craftsmanship. The formal sentence structure, as well as word choices such as

“cravat” and “repressed elegance”, implies a level of “richness” and quality from the

American-made product.

These people realize that, after all, life is not just one unit after another, but that its real pleasures come from being able to do the exceptional things and from being in a position to acquire those possessions that surpass the average. . . .

The cravat whose shade is unnoticeably odd, the hat that is unobtrusively smart, the motor car whose appearance is one of repressed elegance and an increased range of mobility, are the cravat, hat, and motor car that are selected by those whose education and business training has taught them the value and the pride of ownership that can only come with the article that evidences the craftsmanship from which it was sprung. (Howard, 1924)

One 1918 essay chastised consumers who could afford the expense for not hiring chauffeurs to help the wartime economy. Anecdotes and examples played a critical role in “showing” readers how they could help.

Economy does not mean solely the saving of money. Often it means the expenditure of money in order to make more money. Many successful businessmen apply this principle to their motor cars and their chauffeurs. They are competent to drive their own cars if they care to do so. . . . Men who thus employ a chauffeur's time to their own business and personal advantage list the pay of this worker in the economy column instead of the expense column. (Howard, 1918)

Burnett learned from Earle that formality in letter writing, or any writing, did not have to be dull. Writing, however, should be “person-to-person communication of the most human sort” (Burnett, 1961, p.116). To acquaint Burnett with this human aspect of

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writing, Howard assigned the former journalist to write a story about the importance of neatness at a Cadillac dealership. The result was an anecdotal-based story that earned

Burnett a job editing Cadillac’s in-house magazine (Higgins, 2003, p. 34-35).

Burnett’s green-ink signature also developed out of his relationship with Howard.

Burnett was always happy to tell people that the reason for using green ink to sign his name was “in emulation of and in tribute to” Earle Howard. Burnett rationalized, “What was good for him was good enough for me” (Burnett, 1961, p.116).

Howard’s influence on Burnett did not stop at the color of his signature. Later in

1919, Howard, along with D. McCall White, J.W. Applin, Maurice J. Moore, and Charles

W. Nash founded LaFayette Motors Corporation in Indianapolis. Asked to join the newly formed company, Burnett took the offer as the advertising manager, with no staff and only a secretary to run the department (Kufrin, 1995, p.17 & 20).

Arthur Kudner

Burnett’s first job at LaFayette was to find an advertising agency that best suited the new company’s ideals. After scouring the Saturday Evening Post, he “selected what impressed me as being the best ads without knowing what agency had done most of them” (Kufrin, 1995, p. 20). The agency Burnett selected as having the best automobile ads, and to whom he assigned the LaFayette account, was Erwin, Wasey & Company, which Burnett later joined in 1930. The reason he chose the company was because of

Art Kudner, the first company employee he met who shared his Saturday morning work ethic (Kufrin, 1995, p. 20).

Convinced that the Chicago-based Erwin, Wasey & Company was the ideal company to handle the account, Burnett went to Chicago one Saturday morning to talk to them personally. However, when he arrived at the company offices in the Garland 50

Building, there was no one in the unlit reception room. A mailroom clerk told him only

Kudner, the copy chief, was working that day. He found Kudner sitting in his tiny office in his shirtsleeves in front of a typewriter and writing a Goodyear tire ad. In less than five minutes, Burnett had given the account to the company. The resulting ad, simple line drawings of familiar road sights and copy only 200 lines deep, was a hit with LaFayette dealers (Higgins, 2003, p. 38-39). As Burnett recounted,

I have always felt that this experience (LaFayette Motor Car Company), plus my Cadillac advertising experience, gave me a 'feel' for quality in advertising and an understanding of the power of assumption which have benefited me throughout my business life. (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.22)

In 1915, Kudner started his career with the Cheltenham Advertising Agency in

New York, before joining the advertising firm of Erwin, Wasey & Company as a copywriter in Chicago and New York. He was appointed president of Erwin, Wasey &

Company in 1929, the same year he received Harvard University’s award for the best- written ad of the year. Six years later, he left that post at Erwin, Wasey & Company to found Arthur Kudner, Inc. He was known for providing the genius behind some of the most intensive advertising campaigns, especially several promoting rubber tires

(“Untitled”, 1944).

Burnett once noted, “As I look back over the people who did the most to shape my attitudes about advertising, one of the foremost is the late Art Kudner” (McIntyre, 1936).

The clean lines of the illustrations and the succinct ad copy might have been the result of Kudner’s newspaper background. The Lapeer, Michigan native had spent his free time in his father’s newspaper, the Lapeer County Press. Publisher Henry Clay Kudner was a proponent of keeping things simple, and his son Art was adept at writing for

“plain-speaking” people (Myers, 1984).

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Perhaps the best example of Kudner’s simple approach was a speech he delivered at the alumni reunion of Lapeer High School in 1935 (Myers, 1984), which was reprinted a year later in book form for his newborn sons (Burnett, 1961, p. 110).

Called “Little Words,” Kudner’s lines were reprinted in the compilations of Burnett’s speeches and other inspirational writings. It read:

One chapter dealt with "words," as follows: Never fear big long words. Big long words name little things. All big things have little names. Such as life and death, peace and war. Or dawn, day, night, hope, love, home. Learn to use little words in a big way. It is hard to do but they say what you mean. When you don't know what you mean, use big words. That often fools little people. (Burnett, 1961, p. 110) Boca Raton News columnist Bill Myers reprinted the piece in 1984 after running across it in a book by “that language guru of Juno Beach, ol' Charley Redfield.” Myers remembered the words because he had reprinted Kudner’s entire alumni speech in the

Lapeer County Press, which his family later bought from Henry Clay Kudner. Myers praised Kudner for his writing skills and talents as an ad man:

Art went on to become great in the field of advertising, founding his own agency, Arthur Kudner, Inc. He had such accounts as Buick, Listerine, American Tobacco and Barbasol, and he wrote much of the copy himself. Always his ads used words people understood.

Often he came back from Madison Avenue to the country town of Lapeer to get the sense of the plain-speaking people of America. (Myers, 1984)

Homer McKee

While little is mentioned of Homer McKee in current times, he was well known in the business community for his homespun wisdom at the turn of the century. McKee worked as a newspaper cartoonist for seven years with the Indianapolis Star before

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becoming advertising manager of the Cole Motor Car Company, and later of the

Marmon Motor Car Company (Bird, 1947, p. 339). The Cole Blue Book, issued by the

Cole Motor Car Co. and written and arranged by McKee, was lauded as “notable for the straightforward and interesting manner in which it is written,” as well as for its company information and inspiring usage of typography and illustrations (“Untitled”, 1912-13). The techniques used were “almost universally adopted by the writers of automobile advertising” (“Untitled”, 1912-13). According to Tungate, some of Burnett’s basic advertising ideologies were, likewise, developed directly from those of McKee’s, such as: “Don’t try and sell manure spreaders with a Harvard accent” and “If a kid can’t understand it, it’s no good” (Tungate, 2007, p. 67-68).

After resigning as advertising director for the Premier Motor Corp., McKee formed his own advertising company in 1917. Despite his background in automobile advertising, McKee formed the company with Aaron Wolfson, of Kahn Tailoring Co., as vice president and Fred H. Hoover, formerly in the sales department of Woods and

Rauch & Lang electrics, as secretary-treasurer (“Untitled”, 1917a).

McKee’s writing style combined no-nonsense insight and an air of the dramatic, often tinged with a bit of humor. One creative work, which was later printed as part of his book For Ports Unknown (McKee, 1922), was often reprinted by the Kansas and

Michigan state boards of health. His A Man’s Prayer detailed honorable tenets a business man, or any man, should follow to take pride in himself and to have his loved ones be proud of him. He wrote:

Help me to live so that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow and unhaunted by the faces of those to whom I have brought pain.

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Grant that I may earn my meal ticket on the square, and in doing thereof that I may not stick the gaff where it does not belong.

Deafen me to the jingle of tainted money and the rustle of unholy skirts.

Blind me to the faults of the other fellow, but reveal me my own. …as published by the Kansas State Board of Health. (reprinted in Michigan's Health, 1918, p. 4)

Another often reprinted piece was originally produced as a letter to the editors of the Indianapolis News when McKee was still advertising manager at Premier Motor.

Tom Griffith, of Udell Wooden Ware Works, a woodworking company in Indianapolis, had reprints made and distributed to furniture and other woodworking companies as far away as Grand Rapids, Michigan. The overwhelmingly patriotic piece relies on the intense wording and vivid imagery so popular among news feature writers and fiction writers of the period. The direct challenge to the readers at the end uses first-person plural pronouns to elicit the feelings that the writer and the readers “are all in this together.”

And doesn't it mean something to Americans to know that at last their hour has struck, and that from today on we are to be a nation, rich in tradition, a power among world powers, and that the voice of one Uncle Sam is going to be raised in the high councils of the mighty, not in a tone of arrogance and vaunting egotism, but in the deep-throated tones of one who is right, and who has at last learned how to use his big dukes. America is already the world's one great arbiter--the world's one great throne of appeal--the world's chaperon, protector and chief of police--all in one--incorruptible, fair and fearless. . . . Henceforth, when we register from the U. S. A. in hotels of other lands, men will speak gently and women will drop unbidden tears of gratitude, and children will hush their voices in the presence of a love that no man can define.

Wherefore all this gloom, neighbors?

Let us throw out our chests, hold up our chins, and thank Divine Providence for the honor of taking the white man's burden off shoulders that are still strong--but, oh, how weary. (“Untitled”, 1917b; “Untitled”, 1917c)

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In “Saviors,” a piece on racecar driving, readers can “hear”, as well as “feel”, the entire driving experience. A question forces readers to engage in the discussion and think about the drivers and the action on the track.

DID you ever ride ninety miles an hour in an open race ear no bigger than a bath tub, with the sun frying your brain, wind crushing you against the back of your seat, ears splitting with the crash of cylinders—the track and the world and your past pulling back under you like a torrent of milk, and all the while the blinding glimmer of the stretch ahead--always AHEAD--rising up to slam you in the face?

It's HELL, but a kind of happy hell that hairy men come back to year after year.

--Just like they re-enlist in the Marines. (McKee, 1922)

However, his instructions, on business operations or life in general, tended to be his most sought-after work, much like his “A Man’s Prayer.” Unlike his more creative writings, his straightforward wording, in clipped tones, seemed to command rather than to advise. His “certified car plan” offered principles on which to base a resale program for used cars, a program based on honest interaction between the dealers and the buyers. He asserted:

No car could be certified if the ownership title was questionable, tending to prevent the resale of stolen cars.

After proper publicity intelligent dealers would not offer nor intelligent buyers buy a car not certified.

The certification board would be composed of fair, competent, unprejudiced mechanical experts. (McKee, 1922)

Similarly, “A Plan That Keeps Your Head Clear During Readjustment” provided a list of things citizens can do to get the American economy back on its feet and to help families readjust after wartime. His plain-spoken reasoning delivered a verbal “kick in the butt” to readers who continued to worry about the threat of war. He scolded:

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There is something Concrete in the hands of every one--a concrete tool with which to do a concrete job.

Do it and quit worrying about what big things the Almighty has on his mind.

Quit trying to read the riddle of the universe and answer the mail on your desk. All you and I have to comprehend and master is the task of to-day. No one man can dope out the present tangle, and anybody that tries to will merely reveal himself a fool. (McKee, 1921-1922)

Both “A Plan That Keeps Your Head Clear During Readjustment” and “Wealth May

Be Croix de Guerre or Scarlet Letter,” a lengthy reprimand of greedy businessmen, employs anecdotal examples to allow the readers to put a face to the situation. He also incorporated typographical emphasis to underscore his descriptive nouns. He stressed:

Business men have automatically fallen into two classes: swivel-chair slackers and HE MEN who go out and uncover their BARE BREASTS to the BULLETS. . . .I know one millionaire whose bankroll is like a benediction. With him, a million dollars mean a million ways of making the world a better place for people to live in. He GOT his money BY SERVING OTHERS and he is GETTING RID OF IT IN THE SAME WAY. (“Wealth May Be Croix de Guerre or Scarlet Letter,” 1922-1923)

Theodore F. MacManus

Both McKee and Theodore F. MacManus seem to have been instrumental in teaching Burnett the value of taking a straightforward approach when dealing with employees and consumers. Burnett once commented, “MacManus taught me the power of the truth, simply told” (Tungate, 2007, p. 67). Burnett’s timing was perfect for beginning his career in advertising, especially for arriving at Cadillac when MacManus was changing the industry’s thinking about how advertising should be practiced.

Consistently remaining at or near the top over the years, MacManus was one of the most renowned advertising agents in the industry. He was among the first 10 people honored to be members of advertising Hall of Fame –along with John Wanamaker, John

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Romer, Cyrus Curtis, William Johns, Alfred Erickson, McCann-Erickson, Lewis Jones,

E.T. Meredith, and Rollins Ayres (“Ad hall of fame opens with 10 industry giants,” 1999).

Born in Buffalo, New York in in 1872, MacManus started as an office boy at 15, while attending public high school at Canisius College in Buffalo. He later became city editor of the Toledo (Ohio) Commercial at 16 and managing editor at 19. Intrigued by advertising, he went into handling merchant advertising accounts, after quitting the newspaper business. He then was hired as advertising manager of Kobacker’s

Department Store, a chain of stores with locations in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and eventually owners of Tiedtke’s in downtown Toledo, determined to learn all he could about the business. He convinced the storeowner that advertising should be handled by an expert. “I didn’t know anything about advertising at the time,” he recalled later, “but neither did anyone else” (“Death Claims Early Ad Man”, 1940; MacManus,

1925, p.71-85; The City of Detroit, 1922).

He soon became enough of an expert to rent an office in 1903, and he opened the

MacManus Kelly Company, an advertising agency with offices in Detroit and Toledo. His first major account was the Yale automobile in 1907 (“Death claims early ad man,”

1940). In 1915, he joined Erwin, Wasey & Company (“Untitled”, 1915b; “Untitled,”

1915a). His roster of clients after the first experience with the Yale car included most of the American-made motor cars.

Ironically, despite his extensive work with automobiles, MacManus never learned to drive a car. “My one attempt to learn to drive was in a one-lung Cadillac many years ago. It stopped in traffic and I tried to start it until my irritation led along the road to profanity. Then I left it in the middle of the street and never again tried to drive,” he

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recalled in 1937 (“Death claims early ad man,” 1940). By 1922, the city leaders of

Detroit lauded MacManus’ contributions to the local business community. A 200-year history of the city remarked:

They make a specialty of handling the advertising for large corporations and Mr. MacManus’ administrative powers, initiative spirit and determined purpose have enabled him to build up a business of extensive proportions. The company have in their service from forty-five to fifty employees, having a larger office force than any other advertising firm in the city. (The City of Detroit, 1922, p. 59-60)

MacManus was deemed the spokesman for good copy, and Burnett considered him “one of the greatest advertising men of all time.” MacManus once said, “Give me a pencil and a writing pad, and I can make a business” (MacManus, 1927, p. vii). He also advocated, “Big things were not merely done in a big way, but the doers became big in the doing” (MacManus, 1927, p.5).

