The Real Mad Men of Chicago — A Chicago Stories Documentary

♪ Snap, Crackle, Pop, Rice Krispies ♪ - [Anthony] Coming up. ♪ Valley of The Jolly, ho-ho-ho, Green Giant ♪ You may not know the names Albert Lasker, Eugene Kolkey or Tom Burrell, but you certainly know their creations. - They're great! ♪ And you never would believe ♪ - Everywhere you turned, there were these memorable characters being created. ♪ I've got those old dependable everything's working right ♪ ♪ Maytag repair man blues ♪ - [Anthony] Chicago's advertising wizards gave us iconic figures like Charlie the Tuna. - [Man] Sorry Charlie. - [Anthony] Morris the Cat. - [Woman]

Time for din din. - [Morris] Time for my finicky act. - [Anthony] And the Pillsbury Doughboy. (Pillsbury giggles) They sold us soft drinks. - Oh, big time. Big time. - [Anthony] And airplane tickets. ♪ Fly the friendly skies of United ♪ - Whoever thought of flying on a plane as a friendly thing? - [Anthony] They took on Madison Avenue with a down-to-earth Chicago style of advertising. ♪ You, you're the one ♪ - We probably leaned more toward the heart. - [Cup] Butter. - [Anthony] And they had a hell of a time doing it. - They

may have had three martini lunches in New York, but in Chicago, they had six Jack Daniel lunches. ♪ Flying ♪ ♪ Come fly ♪ ♪ Our friendly skies ♪ - [Anthony] "The Real Mad Men of Chicago" next on "Chicago Stories". (dramatic music) (upbeat music) (dramatic musicin honki) The Philip Morris tobacco company, sat at the beating heart of the advertising world. Its headquarters were a mere half block from New York's Madison Avenue, but when its executive vice president was worried about sluggish sales in 1954, he hopped on a train, bound for Chicago. - I think Joe

Cullman was the first man to come out to Chicago on the old 20th Century Limited. He said he'd been seeing Leo Burnett ads in magazines and the like and he was intrigued by the advertising that he saw. - [Anthony] Leo Burnett was 63, an age when most advertising executives were nearing retirement and yet, he and Chicago were on the rise. - There is a huge amount of energy going on in the city. A lot of things are happening, The population hits a high water mark, it's over 3 million. There is a real flowering of culture,

whether we're talking about gospel music and Mahalia Jackson, improv comedy with Second City, Hugh Hefner, who starts Playboy during this period. I think Burnett meets that kind of mid-century cultural moment. - [Anthony] Joe Cullman, the tobacco executive, needed Burnett's help in revamping the image of a filter cigarette called Marlboro. - And it was a woman's cigarette. Had a little red tip on the end, so the lipstick wouldn't smear. - Having a filter on a cigarette was considered feminine. It was almost like having a cigarette holder. - [Anthony] Cullman met with Leo Burnett, in his Michigan

Avenue office. They were joined by a copy supervisor named Draper Dan Daniels. He was later an inspiration for the protagonist of TV's "Mad Men". - So this handsome fellow is Don Draper, the best creative director in New York. - Well, at least the building, pleasure to meet you. - [John] They were obviously impressed by Burnett and said, "Here's an assignment. We wanna take this brand, we wanna sell it to men rather than to women". - Well, this is a huge opportunity. I mean, this is like, hey man, you got a blank piece of paper, what

are you gonna do? - [Anthony] Leo summoned Draper Daniels and a top art director to his Lake Zurich country home. - I started to work out there at the farm about 9:30 on Saturday morning. I said, what's the most masculine symbol you can think of? And one of these writers spoke up and said a cowboy. - Leo went into his file of great photos, great ads and he gets out a picture of a cowboy with three days stubble and beard and he's smoking a cigarette. - [Anthony] The team sketched a format inspired by the Life

Magazine cover and they tweaked the design of the Marlboro package, to appear more masculine. - Monday morning, we set the type on the ad and we slapped this together in a matter less than 24 hours, I would say. Well, the art director brought it in and showed it to me and God, I just jumped out of my chair. I mean, I'd been in the advertising business for quite a while, but this was one of the greatest things I'd ever seen. - [Anthony] Burnett ran a full-page ad of his Marlboro Man in several cities. Within a

month, Marlboro became the number one selling filter cigarette in New York. - The Marlboro Man was able to take a product that was considered feminine because of that filter and suddenly make it seem hardcore and completely flipped the demographics for a product and blow it out. - [Anthony] The campaign moved Chicago one step closer to the center of the advertising universe. - All of a sudden, this guy from Chicago, I mean, Chicago, out in the west, out in the farmland and invents this world shaking advertising. - Where was the real advertising Mecca? 'Cause we had

always heard it was the Madison Avenue boys, but the Madison Avenue boys wasn't doing anything that the Michigan Avenue crowd couldn't do. - [Anthony] Led by Leo Burnett, a handful of Chicago creatives spawned the Chicago School of Advertising after World War II, where New York's Madison Avenue pushed the hard sell. - [Man] Only Anacin has special ingredients to relieve pain fast. - [Anthony] The Chicago school's campaigns were grounded in humble, Midwestern values. - [Leo] I like to think the language of our ads has been ventilated in the fresh Chicago breezes and rinsed in the clear

