This is an interesting ad to me because of the people in it. The ad itself is pretty good and was shot by Warren Winstanley. I think we were at the Metropolitan Beach parking lot near Detroit. We used that location often when we needed a plain background. Chevrolet saved a little money when we used our family as models. The young lady in the car is Warren's daughter and the young man, I think may have been her boy friend. The "younger brother" in the back seat is my oldest son Tom. They were paid and had to sign a model release but didn't earn what real models would earn. It was fun for Warren and me to have our kids see what we did for a living. It is hard to see at this picture size but Tom is being offered a dollar to get out of the car and let his sister go alone with her boyfriend. 

Another interesting aspect of the ad is that Tom, the little guy in the back seat, got into the ad business too. He did pretty well and is now World Chairman and CEO of Leo Burnett 

No bad assignments--only bad solutions

When you work for an ad agency you quite often get assignments that are not to your liking. They come about for a variety of reasons beyond your control--- sometimes beyond anyones control. I have always tried to cope with these situations by taking the attitude that there are no bad assignments only bad solutions. And, I have found over the years

 that it is very true. If you can bring a positive attitude to every assignment the chances are you can do something better than was expected. Make a silk purse out of a sows ear... so to speak. There are always sales going on for all car accounts and today even more so than ever. It's easy to just do what is expected---show a couple of cars and some big type and get it over with. But then every once in a while maybe something different can be done. 

In this case we had Double Dividend Days to deal with. I had been in the meeting where the slogan was born. Bob Lund was the Chevy Sales Manager at the time and he was convinced that Chevrolet needed some kind of event to boost sales. The ads that had been shown were not to his liking and as he made his his comments he became more and more animated. Back then our account guys always made sure each client had the proper cigarettes, mints and chewing gum in place at their seat. Bob began talking about needing something like "Dividend Days" only better. Then he noticed his Wrigley Double Mint Gum and he stood as he nearly shouted that the event should be "Double Dividend Days!!!" Thanks Mr. Wrigley. 

You don't win awards for ads like these but you know you have done the best you can with the problem at hand. Mr. Lund and Chevy wanted some retail- like nearly full page newspaper ads that would support the new theme and work with other promotional material for the dealers. 

Bill Graefen did the copy for both ads and I put together the layouts. We were a little surprised at the good reception they received. They were very visible in the newspapers and did the kind of job Chevrolet needed at the time. The headline for the lower ad is pretty small as shown here but says---Shhhh.....don't tell your Chevrolet dealer it isn't August. Back then August was always a big car sale month to get rid of inventory and be ready for the new models. 

In 1962 the Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Publishers Association said that this Chevy ad achieved the highest ad noting among all ads for that year. The research was conducted by Starch-MMN.

Now that's the kind of recognition you like to get when you are a young ad maker. I made the layout with the four cars because Chevrolet had been asking for multi car ads to show off the all they had to offer. David E. Davis Jr. wrote the wonderful copy to go with it. That was the way we worked back then. Sometimes I came up with a picture idea and David E. would write copy to go with it and other times he would write a headline (sometimes copy too) and I would make the visual to go with it. What fun we had and what good work we did. We were pretty much beginners and just wanted to do good stuff. We weren't making a lot of money and David E. sometimes did some writing on the side. If you ever come across some good stories in an old buff magazine by a fellow named W. Frank Street that will be David E. Davis Jr. I used to pick him up on the way to work when he lived on West Frank Street in Birmingham MI. 

Times were much different back in 1962 at Campbell-Ewald and maybe other agencies too. David and I didn't get invited to the luncheon for the presentation to Chevy and we didn't get our picture taken with the Chevy ad manager. In fact we didn't know about the award until we saw the story in the local paper. No matter we were happy for the ad and for Chevrolet. Like I said we just wanted to do good stuff.

Jose Calvillo did the art for all the cars and background. I think it was Jim Jackson that did all the people. It  was not unusual back then to have more than one artist work on an illustration. At the time newspapers were where Chevrolet spent the most money. To quote Ted Little, our Chairman and CEO, " We're convinced that is where we get the most results for our money". 

I have won a bunch of awards over the years for ads I made but this is the best of all. I present it now because I finally came across the above letter. It isn't an award from some bunch of ad guys but from a fellow that saw the ad and bought the Corvette. The letter went to The New Yorker magazine and they sent it on to the agency where it made the rounds. David E. Davis Jr. wrote the copy and Warren Winstanley shot the picture looking out over the Pacific Ocean. I guess it isn't really an "award" but the kind of recognition that counts even more. I have always been very pleased with it. The ad has the kind of simplicity I always thought was important and a warm human touch in both the picture and the copy that seems to be missing in so many ads today. If you can find a copy of The New Yorker for July 7, 1962 or Sports Illustrated for June 11, 1962 you can have the ad Mr. Nelson saw. And if you happen to have a Corvette like the one in the ad you have something even better and worth a ton these days. I wonder if Mr. Nelson was a bald guy? I'll bet he was. 

You can see many more old Corvette ads from this campaign way down near the beginning of my blog.

This is one of the announcement outdoor boards for the 1969 Chevrolets. It was shot on one of our experimental shoots at the GM Proving Grounds in Mesa, Arizona. Warren Winstanley was the photographer. We had been shooting all day but looking for one last shot before the sun went down. We set up at some distance with a long lens that I liked to use. This was made with a 35 MM camera. At the time our powers that be back at the agency had forbid us to use anything that small. They thought it wouldn't produce a sharp picture. I and Warren liked shooting with the small camera and Warren even bought a special long lens that we called the "big eye". My way around the problem was to go ahead and use the 35MM camera and then have the shot I wanted to use transfered to an 8x10 sheet of film. The powers liked to look at large pictures and didn't ever catch me. We went back to the 35MM film for reproduction. The thing I liked best about this shot was the way it illustrated the little styling bulge above the wheel wells. In regular light this styling feature was not very visible but surely made a fine contribution to the good looks of this Chevrolet. Chuck Felt may have written the copy. He was the Chevy creative director at the time and the author of the very aggressive copy we were using. One last thought on the picture. This is a very honest depiction of the car. You can tell by the vertical oval on the wheels that we didn't use a stretch lens. Everyone, including us, used a stretch lens to make the cars look a little longer and more like styling illustrations. When used the wheels were perfectly round or slightly oval in a horizontal direction.