My Favorite Ad - Pt. 1

What a lot of people forget, when they think about the modeling business, is that models are posing for a reason, and that reason is to sell products. Whether it’s a print ad, a commercial or a runway show, the point is to let people know about the clothes, shoes, perfume, car…whatever the client wants their audience to know about.

As I mentioned in Jack in the Box, I posed for ads for United Airlines, Evian Water, Club Med and many other products. I did a catalog shoot for Bal Harbour with supermodel Lauren Hutton in Miami. And I got to do it in places as far-flung as Australia, Scotland and Italy.

But being IN ads was not my first professional exposure to the world of advertising. I did ad sales and wrote ad copy for WRNO radio (the Rock of New Orleans). So, advertising has figured in my life for a long time.

Maybe that’s why “Mad Men” is my all-time favorite TV show. Not only did it bring back to life a stylized version of the 1960s; it gave us a peek behind the scenes of the advertising world. One episode in particular examines the 1959 “Think Small” newspaper ad for the Volkswagen Beetle from Doyle Dane Bernbach, considered the greatest ad of all time by the bible of the ad industry, Advertising Age.

In the episode called “The Marriage of Figaro,” Don Draper meets with the creative department, during which there is a lot of negative discussion about the VW ad. Draper says, “I don’t know what I hate about it the most: the ad or the car.” Some think the product is ugly; others are puzzled by a large black and white ad that’s mostly white space. Still others, who’ve lived through and even fought in WWII, are repelled by the notion of a German car infiltrating the American market. Ultimately, Draper says, “Love it or hate it, the fact is, we’ve been talking about it for the last 15 minutes.”

Love it or hate it, it must have worked. VW stayed with DDB as their agency of record until 2018.

And it’s stayed with me all these years as one of my top three ads of all time.