Seventh, at Eight O`clock, PM, to consider the

7
Congratulations
to the Adcraft Club
on 100 years of
excellence and innovation.
7
©2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
CONTENTS
ADCRAFT CELEBRATES 100 YEARS OF BIG IDEAS
Welcome to the Adcraft Club of Detroit’s celebration of 100 Years of Big Ideas!
A4
1905 HOW IT ALL BEGAN
A6
1910 GROWTH AND THE GREAT WAR
Adcraft is justifiably proud of its reputation as the largest and most vital
advertising club in the nation. In our market, “Adcraft” and “advertising” are
virtually synonymous.
The pages that follow chronicle the 100-year history of the Adcraft Club and
the history of Detroit’s dynamic advertising community, celebrating a century of
culture, community and advertising. You’ll see some amazing creative, and you'll
Adcraft’s Centennial, and this section in particular, demonstrate to a national audience our pride in the
1920 THAT ROARING DECADE
A12
1930 THE DEPRESSION YEARS
Adcraft Club, and in the work we all produce for the domestic auto industry and many other blue-chip
clients. We’re particularly proud that the auto industry is the largest ad revenue-generating industry in the
nation, representing 15% of the total advertising revenue in the U.S. And 63% of that revenue is generated
But this celebration isn’t just about the past. I would invite you to read about the Adcraft Labyrinth on Page
Our future is bright. The Adcraft Club—and the Detroit advertising community—are poised for the next
A20
1950 HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN
A24
1960 DECADE OF DISSONANCE
A30
1970 CONSOLIDATION IN MOTOR CITY
A34
1980 THE EMPHASIS ON QUALITY
100 Years of Big Ideas.
Michael Wright
Senior VP-group account director, Cadillac, Leo Burnett Detroit
Adcraft president, 2005-06
A36
Karen Egolf
Director-Editor, Special
Projects
Vanessa Reed
General Manager-Sales
& Marketing
Paul Audino
Advertising Director
Suzanne Hermalyn
Director-Business
Development
Richard K. Skews
Associate Editor
John McDonough
Writer
Barry Kafka
Art Director
A38
Jeanine Dunn
Issue Designer
Vickie Daniel
Production Manager
The 1930s were bleak for Detroit, but Adcraft
rallied despite the economy.
1940 THE SECOND GREAT WAR
A40. Adcraft is leaving a legacy for the future that is relevant and exciting—just like great marketing—and will
create a buzz in the Detroit community for decades to come.
Despite early labor problems, the 1920s was a
decade of expansion and change.
A18
right here in Detroit.
Yes, the work is fantastic and we’re very proud of what we’ve done here in Detroit for the past 100 years.
Adcraft works to establish itself as Detroit undergoes massive growth.
A10
learn that here in the Motor City we are looking forward to a very bright future
for Adcraft and an equally dynamic future for the Detroit agency community.
Adcraft launches in Detroit amid the new-born
automotive furor.
A40
Adcraft members do their share, as Uncle Sam
takes over Detroit for the war effort.
Detroit and Adcraft thrive as the country turns to
TV, consumerism and cars.
The 1960s was an uneasy period for the U.S., and
Detroit was no exception.
Takeovers and downsizing mark a decade of
change in Detroit.
In a tough period, Detroit advertising faces
mergers while its automotive clients take on
the imports.
1990 THE CHANGING FACES OF DETROIT
In the last decade of the 20th century, the agency
world continues to consolidate.
2000 ADCRAFT DEFINES A NEW ERA
As Detroit businesses disperse, Adcraft takes the
lead as a unifying force for a new century.
THE FUTURE OF ADCRAFT
Marking its centennial, Adcraft creates a legacy
for the people of Detroit.
Julie Armstrong
Researcher
A42
Jane Adler
Proofreader
Cover design: Andy Lazaris, JWT, Detroit
100 YEARS OF ADCRAFT PRESIDENTS
A look at a century of leadership.
DaimlerChrysler Corp. images: Copyright DaimlerChrysler Corp. Used with permission.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
A3
1905
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
THE BIRTH OF AN ERA
I
n the opening decade of the 20th century, Detroit saw two key industries take root that would mark its
reputation and direction for decades: automobiles and advertising.
On the automotive side, if the city had not first been named le Detroit (for “the straight”) in 1701 by
French explorer Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, it would surely have been christened Ford City by
1910. In 1903, Henry Ford began building his first little two-cylinder jobs on Mack Avenue. That same year
56 other companies took a flier on the flivver, and 27 conked out before 1904, all in the Detroit area. Mr.
Ford, of course, puttered along with arduous practicality, and in 1905 began turning out his Tin Lizzys,
backed by an advertising investment of $39,513. The Ford tide—along with a push from General Motors
Co., formed in 1908—would lift all boats in Detroit, including the city’s place as an advertising center.
Amid the automotive furor, the Adcraft Club was born in December 1905 to the tune of Gus Edwards’
and Vincent Bryan’s “In My Merry Oldsmobile,” which celebrated (as well as advertised) the Detroitto-Portland trek that Oldsmobile was
promoting as part of the Lewis and
Clark Exposition that year.
“Dear Sir: You are invited to attend a meeting
Adcraft was the brainchild of 19to be held…on Thursday, December
year-old Henry Ewald, then ad
Seventh, at Eight O’clock, P.M., to consider the
manager for the Detroit & Cleveland
Navigation Co. While attending the
formation of an Advertising Club in Detroit.”
first meeting of the Associated
Advertising Clubs of America in
—Invitation to the first Adcraft Club meeting
Chicago in the fall of 1905, he saw
what the profession was making of
itself in Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago. He returned home, determined that the Detroit ad community must
organize in a consortium of shared interests.
About 40 of the city’s leading admen met on Dec. 7, 1905. They would become the charter membership of the
Detroit Adcraft Club, representing the four legs of the business: advertisers, agencies, media and suppliers.
Most advertising, like politics, was still local. But the industry was beginning to talk of itself as a science, not a transaction. And the weekly luncheons of the Adcraft Club were where some of the more interesting talk was to happen.
ADCRAFT FOUNDER Henry Ewald takes a spin in 1909 in a 1910 E-M-F car.
A4
DECEMBER 5, 2005
In the future, ads will pop up in our cereal bowls.
Our dreams will be interrupted by commercials.
But we’ll still look to magazines when we don’t want to be found.
READ ON magazine.org/readon
1910
GROWTH IN A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE
THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE:
ADCRAFT AND SELF-REGULATION
Some of the first tentative, though premature,
steps toward advertising self-regulation were
taken by the Detroit ad community nearly 90
years ago when the Adcraft Club formed the
Vigilance Committee.
The notion that advertisers might have some
faint obligation to tell the truth about the products
they sold was a progressive idea of almost radical
proportions in the second decade of the 20th
century—something akin to backing child labor
laws, old-age pensions or the union movement.
But in the waning days of the Progressive Era, it
was being increasingly talked about.
In 1917, self-imposed honesty got a boost
with the formation of the American Association
of Advertising Agencies. But as a trade group,
the Four A’s was prohibited by law from forcing
ethics codes on its members.
In Detroit during that period, local advertisers
found it easy to make bold claims and extravagant
promises that were invariably either exaggerated
or nonexistent. This was especially common
among local retailers and cosmetics marketers.
In response, the Adcraft Club formed a Vigilance
Committee to write an advertising code of
conduct and persuade, not force, members to
comply. Those who didn’t might ultimately be
shamed into some sort of observance.
The problem, according to Adcraft historian
and former Executive Secretary Lee Wilson, was
that certain Adcraft members were among the
rogue advertisers and had little enthusiasm for
supporting a trade organization that was
undermining their selling methods or embarrassing
their owners.