“I was fortunate to be able to spend quite a lot of time with him,” Burnett later acknowledged, “and I became fascinated with his thinking and his quality-mindedness and his great power of assumptiveness that he employed in his copy” (Higgins, 2003, p.

35).

MacManus’ “assumptiveness” was probably most noticeable in “The Penalty of

Leadership” ad. MacManus’ most famous ad, run only once in the Saturday Evening

Post, on January 2, 1915, even though the impact of the campaign has continued into the 21st century. MacManus later commented, “Probably we are all silly, but we all have our underlying sanities. Advertising has gone amuck in that it has mistaken the surface silliness for the sane, solid substance of an averagely decent human nature” (as cited in

“Modern sales arguments,” 1929).

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The simplistic approach to “The Penalty of Leadership” ad stripped away the

“silliness” and focused on the positive and negative aspects of being a visionary. The ad, for Cadillac Motor Company, attempted to deal with rapidly spreading rumors that problems with Cadillac’s new V8 model would run rampant because it was introduced onto the market too early. Rather than mention the car or the technology, MacManus chose to humanize the product and the company in the minds of American consumers by focusing on the heavy “responsibility” that comes from being innovative and daring.

With no illustrations and wide margins of white space around the text, the ad read, in part:

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white glare of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in music, in industry, the reward and punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. (MacManus, 1915)

Those who knew MacManus, “T.F.” to his family and friends, would not have been surprised by this unusual approach. According to MacManus, imagination and daring are critical for any successful business. Any business could succeed by applying the following principle:

The thing which is important is that the only five ingredients which could possibly have promised even a lesser business success were these: a vivid and unruly imagination, a stubborn pride, which concealed his timidity; more or less of a flair or expression, an intense interest in other people’s thoughts, acts, and motives; and a thin underlying stratum of common sense. (MacManus, 1927, p.19)

MacManus used a similar approach of humanizing the product and the company with anecdotes and sensationalistic wording in many of his writings. The central theme of MacManus’ book with co-author Norman Beasley, a Detroit newspaper reporter, Men,

Money, and Motors; the Drama of the Automobile, was not a typical history of the 59

development of the automobile. Relying on “a somewhat scrambled succession of anecdotes which dramatize the birth of the gasoline age and pick out some of the high lights in its stormy adolescence” (“Obituaries,” 1929), not on the motors and technology, but on the men behind the machines. Anecdotes and the descriptive narrative add a larger-than-life quality to the characters selected as important to the evolution of the automobile. The words of MacManus and Beasley paint a dramatic picture of the inventors, elevating them to almost epic levels.

(T)here was a rugged picturesqueness to those pursuers of fortunes. . . .The stuff from which men are made heroic was not altogether lacking in them. Business has become the last great heroism . . . . a conflict of the hard-muscled and strong-willed, for only they will survive. (MacManus & Beasley, 1930, p. 9)

Reviews of the book were generally favorable, with many reviewers noting the unusual writing style. One critic, James Malin (1929), admitted that despite the lack of a rigorous research methodology, there was not a “really dull page in the book, not even pages 17-18 which are devoted to the enumeration of some of the names of automobiles which no longer exist.” Malin attributed the engrossing and dramatic writing style to the authors’ journalistic background. He concluded:

It does not follow, however, that the rules of dramatic structure have been observed; and it is quite obvious to the reader that the writing was done without the guidance of a standard manual on historical method. The style is a good example of the influence which newspaper writing and high- pressure advertising have upon the evolution of the English language. (Malin, 1929)

Because of the semiautobiographical component of the book, Malin (1929) referred to MacManus as “an actor turned playwright,” which was not far from the truth.

MacManus was also a poet who blended news events, creative writing elements, and a personal passion for his topics. His A Book of Verse, written in 1922, was a collection of

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MacManus’ original poetry, some previously appearing in newspapers and magazines around the country. “Cave Sedem!”, a verse in which MacManus warned of the consequences of inactivity, was reprinted in Harper’s Weekly and other publications, such as Labor Digest, a national magazine for the advocacy of industrial peace.

MacManus warned:

Man was not made to sit a-trance, And press, and press, and press, his pants; But rather, with an open mind, To circulate among his kind. (MacManus, 1914)

His poem, “The Nation’s Grief,” chronicled the country’s reaction to the assassination of President William McKinley. A notation from the publisher of the Toledo

Bee indicated that the poem was written for C. A. King & Co’s. market circular. C.A.

King & Co. was a grain dealer in Toledo.

HOT with the tears that choke and blind, Bear with us, Lord, ’till we be resigned. Our hearts are human—he was our chief— Bear with the anger that mars our grief. Time! O, Lord, till the fight be won— Time, to falter “Thy will be done.” (MacManus, 1901)

MacManus passed away in 1940, four years after the Leo Burnet Company was founded. He never had the chance to witness the success of one of his disciples in the advertising world. Burnett had learned to use humanizing techniques to present the

“inherent drama” he and his company discovered within every product, even to

Theodore F. MacManus’ standards.

“It has suddenly dawned on me that perhaps nearly all printed advertising may fall into two basic types: poster-style and reason-why” style (Burnett, 1961, p.241). Burnett

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believed “the poster style of advertising is addressed to all,” and explained his reasoning:

By the same token, it is easy to try to bolster up a lame piece of selling copy with a pretty picture rather than relying on the sharpness of the headline appeal, the news value of the product, and the readable persuasiveness of the argument. (Burnett, 1961, p. 241)r

Leo Burnett was the “jowly genius of the heartland subconscious” (Ewen, 1998).

He passed away in the year of 1971, but he was ranked No.3 in Advertising Age’s “Top

100 people of the century.” The only book he actually wrote was called Good Citizen:

The Rights and Duties of an American, a comprehensive collection of essays on topics ranging from American idealism to the sacrifices that one has to make to be an

American. Maintaining personal values and pride in being an American were paramount in his life, something he shared with all of his mentors. When citizens of Little Rock sent letters to 1,500 advertisers threatening a boycott if the companies refused to stop doing business with the Arkansas Gazette and its editor, Harry Ashmore, because of the paper’s stance on integration, Burnett promptly sent a memo to the Leo Burnett

Company staff. The memo, made public a year after the fact, stated:

This temporary loss of circulation should under no circumstances become a factor in our evaluation of the medium and in our recommendations to our clients. In fact, I feel it should influence us to place maximum linage in this newspaper, which is not only a shining example of editorial integrity and courage, but which in the experience of local department stores is a highly efficient advertising buy, in spite of its currently reduced subscription, rate per thousand, or what have you.

If this memo is construed by anybody as an example of using the economic power of advertising to influence the freedom of the press, make the most of it. (“News Behind the Ads”, 1958)

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This chapter aims to provide a clear background of Leo Burnett as well as his family members’ ties to journalism, in order to further explain why his creative style was the way it was.

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CHAPTER 3 FEATURE WRITING AND INHERENT DRAMA

This chapter focuses on explaining Leo Burnett’s most well known advertising technique as well as his most well recognized contribution to the advertising world.

Detailed background of journalistic writing style, feature writing is also provided in this chapter aiming to present a better understanding of what constitutes “feature writing,” and what is the tenet behind the Chicago School of Advertising.

Lecturing to a group of newly promoted ad agency executives, Leo Burnett passed on a bit of final wisdom: “Remember what our business is all about. It’s two things: making better ads and attending to clients” (Knoch, 1962, p. D6).

Succeeding at both was the difficulty Burnett had to overcome when he first entered the advertising business after an early life dominated by journalism. However, he believed that one of the reasons for his success in the advertising business was his ability to be curious. While still a news reporter at the Peoria Journal, he concluded that curiosity attributed to his first raise, by finding details that rival reporters failed to discover (Burnett, 1961, p.96). He later maintained his “passionate curiosity about things,” to the extent that his almost “naive curiosity about life” was one of the criteria he relied upon to evaluate an employee’s ability to produce effective advertising campaigns

(Burnett, 1955, p.77).

Burnett shared this natural curiosity with one of his idols of the newspaper industry, Joseph Pulitzer. According to his son, Ralph Pulitzer, the New York World publisher was tenacious about ferreting out facts and investigating all aspects of a topic.

The younger Pulitzer said of his father:

With his marvellous [sic] divination of interesting news hidden in situations or events where others could see no news values, went hand in hand an 64

almost uncanny intuition for a fake. Again and again in some place thousands of miles away I have started to read him some news item of great interest and to me of perfect plausibility, only to have him interrupt with “Skip! Can’t you see that that is a miserable fake!” And invariably, perhaps days perhaps weeks perhaps months later, but invariably that particular story would prove to have been a fake, and if ours was the paper even inadvertently guilty of the “miserable fake,” the cable the telegraph or the telephone wire would sizzle with the emphasis of his condemnation. (Pulitzer, 1912, p. 3)

However, using this curiosity and thirst for accurate information to find “the magic things to say about a product that would interest people” was what Burnett considered one of the true arts of an ad man (Higgins, 2003, p.28). Literary educator Melvin James

Curl concluded that interest “enters at the moment when the writing becomes related vitally to human beings, and not until that moment” (Curl, 1919, p. 4).

Like the best feature writers, advertising giant and former journalist Theodore

MacManus urged young advertising executives to connect with the consumer on a personal level. He advised:

Think of your copy in terms of one individual. Think of one man or one woman. Think of a man sitting on the bank of a creek fishing for bull-heads. Think of the woman knitting or rocking, or busily bustling about a store. Think of that man’s thoughts. Think of that woman’s thoughts. Think of the remembrance of the product you are writing about flashing through their minds. Think of that momentary flash followed by a warm feeling of approval. It comes—it goes—but it has registered. That friendly thought is stored away in the brain cells. It will rise to the surface when occasion arises. There is a predisposition there in favor of the product—a preference which may even amount to a prejudice. When you have gotten thus far, set your own mind at work. Ask yourself if it is possible to create such a state of mind in the individual. The answer is unmistakably and emphatically—yes, it is. (MacManus, 1925, p. 83- 84)

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Steensen (2011) argued that feature journalism is a communication practice that transcends traditional reporting style, as well as audience expectations, in the sense of news production, distribution, and consumption. The clash of three distinctive styles of news reporting at the turn of the century resulted in a fact-based writing style that emphasized truthfulness and focused on four primary human interest elements: narrative (storytelling), vivid and detailed description, engaging quotes and dialogue, and expository background and characterization.

The foundation of these four elements in feature writing was facts and an honest representation of those facts. According to journalism educator E.L. Shuman (1903), the writer who can combine both reliability and the “sparkle” of dramatic writing is the one who will have the greatest chance of achieving the highest level of success in the journalism profession (p. 40). At the height of the yellow journalism period, New York

Sun editor Charles Dana, likewise, encouraged Cornell University students to be diligent in their efforts to become honest and accurate reporters, while maintaining reader interest. He prophesied:

There are some men that a lie cannot deceive; and that is a very precious gift for a reporter as well as for anybody else. The man who has it is sure to live long and prosper; especially if he is able to tell the truth which he sees, to state the fact or discovery that he has been sent out after, in a clear and vivid and interesting manner. The invariable law of the newspaper is to be interesting. (Dana, 1895, p. 188)

Forty years earlier, Isaac Clarke Pray found similar sentiments in the journals and in the personal actions of Penny Press editor James Gordon Bennett. Pray said of

Bennett:

(H)e is always forcible, as he seizes the general strong points before him and conveys them to his readers with direct plainness. . . . His style is rather old-fashioned, but not the less strong on that account. His words are few, but well chosen. . . . It may be noticed that he frequently sacrifices the 66

expression of the thought wholly to the thought itself, so unimportant seems the vehicle in comparison to the matter to be conveyed. (p. 385)

Turn-of-the century feature writer H. F. Harrington noted that many professions were looking to skilled journalists for assistance in dealing with a rapidly changing

American public. The greatest contribution to other professions was the journalist’s ability to pinpoint what interests the public. Harrington concluded:

I KNOW what news is; I used to be a newspaper man myself," replied a manager of a great hotel one morning after a reporter had thanked him for steering him into an excellent first-page story. The remark is eloquent with meaning. Many men who sit in places of responsibility proudly acknowledge their erstwhile association with the journalistic profession. Almost every important calling has recruited many of its best workers from the newspaper office. The list includes directors of advertising, secretaries of chambers of commerce, publicity men, private secretaries, confidential advisers, advance men, free-lance writers, college instructors, trade journal editors, the whole range of positions which have to do with an institution's relationship to the public. (Harrington, 1922, p. 476)

Burnett later chastised magazine publishers for not living up to this concept of providing a vehicle for creativity and skillful abilities with words. Washington Post editors claimed “Burnett penned the following remarks at 6 a.m. last Tuesday, apparently at white heat and delivered them a few hours later -- instead of the homilies which had been expected -- before the Magazine Publishers Association in New York” (Burnett

1959, p. C13). In the article, which appeared in numerous publications (Washington

Times Herald, Dec. 6, 1959; The Saturday Review, Dec. 26, 1959), Burnett lamented that “in all too many cases the man with imagination, the dreamer, if you like, the courageous and sensitive soul who knows the power of words and pictures and how to use them, has been forced to capitulate to the brass, and I mean brass in every sense”

(Burnett, 1959a).

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Burnett recognized the value of combining skills from both advertising and journalism to create the most effective means of presenting a product. He blended elements from the current hybrid form of “news feature” story with his own journalist’s sense of what would interest consumers. Burnett later classified this style of creativity and human interest as “visibility with a bite” (Lazarus, 1964, p. 62). He explained:

Too much advertising is not getting noticed. If you're not noticed, you don't get recall, and that's essential if you're selling a product. With rising ad costs and with the public obviously bored by a lot of advertising, there seems to be a new opportunity to serve advertisers. We need visibility with a bite, visibility that has uninterrupted power — with relevance and believability. (Lazarus, 1964, p. 62)

Yet, a feature writer can utilize many techniques to achieve the effect of dramatization for human interest appeal, such as using vivid descriptions, intriguing narratives, clever deployment of content and background, as well as arrangement of characters. One point he gleaned from journalists of the period was that “a good feature story frequently tells itself; all that the writer does is to record the incidents without comment or adornment” (Bleyer, 1913, p. 213).

