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MANAGEMENT GIANT

Raymond Rubicam
Timeline
1892 Born. 1916 Starts as a copywriter at F. Wallis Armstrong Company. 1919 Moves to N. W. Ayer & Son. 1922 Passed over for promotion. 1923 Founds agency Young & Rubicam. 1926 Young & Rubicam moves to 285 Madison Avenue, New York. 1927 Young retires. Rubicam becomes president. 1932 Hires Dr. George H. Gallup to conduct market research. 1934 Becomes chairman. 1944 Rubicam retires. Moves to Arizona. 1978 Dies.

Summary
Raymond Rubicam took advertising out of the dark ages and, using a mixture of science and art, created one of the most potent advertising agencies of his era. He wanted to write literature, but ended up writing advertising copy. Astonished to learn that a few wellchosen wordsno more than 11 if it was a headlinecould earn him a living, Rubicam soon had his own ad agency, Young & Rubicam. Using science as a foundation for creativity, he introduced practicessuch as market research and audience testingthat are standard techniques in the industry today. By the time he retired in 1944, he had created one of the biggest ad agencies in the world, and changed the face of advertising.

Background and Rise

The youngest of eight children, Raymond Rubicam, the father of advertising, was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 16, 1892. He had an unsettled childhood. When his grandfather died, the family import-export business was left to his grandfathers wife and her family. Rubicams father was forced to obtain alternative employment and became a journalist. Then when he too died, the family was split up. Rubicam was passed from one

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relation to another, spending time with one brother in Texas, a sister in Ohio and another brother in Denver. It is no surprise that the constantly migrating Rubicam had little schooling. Instead, he learned the value of hard work. His childhood was punctuated by the drudgery of odd jobs, and his education came to a premature conclusion at the age of 15 when he took a full-time job as a shipping clerks assistant, for $5 weekly. For eight years, Rubicam drifted from one job to the next. Yet the aimless boy wasnt entirely without purpose: he harbored a burning ambition to become a writer. He traveled the country, absorbing the sights of everyday American life. In the space of a year, he worked as a door-to-door salesman of photographs, a film projectionist, a theater usher, and a bellhop. Settling in Philadelphia, he wrote a number of short stories and applied to newspapers throughout Denver for a job as a reporter. His persistence paid off when he was offered a position on the Philadelphia Inquirer for $12 a week. Rubicam was writing for a living.

Defining Moments
Fame as a writer didnt come as Rubicam might have imagined. In fact, early on, it looked like it might never come at all. Rubicam fell in love and decided to marry, but $12 a week was not a princely sum on which to raise a family. He had to get a raise, or another job. Rubicam asked for a raise. Clearly he hadnt honed his powers of persuasion this early on in his career, as a few weeks later he found himself working as an automobile salesman. It was a job he disliked intensely. However, it was at about this time that Rubicam discovered it was possible to work as a writer in advertising, and earn enough money to support his family. He did some research and wrote some sample advertisements. Then, armed with a list of advertising agencies garnered from a telephone book, he set out to work his way through them, applying in person to each. He never reached the letter b. His life in advertising started in 1916 as a copywriter at F. Wallis Armstrong, the first company he applied to. It took a little persuasion. After nine days of waiting in the lobby to see the head of the agency, Rubicam wrote the boss a furious letter, calculated to produce an immediate interview or a couple of black eyes. Delivered in person, the letter had the desired effect. Tearing out of his office the agency chief remarked, those ads you wrote didnt amount to much, but this letter has some stuff in it. Armstrong, Rubicams boss, was no connoisseur or lover of copywriting, running the agency in the old-fashioned style geared to the buying of advertising space rather than the crafting of catchy ads. But it was a start. Rubicam learned much from his colleaguesenough to earn him several raises. By 1919 he had moved on to the largest agency of the time, N. W. Ayer & Son. Rubicam wrote some of its best copy. Campaigns for companies, such as Steinway the piano manufacturer, became some of the most famous of the time. Rubicams slogans for Squib were still being used 70 years later. The quality of his work quickly marked him out as one of the top copywriters of his generation. It was during this period that he brought ex Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2005

