'63 Chevrolet Newspaper

YOU'LL MAKE THE WISEST CHOICE NO MATTER WHICH CHEVROLET YOU CHOOSE! This was our four color newspaper ad for January. This kind of color was fairly new for newspapers and Chevrolet wanted to take advantage of it. They insisted on four cars, their full line, in almost every ad. We didn't want to do the four cars as plain outlined product presentations but put them in some kind of warm and human situation that played to Chevrolets ever growing relationship with America . Gerry Edmison who had been my assistant art director when we were in the Campbell-Ewald Experimental group came with me when we took over the regular Chevy creative group. I put him in charge of the art side of newspaper ads. What that meant was that he would look after the details of getting the ads manufactured. He would continue to work closely with me as we had before. It was a big load for a young guy but he went for it. We were pressed for ideas for four car illustrations and we used another freeway overpass like the one we had used earlier but from a different point of view. Bill Graefen may have written the copy for this but I am not sure. Bill joined our group from the C-E general accounts group where they handled all the non-Chevrolet advertising. I knew we needed copy help badly after a few months in my new position. David E. was gone and in my opinion the group didn't have the necessary fire power to do what needed to be done . I had even fired a couple of writers and we were very lean. [I had never fired anyone before and the first guy I canned told me he was gong to kill himself. I had gone to his office and closed the door to tell him he wasn't good enough to write for Chevy. I didn't know what to say or do when he told me what he was going to do but after a few minutes I said something like--well you have to do what you have to do and I left. I did go straight to my boss, Pete Booth, to tell him what had happened. By the time we got back to the guy's office he had gone. He didn't do it and instead went down the hall to the D.P. Brother Agency where they had the Oldsmobile account and worked for them. He still wasn't good enough to work on Chevrolet. But Bill Graefen was more than good enough. He became one of the beat writers to make Chevy ads and we became very good friends.