Many journalists of the first decades of the 20th century believed that keeping the message simple and straightforward was the best approach to intrigue readers. The unembellished truth would allow the readers to draw their own conclusions. Often known as “the American Wordsworth,” New York Evening Post editor William Cullen

Bryant offered this advice to a young man who had asked for criticism of an article he had written:

Be simple, unaffected; be honest in your speaking and writing. Never use a long word when a short one will do as well. Call a spade by its name, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual labor; let a home be a home, and not a residence; a place, not a locality; and so on of the rest. When a short word will do, you will always lose by a long one. You lose in clearness, you lose in honest expression of meaning, and in the estimation of all men who 68

are capable of judging, you lose in reputation for ability. (Fisher, 1899, p. 93)

One of Burnett’s advertising mentors, Theodore MacManus, incorporated this thinking into one of his most well-recognized ads, “The Penalty of Leadership.” Dictated to his secretary late one night in his office, MacManus humanized the product and the company in the minds of American consumers. With no illustrations and wide margins of white space around the text, the ad read, in part:

When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work is mediocre, he will be left severely alone—if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongue a-wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. (MacManus, 1915)

Similar to the philosophy of his former newspaper colleagues, MacManus reasoned that if ad copy were “true and human and sincere,” as well as “reasonable, suggestive and interesting,” the consumers would “read it and accept it” (MacManus,

1925, p. 84). There was no word about the name of the brand or the nature of the product. In short, there was no mention of Cadillac, automobiles, or any selling features about the V8 model because MacManus chose to focus on the human interest element.

MacManus later commented, “The real suggestion to convey is that the man manufacturing the product is an honest man, and that the product is an honest product, to be preferred above all others” (MacManus, 1925, p. 79).

This concept of honesty was at the foundation of Burnett’s philosophy of advertising as well. In discussing one of the five fallacies of marketing, Burnett argued that people already in the marketing field are not the best judge of what a consumer wants. He contended: 69

Given access to honest information, the consumer himself is the best judge of what he needs and wants, the form and the package it comes in, and the price he will pay. Moreover, he is most likely to get what he wants under a system in which thousands of business enterprises are competing fiercely but fairly for his favor.

Often he does not even know he wants a purple cow until he sees one. (Burnett, 1966, p. 2)

Much like MacManus’ idea that every company has a reputation that can be defined in the mind of the public, Burnett’s similar approach was to find the “inherent drama” in the product and write the ad out of that drama rather than using mere

“cleverness” (as cited in Kluger, 1997, p.26; as cited in Bessie, 2012, p.3219). Burnett believed that every product has inherent drama. He argued, “It is often hard to find, but it is always there, and, once found, it is the most interesting and believable of all advertising appeals” (Lazarus, 1964, p. 60).

Burnett resolved that understanding the concept of inherent drama was a skill that could not be taught. Only an instinct found "in the blood-stream of many good advertising people" could discern it (Burnett, 1971, p. 40-41). He concluded:

It is what the manufacturer had in-mind in the first place when he conceived the product. It is the most direct route to the mind of the reader viewer. It is always honest and believable. It is always there if you dig hard enough for it, and there are always fresh ways of projecting it. (Burnett, 1971, p. 40)

Burnett’s philosophy of focusing on the inherent drama, while remaining down-to- earth, is indicative of the central principles of the Chicago school of advertising. Burnett believed that his agency's creative work was a more “forthright presentation of facts in the sales message” than the New York style of “bombastic, braggadocios, and, at times, pure bull” (Lazarus, 1964, p. 60; Bessie, 2012, p.3227). A blend of dramatization, honesty, and plain speak, the Chicago approach was the exact opposite of the “hard

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sell”, which “used product features and claims, often exaggerated, to twist arms and pin the reader to the mat” (Bessie, 2012, p.3227).

However, according to Chicago Daily News advertising columnist George Lazarus, the advertising industry was in constant debate over whether a difference actually existed between New York and Chicago agencies over how ad campaigns were treated.

Considering his company the flagship of the Chicago school, Burnett disagreed:

Well, I think they [copywriters] come from all sorts of places and are made up of all types, but I think among the best ones there’s a flair for expression, of putting known and believable things into new relationships. We try to be—which I think typifies the Chicago school of advertising, if there is one, and I think there is one—we try to be more straightforward without being flatfooted. We try to be warm without being mawkish. (Higgins, 2003, p. 44)

Those admen who shared Burnett’s enthusiasm for the approach at the time saw the Chicago school of advertising as more down-to-earth, direct, and less sophisticated in its approach to consumers than New York (Lazarus, 1964, p. 60). Likewise, Burnett saw it as advertising that “does not pound the reader or the viewer over the head with claims or proof. It merely lays the essential facts before him as a sensible, suspicious, sensitive and a fallible human being” (Bessie, 2012, p. 3227).

Since the Chicago school of advertising was a collective of Chicago area advertising titans’ advertising philosophies, no set principles or rules clarified what constituted Chicago school of advertising, except the general idea and the basics of it. A typical Chicago school of advertising would be a 30-second television commercial spot built on behalf of commodity promoted by a conservative Midwestern client, with the aim to build dull but durable ads and a brand image, as well as client and agency relationships (Baar, 2007).

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Yet, supporters of the approach saw it as far from dull and continued to recognize the influence of Burnett on the grass-roots style of presenting a product to consumers.

Dozens of Burnett’s campaigns illustrated how he challenged existing conventions to take a risk on wooing consumers with “innovative, straightforward images” (Higgins,

2003, p. 44).

Chicago school shunned the flashier New York ads in favor of honest simplicity, relying on minimal ad copy and thought-provoking imagery that often contradicted what the readers expected to see. For example, a shabbily dressed, bearded man, along with the caption “There are some men a hat won’t help,” highlighted the executive qualities of a hat by the Hat Corporation of America. Similarly, a view from the shore of a crystalline lake bathed in sunlight, along with the caption “How would an empty beer can look here,” emphasized Schlitz beer’s concern for littering.

The invention of the “Bleed pages” was one result of Burnett’s accrued wit on his understanding of feature writing, as well as creativity in advertising. One of Leo

Burnett’s most cited campaigns, known for its boldness, drama, and success, was the

“Red on Red” campaign for the American Meat Institute, or what Burnett referred to as the “Bleed pages,” the virile campaign to persuade people to consume more meat.

What was special and unique about this advertising campaign was that Burnett attempted something that no one in the advertising business had ever tried before— putting raw, unprepared red meat in the background with the same pure evocative red color, the “distasteful” way of showing meat in an ad (Higgins, 2003, p.46). Burnett recalled:

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I was in Hi Williams’ studio here in New York and I said, “I wonder what would happen if you put a piece of red meat on a red background: Would it disappear or would it be dramatic.” (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.71)

The American Meat Institute welcomed the idea, even framing hundreds of the ads and sending them to home economics editors and others who were not directly related to the meat industry (Kufrin, 1995, p.71). In his book The Making of an Advertising

Agency, Jack O’Kieffe, the advertising talent that Burnett had brought from Homer

McKee Agency (later senior vice president of the company), wrote that the ad was able to stir a commotion because the “startling graphics for that time…gave a fresh, new dimensions to advertising” (as cited in Kufrin, 1995, p.71).

In the “You’re right in liking meat” campaign, for example, the intense adjectives used in the ad copy presented the audience with a vivid picture of experiencing how meat should smell and taste, if the consumer could enjoy the meat in the ad immediately. The ad copy read:

Swiss Steak…put it in the pan…turn on the heat and sniff its steaming fragrance as it simmers, babbles and browns…smothered in its own gravy. That’s hearty flavor for you.

But meat offers far more than flavor. All meat, regardless of cut or kind, is a generous supplier of complete protein, the kind of protein children need for growth—the kind we all must have for life itself. (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

A woman’s hand, presumably a housewife’s hand, tipped with red-polished nails, presented three pieces of Swiss Steak in a paper. The visual effect of the campaign was impressive; the red background, red nail polish, and crimson red pieces of raw meat made them the highlight of the ad. In total, three colors were used in designing the graphics of this ad: white, black and a sea of red. The comparison of the color of white, black and red, as well as the using of different shades of red had not only dramatize the

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common scene of a meat presentation, but also made the unthinkable -- raw meat -- practical and innovative.

This campaign was what Burnett meant by exploring the “inherent drama” of the product. Burnett also admitted that alongside exploring the “inherent drama” of the product, he used a “trick” as one of the techniques in creating the campaign. He remembered:

We convinced ourselves that the image of meat should be a virile one, best expressed in red meat...Red against red was a trick, but it was a natural thing to do. It just intensified the red concept and the virility and everything else we were trying to express. This was inherent drama in its purest form. (as cited in Ewen, 1998)

For Burnett, the importance of doing the “natural” thing was closely connected to the potential sale an ad would trigger, as his years of feature writing experience suggested to him. Burnett would use his instinct to find the “inherent drama” within the product, “without getting too kooky or too clever or too humorous or too anything—it’s just natural” (as cited in Bessie, 2012, p.3233).

The Chicago school of advertising is more than just a style of advertising; it is a unique approach of dealing with target audience. Chicago-style advertising focuses on coding persuasive messages into the ads so that consumers’ attitudes toward the product and service would form into a positive purchasing intent. Advertising agencies in Chicago are known to produce advertising that tries to woo consumers rather than

“knocking them out.” The advertising is well organized and polite, rather than fueled with images and messages that try to seek audiences’ attention, which often is counterproductive since those ads frequently irritates consumers. This kind of advertising understands, appreciates, and plays back the customer’s life experiences with insight and authenticity; the kind of advertising that aims to appeal to the entire 74

strata of consumers’ emotions rather than being focused on a single element, like humor or sex, the Leo Burnett kind of advertising (Reinhard, 1976).

Not everyone in the advertising industry was completely sold on the Chicago style.

Keith Reinhard (1976), senior vice president of creative services and Needham, Harper

& Steers-Chicago said,

I think there’s a Chicago school of advertising or maybe a Chicago style is a better way to describe it. I’m not prepared to say it’s better than anybody else’s style—only that it’s different and that I believe in it. I’m not even suggesting that Chicago style advertising is one exclusively in Chicago— only that it happens more naturally and more frequently here. (Reinhard, 1976)

However, Reinhard did concede that in advertising, it is crucial that consumers can relate to advertisers and resonate with the message coded in the ads. This is more effective if the ad copywriters have a close connection to the consumers at a personal level of understanding. Reinhard added, “But if my success depended on selling products to the Chinese, I’d start looking for some good Chinese writers. Not because they’re more creative, just more Chinese” (Reinhard, 1976).

Leo Burnett’s advertising sought to resonate with consumers’ own recognition of the product rather than seeking attention of the creativity and originality of the ads themselves or the people who created the campaign (Reinhard, 1976). Most of the consumers were not celebrities and billionaires -- just ordinary people with common interests similar to the advertisers themselves. Leo Burnett’s followers did not have the lofty air of Madison Avenue around them, which partially contributed to their reputation as a down-to-earth Chicago advertising group. Reinhard confirmed, “I was welcomed with more honor and respect in the Midwestern Chicago agencies as a customer (than in mid-Manhattan)” (Reinhard, 1976).

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In 1950, when the Leo Burnett Company, Inc., in Chicago observed its 15th birthday with a commemorative booklet listing 12 principles of operation, more than half of items bore a striking resemblance to many of the journalistic principles of the period.

The list read, in part:

1. Every message in print or over the air must have "thought-force"—a central idea that offers an advantage to the reader or listener in an interesting and plausible manner.

2. The reader or listener is presumably a human being and must be rewarded in some human manner for dwelling on your message. . . .

5. To take the attitude that there is inherent drama in the product itself rather than leaning on tricks, devices or "techniques.". . .

7. To keep it simple.

8. To know the rules but to be willing to break them. This involves a sense of good timing-an important factor in successful advertising. . . .

11. To be human without being cute or smart-alecky; to be sincere without being pompous.

12. To fight for what we believe in, regardless of contrary client opinion, provided our conviction is based on sound reasoning, accurate facts, and inspired thought; to be intellectually honest. (Barton 1955, p. 257-258)

As described in Time magazine’s obituary (1971), Leo Burnett was “a short, stout, balding, rumpled, plain-speaking man who viewed the world through black-rimmed bifocals and generally liked what he saw.” He was not the dandy and stereotypically playful ad-man charged with self-righteousness and haughtiness. He was a down-to- earth American entrepreneur who weathered two economic downturns and made a living on the idea of the advertising that he believed could make a difference. He wanted not only to create the ads that make sales and build brands, but also to help business in general, without using manipulative salesmanship and showy techniques.

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This chapter discussed the core elements of Leo Burnett’s advertising career: his most recognized contributions to the advertising world; Chicago School of Advertising; his most renowned advertising technique; inherent drama; as well as his most practiced journalistic writing style, feature writing. In the following chapter, detailed analysis as how does one element fit into the other in the ads that can represent Leo Burnett the most will be discussed.

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CHAPTER 4 FEATURE WRITING ANALYSIS

Analysis of the Dramatization in Burnett’s Ads

This chapter provides detailed analysis of the ads that bear Leo Burnett’s influence the most, in order to find the connections between journalistic writing styles and the way those ads organize advertising messages.

Leo Burnett based almost all of his advertising principles on the importance of gaining solid readership from the brands’ target audience and determining how the ad would relate to potential sale numbers. In doing so, Burnett stressed the importance of understanding consumers.

Burnett believed that two kinds of transactions summed up every consumer’s daily decision-making endeavor. One was the “mental transaction,” which “leads to the premade decisions,” and the other was the “market transaction,” which leads to consumers’ attitude changes and results in “action” (Burnett, 1961, p.49). Even though both transactions were critical to each business deal, the mental transaction structured the market transaction, thus directly affecting how well the consumer perceived the ad created using the “inherent drama” technique (Burnett, 1961, p.49).

The invention of the “Bleed pages” was a rewarding result of Burnett’s accrued understanding of feature writing, as well as his creativity in advertising. Burnett believed that an advertising practitioner not only needs to avoid the “cocoon of sameness” and

“warmed-over version” ads to reach for the “nebulous thing” called creativity, but the successful creative person also needs to be “intelligent and daring” to find the

“individuality,” the “inherent drama” of each and every product (Burnett, 1961, p.20).

The creative practitioner must produce ads that are weaved with believability and

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rewards that consumers would welcome, which was one of the reasons that not all

“Bleed pages” used raw meat to secure consumers’ interest (Burnett, 1961, p. 20&324).