waters of Lake Michigan. - At a time when advertising, frankly was not something you could trust very much, you could always believe a Leo Burnett ad. He's not gonna lie to you, simple words, basic words and it always conveyed an atmosphere of two neighbors chatting across the fence. - [Anthony] This approach was certainly fresh, but Chicago has started to win the respect of the Eastern Establishment decades earlier. Before World War II, a Chicago adman named Albert Lasker, had earned a reputation as the father of modern advertising. - Albert Lasker was a trip. He comes up

from Galveston, Texas and takes a job at the Lord and Thomas Agency in the 1890s and within five years he's a partner and he's running the place. - [Anthony] Most advertisers at the time thought their job was simply to promote a product's brand name. Lasker demanded more. - He wanted to see salesmanship in print or reason why advertising, that is, that an ad should make a definite claim. Something distinguishes this product from all the other products in the field. They've got a lot of text, a lot of words and then down at the bottom, there'd

be a coupon offering a free sample. - [Anthony] Lasker didn't just sell, he practically invented new products. - People had not had orange juice before Albert Lasker said, "You should drink orange juice, not just eat oranges". Pepsodent, people were not brushing their teeth. The GIs had never brushed their teeth. - [Anthony] Lasker turned Lucky Strikes into the country's top-selling cigarette. He noted that their tobacco was toasted during the manufacturing process, though the truth was, all cigarette tobacco was toasted. It was later a plot line in "Mad Men". - How do you make your cigarettes? -

We grow it, cut it, cure it, toast it. - [Don] There you go. (chalk scribbling) - [Anthony] Lasker's influence extended to the White House, where he helped elect Warren Harding and to Cubs Park, which Lasker convinced William Wrigley to rename in the hope of selling more chewing gum. - [Stephen] He had expensive tastes and had an estate near Chicago, his own private golf course. He made a lot of money and got out of the business at the age of 62. - [Anthony] Just as Lasker was stepping down, another ad man was stepping up. Leo Burnett

had climbed the ranks from copy writer to president of his own ad agency, but he still didn't look the part. - He would wear these wrinkled suits with ashes down the front and finally they said, "Leo, you're Mr. Burnett, you need to dress better". - [Anthony] Short and pear-shaped, it was said he donned a freshly-rumpled suit every morning. - He looked like a giant, but he was actually a short man and round. He kind of reminded me of the Pillsbury Doughboy with a suit on and a stogie in his mouth. - [Anthony] Leo started his

agency in the depths of the Great Depression, hocking his life insurance policy to pay for it. - He put out a basket of apples to kind of welcome journalists as he was opening up and doing his own little PR as he launched the agency and one of the journalists was noted to say, "It won't be long 'til Leo is selling apples on the street". - [Anthony] "The hell I will," Leo was said to respond. "I'll give them away". - He put them in this beautiful bowl and he put them on every reception desk that he

had. - [Anthony] Leo was obsessed with his craft, something his wife was painfully aware of. - He brought work home all the time and she said, "Sometimes I feel like we don't live in a house, we live in an office and I'm your secretary" and he said, "Yes and a damn good one too". (Joan giggles) - [Anthony] Leo started slowly with a couple charter clients, Hoover Vacuum Cleaners and Real Silk Hosiery. So legend has it, he was quite thrilled to get a new campaign with a Minnesota customer. - Leo is standing next to the chairman

of the Minnesota Valley Canning Company at the urinals in the men's room and the guy turns to Leo and says, "Leo, it was a hell of a presentation, you got the business" and with that, Leo turned to shake his hand and obviously he wasn't done with that part of his business. - [Anthony] Leo got to work, transforming the canning company's green mascot. - He looked at the label and he said, "That's not a Jolly Green Giant, that's an ugly dwarf scowling". - Leo made him friendlier, less of a monster and more of just this big

lug who's telling you about the product, but what that hooks into you see, is the memory of Paul Bunyan, another giant from the north woods and so here is this Jolly Green Giant ho, ho, hoeing, telling you about the virtues of his peas. ♪ Ho-ho-ho, Green Giant ♪ And it really worked to the point that the company renamed itself, the Green Giant Company. ♪ Good things from the garden, garden in the valley ♪ - It tickled the imagination, come on, if you have any kind of love of fantasy in you, who wouldn't want to live

in that valley for two seconds? ♪ Ho-ho-ho, Green Giant ♪ - [Anthony] It took years for Burnett, to win his first million-dollar account, The American Meat Institute. Showing raw meat in advertising was considered taboo, but Burnett wasn't afraid to take risks. The ads featured a cutting-edge graphic technique called bleeding, which stretched visuals to the edge of the page. - It was red meat on a red background and he still talked about it. I was in a few meetings where he was still around and he said, "They sold out of pork chops the next week". -