It soon became clear that Adcraft was not in a
position to impose sanctions on its own. This
could only be done by an organization independent
of the industry it was to regulate. So in 1917 the
Adcraft Vigilance Committee was spun off and
became the first office of the Better Business
Bureau of Detroit.
M
uckraking killjoys such as Ida Tarbell may not have been welcome at Adcraft luncheons,
but members were getting to know their Freud. In October 1911, W.A. Shryer spoke at
a club luncheon about the mysteries of psychology and “the psychological laws
underlying interest and desire” in advertising. Who said this ain’t a science?
Among other luncheon speakers in Adcraft’s new quarters at Grand River and
Washington was Henry Ford himself, then celebrating his 10th year in business and
his millionth car sold. His topic on Feb. 18, 1913, was “The value of an idea in advertising.”
Mr. Ford never made it clear exactly what that value was. But his trust in advertising
was known to be erratic at best.
Mr. Ford was not the only agent of change in Detroit during the teens. In ways few
could have
expected, the Great War that remade
“The luncheons served in the café of the
Europe helped remake Detroit, too.
Before World War I, much of the
Adcraft Club are the best 40 cents’ worth you
cheap labor that kept the factories
can get in the city of Detroit....There isn’t
expanding had come from successive
another 40 cents’ worth equal to it in these
waves of poor but eager European
immigrants. But that immigration fell
United States.”
off sharply as Europe became mired
—Adcrafter, Jan. 21, 1913
in conflict and stalemate during the
war years of 1914 to 1918. Squeezed
for labor, factory recruiters headed to the South with as many one-way train tickets as they could carry and
promises of high-paying jobs in the big-city North. Their principal target: impoverished black sharecroppers
and plantation workers. The pulling effect of such promises was accelerated in 1915 by the pushing effect of
a monstrous boll weevil plague and massive cotton crop failures.
It triggered the greatest single mass migration in American history, as hundreds of thousands of poor black
laborers flooded north. Fewer than 6,000 African-Americans lived in Detroit in 1910. Within 20 years, that
figure would surge twentyfold to 120,000.
As America entered World War I in 1917, Detroit factories became a center of war production. The Adcraft
Club moved into Detroit’s Board of Commerce offices as membership fell off. But it never ceased activity.
EARLY ADCRAFT members (from left) George Slocum, Richard Cohn and Frank Martin stroll along the waterfront in 1914.
A6
DECEMBER 5, 2005
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1905-1929 THE WORK
1905
1927
1915
1905
Ford
1927
Lincoln
1928
LaSalle
1915
Cadillac
Written by Ted MacManus, “The Penalty of Leadership”
was ranked one of the top 50 ads of the 20th century by
Advertising Age.
1928
DECEMBER 5, 2005
1929
1929
Nash Ambassador
A7
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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1920
DETROIT PICKS ITSELF UP AND ROARS ALONG
A
THE ADCRAFT BUILDING: Planned, then abandoned in 1929.
A10
fter several years of relative inactivity, a reorganized Adcraft resumed publication
of the weekly Adcrafter magazine in 1923. The club reawakened to a series of seismic
events that would rock the nation, especially Detroit. Triggered at first by voracious
post-war inflation that sent the buying power of Henry Ford’s famous $5 day of
1914 plummeting to $2.40, labor was seething with discontent and frustration.
It was ironic, though hardly coincidental, that the world’s most industrialized
workforce would produce the most powerless labor movement. But this was
America, where the freedom to make a contract made no distinction between the
individual worker and the all-powerful oligarch. Besides, frightened immigrants
who barely spoke English were hard to organize. But they could still get angry.
Stymied on all sides by management, government, the courts, police and hired
thugs, labor went for the nuclear option—the general strike. Between 1919 and 1921, for the first time
in American history, whole industries
shut down as more than 4 million
workers walked out. The final
“Better advertising…will mean better
showdown might have happened
profits to the advertiser, better jobs to
then and there if recession and
the advertising man, better volume for
depression hadn’t crushed the labor
uprising by throwing millions out of
the printers, because better has always
work—10% of the workforce by
resulted in more.”
some estimates.
—E. St. Elmo Lewis, former Adcraft president, in the
As labor licked its wounds,
Dec. 4, 1928, Adcrafter
Henry Ford built the crowning
monument of the industrialized
world: the River Rouge plant just
south of Detroit. When completed in 1927, it covered 2,000 acres and employed 75,000 men. Not to
be outdone, General Motors Corp. built the largest office complex in the world on West Grand
Boulevard. Detroit prospered in labor peace, as Mr. Ford proved a generous despot, raising wages as
Ford sales grew. Then in 1926 he made the 40-hour, five-day week the industry standard. Labor
blessed him.
There was always plenty to talk about at the weekly Adcraft luncheons, now being run by the
club’s first paid executive secretary, Merritt Chapman. How about that Alfred Sloan, dropping the
whole GM nut into Henry Ewald’s lap in 1922—the biggest ad contract ever, they’re saying. And
everybody’s talking about the snappy slogan Mr. Ewald came up with for the GOP in 1924: “Keep
cool with Coolidge.” As for Ford, it seemed the Old Man, after a parade of agencies for years, finally
settled down with N.W. Ayer in 1927.
Speaking of agencies, did you hear Ross Roy set up his own shop with the Dodge business last
year (1926)? And with Chrysler taking over Dodge, he’ll get that, too. And don’t forget Lou
Maxon’s new agency (1927) with the Valet Razor business. Let’s see, who’s on the speaker’s
docket? Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover is coming; so is Henry C. Wallace, Secretary
of Agriculture.
But the speaker who really set tongues wagging was Julia Coburn, ad manager of LaSalle & Koch,
the Toledo department store. On June 14, 1923, she became the first woman to speak at an Adcraft
luncheon. It was an unprecedented event. The Women’s Advertising Club of Detroit was even invited
to attend—just this once, mind you—and cigars and rough talk were officially discouraged for the brief
duration.
The year 1929 was Detroit’s biggest to that point. Auto and truck sales reached a record 4.3 million
vehicles that year. And thanks to Prohibition, illegal liquor profits beat out those of the automakers,
and the producers didn’t even have to advertise.
Shortly after the Oct. 29 stock market crash, Adcraft abandoned plans for building its own
headquarters. Instead, it moved into the Book Building, where it remained for the next 70 years.
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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1930
BRIGHT SPOTS LIGHTEN GRIM TIMES
T
ADCRAFEST: LURING THE GOLFERS
One of the most popular Adcraft events is the annual
Adcrafest, the club’s summer golf outing.
But Adcrafest didn't start as a golf event. In the early 20th
century, David Brown, who had been Adcraft president from
1917-19, owned People’s Ice Co., an ice farm along a lake
near Pontiac. Every winter his company would harvest and
store huge chunks of ice and sell them for use in pre-electric
home ice boxes. In July 1932, he offered his lake property to
the club's membership for a summer picnic and game day.
Adcrafest remained a picnic social until the mid-1940s,
he decade of the Great Depression began with a note of irony as Henry Luce launched
Fortune magazine at $1 a copy, or one-fifth a Ford Motor Co. worker’s daily wage. The
first issue in February 1930 expounded on the economic power of color, noting that
even Ford had recently surrendered to the challenge posed by General Motors Corp.’s
colorful new Chevrolets.
But on the streets of Detroit, prospects were as black as an old Model T. By 1932,
auto production had dropped to 1.3 million units from 4.3 million units in 1929.
Joblessness swept the region like a plague: 75% of workers at Ford’s River Rouge
plant—more than 56,000 men—were unemployed by 1932. The figures were equally
grim industrywide. Those who hung on found their wages cut from $35 a week in 1928
to $20 or less four years later.
