J. Stirling Getchell
(July 7, 1899-December 17, 1940)
Though he only lived a short time, J. Stirling Getchell left his mark on advertising history. Known for his personality and design style, he managed to succeed during this country's worst economic era - The Depression.
Born in New York, Getchell was the son of a silk salesman and a teacher. At age eleven, he suffered a bout of rheumatic fever that left him with a weakened heart for the rest of his life. It was his heart condition that propelled him through life. When advised by others to slow down, he responded "I haven't got time to do it that way. I have to make all the money by the time I'm forty." Nonetheless, he was a typical adolescent - willful and determined. These traits characterized his personality even after he grew out of the teenage years. He attended the Peddie Institute until the age of 17, when he grew bored with school and ran away from home to Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa with Pershing's troops. After that excursion, he enlisted and served overseas in World War I. During his tour, he met and married English woman and then brought her back to New York and decided to go into advertising.
True to his restless personality, Getchell held over a dozen jobs at different advertising agencies over the next twelve years, none lasting more than a year. Though he had no real experience or credentials, the head of a small New York agency was impressed enough by his sense of earnestness that he hired him as a copywriter for $25 a week. As time passed, it became obvious to his employer that Getchell had an insatiable interest in all aspects of advertising, not just copywriting. In fact, he was particularly drawn towards the visual aspects of ads and it was in that area that he would be remembered for. One of his earliest successful ads was part of a dealer campaign for a tire company which showed a pair of shoes dominating the page and the headline "Can You Fill These Shoes?"
After a disagreement over salary, Getchell went on to work at agencies in Philadelphia, Toledo, Detroit, and New York. He ended up specializing in campaigns for automotive industries. His first major job came in 1924, when he was hired by showing a portfolio of ads by Bruce Barton, Helen Resor, Raymond Rubicam, and others. He convinced management that he could do ads just as good if given the chance, and they gave him that chance on the Studebaker account. Getchell continued his study of the advertising business, now watching major admen up close with the motive of learning how to run his own agency.
The following year Getchell moved on to the George Batten Agency where he worked in an office with Chester Bowles and William Benton. Getchell was credited with saving the Colgate Rapid Shave account by devising "microphotographs" that illustrated how the product softened beard hair. After refusing to put a coupon in a Palmolive ad at the client's request, Getchell quit. Batten account executive Taylor Adams remembers the event and Getchell by saying "he wouldn't stay long on a job...where he couldn't be king."
Getchell had applied to J. Walter Thompson several times and was finally hired on his fourth try. True to form, he rebelled against company dress codes and smoking policies, yet managed to become a resident star at the agency. It was here that he created on of his most famous campaigns ­ the Silvertown Safety League for Goodrich Tires. This safe-driving crusade eventually enrolled 2.5 million consumers. Based solely on his instincts, he publicized the campaign by sending a fleet of fifteen cars on a year-long tour of America and hiring photographers to cover it as a news event.
Despite his critical success at JWT, Getchell was hired away by Lennen & Mitchell for $50,000 a year. He brought with him from JWT his secretary, Helen Boyd, and favorite art director, Jack Tarleton. During the following year, the three met and discussed the possibility of opening their own agency. In 1931 they made the leap and founded the J. Stirling Getchell Agency. It was two years into the Great Depression, but Getchell saw this as an advantage, saying "things can't get much worse than they are."
Their first year of business was funded entirely by service fees from special assignment freelance work for clients such as Chesterfield, Vick's, General Tire, and Lydia Pinkham. For Pinkham vegetable compound, Getchell remembered their ad copy from the late nineteenth century which showed distressed women. Known for its promised cures for numerous female problems, Getchell created a somewhat controversial ad showing a woman telling her husband "I'm sorry...not tonight!" Although Pinkham family members werenıt all enthusiastic about the ad, they were pleased with its effects. The company made $400,000 the year the ad ran, up from a $260,000 loss the previous year.
