Sarah Koenig
Appearances
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Then there's the ad for coldine cough medicine. The page is entirely black, with just two quotes at different heights, meant to show a couple talking in bed. John, is that Billy coughing, says the wife. Get up and give him some coldine, the husband replies. In an interview 20 years later, George Lois said, the idea for the ad hit me like a brainstorm.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
This was the first time there would be no copy, no package design, no trademark, he said. It was really the beginning of a new creative revolution. It was one of those ads that made history effectively. Again, my dad is adamant that the whole ad, copy, and design were his. There are many possibilities here of what's going on. George Lois could be lying.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Or George Lois could have convinced himself in some way that what he's saying about all this stuff is true. Or my dad could be doing the same thing, remembering stuff that happened when it didn't happen. Or, I suppose, my dad could be lying. I'd worry about those latter options more if my father was the only one disputing George Lois' version of history, but he's not.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
There's the photographer Carl Fischer, who worked with George Lois for more than 30 years and shot many of the most famous Esquire covers. Carl Fischer says George is taking credit for cover ideas and photographs that were Carl's and talked in detail about certain photo shoots. Like about flying to Las Vegas to shoot the boxer Sonny Liston as Santa, and even placing the Santa cap on Liston's head.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Or rushing Italian actress Verna Lisi into a photo shoot in New York for this famous cover where she's pretending to shave her face. But Fisher says George wasn't there for either shoot. In fact, the Lisi shoot happened in Rome, and he still has receipts to prove it. And then there's Shelley Zalaznik, the first editor of New York Magazine.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
George once told a reporter, quote, Mr. Zalaznik says that's simply not true. He himself remembers making the first dummy front page one hot August night in 1963. Not only that, he's never met George Lois. As for George's version, he told me, I'm at a loss. I don't know why grown-ups do things like this. But the story my father objects to the most isn't about ad copy at all. It's personal.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Papert, Koenig, and Lois had gotten the Dutch master's cigar account, and their TV spokesman at the time was this famous comedian, Ernie Kovacs. So my dad flew out to L.A. to meet him, and they hit it off.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Lo and behold, in his 2005 book, Celebrities, which is spelled with a dollar sign instead of a C at the beginning, George tells the story of his lovely poolside lunch with Ernie, his car ride to the airport with Ernie, his red-eye flight back to New York, and his learning the following morning from a stack of stillbound newspapers that Ernie had been killed in a car crash.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
My father has tried to fight back, aggressively at times. For instance, after the Ernie Kovacs story appeared in Celebrities, my dad retaliated in the medium he knows best. He wrote an ad.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
The Times didn't run it, but it did run in ad week, though toward the back of the magazine, and it got no response. Over the years, he and some of his former colleagues have written to reporters at the New York Times and other places, trying to correct the record, but their letters have mostly been ignored.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Just last year, a Times story about an exhibit of George Lois' Esquire covers credited him, in the very first paragraph, with Think Small, the Xerox ads with the chimp, and a couple of other campaigns people say George either didn't originate or didn't even work on. Finally, the Times printed a short correction, giving Think Small back to my dad.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
But it was a small victory, three weeks after the fact. In the mid-80s, my dad wrote a letter to George directly, threatening to sue, it seems, and received a letter back calling him a sad, tortured, and tragic figure. All in all, my father's efforts haven't really done the damage he's hoped, or really any damage at all.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
He's an indignant basset hound, nipping at the heels of the media's Great Dane. George Lois is a good talker, with an engaging personality, and he's become something of a spokesman for the advertising industry. There are quotes in the newspaper and magazine profiles, exhibits, books. Errors printed once are repeated and repeated.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
So if you look up Think Small on the internet, for instance, you'll find it attributed to Julian Koenig. But you're also likely to learn that George Lois wrote it.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
That's Fred Papert, the P of PKL. He was the guy who recruited Lois and Koenig to make a new agency in 1960. Now he's one of the guys responsible for redeveloping Times Square as president of the 42nd Street Development Corporation. He knows the stories all too well. Xerox, Harvey Prober, Kolding, Ernie Kovacs even.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Fred's in my dad's camp insofar as he knows and believes my dad is telling the truth. But his support more or less stops there. And he's categorical on this point, that my dad is himself acting like a nut, wasting his time. They've talked about this on rides to and from the racetrack.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
My father recognizes that there are only about four people left on Earth who care about this stuff. It's just that he happens to be one of them, and he cannot let it go.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
The odd thing about all this, as my older brother John points out, is that my father's never exactly been a champion of advertising.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
I understand why he cares. He's 88 years old now, so his legacy, understandably, is on his mind. And even though he did campaigns for all sorts of good causes, gun control, nuclear proliferation, Robert Kennedy's senatorial and presidential campaigns, my father's not quite satisfied with his life's work.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
You're not necessarily proud that you had a career in the field of advertising and that's your legacy, but you are proud that you were the best in the business at the thing you chose to do.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
If he could go back, choose another career, my father would have liked to have been an environmentalist of some kind, which is why he'd really like to be remembered for something almost nobody knows he did, naming Earth Day. It agitated him to look up Earth Day on Wikipedia recently and not see his name anywhere. So a few days ago, I added it.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
All my life, I've heard the hallmarks of my father's achievements.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
That was in 1936 when he was a counselor at Camp Greylock for boys. They already had arm wrestling for the boys and leg wrestling.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
It just came to you, like just a stroke, oh, we should use our thumbs?