Detroit’s ad community was hit almost as hard. Rate wars and kickback deals put pressure on the
new 15% commission as everyone groveled for a buck. Campbell-Ewald’s billings dropped 70% from
$26 million in 1929 to $8 million in 1938.
Amid the turmoil, things were looking brighter for the Adcraft Club, which got a sudden infusion
of new blood in 1934-35 with the appearance of several fresh agencies. In the wake of a sweeping
decentralization, GM advertising was divided among Campbell-Ewald, which hung onto Chevrolet,
and newcomers D.P. Brother & Co., which got Oldsmobile; MacManus, John & Adams, which took
Cadillac and Pontiac; and Kudner Advertising, a carpetbagger from New York, which won Buick. All
set up in the GM or Fisher buildings.
Other shops came to Detroit through auto accounts and into Adcraft. For Plymouth, Chrysler
hired J. Stirling Getchell Inc., which invited America to “look at all three.” Ruthrauff & Ryan got
Dodge. And Young & Rubicam came to Detroit in 1932 for Packard.
There was plenty of talk at the Adcraft sailing outings, and some of it had nothing to do with cars.
Some had to do with membership: Haley Bell of WCHB radio became Adcraft’s first AfricanAmerican member.
People were also chatting about the powerful insight that won Lou Maxon the Gillette business in 1937.
Men may have a surface vanity, he argued, but they are driven by ambition and competition. It followed
then that Gillette and sports were natural allies. To prove it, Mr. Maxon “bought” the 1939 World Series
and Gillette was off and running, pulling itself up from a lowly 18% share to dominate its category.
when the board decided to convert it to a golf outing. The
first games were played at Western Golf and Country Club in
Redford, west of Detroit. By the 1950s, Adcrafest had moved
to the larger Detroit Golf Club, until it moved around 1990
to its current home, the Indianwood Golf and Country Club.
For its first 42 years, Adcrafest was a men-only play day
and operated under boys-will-be-boys rules. Most of that
ended when the courses were opened to women in 1974.
But competition to get into the event did not abate. “In the
’80s when membership was at it height,” says former
Adcraft Executive Secretary Lee Wilson, “we had to limit participation to members only because we had too many
guests. That made Adcraft membership even more valuable,
and every May we'd get a big influx of new members, just to
get into the Adcrafest.”
With membership back down to more manageable levels,
guests are once again permitted. But Adcrafest remains one
of the biggest summer golf events in the state.
THE ADCRAFT CLUB enjoys an outing in 1933 at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.
A12
DECEMBER 5, 2005
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1930 THE WORK
1938
1936
1936
1938
Cadillac Fleetwood
1936
Lincoln Zephyr
1936
Ford
1932
Plymouth
1932
WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?
In 1933, a masked man on a fiery horse with the speed of light came thundering out of Detroit and for 21 years kept
riding coast to coast with a hearty “Hi-Ho Silver”—the Lone Ranger.
Not even the oldest Adcraft members today seem to recall the Michigan Radio Network, the seven-station hookup
anchored by Detroit’s venerable WXYZ, which aired the first “Lone Ranger” episode on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 1933.
The station had been acquired in 1930 by George W. Trendle, who wanted to sell local programming to Detroit
advertisers. He took the station independent in 1932 (from the CBS network), but had little to offer listeners or advertisers
until he decided to mount an original western.
TM & COPYRIGHT CLASSIC MEDIA INC.
The characters, the mask and the name—the Lone Ranger—were hashed out in a series of meetings with station
staffers and writer Fran Striker. From WXYZ’s library of classical music, they choose Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” as the
theme. Tonto appeared on the 12th episode so the Lone Ranger would have someone to talk to. This was radio, after all.
The Detroit show was a fast hit, becoming part of the bait whereby WGN in Chicago, WOR in New York and WLW in
Cincinnati joined WXYZ to form a fourth network in September 1934, the Mutual Broadcasting System.
In 1941, agency Blackett-Sample-Hummert bought “The Lone Ranger” for General Mills’ Kix and Cheerios brands. The
next year it moved to the NBC Blue Network, which became ABC after World War II. But the radio program continued to
be produced by WXYZ until the end in 1954.
A16
DECEMBER 5, 2005
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1940
GEARING UP FOR WAR—AND FOR PEACE
ADCRAFT MEMORY
THE POWER OF ADVERTISING?
Arthur Godfrey was always quoted as saying that he
T
he 1940s arrived with a record round of musical chairs as two of the Big 3 automakers
shuffled agencies. It started at Ford Motor Co., which had cruised into the 1930s as No. 1
and sputtered out a poor third. Everyone at Adcraft knew that someone would have to pay—
and was pretty sure who would get stuck with the check: N.W. Ayer.
What made such rituals particularly interesting at Ford were the family intrigues
involved—always grist for rich luncheon gossip. Did you hear old man Ford’s niece just
married Harry Wismer from Philly? You know that Ayer refused Ford’s request to give
Wismer a job. Too bad for Ayer, I guess. But good for Lou Maxon, who proved far more
accommodating. Three months later, he ended up with both Wismer and the LincolnMercury business. Hey, c’est la vie!
Before the end of 1940, the Ford Division went to McCann-Erickson.
No one expected a similar shakeup at
Chrysler Corp. But two months later J.
Stirling Getchell died, his agency folded and
“The world is hungry for what we
DeSoto and Plymouth were homeless. An ill
have, not only for wealth like ours,
wind for Getchell proved a tropical breeze to
but for the freedom and enterprise
Ayer, which promptly picked up both brands
and was back in the car business, barely missthat produced our wealth.”
ing a beat. Meanwhile, Ford dumped
McCann and Maxon late in 1943 for J.
—Cecil B. DeMille, movie producer-director, in an
Walter Thompson Co., which promptly
Oct. 23, 1947, talk to Adcraft
returned to Detroit and Adcraft after a 24year absence. McCann traded Ford for
Chrysler, and even Maxon ended up with some Ford dealer association business. All’s well that ends well.
But by then it hardly seemed to matter. There were no more cars to sell. Production of the last 1942
models shut down in the spring. Detroit had only one customer now, Uncle Sam, and he was ready to buy
everything the town could turn out. For the first time, full employment was the norm.
Ford’s mile-long production line at Willow Run was the most colossal manufacturing weapon on earth.
By 1945, 8,685 four-engine Liberator bombers had flown out over Grand River and taken a little bit of
Detroit to Berlin. Everybody griped about wage and price controls, but no one dared do without them.
Even Henry Ford bargained with the United Auto Workers.
In 1946, Detroit saw its first new cars in four years, and its first TV sets ever as WWJ hit the airwaves.
No wonder Arthur Godfrey drew a record 1,011 guests at an Adcraft luncheon in 1949.
wouldn’t endorse any product on his radio show that he
didn’t personally believe in. On display on the podium
that day were four of his favorite products—
Chesterfield cigarettes, Lipton tea bags, Glass Wax and
Nabisco Premium crackers.
Immediately following his speech, I was at his side, as
shown in the photo (above left).
I said, “Arthur, you claim that Glass Wax can be
used on anything. You always state, ‘Wipe it on! Wipe
it off!’ I took your advice. Look at me now—bald!”
Needless to say, Mr. Godfrey broke up. Good
Adcraft memory!
—Adcraft member Ed Rossman recalling
media personality Arthur Godfrey’s April 22, 1949,
appearance at Adcraft
A18
FORMER ADCRAFT PRESIDENTS Charles Hughes (left), Henry Ewald (center) and George Slocum get together
during Adcraft’s 42nd annual dinner on Dec. 4, 1947.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1940 THE WORK
1944
1946
1944
1946
Cadillac
1940
Plymouth
1945
Parke, Davis & Co.