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colleague John Orr Young to N. W. Ayer & Son, from F. Wallis Armstrong. Young was also a promising copywriter, and he and Rubicam were close friends. Like so many other agencies at the time, N. W. Ayer & Son placed a premium on quantity and size of advertisements rather than the quality of the copy. Rubicam was convinced that the content of the addesign, artwork, and copywas a critical factor in the success of any advertising campaign. The last straw came when Rubicam was passed over for promotion after the head of the agency, Wayland Ayer, died in 1922. Together with Young, Rubicam founded the agency Young & Rubicam in the spring of 1923. They started with just $5,000 and one client, Quick Tipper, a company that sold a tool for capping shoelaces. From the start, Rubicam placed a premium on creativity. The future success of the agency was largely due to thisand to one of its earliest clients, General Foods. When Young & Rubicams campaign for General Foods won a mantelpiece full of prestigious awards, the company rewarded them with its Grape Nuts and Jello accounts. The strong relationship with General Foods persuaded Rubicam to move to New York. In 1926, Young & Rubicam moved into offices at 285 Madison Avenue. Young & Rubicams success also owed much to a string of advertising innovations introduced by Rubicam. He believed that an advertiser should know as much as possible about both the product advertised and the consumer. In 1932, he hired a professor from Northwestern University to establish a research department to investigate consumer preferences and prejudices. The professor was Dr. George H. Gallup, who would go on to found the Gallup Polling organization. Gallup and Rubicam also established an audience research institute at Princeton run by a young Englishman, David Ogilvy, who would eventually be recognized as one of the great advertising men of his time. The research findings from this bold experiment encouraged Rubicam to try new types of advertising. One innovation was the use of caption bubbles; another was comic strip ads, that presented an advertisement as a sequential story. It was the first time this form of advertising had been used. Other refinements included the use of a short first paragraph; the extensive use of subheadings in long copy, and headlines of no more than 11 words in length. These techniques, a direct result of the Gallup research, became standard in the advertising industry. Rubicams obsession with advertising research led to further innovations. He was the first to commission scientific audience sampling. He used Gallup to measure radio audiences, and to conduct product-recognition and test-advertising research. When Young retired in 1927, Rubicam became president, relinquishing the title in 1934 to become chairman. He was a popular boss. The atmosphere at Young & Rubicam was informal, a stark contrast to most businesses of the time, advertising or otherwise. In particular, Rubicam nurtured the creative staff. A writer himself, he knew that creative people could be temperamental and difficult to work with, so he made allowances. It was a smart move. As word spread of the relaxed company culture, the best creative minds in the business headed for 285 Madison Avenue.
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Rubicam retired at the age of 52 in 1944 and moved to Arizona, where he continued to retain his interest in business. He acted as a consultant to the Campbell Soup Company and sat on a number of boards of directors. He also speculated in real estate. He died in 1978 at the age of 85.

Context and Conclusions

Raymond Rubicam is known as the father of advertising with good reason. Together with other great advertising men like James Walter Thompson, Stanley Resor, and David Ogilvy, Rubicam is responsible for transforming advertising from a crude sales device to a sophisticated marketing tool. Rubicam understood the importance of the consumer in the advertising process. He pioneered the use of scientific research techniques, such as advertising recognition and test audiences. He employed Dr. Gallup to conduct consumer research. On the creative side, he introduced new ideas such as the sequential cartoon strip advertisement and the caption bubble. Rubicams methods were so successful that the agency he created was in the top five agencies for over 35 years.

Close But No Cigar

James Walter Thompson A Marine Corps veteran from Massachusetts, Thompson joined a fledgling advertising agency, Carlton & Smith, in 1868. In 1878 he bought the agency for $500, renaming it J. Walter Thompson Company. Advertising at the time was more about the purchasing of space and placing of ads than the actual creation of advertisements. Thompson changed this when he introduced the concept of full service advertising. From that time on, Thompson created the advertising as well as placing it. Thompson also introduced a number of other innovations. These included giving away free branded promotional products and creating advertising for the agency itself, known as house adverts. Thompson sold out to a group of company employees in 1916.

For More Information

Book: Watkins, Julian Lewis. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did. New York: Dover, 1959.

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