Staying On Message

Chuck Felt, my boss and Chevy's creative director at the time, wrote the copy, and it says so much about what Chevy was all about back then - very competitive, and very aggressive.

The picture was taken before Felt's copy was written and was part of what we called an experimental shoot. We took two truckloads of Chevy prototype cars to the GM Proving Ground in Mesa, Arizona, to take pictures that could later be turned into ads. Most of the effort was made on the proving grounds, but we also found a secure location just east of Apache Junction.

It was a Western town constructed by one of the movie studios way out in the desert. Perfect for the kind of security Chevrolet demanded, so we rented it for a day. I spotted an old barn, and we put two cars in it for the picture you see. Warren Winstanley was the photographer and the young lady, as I recall, was later to become famous as the Perfect 10... Bo Derek. I think she was only in her teens at the time. My only regret is that we didn't do a bit of retouching on the cars.

Chevy's ad department approved the ad, and it moved on to the general sales manager. He thought the rope interfered with the cars and should be removed. While that was being done, Chevy general manager "Pete" Estes reviewed the ad. He thought, as we did, that the rope added considerably to the ad, so it was put back in. When the general sales manager made his final approval, he asked for the rope's removal. He would handle the problem with 1 Mr. Estes. Out came the rope again. In a final review, with Mr. Estes and the corporation, Mr. Estes ordered the rope back in. Win some, lose some. This time a win.

Camaro and Corvette had also shared ad space in 1968. "HUGGING COUSINS" ran in the buff books and Sports I Illustrated as a single page. This j fine ad was produced by the creative team of Jim Hartzell and Tony Longo. Hartzell was the copywriter who would later make us all memorable with his Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet television and radio commercials. (Probably the most famous ever written for Chevrolet, or any other automaker.) One of our finest art directors, Tony was a great proponent of using large type as a design element. It would be difficult to imagine this ad with the tiny type used in most ad headlines today. Design styles come and go, and I bet it won't be much longer before art directors again discover the value of large-type headlines as a design element. Copywriters will be happy when they do.

If you can find a copy of the November 11, 1967 issue of Newsweek or the December 6, 1967 issue of Life magazine, you'll have a copy of the spread version of this ad. Single pages ran in other national magazines.

The idea of "HUGGING COUSINS" was more than just a nifty turn on an old saying. It played beautifully to a theme we had been using for Camaro since 1967: "The Hugger - The road-hugging fun car from Chevrolet." Actually, Corvette and Camaro had very little in common. Corvette was a real sports car, and Camaro was a fun sporty car. They both had bucket seats, and they both handled well in turns. The Camaro's handling capability was the reason for the "Hugger" designation. The most important thing the two vehicles had in common was your local Chevrolet dealer. When you inspect the way the sheet metal looks on both cars, you can see why I wish we had done some retouching on the other ad.

While quite different in their presentation, both ads did a memorable job for Chevrolet.

Camaro's "Hugger" handle came about in a meeting with Chevrolet ad executives, and the ad here is the first in which we made that claim. We had presented a round of new advertising that was fairly well accepted but had generated considerable conversation about the Camaro's handling capability. Tom Staudt had recently joined Chevrolet as its first real director of marketing, and he liked to discuss at length various aspects of the communications.

I liked and respected him very much, but I think it is fair to say he could be a little long-winded at times. Still, he was one of the few ad executives with whom you could win an argument if you presented him with a convincing point of view. After a long speech about the Camaro's road-hugging capabilities, Tom kind of stumbled on the idea of Camaro as "The Hugger."

The ad was pretty much put together and approved in the meeting. The creative people are most often the ones who come up with ad ideas, but there are plenty of times when good thoughts come from other places. The trick for the creative people is to grab the thought no matter where it comes from and run with it. In this case, it made all future Camaro ads a lot easier to get approved if there was a mention of "The Hugger." This ad could have been better if the car had been shown performing at high speed in a tight turn, but the water on the road does help some. In retrospect, I don't remember why we didn't use a better picture. Sometimes it just works out that way.

The Way CHEVY Moved the Metal

Magazines and outdoor advertising were right up there too, but newspaper ads were where the dealers were recognized at the bottom of every ad with an invitation to come see them. Later, television would be where most of the money was spent. But in the Fifties, we produced five nearly full-page ads every month. One ad ran each week, and a fifth called a swing ad took the place of another in a market where exposure was needed on one product rather than another. Chevrolet made those determinations.

Newspaper ads back then needed special attention to get good reproduction. Printing presses tended to wobble and have too little or too much ink for good reproduction. That was the reason behind the kind of illustration art developed by Jim Hastings for Chevy ads. The illustrations were done all in line and halftone elements added later. The line illustrations were like the type in newspapers and held the illustration together no matter what happened. Few illustrators were capable of this kind of work, and Hastings used several artists from San Francisco until a group from Detroit could learn the technique. Color was just beginning in newspapers, and this approach was perfect for it.

The 1955 ad above was illustrated by Charles Allen and represents a kind of picture content that would belong to Chevrolet along with the tagline "SEE THE USA." Many newspaper ads in the fifties and early sixties were like magazine ads in that they helped build a brand image for Chevy that continues today. Dinah Shore helped a bunch too, with her live TV show. Nobody could sing the Chevy theme like Dinah. I have always marveled that a car with a French name could be regarded as "America's Car" rather than Ford, considering all the contributions Henry
Charles Allen is still with us, and you can see more of his work by going to his blog (charlieallensblog.blogspot.com). You can see more Chevy ads by going to my blog, About Old Chevy Ads (oldchevyads.blogspot. com). Unfortunately, few of the newspaper ads survived as most were simply thrown away.

These two 1956 ads represent the look of Chevy ads in news-papers that began in 1955 and would continue for many years. Most of the artists Jim Hastings was using were in San Francisco at a studio named Patterson and Hall. Hastings worked there as an illustrator before moving to the RW Webster agency in LA.

He was then hired byCampbell- Ewald chairman Ted Little to put more gusto into Chevy advertis¬ing. In the beginning, he had no official title but reported directly to Big Daddy. That's what we called Chairman Little but never to his face. Hastings worked with his illustrator friends in San Francisco as a kind of outside group to come up with ads like those seen here and the '55 ad. They were shown in competition with the regular Chevy creative group headed by Halsey Davidson. The Chevy people liked them in part because they were so different from other car ads, as well as from previous Chevy ads. A whole new direc-tion for Chevrolet print had been established. The relationship with America had its beginning with ads that showed long, beautiful highways and people enjoying the bounty of our country. Pete Booth, a superb copy and creative guy, began working with Hastings to transform the agency. They had adjoining offices with only a cur-tain to separate them, something that was unheard of back then — art and copy working closely together.

Nonnast. It has all the warmth and feeling that had been missing from pre-1955 Chevy ads. And look at the plane about to land. It's a prop- driven Constellation. I wonder if Howard Hughes could be the pilot? The copy theme is pure Chevrolet; more car for your money. The 1955, 1956 and 1957 Chevrolets were a huge hit in the market and continue to be high-priced collector items today.

The ad with the car on the mountain road was illustrated by Haines Hall, another of Hastings friends. Haines was more than a fine illustrator; he was part owner of the Patterson Hall Art Studio in San Francisco. The studio still is in business although all the old illustrators have long ago retired. Today it is known as P & H Creative Group and is run by Bruce Hettema. Bruce is very interested in the history of the studio and has a fine collection of ads and art from days gone by.