1944
Ford
1944
Pontiac
1940
DECEMBER 5, 2005
1945
A19
1950
HAPPY DAYS, TV SETS AND BIG CARS
BOWLING FOR ADCRAFT
The Adcraft Bowling League has been around so
long—since 1925, to be exact—it finds itself today in
a somewhat awkward, even embarrassing position.
Once again this year, amid much celebration and
pride, one of the league's 15 teams will receive the
coveted and venerable Lew Houghton Championship
trophy, a large and imposing cup that has been
passed from one winning Adcraft team to another for
something like 50 years.
The hope is that no one will actually ask who Lew
Houghton was, because any information as to who he
was and what he did seems to have been mislaid
among the league's 80 years of history and traditions. He is known today only as a trophy.
“It is one of the great mysteries of the Adcraft
Club,” says Paul Gross, meteorologist at WDIV-TV in
Detroit and for nearly 15 years president of the
Adcraft Bowling League. “Being a historian, I’ve
sought out some of the old-timers and asked them.
But no one seems to know.”
The earliest Adcraft teams played at the Harmony
Club, Mr. Gross says, which was an old graphic arts
club with four or five lanes in downtown Detroit. Then
it moved to the Bob Lo Lanes on Woodward Avenue.
In the 1950s the games were played at the Riverside
Recreation center. The golden age, says Mr. Gross,
may have been in the late 1980s and early ’90s when
there were 24 teams in the league. That has dropped
to the present 15. Today the home of the Adcraft
Bowling League is the Hartfield Lanes in Berkley.
The games have evolved from “a boys night out”
affair every Thursday in the old days to a shared
experience today in which about 40% of the league’s
members are women.
A20
A
fter a generation of denial and deferral, Detroit had a lot of catching up to do and plenty of
Victory bonds ripe for redemption. The worry was whether the postwar demand unleashed
in the late 1940s could be sustained through the 1950s.
Among car brands, there was an early shakeout around the edges. Studebaker and
Packard merged in an overture to oblivion. Hudson and Nash became American Motors
Corp. And Kaiser-Frazier just vanished. For the survivors, fewer brands to sell meant more
brand to advertise. Each October the fanfares would sound and the curtains part on next
year’s “all new” models. Futuristic styling inspired by the famous P-38 aircraft used in World
War II and manifested in rakish tail fins gave an impression of motion—and the style became
more extreme as the automakers pushed differences in each model year.
With TV emerging, advertisers got serious about broadcasting, with sponsors producing
their own shows just as they had in radio. Kenyon & Eckert, hired by Henry Ford II in 1948,
made Lincoln-Mercury synonymous with Ed Sullivan. Ford celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1953 with a
history-making TV special, and Chrysler joined with Bob Hope.
As automobiles increasingly became objects of fashion over function, Adcraft members debated the merits
of women selling cars on TV. But there wasn’t much to argue about. Hadn’t Julia Meade scored for Lincoln
and Mercury? And didn’t Campbell-Ewald settle the question for good when it found the perfect personification
of Chevrolet in Dinah Shore?
In 1951, Harold Hastings celebrated his 25th year as Adcraft secretary-manager and brought a parade of prestigious speakers to the club, by now the largest in the U.S. A.C. Nielsen explained audience measurement. Walter
Ruther of the United Auto Workers finally addressed Adcraft. So did Bob Sarnoff of NBC; Bennett Cerf, the publisher-panelist from “What’s My Line?”; Leo Durocher of the New York Giants; and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz.
The tab for a typical Adcraft luncheon then, says former Adcraft Executive Secretary Lee Wilson, was about $1.25.
Locally, J.L. Hudson opened America’s first suburban mall, Northland, in 1954, and office managers
phased out the traditional half-day of work on Saturday mornings.
One area agency, which was launched in 1937, began to draw attention as it expanded on an unorthodox
model. W.B. Doner & Co. was a kind of federation of independent account execs, each sovereign over the
accounts he brought in as a “partner.” Its flexibility became a formula for quick growth, but one to be
challenged in the ’60s.
On a darker note, it was the decade of conspiracy theories in which advertising was as suspect as communism. In
1958, Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” purported to expose the Svengali techniques by which advertisers
secretly manipulated consumers’ minds, controlled free will and dictated desire. Ford’s marketing men may have
wondered why their agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, had not shared such secrets with them that October when they
unveiled the Edsel, whose sales performance did more to prick Mr. Packard’s theories than all the reasoned
arguments. If Ford couldn’t celebrate the Edsel, though, it could toast its 50 millionth car as the decade ended.
SHARING A LAUGH are (from left): Adcrafters Bob McKown and Johnny Nielan, guests Charley Randolph and Leo “the Lip”
Durocher, club President Clark Stevens and Adcrafter Norm Sharrock.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1950 THE WORK
1954
Chevrolet
With Dinah Shore
singing, “See the U.S.A.
in your Chevrolet.”
1950
Oldsmobile
With Mel Torme
1959
Pontiac
With Ray Bolger
1954
1950
1958
Timex Corp.
With John Cameron Swayze
demonstrating that a Timex
watch can “take a licking and
keep on ticking.”
1954
Chrysler
1959
1958
1954
GM PLANWORKS CONGRATULATES THE ADCRAFT CLUB OF DETROIT ON 100 YEARS OF SERVICE.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
A21
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1960
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
DETROIT’S DECADE OF DISSONANCE
Corbis Images
ADCRAFT MEMORY
ADCRAFT CHICKEN, ANYONE?
Adcraft guest speakers at the regular luncheons
are a great reason to go to the luncheons, but we
used to have an added incentive to go in the
1960s and 1970s. Our incentive was a pool at our
table when lunch was served.
We would each put in some funds and then we
I
f the decade of the 1950s was all harmony, the 1960s was a decade of dissonance. Having risen above
depression and world war, the G.I. generation finally was rewarded with everything it had ever wished
for—a good life of college education, rising prosperity, suburban seclusion and a more widely dispersed
purchasing power than any other people in history. Much of that money flooded into Detroit in the form
of record automobile purchases.
But by the 1960s, many of the children of this new middle class were taking for granted what their
parents had fought to achieve. Instead, they threw the good life back in their parents’ faces in a revolt
against what they saw as a boring bourgeois materialism that had led to the crisis in Vietnam. “The [Ford]
Mustang was perhaps the last thing that Americans of all generations really liked,” wrote design critic
Thomas Hine.
As the decade turned, the basic look of automobile ads was changing. Idyllic illustrations, along with the
illustrators who drew them, were fading. Photography was on its way in. Detroit advertising was prosperous and
growing, and TV, now firmly under control of the three major broadcast networks, was swelling ad budgets.
Mary Wells brought plenty of glamour as well as business savvy to the advertising world in the 1960s, and
Detroit was eager for a look. When she spoke at an Adcraft luncheon in November 1967, the turnout of 1,040
broke the attendance record set in 1949 by Arthur Godfrey. Her agency had the feisty American Motors Corp.
account. Yet she could not join the all-male Adcraft club. With more women coming into the profession, some
members were quietly beginning to wonder whether this made any sense.
If advertising’s demographics were changing, so were those of Detroit, whose population was becoming
smaller and poorer. Suburban expansion inspired by prosperity in the 1950s was accelerated by race and class in
the 1960s, then became a flight after riots in 1967. The white and black middle class left the city, taking with it
much of the ad community that had once been concentrated along downtown Jefferson Avenue.
Some venerable Detroit agency names also disappeared. Brooke, Smith, French & Dorrance was absorbed by
Ross Roy in 1960 after 53 years, as was Zimmer Keller & Calvert in 1969 after 54 years. Maxon Inc. merged out
of existence in 1966. And Leo Burnett Co. acquired D.P. Brother & Co. in 1967.