[Anthony] Leo Burnett was an innovator, but he was also in the right place at the right time. (dramatic music) - [Reporter] Reporters rush out to relay the news to an anxious world and in Chicago, more than a million sing and dance in the streets in the biggest celebration the Windy City has ever seen. - [Anthony] After the allied victory in World War II, GIs returned home to a new era of prosperity. Rationing and the Great Depression soon faded into memory. - We were all looking for getting married, wanting homes, the little home with the white

picket fence. - The baby boom starts in the 1950s, really and a lot of people are moving to the suburbs and having families and all of a sudden, boom! It all opens up and Leo is part of that. - [Anthony] Leo had been too old to serve overseas, but was young enough to understand this new consumer class. His clients looked to him to create new desires that Americans didn't even know they had. - The post-war era suddenly meant this vast influx of money that suddenly people had and they wanted to spend it on stuff and

so it really was a great moment for advertising because that was the job. Here's all this money, let's help people spend it. - [Anthony] Burnett was well-positioned to capitalize on a new medium. - Leo was at the development of television as an advertising force. Leo's sensibility just nailed what TV was good at, which was simple imagery. - [Narrator] Niblets brand corn is the Giant's own special kind grown to be sweeter. - Imagery that makes you have an emotional reaction to the product and that is the core of television. - [Anthony] Burnett scored one of his

biggest clients yet, in 1949. Leo assigned an up-and-coming art director named Eugene Kolkey to Kellogg's newest cereal, Sugar Frosted Flakes. - My father was someone that Leo was fond of and that my father absolutely adored. - [Anthony] Leo always urged creatives like Kolkey, to tap into a product's inherent drama to find the soul of a brand, something surprising, relevant and true. - And my father is widely credited with helping to create Tony the Tiger. He has evolved over time, but he kind of a football head, he had three whiskers on each cheek and my father

could draw him in about six seconds. ♪ Hi Kelloggs, good morning ♪ - Shopping or just come for a visit? - Shopping. - We did cartoon figures that kind of represented each cereal variety and there was a rooster for Corn Flakes, there was Snap, Crackle and Pop for Rice Krispies, there's sugar on Sugar Frosted Flakes, sugar is energy, energy tiger, roar, Tony the Tiger. - Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes are great! ♪ K-E double O, oh, double G ♪ ♪ Kellogg's best to you ♪ (TV knob clicks) - What causes most of today's headaches? - [Anthony]

While New York's Madison Avenue often made hard-selling, insistent claims... - Only Anacin has a special ingredient to relax tension. (TV knob clicks) - [Anthony] Burnett was honing a Chicago style with a friendly straightforward approach that put the products front and center. - [Man] You get. ♪ Young peas, darling peas. ♪ - He was very explicit. He didn't like the hard sell or the soft sell. He was about the warm sell. ♪ From the valley ♪ ♪ From the valley ♪ Talking about humanness, everything had to be connected to people and that primacy of people is

another great part of what I would call a Chicago aesthetic. - I'm Tony the Tiger and for years, I've been saying, Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes are great! - All these different characters that he creates, Tony the Tiger and Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, I mean, in a way they are the Marvel Universe for mid-century America, right? I mean, there are kind of pantheon for a generation of consumerism, but what's going on is something just a little insidious as well. We're having these warm feelings kind of packaged up, but the point is to sell stuff.

- [Anthony] As America greeted a new decade, Leo Burnett celebrated 25 years of business. It was at the top of its game, the sixth largest agency in the country with billings of $110 million. Its 900 employees were now spread over several floors in the brand new Prudential Building. - The Prudential Building was the tall building in Chicago. Having a place in an office in that building was a kind of statement. - [Anthony] Burnett's clients now stretched from coast to coast, after winning StarKist in California, but for an agency that found the inherent drama in products,

this new client was a challenge. - Here, you've got a little problem in that, how do you get a story out of a can of tuna? - [Anthony] Burnett assigned Don Keller and Tom Rogers, to dream up the fish tale. - Don Keller was a highly gifted art director. If you needed something, than you had to convey a nuanced emotion just through an illustration, he was the guy to do that. - Tom Rogers was a very serious writer who was always writing a novel or a screenplay, but he was terrific writing these animated characters. -

[Anthony] Rogers had met a supremely confident beat musician in New York named Henry Nemo. ♪ Hip, hip, hooray ♪ ♪ He be stopped today ♪ The Cool Cat inspired a beret and sunglass-wearing fish, Charlie the Tuna. - Do you tunas sort of resent being caught? - Why should we? It's our destiny man, but naturally we wanna make the big time. - Big time? - StarKist. Hey, watch this. (dramatic music) Ay! - [Man] Sorry Charlie, only the best tunas get to be StarKist. - So everywhere you turned, there were these memorable characters with their own personalities

being created and these brands would blow up. ♪ Crispy and elicious-day ♪ - [Anthony] But these memorable characters were earning Leo Burnett the scorn of the New York establishment. - I'm going to meet where the Giant's really special frozen vegetables. - [Anthony] Some were starting to call Burnett, the critter agency. - Someone once said the Leo Burnett Agency has a closet and in the closet, they got all these crazy little critters and every time they get a new account, they open up the door and out comes another critter. - [Morris] Ow, ooh, that smarts! -