For Burnett, producing effective ad copy meant “finding the ‘inherent drama’ in the product and writing the ad out of that drama rather than using mere cleverness” (as cited in Kluger, 1997, p.26; as cited in Bessie, 2012, p.3220). The result was an alluring blend of vivid description and animated expression. Burnett realized the value of combining the expressive style of feature writing with advertising techniques that drew the consumer in. In an interview about his advertising prowess, Burnett said:

[Working as a reporter,] I learned a lot from newspapers as to how to communicate and how to put color into copy. But finding the magic things to say about a product that would interest people and lead them by the hand to the conclusion that they should buy something—that was another art, really. (Higgins 2003, p.28)

The mass media writing style of Burnett’s era centered around a three-sided clash of sensational journalist William Randolph Hearst’s brand of “journalism of action” or

“journalism that acts,” New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs’ conservative, fact-based reporting, and muckraker Lincoln Steffens’ non-journalistic, literary approach that focused on descriptive storytelling (Campbell, 2006, p.69-118). Despite the eventual dominance of Ochs’ conservative and impartial approach, the muckraking movement provided the ideal opportunity for an alternative approach to viewing the news by combining Hearst’s dramatic writing style and Steffens’ literary approach into a hybrid form of “news feature” that appeared in magazines and many major newspapers’ front sections and features sections (Campbell, 2006, p.106-115). The result was a fact- based writing style that emphasized truthfulness and focused on four primary elements: vivid and detailed description, narrative (storytelling), engaging quotes and dialogue, and characterization/exposition. 79

Of this emerging style of journalistic writing, literary critic and journalist C.H. Dana commented in his address at Cornell University’s Founder’s Day celebration:

The invariable law of the newspaper is to be interesting. Suppose you tell all the truths of science in a way that bores the reader; what is the good? The truths don’t stay in the mind, and nobody thinks any better of you because you have told him the truth tediously. The telling must be vivid and animating. The reporter must give his story in such a way that you know he feels its qualities and events, and is interested in them. (Dana, 1895, p. 190)

However, journalist Isaac Clarke Pray’s explanation of the writing style of Penny

Press publisher James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, seems to indicate that this writing style began a half-century earlier. In his Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times (1855), Pray wrote:

He [Bennett] is the founder of a new school of writing. His articles were complete essays in themselves. They have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. They are characterized by a dashing fearlessness that harmonizes with the tone of the American mind. They are not collections of words merely; but are bundles of just thoughts, sound arguments, and practical conclusions. Their charm lies in the purity of their style. There is a vein of cheerfulness running through them that is delightfully refreshing. Mr. Bennett's style of writing is peculiar to himself. He may be said to be the founder of a school of writing, whose chief characteristic is simplicity, and whose basis is common sense. (Pray, 1855, p. 416)

By the time media magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst dominated newspaper circulation competition in the 1890s, other editors had refined

Bennett’s principles of effective and engaging news writing, a style that continued into the first half of the 20th century and beyond. Analyzed through this template of news writing techniques, Leo Burnett’s advertising campaigns illustrated some of the basic elements of journalistic writing as revealed in his most renowned advertising concept— inherent drama. Much of Burnett’s ability to win accounts can be partially attributed to his reporter’s eye for a thorough understanding of the product’s features and for

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discerning what information would appeal to the consumer. Burnett also created some of the most successful advertising campaigns in which the appeal was the illustrations and/or graphic components.

To illustrate the connection between Burnett’s advertising technique and the standard practice of feature writing style, several of his ads, especially ads for his agency’s first three clients and other memorable ad campaigns, were selected from available electronic databases. The ads selected were those in which the researcher could readily verify that they were indeed produced by Leo Burnett’s company. These samplings of ads were analyzed to discern the presence of the four primary components: vivid and detailed description, narrative storytelling, engaging quotes and dialogue, and characterization/exposition. The narrative used in the ad copy created by

Burnett, the vivid description conjured by Burnett and his team, as well as the showmanship demonstrated by the arrangement of the ads’ other components, were all indicative of a good feature story writer.

Although all of the ads examined showcased a combination of the four attributes of feature stories, as well as a vibrant and complementary visual element, for the sake of brevity and to avoid overlap, the analytical evidence presented here was restricted to the dominant component among the writing techniques utilized in each ad. Ads were analyzed to determine the presence of such stylistic writing devices as descriptive word usage and connotative meanings associated with words, second-person pronouns, narrative structure, anecdotal material, and other linguistic devices. Where necessary, as with analyzing for narrative storytelling or descriptive style, reference was made to the accompanying illustrations in their complementary role to the ad copy. Thus,

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findings were limited only to the journalistic writing elements, and no attempt was made to judge the ads in light of theories and persuasion tactics, advertising campaign strategies, or effectiveness among the targeted audience members.

Detailed Description and Dramatization

Some scholars argued that, “feature articles fall somewhere between news writing and short story writing” (Garrison, 2004, p.8). When turn-of-the century feature writer

H.F. Harrington (1912) decided to produce a how-to textbook on the writing style in

1912, he noted, “To feature or play up a story is to give some element of it unusual prominence, because of its freshness, setting, or breadth of appeal” (p.294). Harrington emphasized,

While in a general way it should not be forgotten that newspaper style is notable for its terseness, brevity, and vigor, it should not be inferred that it is therefore wooden and commonplace. Abundant use is made of every opportunity to paint a picture or to sketch a dramatic incident. There are many misdemeanors in journalism; there is but one crime, that of being dull. Nowadays originality of diction is far from discouraged, individuality is constantly sought, new ways of saying things in an attractive, buoyant fashion are welcomed. Readers will forgive immaterial inaccuracies sooner than intolerable stupidity in writing the news. (p. 4)

However, to be effective, a feature story had to be based on fact to avoid a common problem of “fakery”, but it also needed to contain detailed descriptions of people and the settings using strong adjectives and dynamic verbs. Concrete details allow readers to visualize where and how the action took place, while physical descriptions of people help readers grasp characteristics better and connect with them on a personal level. Details in a story bring people and situations “alive and make them real”; in general, in-depth descriptions “help readers to ‘see’ what the writer is writing about, to smell it, or to hear it” (Sloan & Wray, 1997, p. 14).

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Leo Burnett’s policy of depicting a product in a way to “show” the consumer its benefits mimicked feature writing’s emphasis on painting an accurate picture of people, settings, and events to allow readers to “experience” the story and reach their own conclusions. Burnett once said, “The best advertising…merely lays the essential facts before him (a consumer) as a sensible, suspicious, sensitive and a fallible human being”

(as cited in Bessie, 2012, p.3230). Even though Burnett believed that writing ad copy was a more difficult job compared to writing news, since copy is “much more compact and yet it had to deliver the facts,” Burnett was still able to manage copywriting well

(Higgins, 2003, p.36). His ads included sufficient facts incorporated throughout the copy without losing the appealing elements or the “human note” (Higgins, 2003, p.36).

Much like Burnett’s favorite professor had encouraged him to read good news writing such as the New York World, veteran city editor J. Frank Davis noted that beginning reporters should take the time to educate themselves on this engaging style of feature writing by reading. Davis advised:

Read Dickens until you can go out and describe the man you meet with almost as much detail as he did.

Read Shakespeare until you have absorbed something of the marvelous vocabulary he commanded.

Read the Bible until you have a glimmering of how its writers condensed. Paul's address on Mars Hill takes up little more than a "stick" of newspaper type. The entire story of the crucifixion is told in two sticks. Beside that, no book in the world contains such powerful, dramatic English. No book in the world is so much quoted. No book in the world, I believe, will help the newspaper man to learn to write for newspaper readers so much as the Bible.

Read newspapers — newspapers of the kind whose stories are interesting whether or not you know the places and the people mentioned in them.

There is no need of trying to copy the style of these writers whose works you read. Just absorb them, and if you have it in you to write, there will 83

come out, sometime, a style of your own. (Reprinted in Harrington, 1922, p. 13)

Burnett’s early ad campaigns are indicative of the writing style most prevalent in the columns of his favorite newspaper, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Burnett’s

“Bleed pages” and his campaign for the American Meat Institute provided a strong example of effective descriptive writing, emphasizing the use of vibrant adjectives and careful attention to specifics. The critical element of descriptive writing is the cohesive presentation of facts and visualization – components based on keen observation and eye for recounting concrete details (Sloan & Wray, 1997, p. 151). In the “Nourishing

Meat” campaign, Burnett used unpretentious language in the ad, as if it were a casual conversation between housewives whose paths cross one sunny afternoon in a grocery store. The ad copy read:

You know it was good…but did you know it was this good?

From its crisp outside edge, right down to the last tender morsel of meat on the bone, a pork chop is good eating. But there is another kind of goodness in meat which your body asks for and must have. This chart tells most of the story. But note this also: meat is a complete protein food—with all ten of the body-building amino acids which must be supplied at the same time to enable the body to do the best job of building and maintaining itself as it should.

You knew meat was good. But did you know it was this good? (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

By appealing to the senses and focusing on the taste and texture, consumers could easily visualize themselves in a dinner setting -- enjoying the “crisp outside edge” of the meat and savoring every “tender morsel.” In the lower left portion of the ad, a nutrition chart was also presented, as a method of scientific persuasion, with a list of nutritional information on pork, beef, lamb, veal, variety meat, and sausage. While the ad copy causes the consumers to envision the meat as a guilty indulgence that their 84

bodies “must have,” it also informs them that the “body-building amino acids” are as good for them as the taste is good to them.

This technique was used in the “What you get in a can of Green Giant Peas” ad created for the Green Giant Peas published in the Woman’s Day magazine. Targeting the magazine’s women readers, Burnett pointed out the benefits of the Green Giant

Peas with vivid descriptions that conjured images of hand-selecting fresh vegetables from a farm vendor. For example:

Two pounds of fresh-picked peas in every can. Bred for flavor, farmed for flavor, “picked and packed at the fleeting moment of perfect flavor” (Woman’s Day, September 1, 1949, p.58).

“Bred” and “farmed” connote homegrown products, while “fresh-picked” implies recent removal from a field. The alliteration of “picked”, “packed” and “perfect”, along with “pounds” and “peas”, add the element of sound, while making the phrases seem to jump off the page at the reader and cement them into memory.

Burnett also understood the importance of combining graphics with complementary description to add another dimension to the visualization. Yellow journals regularly revealed important news by utilizing oversized illustrations and a minimal amount of fact-based copy to grab the readers’ attention and allow them to infer information from what they saw. No doubt Burnett’s creation for the Hoover vacuum cleaner published in October 17, 1949, Life magazine stood out, considering the main body of the ad is occupied with graphics rather than paragraphs of words. The “show, don’t tell” approach of feature writing not only depicts how to use the product, but also why a woman should use it. In this “The Great New Hoover Cleaners” ad, Burnett used four pictures to illustrate the intricate features of the new Hoover vacuum, possibly in an effort to help consumers to fully understand the benefits without having to wade through 85

boring paragraphs of exposition. The reader can “see”, as well as experience, how well the vacuum works through the use of the illustrations and action verbs that demonstrate how the product “beats”, “sweeps”, and “picks up” as it cleans various common items in the home. A “click” and “flick” allows the woman to avoid “stooping” and to clean with ease, as the verbs used in the ad indicates.

This emphasis on graphics can also be seen in Burnett’s Air Step ad that appeared in the February 14, 1944, issue of Life magazine. In “The shoe with the youthful feel,” the single Air Step shoe dominates the whole ad. The ad copy explains the benefit of the shoe by focusing on Burnett’s inherent drama:

Yours the swing, the zest, the easy freedom of a young and happy foot with Air Step’s Magic Sole. A kindly, comforting cushion that turns hard pavements soft. (Life, February 14, 1944, p.44)

While the shoe illustration would draw the readers’ attention, the “swing”, “zest”, and “freedom” of the shoe suggests a carefree and “youthful” lifestyle for the woman who is young at heart. On the practical side, the “comforting cushion” has the magical power to soften “hard pavements.”

In Roblee’s “New fun for your feet” ad that ran in Life magazine’s April 17, 1950, issue, Burnett linked the ingrained trait of a panther’s flexibility to the potential benefit of owning a shoe that shared the sleek look. Burnett had started the ad with an illustration of a panther on the prowl and an enticing question.

Ever meet a black panther? We hope you never do, but we use him here to illustrate the supple, strong, light-on-you-feet flexibility of these Roblee Soft- Steppers. (Life, April 17, 1950, p.129)

Using a sensory writing approach, the ad employs the image of the dangerous panther with “supple” and “strong” words to connote a masculine trait, before moving

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onto the sense of touch. The shoe that fits like a “soft glove” and “bends” in your hand but “feels” like a shadow enhances the readers’ tactile experiences.

The Green Giant Company ads were ideal for the application of sensory writing. In

“Look what you can do with Niblets Corn,” Burnett not only introduced the Woman’s Day magazine readers to one new recipe and two new twists on old stand-by meals, but he also presented pictures of the delicious results of those recipes, “a meaty pie -- a flavory casserole -- a hearty meal of chowder” (Woman’s Day, October 1, 1949, p.75). Readers can see and taste the “tender, golden kernels” or the “plump tender kernels.” Likewise, the sound quality of “picked and packed at the fleeting moment of perfect flavor,” along with the “flaked fresh fish,” would tempt any woman in need of meal ideas. Also, by including the tempting and enjoyable pictures of those dishes, Burnett further encourage housewives to purchase the Green Giant products and challenged them to experiment with those recipes.

Burnett had maximized the engaging appeal of this Hoover ad with visualization, as well as an interactive element. The ad, which appeared in the February 14, 1944, issue of Life magazine tapped into the general population’s desire to join the war effort and shorten the length of the war. Burnett’s challenge to the target audience begins at the title of the ad: “Can you find 9 ‘War-Shorteners’ in this picture?” (Life, February 14,

1944, p.18) The illustration teems with activity, while the ad copy defines “war- shorteners” and provides clues to answer the question.

But 30,000,000 homes with their hearts right and their hands ready and their eyes cocked can find “War-Shorteners” on the front porch, in the attic, in the kitchen—all over the place.

Can your quick eye pick out the nine “War-Shorteners” in the above picture? (Life, February 14, 1944, p.18)

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Like a well-written descriptive piece, Burnett’s words direct the consumers’ eyes to key spots within the artwork. The characters are revealed by the descriptions of their actions in the neighborhood. The woman “carrying home groceries,” the five men

“carpooling”, the “war handy” husband “repairing the fence,” and the boy “bringing up a load of bullets-to-be” sets the scene and makes the reader a part of the action.

In the “Shoes for Men of America” ad, Burnett implied that volunteers on the battlefield and on the home front deserve to be rewarded for their efforts. Burnett

“talked” with his audience about the importance of owning a pair of Roblee shoes – for battle and for leisure time.