It was an uneasy decade, with more changes ahead. For the first time since World War II, Detroit found itself
in a two-front war against the Germans and the Japanese.
would try to identify the food that we were having
for lunch. The one with the most points won the
pool. Our scoring was as follows:
■ 5 points if you could tell what the main course
was after smelling it as it was being served.
■ 10 points if you could tell what the main course
was after looking at the food.
■ 15 points if you could tell what the main course
was after tasting it.
Admittedly there were some weeks when
nobody got any points, and we had to carry over
the pool to the next week.
The speakers at Adcraft luncheons as well as the
camaraderie among advertisers were great reasons
to go the luncheons. Obviously, the food was not
one of the top reasons for going.
—Adcraft member Don Kolke
THE ADCRAFT OFFICE in the Book Building ran efficiently in the 1960s, thanks to the work of people such as Kay Nelson.
A24
DECEMBER 5, 2005
© 2005 Radio Advertising Bureau. *RAEL Study, The Benefits of Synergy, 2004.
Ironically, adding radio
gives your customers
a clearer picture.
A new consumer research study by the Radio Effectiveness Lab found swapping out one of two
TV ads for two radio ads boosted brand recall by 34%. Replacing one of two newspaper ads with
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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1960 THE WORK
1968
1968
1964
1964
s
n
o
i
t
a
l
u
t
a
r
g
n
Co
t
f
a
r
c
d
A
Investor’s Business Daily
congratulates you on
100
0 years
of excellent service
to the Detroit
advertising community.
1968
1968
Pontiac GTO
1964
Chrysler
1968
Ford
“Ford has a better idea”
1968
Dodge Charger
1964
Chevrolet
“Chevy stands alone”
www.investors.com/ibdadvertising
A26
DECEMBER 5, 2005
©2005 Speed Channel, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Congratulations Adcraft Club for 100 years of great ideas.
ENTERTAINMENT THAT MOVES. 24/7.
For Advertising Opportunities Contact Todd Siegel, SVP Advertising Sales 212-822-8681
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1970
READJUSTING FOR A NEW ECONOMY
WOMEN JOIN ADCRAFT—AT LAST
Today the Adcraft Club of Detroit boasts five former
women presidents from the last seven years. But until
1974, when women were first invited to join, the club
was strictly a stag affair, except perhaps on Secretary’s
Day or when a woman speaker was scheduled.
It wasn’t the case, however, that the decision to dispose
of such a medieval viewpoint was greased by any liberal
social enlightenment. “I had no ax to grind for the
women’s lib movement then,” recalls Lee Wilson, who
joined Adcraft in 1950 and served as executive secretary
from 1960 to 1997. “What occurred to me was that we
could pick up some extra dues.”
Mr. Wilson began quietly making his case to include
women in 1967, the same year Mary Wells’ new agency,
Wells, Rich, Greene, won the American Motors Corp.
business. “But the guys on the board were older than I
was,” he says, “and much more traditional and macho.
Their view was the girls had their adclub. It was very
much a generation thing.”
But Mr. Wilson won a powerful ally in David Gillespie,
who was then president of Detroit’s Kenyon & Eckhardt
office, which was handling the Lincoln-Mercury business.
“When Dave and I decided what to do,” Mr. Wilson
says, “we took the president and VP of the Women’s Ad
Club to lunch. We told them our plans and asked would
they mind. We assumed we’d kill them off as their eligible
members would come over to us, leaving them with a
W
hen, by the 1970s, one spoke of Detroit, one meant the Detroit metropolitan
area. While Adcraft stayed put at 1249 Washington, its members increasingly
were coming to the luncheons from Troy, Bloomfield Hills and Southfield.
If Ralph Nader had shaken up Detroit in the ’60s, a consortium of oil sheiks
nearly brought it down in the ’70s. Just as the Big 3 automakers were
beginning to show proper respect for names such as Volkswagen, Toyota,
Datsun and Volvo, they were clobbered by the first of two oil price shocks that
vastly enhanced the appeal of the small, fuel-efficient imports.
Detroit remained the third-largest marketing town in America as the
automakers fought for their survival. Yet there was some consolidation through
the decade.
Among agencies, Interpublic came to Detroit in 1972 with its acquisition of Campbell-Ewald.
MacManus, John & Adams merged with
D’Arcy in 1970, and Ross Roy bought up Gray
& Kilgore in 1974.
“We waste energy; we waste
On the auto side, American Motors Corp.
trees; we waste everything that
bought out Kaiser-Jeep in 1970. Henry Ford II led
God gave us. I think perhaps
the charge to rebuild downtown Detroit around
the $337 million Renaissance Center, which
this energy crisis is going to
opened in March 1977 with high intentions and a
bring us back to a more rational
long road ahead. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co.
President Lee Iacocca became as famous as his
viewpoint.”
boss. When the two men finally parted, it set off a
sequence of events—between July 1978 and March
—John DeLorean, former VP, General Motors
Corp., speaking to Adcraft on Dec. 14, 1973
1979—that shook the town.
In November 1978, Mr. Iacocca signed on to
run Chrysler Corp., then teetering on the brink
of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He acted quickly and publicly, summarily firing Young & Rubicam and
BBDO, then dropped the whole $120 million bundle into the lap of Kenyon & Eckhardt. K&E, in turn,
was obliged to dump Ford corporate and the Lincoln-Mercury division. When the music finally stopped,
Y&R had Lincoln-Mercury; Wells, Rich, Greene got Ford corporate; and BBDO was on the sidelines
but soon won back Chrysler’s Dodge division. It was the biggest account shuffle in history at the time.
lot of secretaries and elevator operators. But that
didn’t happen—at least not right away.”
In order to avoid the publicity that might attend to a
“first” woman in Adcraft, the plan was to invite seven
women into the club with as little fanfare as possible.
One of those was Marce Haney, who in 1974 operated a
major Detroit talent agency. “I was not an activist in the
usual sense,” says Ms. Haney, who still works in the
business at 83. “I was busy with my business....When
the invitation finally came, it seemed like quite an honor
at the time.
“It also had a very positive impact on my company,”
she says. “The networking was invaluable. You always
met someone at the luncheons, and Adcraft was very
close-knit and mutually supportive.”
A30
POPULAR SPEAKERS in the 1970s included (from left) sportscaster Howard Cosell (1971), auto exec John DeLorean
(1973) and comedian Jonathan Winters (1974)
DECEMBER 5, 2005
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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1970-1989 THE WORK
1979
1973
1974
1985
1984
A32
1973
General Tire
1984
FTD
1979
Chrysler 300
1985
Ford Mustang
1974
Little Caesars
1978
Big Boy
With Rodney
Dangerfield
1978
DECEMBER 5, 2005
Look what you started. Happy hundredth, Adcraft.
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1980
ADCRAFT THRIVES AS CITY REGROUPS
ADCRAFT PM: STAYIN’ ALIVE
Back in the days of the three-martini lunch when the
grown-ups gathered at the luncheons, schmoozed each
other and scribbled their deals on napkins, few worried
about the future of Adcraft, where its members might
come from or how they would be recruited. It was
assumed that if you were in advertising in Detroit, you
were in Adcraft.
But in the 1980s, as the town began to feel the first
effects of Japanese competition and the shockwaves of
contraction began to register in the local advertising
community, the question of Adcraft’s future suddenly
became something that no one could take for granted.
For the first time since the Depression, the possibility
loomed that young people might not be coming in as fast
as older members were leaving.
The answer was Adcraft PM, formed in 1982 as a
subcommittee of the club’s Education Committee. The
name derived from the clock and was intended to suggest
useful hours after work.