[Anthony] But Leo didn't care, as long as it worked. - The thing that Leo Burnett understood as a company was that advertising's power was cumulative. Leo called it the glacier-like power of friendly familiarity. Basically, they'd find something like, today's shiny object and they'd hang on that shiny object for decades. ♪ Snap, Crackle, Pop, Rice Krispies ♪ - I'd go crackle at the drop of milk. (milk crackles) - [Anthony] Leo liked to picture his creatives as a distinctive breed from Madison Avenue, his blue-collar workers spit on their hands before picking up their thick alpha 245 pencils

to build a campaign. - I always called Burnett a benevolent sweatshop. We worked, we didn't mind it. We would come in on Saturdays, we would come in on Sundays, half the agency would be there. - [Anthony] Burnett paid employees handsomely, but climbing the corporate ladder came at a price. Something Account Executive, Howard Cain, learned all too well when his daughter wrote to his client in New York. - My name is Suzanne Cain, I never see my daddy, he's always in New York. Please build a building here. I missed so many special events for the kids

that I don't even wanna think about. That was our lifestyle and that was the Burnett lifestyle and I'm proud of it. - [Anthony] There were tensions brewing inside the agency. Leo was now in his 70s, a time when most ad men had retired. His unwillingness to step aside didn't sit well with Creative Director, Draper Daniels. - Draper thought he was gonna be in charge of creative review and Leo wouldn't give it up. - That's when Draper Daniels said, "That's it, I've had it". - I think it sounds like a great agency and I think Duck

is the man to run it. I just don't think I'll be a part of it. (people murmuring) - [Anthony] Burnetters worked hard and played hard. Something an Iowa-born copywriter named Norman Muse learned in his job interview. - We went to lunch and the first thing they asked is, "Mr. Muse, do they drink martinis in Iowa?" I said, well, yeah, I think, yeah, we can do that. I helped them back to the agency after three martinis and they suggested that I was the right guy for the job. - [Anthony] There were plenty of spots to entertain

clients in Chicago's thriving nightlife, but when Burnetters really wanted to loosen up, they'd head down to the Prudential Building's basement. - You'd often go down and talk about business, down in what we used to call under the rock. It was a great way to say I'll meet you at the saloon. - At Riccardo's, a lot of great campaigns were conceived on cocktail napkins, absolutely. - Riccardo's was very big, yeah. Did you see me there? How do yo... (Norman giggles) - I mean, we had a situation where if you didn't get your boss to sign out

on stuff by one o'clock, you had to go to the bars to find them and it was a real danger going down in those places. - My dad's favorite excuse when he wouldn't make it home for dinner was the bridge was up on Michigan Avenue. (Scott laughs) Where's dad? Well, the bridge was up. He missed the train. - So they may have had three martini lunches in New York, but in Chicago, they had six Jack Daniel lunches. - And it wasn't just like that at Leo Burnett, it was like that across the industry. It was

not mankind at its best, let's just say that. - [Anthony] It was very much an old boy's club. While barriers were starting to break down for women in the 1960s, an urban league survey found fewer than 25 African Americans in creative or executive positions at the top agencies. - It was a hair on a lion's mane. I mean, they were invisible. You didn't really know em' or didn't see em' 'cause it practically didn't exist. - [Anthony] Tom Burrell was considering an advertising career, but a well-meaning professor at Roosevelt University warned him. - He said that

you probably need to abandon that idea, because there were no Black people in Chicago, in the advertising agency business doing anything. (people clapping) - [Anthony] President Lyndon Johnson, signed The Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning discrimination in the workplace. That same year, the Leo Burnett Agency hired Burrell, making him one of the first African Americans in its Creative Department. - I came up with the idea of using a new comedian on a scene called Dom DeLuise. - Our crack team of specially-trained ushers and usherettes, will pass their cans among you. - And that was rejected.

Yeah, I had ideas of it, didn't get too far with too many of them. - [Anthony] Burrell's boss was the illustrious creative, Rudy Perz. - Something he said once, he was giving a presentation and he said, "This is the first time I've been presenting to you, so I can understand why you're nervous". So he was kind of disarming like that. - And I remember someone telling me about a shoving match that took place in the office where Rudy was trying to make a point and kept poking my father in the chest to the point where

my father had had enough. - [Anthony] Perz's bravado didn't stop his march to the top. In March of 1965, Burnett assigned him to Pillsbury's Refrigerated Foods account. Perz took home a cylinder of dough and spent the night contemplating how to market the oozing mix of flour and water. - What would happen if something came out of that tube, would it be made of dough? What do you call something like that? - And somehow, out popped in his mind, the Doughboy. (dramatic music) - And who are you? - I'm poppin' fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. May I

have a- - [Anthony] The first TV commercials were shot using a stop-motion technique that required five Doughboy bodies and 15 heads. - His belly was so prominent that I thought, that's the kind of thing you'd wanna and then he'd giggle of course. (Doughboy giggles) Pillsbury would get letters from people saying, Oh, I love your little doughboy. I make the biscuits once a week and boy, that's magic to a client's ear. ♪ And Pillsbury says it best ♪ - The Doughboy is known better than most of the presidents of the United States of America. That little

white creature was welcome in any household. - You're wonderful. (Doughboy giggles) - [Anthony] Before any ad hit the airwaves, it had to make it past Leo and his infamous creative review committee. With millions of advertising dollars on the line, the stakes couldn't have been higher. - There'd be pitched battles. People that basically love each other, respect each other, but when it came down to the creative, they would fight tooth and nail for whatever they believed in. - [Anthony] Creatives could gauge Leo's reaction by an unusual barometer known as the LPI or lip protrusion index. -