When you build a shoe for a man who may parachute out over enemy territory, or walk a destroyer’s desk on a hostile ocean, you don’t hesitate about putting in honest-john stitches and the best leather you can get. (Life, October 11, 1943, p.69)

Burnett’s ad argued that, in principle, men of action require a shoe that is made to handle the activity. Men “parachute” and “walk” into dangerous situation, but he can always count on the workmanship of his shoes. Later in the ad, this promise of trustworthiness is extended to those men who also serve at home because “men fighting here on the Home Front also deserve ‘shoes they can trust’” (Life, October 11,

1943, p.69).

Action verbs describe the robust life of a paratrooper and how Roblee has performed its patriotic duty of making a product that can take the strain. “Landing” and

“jumping” requires shoes that “protect,” “catch,” and “reinforce.”

First in Sicily, hours before landing barges disgorged infantry, were our paratroopers. Landing via chute is like jumping from a fifteen-foot height. An instep “bandage” protects the arch, and toes are extra reinforced. And note wedge heel and rounded soles, so nothing catches as wearer jumps. The makers of Roblee have made literally thousands of dozens of these U.S. paratrooper boots. (Life, October 11, 1943, p.69) 88

The patriotic theme was also evident in a shoe ad targeting women. The “Tailored to A ‘T’” focused on characterizing the product for the women workers of World War II.

In the Air Step ad, Burnett emphasized the features of the shoes’ sole, a major contrast to the more common cork soles or clogs that rationing dictated in order to conserve leather.

They’re simple styles, as shoes in wartime should be. They’re smart and tailored…Try the buoyant comfort of the Magic Sole—the hidden, air-filled cushion that takes up walking jolts and jars and keeps you “Fresh at Five.” (Life, October 25, 1943, p.997)

Burnett’s ad assured women that they could still be stylish, “smart”, and “tailored” while adhering to ration guidelines. Keen on catering to the female audience’s fashion sense, Burnett used the ad illustration to spotlight three styles that coordinated with the standard fabric colors (khaki, olive drab no. 3, and olive drab no. 7) that dominated because of dye and thread shortages. Thus, women could look as “fresh at five” in the afternoon as they did at nine in the morning, while looking stylish and tackling “jolts” and

“jars” in comfort.

Countering the drabness of war, colors were more readily available in corn and other canned vegetables, and consumers were instructed to save the tin cans for scrap metal. Burnett’s cheery ad emphasized the vibrant color of corn, likening it to “Eating

Sunshine.” During the depressing and uncertain time of the war, Burnett offered his target audience the promise of good nutrition and “cheerfulness” in Niblets brand corn on May 24, 1943, in Life. The creamy butter on golden corn provides a complementary backdrop for Burnett’s call to action. Housewives were advised, “It’s no more trouble to prepare a colorful, encouraging meal than a drab, ‘discouraging’ one, and it’s a lot more fun for everyone.” The upbeat message to the public stressed:

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The sunny color of Niblets Brand whole kernel corn is a promise of part of the good nutrition it brings you. (Life, May 24, 1943, p.997)

Not only did Burnett rediscover the golden color of corn, but he also made the manufacturing process engaging and the Green Giant seem conscientious about providing the healthiest fare for war supporters on the home front.

It is cut from the cob and sealed in vacuum when very young—at the fleeting moment of perfect flavor. (Life, May 24, 1943, p.997)

The Green Giant seems even more conscientious and dependable in Burnett’s

“Harvested in the Moonlight” ad. Appearing in Life magazine in 1939, the ad contains both meticulous graphics and dramatic words to present the target audience with a list of reasons to purchase the Green Giant Peas. At the top of the ad, the picture shows the busy harvesting process, while "Typical night scene at pea viner station in the Land of the Green Giant" brings to mind a caring quality and a genuine concern that consumer should receive only the choicest peas. The peas are “better to begin with because they’re packed from a rare and exclusive breed,” and “harvested at the very peak of their young plumpness.” As with feature writing, “plumpness” hints at succulence and “tenderness” that readers can almost taste. Readers can visualize eager farm hands working through all hours of the day and night, before dashing off to the cannery.

Whether it’s day or night, Green Giant Peas are picked at the fleeting moment of perfect flavor—less than three hours from field to can. (Life, 1939)

Another Green Giant pea ad, “They’re so tender,” humanizes the product by juxtaposing it with a “plump” cherub. In the ad, which appeared in Woman’s Day, on

December 1, 1948, Burnett elevated the Green Giant Peas brand to a new level by appearing to compare the traits of the peas to those of an adorable cherub. 90

—just babies at heart. As chubby with goodness as nature (and scientific flavor farming) can make them. When they’ve stored up all the sweetness their tender little skins can hold we pick them, pod them, bathe them in soft water and pack them up for you at that fleeting moment of perfect flavor. (Woman’s Day, December 1, 1948, p.30)

This heavenly, but child-like figure’s endorsement of Green Giant helps establish a positive, healthy, and friendly image in consumers’ minds. Similarly, the action to “pick them, pod them, bathe them in soft water” is reminiscent of a caring mother dutifully attending to her children.

Burnett focused on both imagery and taste in the Green Giant’s “Golden Kernels in

Gay Company” ad. The festive “red” and “green” colors promise his audience a “gay” and light-hearted dinner party with the exotic Mexicorn mix, while pointing out the

“surprising” freshness and plumpness of the kernels.

When these plump whole kernels of fresh-picked corn come to dinner, they bring their own flavor-mates with them. For Niblets Brand Mexicorn is whole kernel corn with sweet red and green peppers added. A gay surprise in eating—for tonight! (Woman’s Day, November 1, 1949)

Burnett was adept at producing copy that energized. In his “Wake them up to a

Real American Breakfast” ad, he brought the sounds and smells of an American breakfast to the table. Along with the invigorating quality of the brisk sentence structure, words such as “crisp” and “sizzle” drew housewives’ attention and further persuaded them to purchase American Meat Institute’s products by invoking memories of hearty breakfasts and an eagerness to begin the day.

Hear that bacon sizzle in the skillet and your appetite says, “Come on, let’s eat!” Meat for breakfast—bacon, sausage or ham—gives you a morning send-off with good, complete protein under your belt. And plenty of complete protein in the breakfast helps you keep feeling and doing your best until it’s time to eat again. (Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1, 1950, p.22)

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By exploring the inherent drama of bacon, Burnett not only recreated the image of bacon “sizzling” on the stove, but also the “crisp” taste, as well as the beneficial nutrition. This same technique was also used in the Green Giant “Easy Eatin’, Easy

Heatin’” ad.

Mighty easy on the taster. Tender kernels—milk-sweet. It’s fresh corn-on- the-cob without the cob. (Woman’s Day, January 1, 1949, p.59)

In this ad, Burnett almost present a picture of the satisfaction of a good meal, made purely of the Green Giant Niblets Corns; rich in tenderness and filled with fresh taste – “milk-sweet” and “fresh”. Short on words, the ad sports an efficient use of sensory words that parallels the quick and easy preparation it promotes.

Narrative Storytelling

Narratives are one of the oldest forms of journalistic writing. As narrative storytelling mimics fiction writing, it entertains readers, while engaging them in the retelling of an interesting story. Even when some news items do not lend themselves to an entire narrative structure, anecdotes and examples used to illustrate points provide the necessary “human dimension and make reading livelier” (Sloan & Wray, 1997, p.

15). According to journalism educator E.L. Shuman, a news writer should “never forget that the greatest interest you can arouse, is the human interest” (Shuman, 1894, p.

210). In his 1894 textbook, Shuman lectured beginning writers:

A descriptive article can never command the attention of a narrative. A village paper will find more readers for the story of a fight in the local corner-grocery than for the most eloquent description of sunrise in the Alps that was ever penned. Human nature is essentially gregarious and is always intensely curious to see or hear what the other fellow is doing or saying. (Shuman, 1894, p. 210)

Through the narrative structure, descriptive images, and emotive language, readers are expected to identify with the people in the story and consider that similar 92

stories happened to the people they can resonate with could happen to them as well.

Harrington (1912) also pointed out that “a good newspaper story is as well-knit as a

Homeric narrative, as compact as the parables of the Bible. It is well always to bear in mind that the story of the Creation, the greatest event ever chronicled in written form, is told in 400 words” (p. 2). As the term suggests, “news stories” are stories about news, with an emphasis on drama, and the best news stories “exhibit a narrative structure akin to the root elements in human drama” (Golding & Elliott, 1979, p. 115).

Narrative writing combines detailed description with characterization of the people in a storytelling format. Character revelation puts a face on events and circumstances, while providing a way for readers to connect with sources on a more personal level.

Even in the form of anecdotal illustrations, narrative storytelling can “reveal character, capture the essence of an event or situation, or create a sense of place or action”

(Sloan & Wray, 1997, p.15-16). From a practical standpoint, Shuman (1903) advised young journalists:

The reporter should be a local Macaulay, studying to clothe the events which he chronicles in a befitting garment woven of the myriad trifling scenes and incidents that surround the main facts, thus giving vividness and life to the narrative.... The work acquaints one with humanity as no other course of instruction can; and humanity, with its faults, foibles, hatreds, crimes, sorrows, loves, and joys, is a subject of exhaustless interest. (Shuman, 1903, p. 40)

Storytelling allowed Burnett to produce character-focused ads that would mesmerize consumers and touch them at an emotional level, thus persuade them to make a purchase. The ad copy “From Mill to Millions,” created by Burnett for Realsilk

Hosiery, started with the following verse:

Get straight “A’s”—yet flunk “ensembles”; You’ll stay home from college proms; Know your Latin, but not clothes, too; 93

Dorm phones will ring, but not for you. (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

Mimicking the singsong nature of a children’s nursery rhyme, the verse easily draws the consumer in with the implied promise of a story, while using second-person voice to speak directly to the consumer. After tossing the tease to the audience, Burnett went on to explain the reason for this “ominous verse” and the importance of owning a

Realsilk Hosiery Wardrobe. The ad explained:

The purpose of this ominous verse is to advise the new-girl-in-college that Realsilk has been the friend indeed to many a generation of college girls.

Soon you’ll be heading for that campus of your choice and will need a supply of stockings for studying in, “steadying” in and for dancing in. (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

The last line of the explanation is a series of anecdotal examples that provide a human dimension to what could have been a simple restating the selling points of the product. By invoking images of a busy social life, any college-bound girl would have no problem imagining her own fairytale plot, while her older female relatives would be hard- pressed to avoid conjuring up their own memories of campus life.

Realsilk’s “Her First Silk Stockings” ad creates a similar mood in the minds of mothers by reminding them that their teenage daughters are growing up. Burnett optimized the human interest connection by conversing directly with mothers who have teenager daughters at home or who remember this well-known rite of passage themselves. This ad uses a moderate and considerate tone as if the narrator of the ad were a mother herself, invoking images of dating, marriage, and womanhood with words of activity -- such as shopping, cooking, sewing, dreaming – and emotion, “a gasp to her throat” and the “catch in yours.”

Now she’ll want to go shopping with you; she will want you to teach her how to cook, and how to sew…Now she wears stockings like mother’s. Now she 94

has moved up-to her new place in her world—the place she has been growing for, preparing for, dreaming toward—is it twelve—or thirteen—or fourteen long years? (Life, September 29, 1942, p. 999)

Consumers can touch the “sheer” softness of the silk as a “Lady of Lingerie”, smell the “personal perfume,” and see the perfect “colors” and hair style for her “curls”.

Burnett depicted the Realsilk stockings as a dramatic and emotional symbol — a new horizon teenage girls to explore; a door that can open endless possibilities to them; a path to a brighter, more secured life, and more importantly, a lifelong friend that accompanies the girl through each stage of her life.

Once to every girl comes this experience…Now the dolls go into a drawer— to look back on…Now the curls are held a little more proudly…Now the step is a little less tomboy…Now the words and the thoughts—and the dreams— are a little more grown-up…The girl had her first silk stockings…Long silk stockings…Sheer…Grown-up silk stockings…The kind of stockings girls get engaged in…get married in… walk through life in. (Life, September 29, 1942, p. 999)

Instead of lecturing about the importance of providing meat for teenagers daily,

Burnett again addresses the mother instinct in consumers, including the faces of two innocent youngsters representing the future generation in his “Meat and a generation to guard” ad for the American Meat Institute. Like an efficient yellow journalism editor, once again Burnett shows his ability in choosing the right graphic for the right ad. The eyes of the children used for this ad are full of anticipation and hope, yet somehow their eyes emitting lackluster tiredness, like other people under the war’s influence would feel; like malnourished children in the country of war who have not consumed meat for a period of time. His words forces readers to “see”, while the urgency of his verbs compel readers into action. Much like Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s Journal rousing readers to retaliate for the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, consumers are told that they must “guard”,

“rebuild”, and “provide”. 95

When you look into the shining eyes of children today, what do you see? You see the hope of better times to come…you see the promise of a better world to live in.

When the last shot has been fired from the last smoking gun, look to see a young army of brown and blue and gray eyes advancing to rebuild a war- torn world…

We must guard the growing generation which will make our post-war dreams come true.

It must be given the spirit and the strength…(Life, October 25, 1943, p.997)

This ad copy communicates with its audience on a human level. It serves as a reminder of the nutritious possibility America can offer to her younger generation, the possibility that other war-torn nations could only dream about—to be able to consume meat. It almost says to its audience to relish every bit of the good life – laughing, playing, and eating good food.

The greatest tragedy of war-occupied countries is the starved bodies and haunting eyes of children who should be playing, laughing and eating right…More important than ever under rationing, the good flavor of meat helps stimulate the child’s appetite for other essential foods. (Life, October 25, 1943, p.997)

Meat was also depicted as the “weapon of war,” “the yardstick of protein foods” in the American Meat Institute’s “We Waste Not the Meat” (Life, December 20, 1943, p.64). However, instead of the lackluster faces presented in the “Meat and a generation to guard” ad, the face of the boy is full of joy and happiness. Using a Christmas setting,

Burnett compares the boy to the “boys” fighting overseas.

This year a lot of boys are spending their holidays in faraway lands. This time a lot of boys will be eating Christmas dinner from a mess kit.

Lest we forget, the ounce of meat we save is an ounce of insurance that our meat is being used more effectively as a weapon of war. (Life, December 20, 1943, p.64)

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Since women were the main food shoppers, this ad targeted women with its advertising messages. Burnett combines the story of wartime with the idyllic scene of a loving family. In order to encourage housewives to purchase more meat products,

Burnett sets the scene with a happy family at the dinner table, centering on a boy holding his plate while he smiles and waits for his father to share meat with him.