In the beginning, it targeted potential young Adcrafters
the way frats rushed potential pledges on campuses—
through social activities. But while partying for the future
of Adcraft may have been a lively means to a worthy end,
more recently PM has been working to refine and expand
its mandate.
“We feel PM’s become over the past five years too
much of a party image,” says Eric Kracht, 27, the immediate
past chairman of PM. “We would like to be something for
T
he 1980s would see Lee Iacocca become the country’s first CEO superstar, and certainly one
of the most actively involved CEOs in overseeing his company’s advertising. He personally
approved many individual ads and filmed 61 TV spots in 10 years—the first ones rudimentary,
the later ones very professional.
By the end of 1983, Chrysler Corp. repaid its bailout loans—seven years ahead of schedule.
Despite this bright spot, it would be a difficult decade. Within 10 years, 50,000 Detroit
autoworkers watched their jobs disappear as robotics took over the production line. By the end
of the decade the population of the city proper was half the 2 million it had been in the 1950s,
devastating the urban retail and tax base. Detroit went from being America’s fourth-largest city
in the 1940s to ninth by the end of the 1980s. Yet Adcraft membership peaked at around 4,200
in the late 1980s, fueled by an expanding metro area whose growth was pushing past 4 million.
In a rare show of frankness, automobile advertising faced up to the reality of the challenge from
imports. “Quality” became the decade’s busiest buzzword. In its famous corporate campaign for Ford
Motor Co., Wells, Rich, Greene
asserted that “Quality Is Job
One.” General Motors Corp.
“In the past 79 years, 200 auto companies
echoed the theme with “GM
have come and gone, but no matter, the
Puts Quality on the Road.”
It was a decade of further conad business kept growing and growing. It
solidation and mergers within
seems you have more staying power than
the Detroit ad community. Some
your clients. There has to be a lesson
were unusual, even convoluted.
In 1983, K&E was bought by
there—I don’t know what the hell it is.”
Lorimar, a TV production company famous for “The Waltons,”
—Lee Iacocca, chairman, Chrysler Corp., speaking to Adcraft
“Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”
on Dec. 14, 1984
It then acquired Bozell & Jacobs
and combined its two agencies
into Bozell Worldwide. Chrysler stayed with the merged agency, but it was the end of the line for K&E.
WPP Group acquired J. Walter Thompson Co. in 1987, and two years later added Ogilvy & Mather, both
Ford agencies.
But Henry Ford II would not live to see the new setup. He died in 1986. Also to pass from the scene:
American Motors Corp., acquired by Chrysler in 1987 because it wanted the Jeep division.
everybody, by which I mean not to discriminate on age at
all. Our purpose is not to be a hangout for the young. It’s
to bring young people into PM, help them build contacts
with more senior people and ultimately get them to sign
on as Adcraft members.”
Adcraft PM also has a charitable side. Through its ReadAloud literacy program, members spend one hour each
month reading to first graders in Detroit schools. For the
past two years, Adcraft PM has also been coordinating
Project Playground, a project in which members renovate
a playground in Detroit.
Says Mr. Kracht, “It’s not just about the parties. PM’s
about the identity of advertising in Detroit—and very
much a part of Adcraft.”
LEE IACOCCA accepts Adcraft’s $10,000 check for the Statue of Liberty Fund from club President Harvey Willens.
A34
DECEMBER 5, 2005
1990
NEW NAMES, NEW PATTERNS EMERGE
TIM ALLEN’S first TV spot, for ABC Warehouse.
AN EYE FOR TALENT
A new generation of TV and film talent was emerging as
stars—people Adcraft members had turned down for jobs
when they were in Detroit. John DeCerchio, vice chairmanchief creative officer at Doner, remembers his less-thanperfect track record in the 1990s and before: “Kevin
Bacon came in for an Art Van commercial. It was a
George Washington Day sale and Bacon was up to play
Washington. We rejected him. There was Tim Allen, who
was always trying to get into Highland Appliance
commercials, and we were always turning him down.
“A couple of years ago I ran into Tim and said I feel so
D
uring the 1990s, Adcraft luncheons not only commanded attention, they continued to
break attendance records—even Lee Iacocca’s. The turnout for George Editor in Chief
John F. Kennedy Jr. was so big it had to be moved to the Detroit Renaissance Center to
accommodate the curious and the stargazers.
There was also another spate of remarkable mergers and consolidations that
would reshape Detroit. Ross Roy became part of Omnicom in 1995 and
changed its name to Inter One Marketing Group.
“I’m speaking not as a politician, but
In 1997, there was plenty of
talk about Bozell Worldas a magazine editor. And if I do
wide, which had conthat right, I hope to someday end
sumed K&E in the 1980s. Now it was
being swallowed up by True North
up as president—of a very successful
Communications, the holding company of
publishing venture.”
Foote, Cone & Belding. But names such as
True North and Bozell passed through
—John F. Kennedy Jr., editor in chief, George,
Motown’s history too quickly to take root.
speaking to Adcraft on April 21, 1995
On the other hand, who would have
dreamed that Chrysler Corp. might be
taken over by Daimler-Benz? Out of this vast reorganization, a new agency brand was born in 1998,
PentaMark Worldwide, created by BBDO to handle its new Chrysler business.
As new names came in, however, Adcraft said farewell to two legendary nameplates that embodied
the history of the American car. Chrysler announced the phase-out of Plymouth in 1999, and four
years later General Motors Corp. did the same for Oldsmobile, celebrated in song the same year
Adcraft was born.
Adcraft ended the 20th century as the largest adclub in America, but with a significantly smaller
membership than it had in the 1980s. Still, the club was 2,500 strong—and a significant force in Detroit—
as it entered the 21st century.
dumb for not putting you in that Highland spot. He said,
‘Oh yeah, it just ruined my life. Every morning I wake up
wondering where I might be today if I’d gotten that
Highland gig.’
“Once Jay Leno came in for a Little Caesars Pizza radio
spot. He’d been on the ‘Late Show’ with Letterman a couple
of times and came highly recommended, but I said no.
Then there was Kate Capshaw, whom I rejected only to
see turn up starring in the sequel to ‘Raiders of the
Lost Ark.’ ”
Not all talent found Detroit so picky. Farrah Fawcett
received about $1,000 a spot for a Mercury Couger
campaign. When she went on to “Charlie’s Angels,” her
replacement was Rachel Ward, who became a star in the
TV miniseries “The Thornbirds.” And Laurence Kasdan
had a successful career in the Doner creative department
before going on to write “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and
“Return of the Jedi” and direct “Body Heat” and “The
Big Chill,” among other theatrical releases.
A36
ADCRAFT MEMBERS present Adcrafollies, a spoof show in the 1990s that sprang from the club’s Spring Frolic, an
annual event that began in the 1930s.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1990-2005 THE WORK
2003
2003
1990
2003
2001
1994
1990
Michigan Department
of Public Health
2003
Buick
Webcast with Tiger
Woods
2003
Cheerios
DECEMBER 5, 2005
1996
2004
2001
General Motors
Corp.
2003
Serta
1996
Dow
1994
Jeep
2004
Health Alliance Plan
First HDTV spots shot
and aired in Detroit
2005
Ford Mustang
2005
A37
2000
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
A UNIFYING FORCE FOR A NEW ERA
ADCRAFT PUTS EMPHASIS
ON EDUCATION INITIATIVES
Contrary to the cliché, advertising people are made, not
born. So it follows that the future of the business
depends on education, not accidents of birth. Largely on
this rather pragmatic bit of common sense, Adcraft was
formed in 1905.
In 1925, Adcraft set up its first school of advertising in
the City College of Detroit. But it took another 30-odd
years of practical experience and evolution before the
elements of the successful advertising education began to
come together in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Today,
says Keith Price, an Adcraft member since 1981 and director
of sales and marketing for AutoWeek, Adcraft educational
programs target both membership and the larger community
through two basic initiatives.
