Bernbach lived...

A life well poised for success

"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction". -KahlilGibran

Growing up on a staple diet of Kahlil Gibran's poetry, Bernbach exhibited the sense of balance and harmony in life expressed in those verses. In an industry ridden with schizophrenia of every sort William Bernbach stands out as an adman extraordinaire.He recognized the importance of balancing his personal and professional lives.He lived a modest and peaceful life with his wife and two sons and loved his family.Stephen Fox says,"he was utterly sane and balanced,uneccentric to the point of dullness." This is surprising from a man who believed that the creative spark was everything.But then this is the poise he struck between his passion and reason.

Bernbach instinctively knew how to strike the compromise everywhere.He had an innate talent for balancing impact with subtety, logic with insight, art with copy, businness with poetry, freedom with restraint and work with home.

At Schenley

A Bronx boy who graduated from New York University (B.A., '32) during the Depression, Bernbach felt lucky when he found a mailroom job at Schenley Distillers. There he met Grover Whalen, Schenley's chairman as well as New York's "official greeter" and prominent adclub officer, who soon took the bright young man under his wing. When Whalen left to oversee the 1939 New York World's Fair, Bernbach went with him as a staff writer.

At William Weintraub agency

He married Evelyn Carbone in 1938, and they had two sons, John and Paul. He worked for the New York World’s Fair as a writer and researcher during 1939-40, but his first, true advertising experience came when he joined William H. Weintraub, Inc. He parlayed this experience into a copywriter job, at age 30, with the old William Weintraub agency. In those days, copywriters tended to look down on art directors, but Bernbach didn't know that. When he met legendary designer Paul Rand, the agency's art director, the young copywriter was profoundly impressed. They would visit art galleries and museums during lunch breaks, and talk about art and copy working in harmony. Bernbach understood how such collaborations could liberate agency creative work.

At Grey Advertising

When he joined Grey Advertising in 1945, he rose quickly from copywriter to copy chief. Here he recreated the same symbiosis with Bob Gage."On the day they met ,Gage went home and told his wife that someday he would go into business with Bernbach.'I understoodwhat he was talking about, and he understood me' They worked on retail campaigns- shirts,watches, liquor, fashion,softgoods- for bargain outlets on Seventh Avenue."(Stephen Fox)

Then, when he rose to become VP-creative director, he teamed Phyllis Robinson with Bob Gage, another Rand disciple, in order to perfect his new copy/art "team" concept. Bernbach feared that Grey's growth would lessen its appetite for "inspiring" work, so he began talking to VP-account supervisor Ned Doyle and Herb Strauss about opening a new agency.When Strauss dropped out Doyle brought in his friend Daneand thus DDB was born in1949.

At DDB

Doyle Dane Bernbach opened with an investment of $1,200, in Dane's 350 Madison Ave, space on June 1, 1949, with Gage, Robinson and a half-dozen others. Doyle ran the account side; Dane, the consummate manager, ran the business/personnel side. And both stayed out of Bernbach's way. During his 33 years with DDB, when the agency achieved $1.2 billion in billings, Bernbach saw it change the dynamics of advertising and America's cultural landscape.In 1976, due to DDB’s mandatory retirement age of 65, Bernbach stepped aside as C.E.O. of what was then America’s 11th largest ad agency.

At the summit of success

The American Advertising Federation inducted William Bernbach into the Advertising Hall of Fame on February 9, 1976. Other honors received during his career included being voted "The One Person Who Did Most for the Progress of the Advertising Industry" in 1963, 1965, and 1966 (award made by the Gallagher Report via reader poll); Copywriters Hall of Fame, April 28, 1964; 1966 Man of the Year Award from Pulse, Inc.; 1968 Madden Memorial Award; "Top Advertising Agency Executive" in 1969 (by Ad Daily via industry-wide balloting); and the "1976 Recipient of American Academy of Achievement Award."

When he started DDB, its billings were $1,000,000; when he died it was near $1,000,000,000. Bernbach's business acumen has stood the test of time in an industry that sees agencies come and go in rapid succession. DDB's $775,000, off-Madison Avenue business in 1949 evolved into a multi-billion dollar international powerhouse by the mid-1980's, when it merged with Needham Harper Worldwide to create DDB Needham.

Throughout his forty year career, Bernbach never stepped away from agency life. He even spoke of returning to work as he suffered from leukemia .Bernbach died of the disease on October 2, 1982 at the age of 71.