His lip kind of stuck out a little, but it would stick out more like this, when he got mad. - My father, he could also get a bit emotional in these meetings. Apparently in this meeting, the LPI is very high and the meeting's going south and my father is getting more and more frustrated and pretty soon, he realizes that the work isn't gonna make it and Leo says, "The work isn't good enough". - [Howard] He started throwing the storyboards all over the room, like they were Frisbees. - [Hank] Leo got down under the table, 'cause

if you get hit with one of these things you could be hurt, right? - My father started to storm out of the room and you can see Leo's finger peeking above the boardroom table and he says, "Still not good enough, Gene". - [Anthony] Tom Burrell made his first appearance before the creative review committee in 1964. It did not go as planned. - So I came in and not knowing any better, I sat down right at the conference table. Leo Burnett comes in, he looks around at other people, he looks at me trying to get a

clue as to who am I and what am i doing here? My creative director comes up to me and says, "You're not supposed to be sitting at the table, you're supposed to be sitting back on the edge." I said, oh, okay. - [Anthony] It was a struggle for Burrell, to earn a seat at the table, literally and figuratively. - I've learned that I probably wasn't alone in feeling like an imposter, I just wasn't sure. - [Anthony] Burrell left the agency after three years. His future, uncertain. - And in truth, I think he may have been

intimidated by the circumstance. Tom was probably one of the first minorities we had there and probably has a lot of pressure on him. (airplane engine roars) (dramatic music) ♪ You get a lot to like with a Marlboro ♪ ♪ Filter, flavor, flip top box ♪ - [Anthony] By the early 1960s, Philip Morris Marketing Executive, Jack Landry, was getting antsy. Marlboro's growth curve had flattened in the years since the Marlboro Man's sensational debut. Burnett had run a string of campaigns featuring tattooed men, professional football players. - [Reporter] Guess you felt pretty good about that score, Paul.

- Sure did and I feel pretty good about this cigarette too. - [Anthony] And the sultry voice of Julie London. ♪ You get a lot to like with a Marlboro ♪ ♪ Filter, flavor, pack or box ♪ Landry demanded a fresh approach. A new campaign would begin with little more than two words, pulled from an ad that had run across several college campuses. - Marlboro Country, which was a line written by Tom Laughlin, an associate creative director who could write some really good lines. - [Anthony] Marlboro Country was brought to life by a World War

II bombardier, turned Art Director, Neil Nails McBain and Copywriter, Norman Muse. - Norm was the kind of guy you'd like to have in a bar room fight. In fact, if you hung with Norm too much, you might find yourself in a bar room fight. - [Man] This is Marlboro Country, the canyons of New York or Colorado. (dramatic music) In all 50 states, the big switch is to Marlboro. - [Anthony] Though Marlboro execs seemed pleased with the early ads, Nails and Muse thought they looked contrived. Then, they had an epiphany. - What if we went out

west and showed cowboys being cowboys? What if we showed them herding cattle? What if we showed them branding cattle, God forbid, 'cause there's something realistic like that. So suddenly in that moment of fortunate lucidity, whoa, here's a whole new world. - [Anthony] The team set out for the Four Sixes Ranch outside Guthrie, Texas, where they replaced paid models with real working cowboys. They set the commercials to Elmer Bernstein's rousing score for The Magnificent Seven. - [Man] You're in Marlboro Country. (dramatic music) - He presented the work to a research company and they said, "If you

run this, nobody can identify with cowboys. If you run this, you'll run the brand out of business in a year". They left the room and Jack Landry at Phillip Morris said, "Run it" and the campaign worked. (dramatic music) - Every time we'd hear that, we'd come on the television, ♪ Bum, bum, bum-bum, bum bum bum bum-bum ♪ We had to run down and look at the commercial that daddy did. (dramatic music) - [Anthony] Marlboro Country was another watershed for Burnett and Philip Morris. - For both Lasker and Burnett, their signature product was cigarettes. Lasker pushed

Lucky Strikes to the number one position. Burnett pushed Marlboros to the number one position. In retrospect, we can see that they were pushing products that killed people. - Sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, those are the industry groups that fund a goodly percentage of advertising. That has been true since the beginning of the republic. Habits that were not good for you could be very profitable as a business. - [Anthony] While some Burnetters refused to work on cigarettes, that didn't mean they objected to the fat Christmas bonuses. - I'm not working on the cigarettes, but please give me my

Christmas bonus. Thank you very much and we got those Christmas bonuses every year and went out and just immersed ourselves in Michigan Avenue and all the merchants were very happy about us. (airplane engine roars) - [Anthony] Burnett's business was still expanding. As the airline industry was opening to leisure travelers, Burnett managed to land a whale, Chicago-based United. Burnett quickly discovered United had an image problem. - Research has shown that the flying public looked upon United as an efficient airline, but with no heart. - You've got a Midwestern-based airline that is trying to capture the sensibility

of not just business travelers, but middle America and the way to do that is to create the same atmosphere as you would in a welcoming Midwestern town. - [Anthony] As creatives hit a wall, Tom Laughlin, who'd written the Marlboro Country slogan, read some copy aloud. - He said, "And when you fly the friendly skies of United," all of a sudden the room got quiet and somebody yelled, "That's it! Friendly skies". (dramatic music) (announcer murmuring) - [Anthony] Nails McBain and Norman Muse pieced together a commercial after a Marlboro shoot depicting a cowboy lost in an airport.