That’s why women are learning to prepare with new glamour the cuts available from day to day, all of which contain the same nutritional essentials—every cut of which has its own distinctive flavor. (Life, December 20, 1943, p.64)

Despite women’s responsibility of maintaining the household, Burnett’s “Don’t do that duchess” ad declared that there is no reason housewives in the 1930s should not feel like they were duchesses. In addition, they could look beautiful and fashionable under the everyday pressures of cooking. Burnett’s 1930s story features with a

“duchess” shelling peas— an upper middle-class housewife who wears a pearl necklace, shiny rings and a glamorous bracelet, not using the Green Giant product. The

“pretty pink nails” and “soft, white hands” conjure up a Cinderella-like situation of a woman slaving away and risking her nails, hands, and dress. Burnett persuades his audience to not be like the lady in the ad.

Don’t take the finish off your pretty pink nails. Don’t toughen up those soft, white hands. Don’t spot that pretty frock…Don’t shell your own peas!...Why shell peas when you can get GREEN GIANTS at your nearest grocery store or delicatessen? (Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1936, p.191)

Not only did Burnett convince housewives to save themselves from chores like shelling peas, but he also gave a list of reasons for them to not feel like less of a housewife if they purchased Green Giant Peas at the local grocery store. Action verbs describing the process of bringing the peas to the table helped to justify purchasing

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Green Giant products and assured them that they were providing something as special as if it came from their own gardens.

…and if you wanted to get peas as good and fresh-tasting as GREEN GIANTS you’d have to have a special kind of seeds, plant them yourself, guard them carefully, nurture them tenderly, pluck the peas right at the hour of perfection, shell them immediately, then cook and eat them at once. (Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1936, p.191)

A similar upper-class housewife saves her marriage with Niblets corn in the “Mrs.

Thomas T. Twiggers cancels Reno Reservation” ad. In the style of a society section news story, complete with a “gossipy” headline, Burnett presented a solution to a problem many housewives feared in the 1930s: an unappreciative husband, an unhappy marriage and too much housework.

She was all set for Reno. She had enough of Mr. Twiggers’ bickering, back- biting and blustering. She was tired of his snooting her friends, her clothes and her meals. She was going to sue on grounds of “incompatibility.” (It should have been on grounds of “indigestibility.”) (Good Housekeeping, December 1, 1935, p.166)

Alone with depicting Mrs. Twiggers as a lady who can afford shiny pieces of jewelry, he empowers her as woman who can “defy” her husband by traveling to Reno and suing him for divorce. To save the day, a wise cook served up the solution to a happy ending – “something golden in a dish.” Mention of his previous life on a farm and memories of his carefree days as a boy, as well as a description of the sensory process, allow consumers to visualize Mr. Twiggers’ action-filled transformation from disgruntled husband to loving and youthful.

Twiggers was served it; he sniffed; he partook. He closed his eyes. He smiled. His lips smacked. His face unwrinkled and relaxed. (Good Housekeeping, December 1, 1935, p.166)

The negative connotations of the opening words are replaced at the end with positive connotative words describing the corn, words that mimic the change in the 98

relationship. Mr. Twiggers is “tickled” and “warmed” by corn and his wife. Thus, in the happy ending, Mrs. Twiggers calls to “cancel that ticket to Reno and make it two to

Tampa,” with the word “two” underlined (Good Housekeeping, December 1, 1935, p.166).

In the ad “A Home with a Fighting Heart,” Burnett weaves together a multitude of anecdotal examples to create a picture of a unified American home front. A man who fixes the stairs or replaces a window, a woman who knits a scarf or repairs a coat or slipcover, and a child who avoids scuffing his shoes all characterize Burnett’s story of civilians doing their part to fight the war. The fact that only the senior couple is shown in the ad leads to the conclusion that a younger member of this family is fighting somewhere else to end the war.

Every mother’s heart, every father’s heart, every American’s heart all beat to one refrain—

“Get this war over right, Get this war over soon.” (Life, November 8, 1943, p.997)

Burnett’s ad copy stresses that one home represents thousands more just like it.

With sensationalistic action verbs reminiscent of Pulitzer and Hearst, he implores readers to “fight”, to “save”, and to “change”, as he rallies supporters to join Hoover’s campaign to shorten the war by conserving and salvaging.

It’s a case of one home with a Fighting Heart being multiplied by 30,000,000 homes.

One snowflake by itself isn’t much. A lot of snowflakes can change the looks of the world. If all our homes fight to save work-hours and materials for war, they can change the length of this war!

Let’s fight, home! (Life, November 8, 1943, p. 997)

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In another Hoover ad, “Meet a Home that is shortening the War,” Burnett tells the story of one home and its family of heroes who regularly engage in activities that will help to end the war. The message from Hoover emphasizes that the company feels it can do its part “by pointing out to the American home the power of the American home in getting this war over faster.”

Our biggest question about the war is “How soon will it end”…We buy Bonds, we salvage scrap, we share our foods in order to get it over faster…

One of the greatest War shorteners is the homes we live in…Let’s fight with them to shorten the war! (Life, October 11, 1943, p. 18)

By introducing the readers to this fictionalized family, Burnett puts a face to the

American home and makes the “war-shortening” drive more meaningful and tangible.

He characterizes the family members as fighters and scrappers willing to do what it takes to win the war, regardless of the personal inconveniences.

The man, by putting on his own storm windows, is doing two things: releasing the work-hours of someone else, and winterizing his home with storm windows which will keep his family warmer with less coal or oil or gas. (Life, October 11, 1943, p.18)

In “Meet a Home that is shortening the War,” Burnett “shows” a regular American family’s daily war-shortening activities, leading the readers to come to their own conclusions about the value of even the smallest contribution. A woman carrying groceries, a child collecting scrap metal, and a man making repairs to his home are all part of the war effort.

Burnett used a more fanciful approach to his storytelling style with the “Midnight in the Kitchen” ad in solving the mystery of “…why the Green Giant on the can of Niblets brand whole kernel corn doesn’t get tired of holding his big ear of corn” (Life, December

16, 1940, p.59). The narrative panels evoke memories of the midnight activities of the

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helpful elves in “The Elves and the Shoemaker” fairytale, while Burnett’s catchy, rhymed verses imbue the ad copy with a lighthearted effect.

To stand for seed this salt I’ll sow (Which in the ground will wake and grow.) These, you know, are special seeds Developed from two thousand breeds. (Life, December 16, 1940, p.59)

In this ad, Burnett depicts the hero-like Green Giant as clever, trustworthy, helpful, healthy, and most importantly, a friend, who advises readers to try his corn. In sharing the secret source of his indefatigable energies to the audience, he “talks” and “plays”, but he can also “plow”, “farm”, and “fix” – all in the dead of night.

Engaging Quotes and Dialogue

Considering that “the human interest feature is, perhaps, the most common variety of the feature story,” as Williamson (1977) argued, feature writers rely heavily on the spoken word to stimulate interest in the story and to allow the readers to draw their own conclusions about the speaker. Journalism educator Willard Grosvenor Bleyer compared the feature story to a work of good fiction, utilizing a variety of elements to engage and entertain the reader. According to Bleyer (1913),

Like the short fiction story, the feature story may begin in any way that will attract the reader's attention, and may be developed by conversation, by narration, or by description that suggests rather than portrays in great detail. A good feature story frequently tells itself; all that the writer does is to record the incidents without comment or adornment.(Bleyer, 1913, p. 213)

Whether as quoted material from an interview, a conversation between characters, or conversational statements directly addressing the reader, the spoken word immediately makes characters more “real” because those people reading the words feel that they know the speakers because they have heard them with their own ears.

Harrington (1912) noted that the New York Sun at the turn of the century even used the

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monologue “with capital results, often adding a personal tone and a chatty freedom to an otherwise humdrum bit of news” (Harrington, 1922).

What a person says and how he or she says it is critical in depicting the human character of its subject. A brief and colorful quote offers insight into the mindset of the character, while the appropriate attribution reveals the tone of how something was said, thereby adding to the contextualization of information. Bleyer (1920) emphasized the myriad of advantages for using the direct quote:

First, the spoken word, quoted verbatim, gives life to the story. The person interviewed seems to be talking to each reader individually. The description of him in his surroundings helps the reader to see him as he talks. Second, events, explanations, and opinions given in the words of one who speaks with authority, have greater weight than do the assertions of an unknown writer. Third, the interview is equally effective whether the writer's purpose is to inform, to entertain, or to furnish practical guidance. Romance and adventure, humor and pathos, may well be handled in interview form. Discoveries, inventions, new processes, unusual methods, new projects, and marked success of any kind may be explained to advantage in the words of those responsible for these undertakings. (Bleyer, 1920, p. 57)

Burnett was particularly adept at using the characterized voice of a friend or wise expert, whether actual or fictionalized, to speak directly to potential consumers. In some instances, consumers assumed the role of third-party listener, or “fly on the wall,” as they overheard valuable tips about picking a product, while at other times, brief quotes provided commentary about the product outside the main narrative of the ad copy.

Another approach was to use direct address, in which “you” was stated or implied, and speak to the consumer friend-to-friend or expert shopper-to-novice shopper.

As in a good feature story, placement within the main copy and effective attribution were key components in determining the way consumers would respond to a character.

Harrington (1912) advised beginning writers that, “conversation is usually most serviceable in direct interviews and in utilizing a significant remark or a stirring passage 102

of an address as a key sentence at the outset” (p. 30). Burnett’s character-focused ads were ideally suited for the use of quotes and dialogue, especially at the beginning of the ad copy.

In feature writing, speaking directly to the readers in second-person pronouns implies a familiarity, as though the characterized speaker knows the audience members on an intimate level. Such is the case in “The shoe with the magic sole” ad. In the ad, a well-dressed woman in the act of entering a revolving door speaks directly to other women about the benefits of Air Step shoes, as if offering advice to a close friend.

“You’ll get around more easily, more smartly too in Air Step” encourages women workers who have to wear heels all day, as well as women interested in fashion, to purchase Air Step shoes for comfort and style (Life, September 29, 1941, p. 997). The advice also includes practical and lighthearted reasons why women will enjoy the shoes.

You don’t tense yourself for pavement jars with Air Steps. You know the Magic Sole is going to take up the jolt. So you step out with freedom—move with grace—get around fast. (Life, September 29, 1941, p. 997)

In “You have only one back to five to your home,” Burnett suggests that the speaker and the female audience members share a common affliction – back problems.

Thus, the advice, courtesy of Hoover characterized by the image of a young mother, seems to come from one wise housewife to an inexperienced one.

You have only one back to give to your home. You’d give it, too, if that sacrifice were required. But it isn’t—not these days… (Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1936, p. 269).

In the accompanying illustration, the mother carries her child on her back, both of them smiling. Under the image is the caption “pick-a-back”, an obvious allusion to a piggyback ride, as well as a reference to the decision housewives need to make about 103

saving their backs. Like a “real” friend of the housewives who are reading the ad, the copy maintains a sincere and honest tone, while offering the Hoover vacuum as an alternative.

Listen to us. A tired back means a tired woman—it means that youth slips away all too soon…We want to take the major load off that back. Work that’s tiring out too many women in too many homes today. (Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1936, p.269)

Burnett’s ad asks housewives not only to read the ad copy, but also to write down the primary message in the women’s ever-present diary. This invitation connotes the empathetic nature of a friend, while reinforcing the ad message Burnett was trying to promote.

Just write this in your diary, “A tired old cleaner means a tired old housewife!” Then say, “But I can have a new back-saving, youth-saving, disposition-saving, work-saving Hoover for as little as $1.00 a week.” (Good Housekeeping, April 1, 1936, p. 269)

The “Madame Schumann-Heink ... Tells Men a Thing Or Two About Christmas

Shopping” ad also offered friendly advice—this time to the man of the house. In the

December 1935 ad, Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, the well-known operatic contralto noted for her Christmas concerts from 1926 to 1935, tries to persuade husbands to choose Hoover cleaners as their gifts to their wives. Her expertise on the topic of housewives is confirmed by her confession, “I know what I talk about because I am a mother—even a great-grandmother—and I am an old housekeeper, too” (Good

Housekeeping, December 1, 1934, p.157).

The main copy of the ad was written as though Madame Schumann-Heink were talking directly to the audience, as a dear friend of worried husbands who wonder,

“What on earth will I give my good wife for her Christmas present?” (Good

Housekeeping, December 1, 1934, p.157) In this heart-to-heart, Madame Schumann- 104

Heink not only attempts to persuade her “friends” to purchase Christmas gifts for their wives “…because they are your partners…for better or for worse,” but she also suggests that the husbands choose the Hoover cleaners over jewelry or perfume.

…Those are fine presents. She will love you for giving them. But there are some other things too which every wife should have….I mean those wonderful modern things that give your wife more time to take it easy and to play with the children, that leave her back not so tired at night, and keep out those old wrinkles. (Good Housekeeping, December 1, 1934, p.157)

One of the bonuses of good dialogue is its ability to inform and entertain at the same time, which Burnett demonstrates in the “After McGuffey” ad he created for the

Green Giant Peas. This was an allusion to the McGuffey Readers of the 19th century, early reading instruction schoolbooks. Structured in the style of a McGuffey Readers lesson, the ad features a humorous story about two sisters who “fooled” their father who is a judge by serving him peas from the Green Giant. Burnett humanizes the story by referring to the sisters’ names, Eleanor and Eloise, as well as their father’s name, Judge

Arbuthnot, although the girls refer to him as “daddy”. Identifying the characters makes the interchange of words seem more personal and allows the readers to feel like they are privy to a family discussion.

“Humph”, garumphed their old man. “You girls must have changed your gardener. These fresh peas are the freshest-tasting peas I have ever et. The best, too.”

“Surprize! Surprize!” shouted his daughters in unison, “those are Green Giant Brand Peas—fresh peas in a can—and we have fooled you at last!” (Life, September 20, 1937)

In addition to the humor used in the copy, the informal language style, including the use of dialect, can also make the target audience more receptive to the advertising message, as well as the advertised product. Many informal language usages can be found in the copy, words and phrases such as “like a lark,” “daddy,” “Humph,” 105

“garumphed,” “et” (ate). Readers also have the benefit of the McGuffey-like list of vocabulary words used in the ad.

Characterization/Exposition

Because it is intended to inform, all news writing is expository, either whole or in part. Literary educator Melvin James Curl concluded that interest “enters at the moment when the writing becomes related vitally to human beings, and not until that moment”

(Curl, 1919, p. 4). To maintain human interest, however, feature stories must include facts in an entertaining manner to preserve reader interest (Bleyer, 1916, p. 10).