“First,” Mr. Price says, “a study program was formed [in
1965] with Northwood University of Midland, Mich.,
where in the spring there would be a 15-week series in
which college kids and young professionals could take a
crash course in all the disciplines of advertising. There
would be opportunities to visit a TV studio, a newspaper
and an ad agency to discuss account management,
research, media and media interactions. Each year about
50 to 75 people go through the program.”
The second initiative started about the same time as
an outgrowth of the Adcraft Foundation. This involves
T
he first years of the new century seemed to finish the work of agency convergence begun
in the 1970s and ’80s. In addition to Interpublic’s absorption of True North/FCB and the
disappearance of Bozell, Young & Rubicam became part of WPP and sibling agency to J.
Walter Thompson Co. and Ogilvy & Mather. The final coup de grâce came in 2002 when
Publicis acquired Bcom3 along with its principal assets, Leo Burnett Co. and D’Arcy. The
new parent promptly shut
down D’Arcy, thus liquidating
the last vestige of Theodore
“This is a different kind of war... It
MacManus’ name as an active
is a war on the festering notion
agency brand.
that we are unworthy infidels....It
If the agency side has consolidated, however, the ad business along
is a war at home in which bio terror
with Adcraft’s membership has dispersed. In
is an elusive and deadly enemy
1972, there were nearly 30 agencies in
that exposes not just our personal
Detroit proper; today, there are around 10,
plus General Motors Corp.’s huge presence
vulnerabilities, but also the inadein the Renaissance Center.
quacies of our health system and
On the other hand, the count in Troy has
gone from one shop in 1972 to 21 today. Big
clumsiness of our most vaunted law
Beaver Road had become what Jefferson
enforcement agencies.”
Avenue or Grand Boulevard were a couple
of generations ago.
—Tom Brokaw, “NBC Nightly News,” speaking to
With the diaspora of media, agencies
Adcraft on Feb. 1, 2002
and support services in the Detroit metro
area, Adcraft has assumed a role its
founders could not have anticipated 100 years ago. “Adcraft is incredibly important to the area,” says
former Adcraft President Bud Liebler. “We are a one-industry town with OEMs, Ford, GM and
Chrysler fighting each other.
“Then,” he says, “you have Adcraft, where everybody can come together and forget their parochial
interests and say we’ve got to do something as a community. Adcraft pulls that together. … You feel
a part of something; you are not out there alone.”
scholarships awarded to Michigan college students studying
advertising and marketing. “We give away about $25,000
a year,” Mr. Price says, “usually five to seven scholarships
varying from $3,000 to $6,000. This is always done under
the Adcraft Foundation, and committee members get
together and determine criteria—grade point averages,
community involvement, AAF involvement and so on.
“We look for well-rounded students. It’s like in the
business: I’d rather hire a B student who gets the jokes than
the A student with the untied shoes. There are essay
components, too, and emphasis is placed on professors’
recommendations. We also look to the professor for validation of economic need, which of course plays a role, too.”
Another Adcraft initiative, Back to School, concentrates
on continuing education for club members with active
careers at any level in the profession.
AMONG FAVORITE ADCRAFT activities are its croquet outings.
A38
DECEMBER 5, 2005
Kudos,
Adcraft
After
100
years,
you’re
still
generating
big
ideas
and
big
success.
Here’s
to
another
© 2005 Crain Communications Inc.
100.
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
THE FUTURE
ADCRAFT CREATES LEGACY FOR DETROIT
ADCRAFT SEES BRIGHT FUTURE
The Adcraft Club is in the midst of changes more sweeping
than any it has faced since the arrival of network
broadcasting in the late 1920s. But broadcasting, like
publishing, was a top-down enterprise in which a handful
of agencies, advertisers and media proprietors determined
the content the country would read and hear. The new
digital platforms, on the other hand, are bottom up,
meaning that anyone can get into the game, a reality that
could remake not only the size but also the character of
Adcraft membership in the next decade.
According to Bob Guerrini, Adcraft executive director,
present membership stands at just more than 2,600,
admittedly a decline from a decade or two ago before the
ADCRAFT’S LEGACY PROJECT will be an Adcraft Labyrinth, similar to this one, on Detroit’s new riverfront.
local marketing community underwent a sharp consolidation
and contraction. But that was also before the world
began transforming itself into strings of zeros and ones.
“A whole new technology is gathering that is changing
advertising,” says Mr. Guerrini, “and I expect Adcraft to
reflect that change. Google and Microsoft have been in
Adcraft since the day they opened their Detroit offices.”
But these are the giants of the realm. The real impact is
likely to come from below, says Kevin Brown, managing
director of Ford Motor Media and a member of the
Adcraft executive committee.
“The reality,” Mr. Brown says, “is that with all those
digital forms out there, virtually anyone can create
content. That’s the new fact of life. Five years from now
that will be even more entrenched.”
Detroit is in the middle of a what could be a decisive
decade. What people were saying in 2000 about what
T
o mark its centennial, the Adcraft Club is planning a special project for the city and the
people of Detroit. The Legacy Project is Adcraft’s gift to the Detroit community for 100
years of doing business in this community.
According to Adcraft, this project is an opportunity for the organization, its past and
present members, to thank Detroit and to give something back. It is also an opportunity
to represent Adcraft’s future in Detroit by doing something that will survive for at least
another 100 years.
For its Legacy Project, Adcraft will work with the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy to
build the Adcraft Labyrinth on the city’s new five-mile riverfront. The exact location is
still being finalized. “We will strive to sercure the best location, one that will provide a
contemplative feeling but still be easily seen and accessible,” says Bud Liebler, chairman
of the Adcraft Legacy Project.
Mr. Liebler says Adcraft is in the process of finalizing a design that will allow visitors to walk through
the labyrinth in peace and solitude and will be “a tribute to the vigor of the right brain with its powers of
intuition, creativity and imagery.” The design will be 60 feet in diameter and landscaped with lighting and
appropriate seating. The labyrinth is expected to be completed by spring 2006.
“In addition to thanking Detroit for the first 100 years, this Adcraft Legacy Project is a great way to look
forward to the next 100 years and beyond,” Mr. Liebler says. “It’s a great gift for Adcraft to give the city.”
was coming five years down the line, Mr. Brown says, is
here now. He sees in all this a rare opportunity for Adcraft
to expand its vision beyond being just a place-specific
club—meaning the Detroit area. “In this global world
we’re in,” he says, “we’re doing business on behalf of
southeastern Michigan clients with a pretty extended
network of people all over the country and world. I don’t
think there’s any reason for the Adcraft Club to restrict its
membership to people who are living here. So as the club
expands its mission, its purview and its outreach, we have
a chance to expand the vision of what the membership
is all about.”
A40
“One hundred years of great advertising is an incredibly unique and
valuable asset. It is evocative of memories of family, friends and
indelible moments. We will use the Adcraft Centennial to unlock
those memories…to celebrate the creativity of this community…to
remind ourselves of how much we have contributed to contemporary
culture…and perhaps most importantly, to leave a legacy for
Detroiters to enjoy for decades to come.”
—Peggy Daitch, chair, Centennial Committee, on plans for Adcraft’s celebration
DECEMBER 5, 2005
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© 2005 Crain Communications Inc.
For more information, contact your sales representative or Paul Audino,
Advertising Director, at 212.210.0280 or [email protected]
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION OF ADVERTISING AGE
1905-2005
PRESIDENTS OF THE ADCRAFT CLUB OF DETROIT
1906
J.W.T. Knox
Frederick K. Stearns Co.