- [Man] Long, lean and lonely, but we know what'll fix that. A little friendliness. It starts on the ground when you fly the friendly skies of United. ♪ Fly the friendly skies of United ♪ - We presented that to United and they thought wow, that's really what we that's who we wanna be. ♪ Come fly the friendly skies ♪ ♪ To our little corner of the world ♪ - Fly the friendly skies of United, whoever thought of flying on a plane as a friendly thing? - I was on a United flight last week and the

captain was thanking us for flying the friendly skies. ♪ Come fly the friendly skies of United ♪ (upbeat music) - [Anthony] As the 60s worn on, changes were rocking the country, but it was slow to appear in Leo Burnett's work. - Black revolution, the sexual revolution, the revival of American feminism, they are not reflected in Leo Burnett's ads of the 60s. So many of his campaigns are already set. He has his archetypal figures and so much of it is just continuing those figures. The Marlboro Man, Pillsbury Doughboy, the Jolly Green Giant, I think it's generally

true of advertising that it does not respond to the 60s very quickly. - Good to be back in the valley. Old place hasn't changed much. There's the Green Giant, there's his Lasagna Kitchen. (horse neighs) Lasagna Kitchen? - [Man] Things have changed. (upbeat music) - [Anthony] From the Prudential Building, Burnetters had a front row seat to the chaos, during the 1968 Democratic Convention. (upbeat music) (people jeering) - Carl Hixson was my father's writing partner and they're walking to the train, Carl turns to my father and he says, "Don't worry Geno" and Carl unbuttons his jacket to

expose a handgun that he's carrying with him. My father said, "Put that effing thing away!" (upbeat music) - [Anthony] As the counter culture slowly seeped into Burnett's offices, Leo made it clear he was not a fan. - I had a terrific young writer working for me named Eric Ross and Eric Ross was a hippie and he had a guitar and he wrote this song, "Hey, Hey, Hey, Mateus Rosé". ♪ Hey, hey, hey, Mateus Rose ♪ And Eric had his bicycle on the elevator and excuse me, my bicycle, he moved onto the elevator with his bike.

Leo was on it, he didn't say a word. Eric got off at the floor, Leo went up to the next floor and after the doors closed, Leo said, "He better be damn good" and Eric Ross was pretty good. - Everybody at Burnett was a hippie. We loved it! There was beads hanging all over the office and guys with magic carpets. - [Anthony] Change was afoot at Leo Burnett. The door was slowly opening for women and people of color. Carol Williams, a 20-year-old copywriter from Chicago's South Side, was hired in 1969. - They hired several Black

people and all these people were on this one floor, housed in this little cluster of cubicles, if you will. We used to call it Chocolate City. - [Anthony] Not long after starting, Williams wandered upstairs to the 13th floor, where her boss, Jim Gilmore, was struggling to find a tagline for a new brand of Pillsbury breakfast biscuits. - My parents were from the South and we always ate biscuits for breakfast. So I went downstairs, I wrote a line, nothing's quite as good as biscuits in the morning, it's Pillsbury's best time of day and I took the

line back upstairs to him and he stared at it and he looked at me and he looked back at the line and he said, "That's a good line. That's a damn good line". ♪ Nothing is as good as biscuits in the morning ♪ - [Man] Breakfast is Pillsbury's best time of day. ♪ Nothing is as good as biscuits in the morning ♪ - The next day, they came and told me I was being moved upstairs. So I broke out of Chocolate City and went to the integrated neighborhood that wasn't really integrated, I integrated it. -

[Anthony] Carol Williams found herself in the elevator with Leo in 1970. Pillsbury had just passed on a commercial she'd written called Uncle Henry. - And he pulled a cigar out his mouth and he said, "Hello Carol," which really shocked me. How could this man possibly know my name? And before I knew it, I was vomiting. (Carol giggles) My pain to him of my spot not being bought and then he said, "Anybody that can write Uncle Henry, can write anything they want" and he stuck his cigar back in his mouth and the door opened on some

floor and he walked off. I never saw Burnett again after that and shortly after that, he left us, but with much brilliance and people like me, that he touched and allowed my talents to blossom. - [Anthony] Leo Burnett died at his home in 1971. He had been a master of messaging until the very end. As his staff looked back on Leo's speech at the annual Christmas party, it suddenly spoke volumes. - Let me tell you, when I might demand that you take my name off the door, that will be the day when you spend more

time trying to make money and less time making advertising, our kind of advertising. When you lose that restless feeling that nothing you do is ever quite good enough, that, boys and girls, is when I shall insist you take my name off the door. Even if i have to materialize long enough some night... (audience laughing) To rub it out myself and throw every goddamn apple down the elevator shafts. (audience laughing) - There was this hero about to walk off into the wings and that was a dramatic goodbye. (audience clapping) (upbeat music) - [Anthony] Another generation of