Feature writers must include “all details necessary for a reader to understand events and issues,” leaving no unanswered questions (Sloan & Wray, 1997, p.13).

Exposition may take a variety of forms, depending on what the readers need in order to make sure they comprehend every element of a story. In the case of human-interest writing, exposition combines elements of definition, characterization, and interpretation.

Buck and Morris (1899) explained that expository writing provides the context necessary for successful communication of the writer’s observations and readers’ comprehension of key points. In its relation to exposition, “definition” tells exactly what something is,

“characterization” analyzes the motives behind the causes or actions, and

“interpretation” reveals the knowledge and principles gained from the writer’s “sense- experiences”.

According to Curl (1919), definition and interpretation provide the “nucleus” around which the underlying point of the story revolves. Once this key point is established, the expository writing “may then be treated as a bald report or as an interpretation, aiming merely to give information or to rouse the further interest of the reader” (p. 8). Curl

(1919) reasoned: 106

As you approach a subject, and learn its character and meaning, you will be at the same time learning whether it is a subject capable of great appeal or only of slight attraction. Interest is not something laid on, but is a development from the nature of the facts themselves. (p. 8)

However, Curl (1919) added, how the exposition is written must be determined not only by “the nature of facts,” but “the purpose of the author in writing,” as well as the readers’ benefits for their continued interest (p. 8). Likewise, one of the cornerstones of

Burnett’s advertising philosophy was that good ads should have the element of reward, whether substantial or emotional, so that consumers would have incentives to purchase the product. “Don't tell people how good you make goods; tell them how good your goods make them,” Burnett counseled (Burnett, 1961, p. 243).

In Burnett’s “You get a lot to like” Marlboro campaign, the main body of the ad copy promised:

You get the man-size flavor of honest tobacco without huffing and puffing. This filter works good and draws easy. The Flip-Top Box keeps every cigarette in good shapes. You’d expect it to cost more, but it doesn’t. (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

Instead of focusing on the product itself, Burnett highlighted Marlboro’s “inherent drama,” as well as the element of reward Marlboro could provide for its consumers. In this instance, Burnett reasoned that ad copy focused only on the facts, without the human element, would not appeal to consumers. He later confessed:

The first temptation was to go overboard with advertising that featured the "Flip-Top Box," the first real change in cigarette packaging in 38 years. It not only kept the cigarettes in good shape right down to the twentieth one, but, when empty, it was dandy for carrying fishhooks, stray buttons, and all sorts of things. But people don't smoke boxes, and everybody decided that it was what was inside the box that counted most. So we turned to Elmo Roper's research. (Burnett, 1958, p. 6)

Based on Roper’s research findings, Burnett’s team realized that the best way to sell the cigarette was to define exactly what the product was, but in a way that refuted 107

the commonly held belief that filter cigarettes were effeminate and the ivory-tipped

Marlboros were sissy. Burnett added, “It didn't take any motivational research or psychological séance to decide that the best way to sell the new Marlboro was to present it for what it really was, a filter cigarette with a full, honest flavor that could satisfy a man who was a regular smoker. In other words, a man's filter” (Burnett, 1958, p. 6).

In addition to the straightforward information, Burnett added the human element by characterizing what should be the product’s typical consumer, a successful and decidedly masculine smoker. Most of the Marlboro ad copy was succinct, much like what a man confident in his own masculinity might say.” Often, the copy of ad consisted of only two sentences, such as: “The filter cigarette with the unfiltered taste. Why don’t you settle back and have a full-flavored smoke?”

His photos of “regular guys,” men who “typified what has been referred to as

‘masculine confidence,’ along with frank facts about the product and the rewards of using it, were a hit with both male and female smokers. He explained:

People told us, "This man looks successful and sophisticated but rugged, and as though he might have had interesting experiences."

The general response among both men and women was, "He is the kind of person you would notice across a crowded room, and I would be interested in meeting him." (Burnett, 1958, p. 7)

Burnett believed that the one thing advertising could most contribute to the image of the brand was “a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he makes”

(Burnett, 1961, p. 278). By combining definition, characterization, and interpretation,

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Burnett created a fact-based ad that engaged the consumer and developed the masculine personality the client wanted to establish for the brand.

He used a similar approach in a 1938 ad for Realsilk Hosiery Mill Inc., adding a unique “twist” to the accompanying illustrations. The graphic elements depict a man and woman sitting close together and whispering amid roses scattered throughout the picture. At the center of the ad, a large-carat diamond ring dangles from a long transparent black silk scarf being held in a woman’s left hand. However, a closer look at the “romantic scene” reveals what the man is holding -- a Realsilk Hosiery catalog, not a ring catalog. The man in the picture was a Realsilk Hosiery representative who was helping the lady choose hosiery. Accompanying the scene, the ad copy stated:

Just a wisp of shimmering sheerness—yet with surprising strength behind its silken “nothingness.” A stocking for your high moments. The kind of hosiery that goes places, and smart ones. Just the hose to flatter an important lady. In daring and subtle shades. (Burnett, Leo Burnett Company)

From a combination of facts and the human-interest element, the female consumers can assume that a pair of Realsilk hosiery can promise durability, as well as the possibility of future social activities and maybe a romance. From the presence of the hosiery representative in the graphics, the consumer can also infer that potential buyers will be able to have all of their questions answered by helpful, professional Realsilk

Hosiery employees, providing Burnett’s idea of “a friendly predisposition” toward the brand and peace of mind about the purchase.

Despite his lack of characterization in this ad, the company representative plays a prominent role in “Shop From Your Swivel Chair.” Another Realsilk Hosiery ad, “Shop

From Your Swivel Chair” showcases a sketch of a fashionable businessman and his

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secretary in the middle of an interoffice daily briefing. In this illustration, the secretary preps her boss about his morning commitments:

…at ten o’clock the Smoke Abatement Committee; at ten thirty the Realsilk Representative; at eleven your attorney and at eleven fifteen you take your acidophilus milk. (Life, September 20, 1937, p.95)

Obviously targeting harried businessmen, the illustration sets the scene for explaining the convenient representative service, as well as the selling points of Realsilk socks. The cartoon illustration implies that the service, which “sets up a men’s shop right in your own sanctum sanctorum,” should require only about 30 minutes out of the businessman’s schedule. Thus, the invisible representative is telling the overworked executive that he can “shop from your swivel chair for ‘The Best Wearing Socks in

America—Bar None’…Other haberdashery too…” (Life, September 20, 1937, p. 95).

This part of the ad copy talks to consumers directly, promising men—whether

“Supreme Court Justice” or “college sophomore”—that they can have the best-wearing socks in America, all from the comfort of their swivel chairs.

This service naturally features the famous Realsilk socks. Those longer- wearing, better-looking, softer-feeling, anti-darning foot casings that are known wherever men are men and men wear shoes. (Life, September 20, 1937, p.95)

Statements directly addressing the reader creates a more “real” and personal situation because it makes consumers feel as though the speaker knows him as an individual. Burnett uses a similar style in another Realsilk ad targeting women. In the

“Thousands of stockings and TWO OF THEM TO FIT YOU” ad, Realsilk Hosiery instructs women to think of themselves as an individual among thousands. Thanks to new technology, Realsilk was changing “the hosiery habits of the nation by furnishing

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hosiery in a tremendous variety of leg proportions as well” (Life, September 6, 1937, p.

95).

Speaking directly to the readers, Burnett clarifies that “Realsilk has a new philosophy,” designed to improve the look and lifestyle of its customers, despite using only “footsize” for years. In order to fulfill this philosophy, Realsilk will “feature a five-way fit—ankle, calf, top and length as well as footsize.” If women want “a new lilt” to their look, “a dash more elegance,” and “three dashes more wear,” they should try the new measuring gadget (Life, September 6, 1937, p.95).

While an elegantly dressed woman reclines on a settee and flaunts a leg entangled in the new measuring gadget, more exposition clarifies that the photo is a less than accurate depiction of the process. However, further reading informs the readers that as always, the representatives of Realsilk would be around the corner if their customers were in need of assistance (Life, September 6, 1937, p.95).

In lieu of characters to personalize the ad copy, Burnett ‘s “Lard…more than a superior cooking fat” ad takes the form of a personal message to doctors and their patients—the readers. Tagged with the image of a note--“A message to doctors that’s important to you, too!”—“paper-clipped” to the ad copy, the ad takes on the persona of newspaper or magazine clipping passed on by caring friend. Created for the American

Meat Institute, the ad stresses the rewards of consuming lard daily.

As a cooking fat for sautéing, shortening and deep frying, lard was long enjoyed a favored position with cooks and housewives. It is economical, tasty and easy to use, and produces foods of outstanding flavor and eye- appeal. (Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1, 1950, p.108)

Implying that the information is intended for doctors, the ad includes scientific terminology and medical references that connote an expertise in health care and

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nutrition. Not only comprehensive information about the benefit of lard was provided in the ad copy, but also information on the potential health-related problems that caused by the deficiency of the nutrients that rich in lard were warned by the ad.

But lard is more than a mere shortening agent. It is an excellent source of the unsaturated fatty acids, linoleic, linolenic and arachidonic acids. These important nutrients must be supplied by the foods eaten; the ability of the human organism to synthesize them is limited. (Ladies’ Home Journal, November 1, 1950, p.108)

A question in the form of dialogue personalizes the expository approach in “New

Home? No--old Hoover,” which introduces the benefits of using the Hoover cleaners. In its illustration, a woman in a suit marvels at the home of another woman wearing an apron and seemingly in the middle of cleaning using the Hoover. “New Home?” the first woman asks. No--old Hoover,” the housewife replies. The ad copy follows up with exposition to explain, “Why is it that Hoover Cleaners all over the country are giving such a good account of themselves these war days?” The answer to the question was provided in the next paragraph of the ad, telling the audience that not only are Hoover

Cleaners known for their product quality, but also for their service program.

Whether it’s an automobile, a washing machine or an electric cleaner, women know that a mechanical device is no better than the service it gets…Hoover has a two-to-one preference, among women, over any other cleaner…(Life, November 13, 1944, p.10)

In the “Meat and Life” ad, Burnett uses the portrayal of a smiling mother and her child to persuade America to use more ration stamps on meat. Burnett’s interactive approach not only tells readers what to “look” for in the illustration, but also where to look to find the same healthy appearance depicted the mother and child.

Look at the smile on the face that goes with well-being. Look to good nutrition for its part in that well-being…And look to that good tasting meat for its part in good nutrition. (Life, February 14, 1944, p.71)

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Once their attention is engaged, readers are now ready to absorb the detailed information on the nutritional rewards of meat. Consumers are inundated with “facts” in order to encourage them “to keep meat on the table as often as possible.”

Proteins are essential to life…The well-being of every man, women and child depends on them…They build and repair body tissues…Since no appreciable reserve of proteins is stored in the body, they must be supplied in the daily foods you ear…The proteins of meat are the right kind—of highest biologic value. (Life, February 14, 1944, p.71)

In Roblee’s “Shoes for Men of the U.S.A.,” Burnett applies a standard “blind lead” that attracts reader interest by keeping them guessing about the subject. To find out what “they” are, consumers must read beyond: “They can be brown or black . . . official or civilian . . . They can fight at the front or work in a war plant.”

…But there are really just two kinds of men’s shoes these days: Shoes that Fight to Win—Shoes that Work to Win…and two kinds of men are asking these two kinds of shoes just these two questions: “How will it march and fight?” . . . “How will it walk and work?” (Life, October 25, 1943, p.16)

Included below the images of the camouflaged solider and the Army Service shoe, details about the shoe further link Roblee shoes with efforts to win the war, both at home and in battle.

“Rough side” out in this Army Service Shoe . . . because it resists jungle scuff or desert scuff better, also can be more thoroughly waterproofed. . . . (C)ivilian shoe in smooth black calf with patented Tread Straight feature which makes you walk like a “Three-Star” general. (Life, October 25, 1943, p.16)

In “A Green Giant recipe you’ll never tire of,” Burnett emphasizes establishing the

Green Giant’s reputation as a “scientist” of freshness and flavor. Following a simple three-ingredient recipe, a series of numbered panels display line drawings of the giant and succinct descriptions of the process for packaging peas. Simple verbs such as

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“gathers,” “shells,” “seals”, “checks,” and “puts” detail the giant’s undertakings as he moves the peas from field to can (Good Housekeeping, March 1, 1940, p.140).

Potentially boring facts about processing procedures are made more interesting by the characterization of the giant as a company scientist. However, his diligent use of a

“Tenderometer” and a “brine solution” conveys the sense of a dutiful employee who oversees each step personally and genuinely cares about customers’ satisfaction with the product (Good Housekeeping, March 1, 1940, p.140).

Burnett takes this characterization one step further in “Meet Prof. Green Giant,

S.S.” In the ad, the Green Giant and his unofficial “scientist of soil” degree serve as an embodiment of the intelligent minds behind the Green Giant Company. “Prof. Green

Giant” describes in meticulous detail how much effort is put into growing healthy corn and peas.

If a growing thing has any hidden hunger, it shows up fast in a test tube. Chop up a bit of corn stalk or leaf or pea vine, pour certain chemicals over it and you can tell instantly if the soil is providing it with sufficient nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and other nutrients to produce a flourishing plant and well-filled corn ears or pea pods. (Life, November 13, 1944, p.113)

As an “expert source,” Prof. Green Giant explains the specifics soil tests—tests for potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus—in simple layman’s terms for the average consumer. Readers can infer that the giant and his skilled counterparts keep a keen eye on the “opaque, creamy-yellow color,” “deep blue color,” and the “darker” blue that indicate healthy soil and the necessary nutrients for succulent peas and corn.

Dialogue between two stereotypical 19th-century Native American warriors personalizes the debut of the new Roblee “Red Skins” shoe colors in “The ‘Red Skins’ are here.” The dialect in the ad copy mimics the 1940s Hollywood interpretation of the

Native American language of the Old West. 114

Heap big news shoe colors Heap big shoe news for fall ROBLEE REDSKINS! Copper red, Indian red Warm as a campfire glow Smart as the New West in Hollywood… (Life, September 30, 1940, p.997)

In addition to the popularity of the cinema-style Indian, vibrant color analogies keep the basic facts about the shoe color interesting for the readers. “Boarded

Redskin,” “Lustrous Redskin,” “Autumn Brown,” and “Kodiak” offer a bevy of “warm, he- man, and handsome” choices. Readers can “see” the vivacious hues and “feel” the texture of the “hand-toned,” “hand-rubbed”, or “plump” leather.

