Famous Advertisers in History: Mary Wells Lawrence
“I love New York!”
“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.”
“Flick your Bic.”
Recognize any of these jingles? What about the picture above— does it look familiar?
All of these iconic ads were created under the direction of Mary Wells Lawrence. She and her agency brought a burst of color into their day’s bland television advertising scene by breaking commonly accepted rules and taking huge risks.
Her advertising didn’t just reinvent a company’s brand; sometimes, it reinvented the company itself!
MARY’S BACKGROUND
Mary enjoyed using her background in theater in her television commercials. Her advertising philosophy was to sell dreams. She looked beyond the products’ face value and found new, exhilarating reasons for customers to buy them, then presented them in a theatrical way on screen. Selling dreams and making commercials more entertaining and dramatic were new, edgy ideas at the time, introduced largely by Mary.
She began gaining national attention for her copywriting at the growing agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. There she became good friends with legendary Bill Bernbach and had a hand in some of their most memorable advertising. From there, she went on to join…