This American Life
535: Origin Story
In 1941, my father, a shrimp lover, was discouraged that there were only two places on Broadway in New York where you could get shrimp. So then in Biloxi, Mississippi, and bear with me here because this story barely makes any sense. So he's in Biloxi on his way to Mexico with some buddies, and he sees this government boat about to go out to track the migratory path of shrimp.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
And he talks his way onto the boat by explaining that he loves shrimp, apparently. And he goes out on this boat, and they find the shrimp breeding grounds or some such. The rest, of course, is history.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
It seems like really, really thin evidence that you popularized shrimp in New York.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
My dad does make a claim on the word character, that he came up with the idea to use it to mean a person of unusual or eccentric qualities.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
According to my father, Norman Mailer also said he invented thumb wrestling. Mailer, who died in 2007, was a famous thumb wrestler, but not its inventor, because, as we now know, my dad invented it at Camp Greylock for boys. And that's the rub. You can't prove the origin of any of this stuff, and it's annoying when people like Norman Mailer take credit.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
My dad would like people to recognize him for his contributions to shrimp and character and thumb wrestling, but he's not going to make a stink if they don't. His real legacy, though, in advertising, that's another story. That he's willing to fight for, and he has been fighting for it for decades. My father was a legendary copywriter. He wrote Timex Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
He named Earth Day Earth Day. It falls on his birthday, April 22nd. Earth Day Birthday. So the idea came easily. The magazine Advertising Age made a list of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th century. The Marlboro Man is on it, and the Energizer Bunny, good to the last drop from Maxwell House, and the Keep America Beautiful Crying Indian. But the number one ad, the top of the 100 list?
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Think small. That was Volkswagen's American campaign to sell the Beetle in 1959, and my father wrote it. a picture of a tiny car on a big white page, and some amused, self-deprecating copy. That ad was followed by Lemon, another VW ad so iconic it made it onto the TV show Mad Men, the show set in 1960 about an ad agency that's slightly behind the times.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
In this scene, the agency's creative team contemplates the Lemon ad.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
At the time, these ads were revolutionary. In the beginning, there was Volkswagen, another famous New York ad man wrote. That was the day when the new advertising agency was really born. Here's another scene from Mad Men when Don Draper, the agency's creative director, interviews some new talent. After he looks at their portfolio, he hands it back to them with this line.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
It's Julian Koenig, actually, my father. And what has irritated him for so long is not that he's not recognized for his talent. I mean, the people who write Mad Men clearly know who he is. It's that some of his best work has been claimed by someone else.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
If you've heard of anyone in the advertising industry, it might be George Lois. He's well known for a lot of things, but maybe especially for his provocative and funny Esquire magazine covers from the 1960s, like the one of Muhammad Ali posing as St. Sebastian. But before that, George Lois worked at Dolday and Birnbach, and so did my father.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
In 1960, they both left DDB and joined up with another guy, Fred Pappert, to form their own upstart agency called PKL, Pappert, Koenig & Lois. George Lois wouldn't talk to me for this story. I'm not going to get into a sophomoric **** fight with a disgruntled ex-partner, he wrote in an email. I can't say I blame him. I've had mixed feelings about this fight.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
Of course I want to stick up for my father, take his side. But I've also thought there's something inherently undignified about the whole thing. Like it's beneath my father to care whether or not George Lois is taking credit for this or that slogan from 1962. So I never really paid attention to the details. Until now. Lately it's been coming up more, or at least more publicly.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
So I started asking questions. According to my father, it all started with the Harvey Prober account. Harvey Prober made elegant modern furniture. My dad says he came up with the ad. A beautiful chair with a matchbook under one leg. And the line, if your Harvey Prober chair wobbles, straighten your floor. And a piece of copy that went with it that he thought was very good.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
In 1972, George Lois published a book, the first of many, about his career, called George Be Careful. In it, he describes going to the Harvey Prober Furniture Factory in Massachusetts with my dad. Each chair was placed on an electronic test platform to be sure it was absolutely level, Lois wrote. Got a book of matches, I asked Julian, a heavy smoker.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
He handed me a matchbook, and I slid it under one leg of the chair on the test platform. I've got the ad, I said. If your Harvey Prober chair is crooked, straighten your floor. Julian scowled and shot back. Asshole. If your Harvey Prober chair wobbles, straighten your floor. That was the way the ad ran, and that was the way we built the first red-hot creative agency.
This American Life
535: Origin Story
There were other instances, also regarding ads that were groundbreaking for their time. A campaign for the New York Herald Tribune, who says a good newspaper has to be dull. Some famous Xerox commercials showing a little girl operating a copy machine, and later a chimpanzee doing it. Ads several people who worked on the account have complained that George literally had nothing to do with.