Chicago advertising titans was rising in the early 1970s. - I'm cutting out this paper knife to make a point about this great frosting. - [Anthony] Carol Williams, baked up a string of Pillsbury spots. ♪ Hungry Jack, they gobble them down ♪ ♪ And the plate comes back for a Hungry Jack ♪ Including a Doughboy sidekick called Little Poppy. ♪ She gives poppin' fresh a hand ♪ Her boss, Doughboy creator Rudy Perz, was not amused by the confusion caused by her new critter. ♪ She's had some big ideas, Little Poppy ♪ - Hi. - People started

saying Carol created the Doughboy. Boy, that used to tick Rudy off. Rudy called me up and go, "Rah!" I said, well, I think it's great. The Black woman ripped off a White guy, what you talking about? - That's my idea. ♪ Little Poppy ♪ - I let it fly! (Little Poppy giggles) - [Anthony] Williams transformed a Proctor & Gamble product called Secret, into the top-selling women's deodorant on the market with a tagline that took a page from the feminist movement. - [Man] Secret, strong enough for a man, but made for a woman. ♪ You've come

a long way baby ♪ Williams became Leo Burnett's first female creative director in just six years and then a vice president one year later. ♪ You've come a long, long way ♪ - I loved Burnett from the first time I walked in there. I was not afraid to take the shot and I took the shot every time they put me on the floor. - [Anthony] Five blocks away, a creative named Keith Reinhard, was working to outdo the Burnett Agency, with his own cast of critters. - Merry Christmas! - Cut, print it! Let's hear it out

there. - [Interviewer] Are they well known? The characters? - Yeah, Captain Crook has an awareness of 70%. Hamburglar is very popular. Howard Morris is the Director- - Excuse me, just wanna show you what happened to today's commercial. - Oh, okay. (paper crackles) - There you at. - Very good, I like it better than the one you shot, Howard. - [Anthony] The creator of the Hamburglar, hailed from a small Swiss Mennonite community in Berne, Indiana where community elders banned television. It took him years to get his foot in the door at the firm of Needham, Harper

and Steers. - I'm 29 years old, the oldest beginning copywriter in the place and so they gave me a workstation right next to the soda and coffee machines and I couldn't concentrate on anything, but making change all day long for everybody. (Reinhard giggles) - [Anthony] One of Reinhard's colleagues in the next office was Tom Burrell. Burrell had put behind his early struggles at Leo Burnett, becoming Needham's first Black copy supervisor. - That was a time where I was able to kind of get my wings, get my footing and know that I was who I said

I was. - We were both working on the same assignment for Continental Airlines, who was advertising wider, more comfortable seats and I went to see what Tom was doing and he had the Chicago Tribune, a two-page spread and the headline was, sit down on this page and you'll see how much wider it is, brilliant. - We're here to show you why so many people like Campbell's Pork and Beans. - [Anthony] Needham pushed its creatives to jolt audiences, often with humor. - Ready Evelyn? First take a forkful and taste the beans. - You can still taste

the sauce. - That's because Campbell's does more than put beans in the sauce. They put sauce in the beans too. - Well, it took a really brave client to buy advertising like that. (car engine roars) - Think it's flooded? (Evelyn laughs) - And the idea was that even plain products should have some excitement built around them. - [Cup] Butter. - Oh, what was that? - Kraft at that time, the talking cup. - Smooth, delicious... Butter. - Parkay. - Reinhard had risen to creative director when he pitched one of the industry's most prized accounts. McDonald's had

taken the suburbs by storm in the post-war era, but by 1971, it was looking to make inroads in urban America. - We won this amazing account. It's the biggest single account the Needham Agency had ever won. What are we gonna do now? - [Anthony] Reinhard learned that families relish the experience of going to McDonald's, more than the hamburgers and fries. His team created a jingle likening the golden arches to island retreats. - We're in the first day of shooting just ending and the call came from McDonald's legal department saying, you can't use islands. Why not?

Well, because there's a chain of root beer stands somewhere, I can't remember it was Nebraska or Oklahoma that calls their root beer stands, islands of pleasure. - [Anthony] Reinhard began brainstorming a new jingle with a top music producer named Sid Woloshin. - And so we start writing some lyrics on the subject of cleanliness. ♪ Grab a bucket and mop ♪ ♪ Scrub the bottom and top ♪ And at the end we wrote, we're so near yet, far away, so get up and get away, but anyway, we take this to McDonald's and they love it, except

what do they say at the end? So now we have seven notes and we've gotta find words for seven notes and we'll sell a campaign. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da. - [Anthony] Reinhard's team looked back at their focus group interviews and extracted a single word. - Break. Okay, moms wanted a break from meal planning. Dads could use a break from the high prices of eating out. I called Sid, I said, I got it Sid! He said, "What is it?" I said, you deserve a break today. He said, "It's not singable". I said, either you sing it, Sid or I'll

