Passing thought:
Ever since I decided on advertising copywriter as a career, I dreamed of one day working in a Madison Avenue ad agency. Now that I'm officialy a copywriter at Y&R, an agency many considered the most creative of the large ad agencies, I regularly pinch myself and ask, " Is this really happening or am I still dreaming?"
Since this memoir is the story of a kid from Paterson who made it in the big leagues of advertising and made it big in the big leagues, I'm about to embark on the "I/me chronicles", a recounting of my work at the job I loved. So, it's not because I have a big ego that I will regale with my hits and even a miss or two, but because this is the work that helped propel me to the top. By the way I'd rather have a big ego and display it than be known as a shmendrick ( a meek, ineffectual Milquetoast).
I left the world of trade advertising in a blaze. Assigned to the Simmons Beautyrest account, I immersed myself in the world of mattresses and particularly the merits of Beautyrest. No one could convince me that there was a better mattress in the world. I knew Beautyrest from the innersprings to the ticking and to learn how the trade approached the selling of Beautyrest I spent time on the selling floor at Bloomingdale's. From this research a four page all copy ad was born with the headline, "How One of the Most Expensive Mattresses Became the Biggest Selling Brand in the World." over my byline, By Alvin Hampel. Copywriters normally create anonymously, but early in my copywriting career I had my one and only by line.
My next assignment for Simmons Beautyrest was to craft a campaign aimed at the salespeople who were asked to sell fair traded Beautyrest for $39.50 while the competition was selling mattresses for as low as $25 and claiming they were as good. Here is where I went off in a different direction from the straight,factual promotional work I was turning out. I decided to go clever and get bold and edgy. Ever since grade school I was known to be clever or funny even a cutup at times and that description stuck with me through college. Indeed it was the reason I was first attracted to advertising, a business built on cleverness. I learned later on that cleverness might have been a way to grab attention but cleverness without selling might have been entertaining but was really a waste of money. The Beautyrest trade campaign featured such sassy headlines as " Anyone Who sells a $25 mattress deserves the $2 dollar profit", "The backbone is connected to the money belt", "Price isn't the only thing that gets cut", an ad featuring the salesman with his finger crossing his neck as in a suicide gesture. " Invite the customer to test a Beautyrest but be sure to leave a wakeup call." Each ad was illustrated with a full face shot of Jack Grier, one of the more colorful account executives at Y&R. His grumpy , sell Beautyrest or look- for- work mug fit the campaign perfectly.
A few months after the campaign broke I was called on stage at an awards luncheon sponsored by a retailing group and was awarded first prize for retail trade advertising. Jack Grier accompanied me on stage and got a rousing ovation too.
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