After these minor successes, Getchell hired Orrin Kilbourn as another partner. Kilbourn had connections in the Chrysler corporation that helped them win their first major account - Chrysler DeSoto. The ads for the campaign showed lush pictures of happy young adults and the line "Expect to be Stared At." This approach to selling cars caught the attention of consumers, other advertisers, and the client. So impressed was Chrysler with the results of the DeSoto campaign that they gave the agency another project. Chrysler was introducing the Plymouth in 1932, their bottom-of-the-line car, and wanted to compete with industry leaders Chevrolet and Ford.
Getchell and partners developed an ad that featured the headline "Look at all three." Chrysler account managers hated the ad and refused to run it, but Walter Chrysler himself saw the ad and ultimately approved it and appeared in it, helping to personalize the company. For the first time, ads spoke like the salesman in the showroom. The ads skirted the ban on comparative advertising by not specifically naming the other cars referred to in the ad. In just three months, Plymouth sales leaped 218% and the client was so pleased that after a review of 22 agencies in the following months, the Getchell agency won the entire account. The following campaign - "Plymouth sets the pace for all three" - was a variation on the original ads, which increased Plymouth's market share of the low-priced market from 16% to 24%.
The Getchell agency had now officially made it and Getchellıs style became easily recognized in the industry. He favored large, bold headlines with innovative, lavish photographs in tabloid formats, meaning rectilinear layouts. Getchell wanted ads with "bounce" that "came off the page fast" and believed that people wanted "realism, events portrayed as they happened. Products as they really are. Human interest. People. Places. Told in simple photographs that the eye can read and the mind can understand." All ads started with the photographs from the best photographers and a huge cross- indexed in-house file. The headline, copy, and fonts were all built up around the pictures. Older advertisers were reminded of a hard-sell style used several decades earlier which stressed a direct sales appeal. Getchell began talking to consumers in a way that they hadn't heard in a while, but combined modern action photography to increase the communication between ads and consumers.
The Plymouth campaign opened many doors for the Getchell Agency and new accounts flooded in. Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Mobil Gas and Oil Filing Stations ("Friendly Service" was coined by Getchell), Airtemp, Devoe and Reynolds paints and varnishes, Kelly-Springfield Tire, Mayflower Stations, Sobol Brothers Service Stations, the Illinois Meat Company, and Schenley Distillers. The Getchell Agency went on to be so successful that at one point it was one of the ten largest in the nation, with 200 employees and branches in Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. Outside of his regular advertising duties, Getchell was a member of the executive board of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. During the spring meeting in 1935 he presented a paper recommending "ample diagnosis, simple news technique, dramatic human photos, sincere, honest copy, but above all, enthusiasm for the product." Getchell offered "no rule for producing advertising, each campaign being an evolutionary process." In another extracurricular project, Getchell was one of several admen who supported the political candidacy of Wendell Willkie. In fact, so many admen were involved in this 1940 campaign that their involvement became an issue. The press expressed the idea that the people who sold Americans any product were now selling the presidency.
Creativity and enthusiasm were priorities at the Getchell agency. Getchellıs own drive kept his employees highly competitive and sometimes very productive. His management style was rather intense, much like his personality. He expected his employees to have the same drive and desire that he did and that they be willing to sacrifice all other aspects of their lives for their job. Needless to say, many of them quit to escape to a more structured job. But even with those problems, Getchell managed to build up an agency with $10 million dollars in billings during the worst economic decade of this country's history. All this hard work took its toll and in 1940 he contracted a blood infection due to a combination of stress, neglect, and decaying teeth. He survived for nine months but finally succumbed to a streptococcus infection in December of 1940. He was 41 years old. Two years later, the J. Stirling Getchell Agency closed its doors.
During his brief encounter with the advertising industry, Getchell and his style came in contact with many now famous admen. David Ogilvy, a self-claimed "advertising classicist," listed Getchell as one of his forefathers that he owed a creative debt to. Anderson F. Hewitt served as head of Getchellıs radio department and went on to form an agency with Ogilvy, Benson, and Mather. James Kennedy trained under Getchell during his stay at JWT and later trained writer Rosser Reeves. Due to the high turnover rate at Getchell's agency, a large number of admen and women can claim to have been touched by his influence.
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this page updated 12.7.96
april c. kilduff
dallas-@mail.utexas.edu