find somebody else who can sing this 'cause I think we can sell this campaign and that was how we created and sold, you deserve a break today. ♪ Tell me what does it mean ♪ ♪ At McDonald's it's clean ♪ ♪ You deserve a break ♪ ♪ Today ♪ - [Anthony] Ad Age called it the number one jingle and the number five advertising campaign of the 20th century. ♪ To McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's ♪ - Sometimes creativity is inspiration, sometimes it's frustration and sometimes it's desperation. In this case it was desperation. - [Anthony] That very same

year, Reinhard's colleague Tom Burrell left Needham to start his own agency. - The conditions were very conducive to doing that and that is that we had for the first time on the race front, the whole notion of Black power, Black identity, Black is beautiful. - [Anthony] Burrell planted his flag on Michigan Avenue, in the very same building where Leo Burnett had started his agency 36 years earlier. - He was this guy with his great big 'fro and a dream. - [Anthony] No one was buying at first. Burrell lost 40 pounds in the first six months,

pounding the pavement for business. Then he wrangled a giant, Philip Morris, but Burrell knew Marlboro Country wouldn't fly with Black consumers. - The west? Cowboys? We couldn't relate to that. So we took that cowboy and turned that person into a cool guy in the neighborhood. - Tom was doing something nobody else was doing. We were developing and tailoring messages to Black people. - Our running theme was the fact that Black people are not dark-skinned White people. ♪ At McDonald's, we do it all for you ♪ - [Anthony] McDonald's took notice and came calling. ♪ You're

the one, you're the one ♪ One of Burrell's early commercials seemed straightforward, depicting a working father doting on his son, but it couldn't have been more groundbreaking. ♪ I've been working nights all week ♪ ♪ And my kid's in school all day ♪ ♪ My day off is for my son, we'll go to the park to play ♪ - We were not used to seeing ourselves portrayed in a positive, realistic way. It's a very simple thing, but it had tremendous impact. ♪ At McDonald's, well, we do it all for you ♪ - [Anthony] Burrell expanded

so quickly, his biggest problem was finding talent. Anna Morris was a bookkeeper, until Burrell discovered her writing chops. - I was fortunate that at the time, advertising was jingle territory and I could snap off a jingle on any subject, on any topic, 'cause I'm damn good, okay? I am damn good. ♪ Coke adds life ♪ ♪ To everything that makes your living nice ♪ ♪ So nice ♪ - [Anthony] Morris crafted an award-winning doo-wop ad for Coca Cola that crossed over to the general market. ♪ Coke adds life ♪ ♪ Coke adds life ♪ -

It was exciting, it was magical, it was frightening sometimes. ♪ Coke adds life to everything that makes your living nice ♪ It was us against the world, that was the feeling of us against the world. ♪ If you're hungry then for goodness sake ♪ ♪ Give yourself a tasty break ♪ ♪ With Big Mac, filet of fish, ♪ ♪ Quarter pounder, french fries, icy coke, thick shakes ♪ ♪ Sundaes, apple pie. ♪ - [Anthony] With his commercials aimed at the Black community, Burrell honed a unique approach to advertising. Today, we call it niche marketing. -

The Burrell story is definitely a Chicago story. I don't think it could have happened in New York. New York was a bastion of the old boy's club and Chicago is in the Midwest and our values are a bit different here. ♪ Scrambled eggs and sausages and hash browns ♪ ♪ Hot cakes and sausage too, ooh, ooh ♪ - [Anthony] Burrell's work was classic Chicago school, in the mold of his old boss, Leo Burnett. - We didn't use actors. We went inside somebody's house and pulled together people off the street. ♪ Momma's telling me, at McDonald's

♪ There was a kind of a down-to-earthness about the work that we did, which I see as prototypically Midwestern, Chicago style. ♪ Like a good neighbor ♪ ♪ State Farm is there ♪ - [Anthony] But as TV gave way to another set of screens. ♪ State Farm is there ♪ The Chicago firms began to lose a bit of their local flavor. (keyboard clicking) Burrell Communications was partially sold to a larger international holding company and while Leo Burnett's name remained on the door, it was also gobbled up. Some industry veterans worry these agencies lost sight of

the Chicago school's Midwestern touch. - You look at ads and you say, who the heck is playing that commercial? - But they still whip up an amazing fish curry. - You have to be reminded 'cause it's entertainment, it's not selling. We're salesmen. - [Anthony] Today, we're bombarded with hundreds of ads, aimed directly at us, taking Tom Burrell's style of niche marketing to a whole new level. ♪ You like it light ♪ It leaves Chicago's "Mad Men" longing for the days when there were three TV networks. - Unthinkable. ♪ You're out of beer ♪ ♪ Wouldn't

a cigarette ♪ And millions of Americans shared a love for characters spawned by a hardworking group of Midwesterners. ♪ All beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese ♪ ♪ Anticipation ♪ - I think that there was just this lightning in a bottle at the time of creativity and openness and culture being built here. ♪ You deserve a break today, yeah ♪ It was a little more sensitivity. It was a little more folksy. It was a little more talking to you and with you versus at you. ♪ It's Kellogg's way ♪ - Yep, today's turning out real

fine. (TV knob clicks) - And as Leo used to say, isn't making ads the most fun you ever had in your life? (speaking in foreign language) - [Cup] Parkay! - Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! (dramatic music) (upbeat music)