1930-1931
Charles MacMahon
First National Bank
1956-1957
Norman W. Sharrock
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1981-1982
Michael M. Carey
Time magazine
1907
E. St. Elmo Lewis
Burroughs Adding
Machine Co.
1931-1933
John B. Gaughen
Capper Publications
1957-1958
Worth Kramer
Radio Station WJR
1982-1983
James L. Scorgie
Hiram Walker Inc.
1933-1934
J.W.T. Knox
Frederick K. Stearns Co.
George M. Slocum
Automotive Daily News
1958-1959
1908
John E. Nielan
Hearst Advertising Service
1983-1984
Paul L. John
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1934-1935
William R. Orr
Detroit Saturday Night
Leo Fitzpatrick
Radio Station WJR
1959-1960
1909 - 1910
Wendell D. “Pete” Moore
Dodge Division, Chrysler
Corp.
1984-1985
Harvey Willens
Willens+Michigan
1935-1936
1910- 1911
Frank W. Farnsworth
J. Walter Thompson Co.
Gordon K. MacEdward
Zimmerman-Post
1960-1961
John S. Pingel
Ross Roy
1985-1986
Richard T. Flynn
People magazine
1911-1912
William C. Radcliffe
Pete Marquette Railway
System
Edward R. “Ted” Grace
Grace & Bement
1961-1962
Toby S. David
CKLW-TV
1986-1987
Joseph J. Hartigan
Campbell-Ewald Co.
Val Corradi
Newspaper Advertising
Bureau
1962-1963
John R. Browers
Ford Division, Ford Motor
Co.
1987-1988
Bruce P. Andrews
Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon
& Eckhardt
1988-1989
James H. Berline
Berline Group
Robert E. Anderson
Batten, Barton, Durstine &
Osborn
1989-1990
Peter C. Vetowich
Ross Roy
1936-1937
1912-1913
1913-1914
1914
1937-1938
Charles A. Hughes
Hudson Motor Car Co.
1938-1939
Hal G. Trump
Fred M. Randall Co.
Harry A. Jones
Hannan Co.
1939-1940
Howard O. Ward
Chrysler Corp.
1940-1941
W. Colburn Standish
Walker & Co.
Joseph Meadon
Joseph Mack Printing
Co.
1963-1964
1964-1965
E. Dawson “Duke” Fisher
J.L. Hudson Co.
1914-1915
Lee Anderson
Advertisers Inc.
1941-1942
David C. Murray
Fortune magazine
1965-1966
Thomas B. Adams
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1990-1991
William A. Power
Young & Rubicam
1915-1916
Henry T. Ewald
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1943
F. Lee Johnston
Advertising Services
1966-1967
Robert VanderKloot
VanderKloot Press
1991-1992
R.H. “Ham” Schirmer
Lintas: Campbell-Ewald
1916-1917
Frank Eastman
General Motors Corp.
1943-1944
Jesse W. Fleck
Detroit Times
1967-1968
Gail Smith
General Motors Corp.
1992-1993
Richard P. Monley
Better Homes & Gardens
1917-1919
David A. Brown
People’s Ice Co.
1944-1945
E.A. “Bud” Schirmer
Crowell-Collier Publishing
Co.
1968-1969
Frederick K. Cody
Look magazine
1993-1994
John Vanderzee
Ford Motor Co.
1919-1920
Harvey Campbell
Campbell-Trump
1969-1970
1945-1946
Robert F.G. Copeland
Arthur Kudner Inc.
Watts Wacker
D.P. Brother & Co.
1994-1995
Philip Guarascio
General Motors Corp.
Lynn B. Dudley
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1946-1947
Elliott Shumaker
Detroit Free Press
Robert J. Fisher
Ford Division, Ford Motor
Co.
1995-1996
S.M. “Skip” Roberts
N.W. Ayer & Partners
Joseph B. Mills
J.L. Hudson Co.
1947-1948
Charles B. Field
Curtis Publishing
1996-1997
Richard D. Scott
BusinessWeek
1948-1949
1997-1998
Jan Daniel Starr
Ogilvy & Mather
1998-1999
A.C. “Bud” Liebler
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
1999-2000
Peggy Daitch
Condé Nast Publications
2000-2001
Susan Kiltie
ESPN the Magazine
2001-2002
Grace Gilchrist
WXYZ-TV
2002-2003
David Martin
BBDO Detroit
2003-2004
Linda Thomas Brooks
General Motors
Mediaworks
1920-1921
1921-1922
1922
1922-1923
1923-1924
1924-1925
C.C. Winingham
Hudson Motor Car
Co.
1970-1971
J. Fred Woodruff
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1949-1950
Frederick Dickenson
Hupp Motor Car Co.
1950-1951
Walter K. Towers
Paige-Detroit Motor Car
Co.
1951-1952
1952-1953
1925-1926
1926-1927
Ward H. Marsh
McKinney, Marsh &
Cushing
Charles W. Brooke
Brooke, Smith & French
1927-1928
Clinton F. Berry
Union Trust Co.
1928-1929
Ralph L. Yonker
J.L. Hudson Co.
1929-1930
William R. Ewald
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1953
1953-1954
1954-1955
1955-1956
A42
1971-1972
Ernest A. Jones
D’Arcy-MacManus
& Masius
Dolph H. Odell
General Motors Corp.
1972-1973
Richard J. McCarthy
Reader’s Digest
Charles B. Lord
Detroit Times
1973-1974
David J. Gillespie
Kenyon & Eckhardt
Henry G. “Ted” Little
Campbell-Ewald Co.
1974-1975
Richard D. O'Connor
Campbell-Ewald Co.
John P. St. Clair
Life magazine
1975-1976
Peter A. Dow
Chrysler Corp.
Ben R. Donaldson
Ford Motor Co.
1976-1977
Rod Burton
Burton Advertising
N.F. Shad Lawler
Nash-Kelvinator Co.
1977-1978
William G. Power
Chevrolet Motor Division,
GM
John J. Morrissey
Ford Division, Ford
Motor Co.
1978-1979
John C. “Jack” Ryan
Leo Burnett Co.
Pete Wemhoff
Automotive News
1979-1980
Donald J. Teasdale
General Motors Corp.
2004-2005
Christine MacKenzie
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
1980-1981
Theodore T. Teegarden
D’Arcy-MacManus & Masius
2005-2006
Michael Wright
Leo Burnett Detroit
Clark H. Stevens
Sawyer-Ferguson-Walker
Co.
DECEMBER 5, 2005
Thanks for a hundred yaers
of reminding us
that advertisng is a craft.
Happy 100th, Adcraft. There’s still some work to be done.
CHEVROLET
PONTIAC
BUICK
CADILLAC
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HUMMER
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onlyGM.com
©2005 GM Corp. All rights reserved. The marks of General Motors and its divisions are registered trademarks of General Motors Corporation.
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my shoes...”
fter 30 years of marriage, Mary Garborg and her husband Rolf had never danced a single
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how Guideposts’ readers uniquely share in the amazing reality of others by stepping into their shoes.
A
Each month Guideposts rivets nearly 8 million readers like no other magazine – engaging them
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no other magazine
ENGAGES READERS
quite like Guideposts
Just ask Hyundai. Last year they said, “Hyundai's Nurses Care contest showed we were able to form
an alliance with Guideposts that reached a tangible connectivity to our potential customers.” Of
course actions speak louder than words, so this year Hyundai signed on to do the program again!
The total reader response to date is over 500,000!
Want more information about how your brand can develop successful programs that reach
Guideposts' highly engaged readers? Contact Joe McHugh in Detroit at 248-399-5430 x 165 also
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at 212-251-8169 also [email protected]; or visit www.guidepostsmedia.com.
Guideposts Salutes Detroit's Adcraft Club on your 100th Anniversary!
®
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