Fox, Duffy was spending US $4 million on the new medium, and the agencyâs TV department had grown from 12 to 150 people. Total US advertising spend on television rose from US $12 million in 1949 to US $158 million just three years later. Having successfully occupied the radio landscape, brands were now firmly established on television.
03
Madison Avenue aristocracy
âCreative organizations are led by formidable individualsâ
I flew in to New York clutching two books: The Hidden Persuaders , by Vance Packard (1957) and Madison Avenue, USA , by Martin Mayer (1958). The thing I liked most about them was that I had managed to get hold of the original editions â tattered ex-library copies with yellowing paper â so I was effectively taking them back to the street that inspired them. One April afternoon I strode half the length of Madison Avenue, stopping occasionally to grab a coffee and leaf through their pages. At the beginning of the Packard book there was a note scrawled in blue ink: New York, Xmas 1960 . It may have been the perfect time and place to work in advertising.
Mayerâs book informs us that Madison Avenue is âthe only major New York street named after a president of the United Statesâ. The author concedes that âthe stretch that has made the street famous takes up one-fifth of its length, beginning at about 200 Madison and ending at about 650⦠forming what the vulgar call ad alley or ulcer gulchâ¦â. At the time that Mayer wrote his book, the agencies on Madison Avenue controlled half of the total expenditure on advertising in the United States â while most of the rest was handled by their branch offices. Madison Avenue had been the unofficial home of the advertising business since before the war, but in the past few years an unprecedented building boom had turned it into a glistening canyon of communications firms. âMadison Avenue as it appears today is impressively new,â writes Mayer in 1958. âMore than a dozen new office buildings, each more than 20 stories high, have been built since the warâ¦â
And what was it like inside these monolithic agencies? Having done the tour, Mayer could tell us that the offices of Young & Rubicam were predominantly decorated in green. McCann-Erickson featured ârestfulpastelsâ, but J Walter Thompson was âa class in itselfâ. The agencyâs stylishness had clearly not waned since the 1930s, and we rediscover with a sense of warm familiarity the dining suite âdecorated like a New England colonial farmhouseâ. The stylish Barcelona chairs by Mies van der Rohe may have been a more recent touch, however.
Madison Avenue symbolized the US advertising industry. When I interviewed him in 2006 (sadly, he passed away the following year), Phil Dusenberry, the former vice-chairman of BBDO, who came to work on the street as a young copywriter in the early 1960s, confirmed: âLike Hollywood, it became an idea rather than a physical place. You could say that Madison Avenue was advertising.â
By the 1950s, advertising was considered a glamorous â if still not exactly honourable â profession. Attitudes to the industry at the time are personified by the Cary Grant character in Hitchcockâs North by Northwest (1959), a dapper Madison Avenue man who is mistaken for a spy. Towards the beginning of the film, Grant says to his secretary, âIn the world of advertising thereâs no such thing as a lie. Thereâs only the expedient exaggeration.â
An entire mythology formed around the advertising business during this period. The standard template for a New York advertising executive was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit , the titular figure of Sloan Wilsonâs 1955 novel, who actually worked in public relations. If admen had ever worn flannel suits before the book became a bestseller, they certainly avoided them afterwards â although they were paid
03
Madison Avenue aristocracy
âCreative organizations are led by formidable individualsâ
I flew in to New York clutching two books: The Hidden Persuaders , by Vance Packard (1957) and Madison Avenue, USA , by Martin Mayer (1958). The thing I liked most about them was that I had managed to get hold of the original editions â tattered ex-library copies with yellowing paper â so I was effectively taking them back to the street that inspired them. One April afternoon I strode half the length of Madison Avenue, stopping occasionally to grab a coffee and leaf through their pages. At the beginning of the Packard book there was a note scrawled in blue ink: New York, Xmas 1960 . It may have been the perfect time and place to work in advertising.
Mayerâs book informs us that Madison Avenue is âthe only major New York street named after a president of the United Statesâ. The author concedes that âthe stretch that has made the street famous takes up one-fifth of its length, beginning at about 200 Madison and ending at about 650⦠forming what the vulgar call ad alley or ulcer gulchâ¦â. At the time that Mayer wrote his book, the agencies on Madison Avenue controlled half of the total expenditure on advertising in the United States â while most of the rest was handled by their branch offices. Madison Avenue had been the unofficial home of the advertising business since before the war, but in the past few years an unprecedented building boom had turned it into a glistening canyon of communications firms. âMadison Avenue as it appears today is impressively new,â writes Mayer in 1958. âMore than a dozen new office buildings, each more than 20 stories high, have been built since the warâ¦â
And what was it like inside these monolithic agencies? Having done the tour, Mayer could tell us that the offices of Young & Rubicam were predominantly decorated in green. McCann-Erickson featured ârestfulpastelsâ, but J Walter Thompson was âa class in itselfâ. The agencyâs stylishness had clearly not waned since the 1930s, and we rediscover with a sense of warm familiarity the dining suite âdecorated like a New England colonial farmhouseâ. The stylish Barcelona chairs by Mies van der Rohe may have been a more recent touch, however.
Madison Avenue symbolized the US advertising industry. When I interviewed him in 2006 (sadly, he passed away the following year), Phil Dusenberry, the former vice-chairman of BBDO, who came to work on the street as a young copywriter in the early 1960s, confirmed: âLike Hollywood, it became an idea rather than a physical place. You could say that Madison Avenue was advertising.â
By the 1950s, advertising was considered a glamorous â if still not exactly honourable â profession. Attitudes to the industry at the time are personified by the Cary Grant character in Hitchcockâs North by Northwest (1959), a dapper Madison Avenue man who is mistaken for a spy. Towards the beginning of the film, Grant says to his secretary, âIn the world of advertising thereâs no such thing as a lie. Thereâs only the expedient exaggeration.â
An entire mythology formed around the advertising business during this period. The standard template for a New York advertising executive was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit , the titular figure of Sloan Wilsonâs 1955 novel, who actually worked in public relations. If admen had ever worn flannel suits before the book became a bestseller, they certainly avoided them afterwards â although they were paid
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