“Here is a basic new shoe color—rich as a 1940 penny, gorgeous as the deep burnished red in Grand Canyon rocks. (Life, September 30, 1940, p.997)

Leo Burnett was concerned that “one of the greatest dangers of advertising is … boring them (people) to death,” “Not being a murderer by inclination,” he constantly sought new ways to stimulate reader interest and bring potentially dull facts to life

(Burnett, 1961, p.169). For Burnett, using feature writing skills was one of the most effective ways to communicate with his audience of consumers.

Based on conversations with the elite members of his prestigious group of fellow writers known as the “Blue Pencil Club,” H.F. Harrington (1925) explained the value of the key elements of the feature story. He stressed:

[…] the feature story deals with people handled intimately. Items not sufficiently important to appear in news may often be salvaged for good feature articles. The newspaper makes room for such non-news material because it strikes a human note and escapes the limitations of time and space. (pp. 138-139)

To accomplish this successfully, a writer would need to start with solid facts, supplementing the exposition with human appeal. Shuman (1903) postulated that a

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journalist who could do this for his readers would have no problem connecting with his audience. He suggested:

If you have a simple, sensible, breezy style with a sparkle in it, the newspaper reader will forgive a good deal of inaccuracy in your matter; and if you are invariably reliable in your statements, the public will tolerate a moderate degree of dullness in your style. But the writer who can combine both reliability and sparkle is the one who will get the choicest assignments and have the best chance of reaching the top of his profession. On the other hand, the unpardonable sin in journalism is to be both stupid and inaccurate. (Shuman, 1903, p. 40)

When Burnett first welcomed the Philip Morris account, it was worth around $1.23 million a year, which was considered “peanuts for the cigarette business” (Daniels 1974, p.237; Kluger, 1997). Advertising Age later declared that Burnett "took a minor cigarette brand with a predominantly feminine image and turned it into big seller by using close- up photos of ruggedly masculine men” (as cited in “Leo Burnett, Leo Burnett Company,”

2001). The success of the campaign was overwhelming, and so were the strategies Leo

Burnett used to produce this campaign and other using basic journalistic writing techniques.

As with any good news story, Burnett’s ads started with a detailed assortment of facts. He clarified, “Our business is looking, and looking desperately, for more young men and women who genuinely look on advertising as a vital force in our economy and a specialized form of communications which starts with facts, creates ideas about them, then projects them” (Knoch, 1962, p. D6).

One of his idols, New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer maintained a similar philosophy. At an address at Columbia University’s Pulitzer School of Journalism, his son Ralph Pulitzer elaborated on his father’s principles regarding the importance of facts in a news story. Ralph Pulitzer recalled:

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Accuracy in newspaper writing was with him a religion. He had a ravenous craving for information. . . .He was intolerant of generalizations and impatient of conclusions. Specific facts were what he wanted and from them he preferred to draw his own conclusions. This craving for exact facts naturally carried with it an insistence on accuracy and an utter detestation of inaccuracy. He hated an inaccurate statement as another man would loathe a lie. He was inexorable in running it down, ruthless in tearing it to pieces. (Pulitzer, 1912, p. 3-4)

Burnett incorporated facts with his own form of creativity to produce ads that piqued consumer interest. Drawing from his own experiences as a journalist, he took elements from the current hybrid form of “news feature” story that appeared in magazines and newspapers and imbued it with his own sense of what consumers viewed as physical and psychological gratification. The result was a fact-based writing style that emphasized truthfulness and focused on four primary elements: narrative

(storytelling), vivid and detailed description, engaging quotes and dialogue, and expository background and characterization.

Burnett recognized the value of combining skills from both advertising and journalism to create the most effective means of presenting a product. This successful blend of the expressive style of feature writing and advertising techniques that drew the consumer in eventually made his agency one of the largest and most respected in the industry. In passing along his wisdom to a group of newly promoted ad agency executives, Burnett admonished them to: “Remember what our business is all about. It’s two things: making better ads and attending to clients” (Knoch, 1962, p. D6).

This chapter discussed in detail how the feature writing style connects to the way advertising messages were organized in the ads that can represent Leo Burnett’s advertising style the most. The limitations as well as implications of this study will be discussed in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

Discussion and Conclusion

This chapter discusses the implications of this study, as well as its limitations.

While concluding the findings of this study, this chapter also aims to shed light on future research interests on Leo Burnett.

To be able to work as a reporter for the New York World used to be Leo Burnett’s dream. He had “never dreamed… of ever going into the advertising business” (Higgins,

2003, p.27). Although Burnett never had the chance to work at the New York World, his endeavor to try to reach for the stars in advertising was well documented by some of the largest media publications in the country.

To the advertising world, Leo Burnett was an icon, yet few researchers have examined his journalism background and how his journalistic connections through various stages of his life might have influenced his advertising prospective and shaped his views on how to advertise in the most effective way. His personal and professional lives were inhabited by numerous people with a journalism background and/or creative writing exposure. These people brought those experiences into their relationships with

Burnett, as evidenced by the stylistic techniques manifested in his ad presentations.

This chapter provides an overview of the commonalities between Burnett’s ads and journalistic feature writing in the early half of the 20th century. It also focuses on how Burnett’s ad copywriting style fits into the overall picture of advertising and mass media history and considers ways in which Burnett’s style pointed to shared principles in reaching the rapidly changing needs of consumers in the first half of the 20th century.

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The most important source of journalistic influence came from Burnett’s own journalism experience, which can be traced back to his job as a “printer’s devil” at the age of 9. As a teenager, Burnett had worked for the Clinton Democrat, later when he entered into college (Higgins, 2003, p.29). He spent four years as a journalism major at the University of Michigan, where he worked for the Michiganensian and The Gargoyle, as well as the Michigan Daily. Burnett worked for the Michigan Wolverine immediately after his graduation from the University of Michigan, and he later joined the Peoria

Journal as part of the effort to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist (Higgins, 2003, p.29).

Family Influences

Public records and personal accounts produced by family members detailed several immediate family members and in-laws with connections to journalistic writing.

Burnett’s brother Verne was a former journalist, a former advertiser, and a public relation professional.

Perhaps, the most accurate picture of Leo Burnett’s early family life appeared in the writings of his sister, Mary and her second husband, Alvah Bessie. Bessie, a noted writer and also a journalist, used his wife’s family stories and recollections as the basis for his first book, Dwell in the Wilderness. Bessie’s work serves as a prime example of experimental writing, described as “the new and fresh use of style, the clean seeing, the interrelation of mood, atmosphere and event to create a unique interpretation of those circumstances” (Appel, 1936, p. 12). Mary published occasional short stories about incidents in her family’s lives, but she never published her journals, which provided the basis for at least two of his books.

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Burnett often turned to his wife, Naomi Burnett, for advice regarding ad copy, especially when he was creating a campaign for household items. Naomi Burnett’s father, George Geddes, was also a member of the journalism community and instilled in her a love of the written word.

Work Influences

Automotive advertising was the “bellwether of the field” from 1905 to 1940, until wartime restrictions intervened. From his bosses at Cadillac Motors, Lafayette Motors, and Homer McKee to colleagues at Erwin, Wasey & Company, Burnett collected words of wisdom that undoubtedly influenced the development of his advertising principles.

Burnett’s first boss at Cadillac Motor Car Company was Earle Howard, an advertising man with a keen instinct for human nature. Burnett learned from Howard that writing should be “person-to-person communication of the most human sort”

(Burnett, 1961, p.116).

Burnett also formed a friendship with Art Kudner at Erwin, Wasey & Company.

Kudner, a former reporter from Lapeer, Michigan, and the son of a newspaper man, was the first company employee he met who shared his Saturday morning work ethic and appreciation for a straightforward and simple approach to ad copy.

Homer McKee, a newspaper cartoonist for seven years with the Indianapolis Star before becoming advertising manager of the Cole Motor Car Company, was well known in the business community for his homespun wisdom. McKee’s straightforward and no- nonsense writing techniques were readily adopted by many automobile advertising writers of the period.

Theodore Francis MacManus was one of the greatest journalism influences.

Burnett once commented, “MacManus taught me the power of the truth, simply told” 120

(Tungate, 2007, p. 67). Burnett’s timing was perfect for beginning his career in advertising, especially for arriving at Cadillac when MacManus was changing the industry’s thinking about how advertising should be practiced. MacManus was deemed the spokesman for good copy, and Burnett considered him “one of the greatest advertising men of all time” (Burnett, 1961, p.169). His writing style focused on putting a human face to the product, rather than by simply hawking only the features of the product.

“Inherent Drama” and Feature Writing Style in Burnett’s Ads

Leo Burnett’s advertising sought to resonate with consumers’ own recognition of the product rather than seeking attention for the creativity and originality of the ads themselves or the people who created the campaign (Reinhard, 1976). Burnett recognized the value of combining skills from both advertising and journalism to create the most effective means of presenting a product. He blended elements from the current hybrid form of “news feature” story with his own journalist’s sense of what would interest consumers. Burnett later classified this style of creativity and human interest as

“visibility with a bite” (Lazarus, 1964, p. 62). This writing style utilized many techniques to achieve the effect of dramatization for human interest appeal, such as using vivid descriptions, intriguing narratives, clever deployment of content and background, as well as arrangement of characters.

Burnett’s philosophy of focusing on the inherent drama, while remaining down-to- earth, is indicative of the central principles of the Chicago school of advertising. Burnett believed that his agency's creative work was a more “forthright presentation of facts in the sales message” than the New York style of “bombastic, braggadocios, and, at times, pure bull” (Lazarus, 1964, p. 60; Bessie, 2012, p. 3227). A blend of dramatization, 121

honesty, and plain speak, the Chicago approach was the exact opposite of the “hard sell”, which “used product features and claims, often exaggerated, to twist arms and pin the reader to the mat” (Bessie, 2012, p.3227).

To illustrate the connection between Burnett’s advertising technique and the standard practice of feature writing style, several of his ads, especially ads for his agency’s first three clients and other memorable ad campaigns, were selected from available electronic databases. Burnett incorporated facts with his own form of creativity to produce ads that piqued consumer interest. Drawing from his own experiences as a journalist, he took elements from the current hybrid form of “news feature” story that appeared in magazines and newspapers and imbued it with his own sense of what consumers viewed as physical and psychological gratification. The result was a fact- based writing style that emphasized truthfulness and focused on four primary elements: narrative (storytelling), vivid and detailed description, engaging quotes and dialogue, and expository background and characterization.

Burnett recognized the value of combining skills from both advertising and journalism to create the most effective means of presenting a product. This successful blend of the expressive style of feature writing and advertising techniques that drew the consumer in eventually made his agency one of the largest and most respected in the industry.

Limitations and Implications

One of the limits of this research study is the status of the researcher. As an international student, my perspective toward Leo Burnett as a historical figure as well as the works he and his agency accomplished is inevitably influenced by my own bias.

Even though intercoder reliability may deem as of less relevant in historical research, it 122

is important to acknowledge the fact that this study is a work of my perceptions toward

Leo Burnett as well as his works are deeply influenced by my background.

Even though Leo Burnett was the head of the Creative Review Council during the time which all the ads selected in this thesis were presented, the fact that he decided which ads got approved cannot guarantee the authorship, as well as the 100 per cent reflectivity of Leo Burnett's creative style. There might be times that Leo Burnett wasn't present at the Creative Review Council due to unpredictable factors such as weather and his health.

Social and economic transformations brought by the Industrial Revolution between

1760 and 1830 forced advertising to become more mass-oriented through the development of transportation and mass printing (McDonald, 2007; Norris, 1980).

Because of increased merchandise production, advertising was forced to adjust its practices and absorb the impact by boosting demand (Tellis, 1998; Nevett, 1982).

Distinctions such as unique packages and brand names were used in order to differentiate between products and brands, along with the adoption of various advertising campaigns.

This study provides insight into the factors that contributed to the principles and strategies developed by advertising pioneers as they sought to meet the needs of their clients, as well as reach a more demanding consumer-oriented audience of the 20th century. A closer look at influential factors in Leo Burnett’s life clarified ways that early advertising practitioners had begun to shift ad agencies’ role away from being the middleman, the group of people who simply bundled and sold ad space to a business

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entity that sought to understand what consumers wanted and to help companies implement those wishes into quality products.

It took advertising decades to become the business and discipline it is today, as well as for merchandisers and print media owners to recognize the value of cultivating relationships with the growing number of advertising practitioners and agencies. This thesis opens the door for other media historians to recognize the value of researching the rich biographical data that offers a wealth of knowledge behind the scenes of this critical juncture in the evolution of both journalism and advertising.

Not being able to access Leo Burnett’s work from his early years as a journalist made it difficult to determine whether some form of his writing style existed prior to his encounters with advertising professional with journalism backgrounds. The argument of this thesis would be stronger if more concrete connections between Burnett’s reporting styles and his copywriting skills could be made. Even though rich material written by

Burnett were found through various venues for the completion of this thesis, his reports produced as a journalist would still provide more thorough insight into journalism’s influence on his advertising style. Time constraints and restrictions on access to key documents limited the type of analysis that could be conducted. Access to Leo Burnett

Archive materials would be invaluable for future research of this topic.

Adopting a larger pool of ads to analyze might offer additional insight into whether

Burnett’s writing techniques varied depending on the magazine market in which the ads would appear. The ads included in analyzing Burnett’s journalistic traits in copywriting were more than sufficient to support the arguments, but increasing the number of ads

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would render more opportunity to provide a more in-depth analysis and categorization of the techniques used.

The advertising world is evolving rapidly today in this ever-changing market.

However, to advertisers’ dismay, the right ingredients for a successful advertising campaign that can help secure customers still remain to be found. As Burnett once said,

We (ad people) worry about manner, overtones, reason-why, product image, corporate image, motivations, good taste, impact, believability, and a host of other good things…Yet the brutal fact is that in the bewildering maze of today’s advertising people look at our advertising or listen to our advertising without even consciously seeing or hearing it. (Burnett, 1961, p.49-50)

It is important for advertisers and historians to try to understand what really contributed to Leo Burnett’s success and what constituted his formula for success. Even though Burnett said, “we have ideals but no formulas; principles but no ‘patterns’,” he oftentimes made summaries of what he believed contributed to his success (Burnett,

1961, p.322). This study has shown that journalism played a huge role in shaping Leo

Burnett’s character and talent, as well as his success in the business of advertising.

Hopefully, this thesis can provide the world with some new perspectives as to how Leo

Burnett progressed in advertising by relying on his journalism-oriented advertising- techniques, as well as what kind of advertising principles worked in conjunction with journalistic attributes in persuading consumers to purchase certain products.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Su Zhaohui received her master’s degree from the University of Florida. Su has always been passionate about advertising, and the two-year master’s program at the

University of Florida had only enhanced her zest for the advertising discipline. Su is currently enrolled in the doctoral program offered at the University of Texas, Austin.

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