Now available: interviews with Mary Wells, JoAnn Ross, and Linda Sawyer in the current issue of Advertising and Society Review.
Mary Wells – Advertising and Society Review, 2011, Volume 12, Issue 3.
Mary Wells is one of the iconic figures of the Creative Revolution of the 1960s. Though books and articles usually focus on men like Bill Bernbach,George Lois, or even David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, in fact Mary is probably responsible for leading more breakthrough campaigns than any other person of the period. From her work at Jack Tinker and Partners, a McCann Erickson think tank begun by Marion Harper, she inspired a new generation of advertising people to create classic campaigns like Alka-Seltzer. In 1966, she left Tinker to found her own agency, Wells Rich Greene, which went onto produce a legion of quintessential campaigns, like those for American Motors and Midas Muffler, as well as to help create product lines, such the whimsical Love cosmetics, and to reinvent whole industries, as when they painted the Braniff planes in bright colors and dressed the flight attendants in Pucci uniforms. Her famous “I Love New York” campaign not only had a major impact on that city, but has become a universal sign, on sweatshirts and bumper stickers worldwide. Mary was the first female CEO to take a company public and onto the New York Stock Exchange. Since selling her interest in WRG in the 1990s, Mary has been challenged by cancer, both her own and that of her late husband, Harding Lawrence, but has nevertheless remained vital and engaged. She published an autobiography, A Big Life in Advertising, in 2002 and it is still selling. Of most recent note, she has, along with several well known women in media, created the wowOwow website, a place for intelligent women on the web.
JoAnn Ross – Advertising and Society Review, Volume 12, Issue 3.
Jo Ann Ross was named President, Network Sales, CBS Television Network, in October 2002. As the
