"I
look upon the public as myself multiplied and have not yet reached the
stage of
diffidence and humility which permits me to write myself down as an Ass."
Theodore Francis MacManus (Fox, p. 73)
It is said that while Claude Hopkins, famous for scientific advertising (hard sell), writes down to an audience, Theodore Francis MacManus writes up to it (Fox, p 73). Theodore MacManus is renown for his soft sell, image-style advertising which helped introduce both Chrysler and Dodge. He was also instrumental in the introduction of many other automobile manufacturer's brands (Lexis-Nexus, "Wrestling with MacManus", p. 23).
MacManus's copy is often compared to Elmo Calkins of the Bates agency, known for having created a style of advertising that resembled original art. MacManus became the leading advocate of soft sell advertising during his lifetime. He supported advertising through "atmosphere" and "suggestion" (Fox, p. 71). His most famous ad,"The Penalty of Leadership", exemplifies his philosophy and ultimately established him as the Father of the second school of creative thought (Smith, p. 224).
Theodore MacManus was born in Buffalo New York in 1872, and died at his summer home on the Georgian Bay in 1940. He was once head of the Theodore MacManus Advertising Agency, known today as the MacManus Group, the new company name for DMB&B and their recently acquired partner NW Ayer.
Photo of Theodore MacManus provided by The John W. Harman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History
Theodore MacManus's working class Irish-Catholic family moved to Toledo, Ohio while he was still young. MacManus became restless during his teen years in Toledo. Bored with school he left to enter the working world. He held various jobs, a common attribute among advertising professionals notes Smith in The Ad Men and Women, before developing his expertise in the field of automotive merchandising.
His first job was as an office boy at Standard Oil in Clevland. After a short time with Standard Oil, MacManus became discontent. At the age of 16 he left Standard Oil to become a reporter for a Toledo newspaper. Before leaving the paper, he had promoted to managing editor.
After his position as editor, MacManus had his first encounter
within field advertising. He tried his hand in retail advertising with
a department store in Pittsburg.
As was with many other jobs that obviously failed to inspire and challenge
him long-term, he became bored and changed his focus from advertising to
sales management. Only after his position in sales for coffee and wholesale
grocery firms, did he become anxious to return to the field of advertising.
General Motors then brought him to Detroit where he began a long reputable career within the advertising profession, creating and developing image-style advertising for many manufacturers (Smith, p. 221). Through his soft sell, image-style advertising he created a name and reputation for himself as the the "Claude Hopkins of soft sell" (Fox, p. 72).
MacManus, a large man,was described in The Mirror Makers as having the look of a professor with his high forhead and rimless glasses. He was said to have had a life outside of his advertising career unlike Claude Hopkins. He enjoyed golf, fishing, vacationing at both his summer and winter homes and reading on such subjects as political philosophy and economics. He is the author of both Men, Money andMotors and The SwordArm of Business . In addition to these two books , MacManus privately published three volumes of his own poetry (Fox, p. 73).
"He was a true figure of mystery always quietly aloof, invariably
absent from garrulous advertising cliques; a law unto himself."
An Unknown Associate of MacManus (Fox, p. 73)
Although MacManus's advertising career actually began in retail, he achieved his expertise and prominence through his works with the automobile industry. MacManus commuted by automobile from his home in Bloomfield Hills to Detroit where he first began his well-known career writing advertising copy for the automobile industry. During his advertising career he worked for such manufacturers as:
His copy for Buick & Cadillac is specifically claimed to have helped build the luxury car image we know of today. This image building copy used a soft sell technique. "The Penalty of Leadership" ad for Cadillac, set the standard and established MacManus as the Father of the second school of creative thought still alive today.
Shortly after having created the "Penalty"ad, Theodore MacManus mentored the famous Leo Burnett. Leo Burnett was hired by MacManus as a junior writer to focus on an in-house publication. This was Burnett's first experience at using his writing to sell, and MacManus is said to of opened Burnett up to the possibility of an eventual career in advertising (Morrison, p. 79).
The "Penalty" ad made MacManus instantly famous. After creating the ad he was offered a position in Chicago which he turned down to stay in Detroit, to continue working from his 13th floor office in the Fisher Building. Later MacManus entered the agency side of the business and created his own known at that time as Theodore MacManus Advertising Agency.
MacManus advocated the use of "imagination" in advertising as opposed to Claude Hopkin's hard sell tactics based on facts and explanation.
Claude Hopkins, the author of Scientific Advertising, emphasized pretesting campaigns and asserted that there was scientific rigor to his methods. MacManus however felt that people rarely were moved by methodical and scientific advertising. He therefore wrote copy based on what he wanted to see in ads. MacManus described scientific advertising as "a clever and semi-scientific application of the thesis that all men are fools" and described his own style of advertising, soft sell, as holding:
"the mass-mind in somewhat higher esteem...appeals of a substantial and more or less
virtuous character and maintains that while men may be fools and sinners they are
everlasting on the search for that which is good." (Fox, p. 73)
MacManus felt that soft sell advertising, defined as "an emotional message that uses mood, ambiguity and suspense to create a response based on feelings and attitudes", creates the essential long-term relationship between the automobile manufacturer and their customer. The philosophy behind soft sell is that a customers interest product that is high-price and infrequently purchased, will increase through the gradual accruation of positive images (Wells, Burnett, & Moriarty, p. 28).
Therefore MacManus aimed at creating an image of "dependability", an expression coined by MacManus (Wright), and "quality" year after year. MacManus wanted a friendship between the consumer and automobile manufacturer to develop. He hoped through this style to communicate "that the man manufacturing the product is an honest man, and that the product is an honest product..." and therefore "to be preferred above all others ." (Fox, p. 71)
Albert Lasker in The Mirror Makers states that the MacManus style is best applied to "large, expensive, durable items with prestige association bought infrequently and seldom on impulse ." (Fox, p. 74)
Research from McCollum/Spielman indicates hard sell is more persuasive than soft sell, however today's emphasis is still on MacManus's technique, soft sell (Wells, Burnett, & Moriarty, p. 438).
MacManus in Men, Money and Motors tells of how
he acquired the Cadillac account, an account in great demand by many advertising
agencies in the early 1900's. According to MacManus, he was trying to interest
Henry M. Leland, the Cadillac owner, into giving the account to
the advertising agency he was with, which he describes as "suffering
by comparison" to other organizations seeking the account. During
his attempts, Mr Leland turns to him and repeats a poets name several times.
He then asks Theodore MacManus if he knows of the poet Frank MacManus.
Theodore MacManus meanwhile replies no and Leland pauses a moment before
proceeding to recite a verse of poetry. MacManus claims he attempted to
stop Henry Leland; however he says Leland "had mounted his Pegasus
and was off at full gallop" (MacManus & Beasley, p. 193). Henry
Leland then told MacManus that "America" was both he and his
father's favorite poem. MacManus proceeded to humbly tell him he was no
poet but the lines he had recited were his words. Then MacManus says his
image changed in Henry Leland's eyes from one of a businessman to a poet.
Needless to say, he acquired the account.
Henry Leland then took MacManus to a chalkboard sketch of an automobile claiming that this unbuilt automobile was the only thing that would preserve his company. Henry Leland then asked MacManus to awaken the interest and excite consumers enough to give him time to build and market the an automobile six-eight months from that point. MacManus then accepted the task and replied:
"I will try to put thoughts into the minds of men which will make them say every
time they see a Cadillac on the street: 'That's a damn fine automobile .'"
(MacManus & Beasley, p. 194)
For More Information on Cadillac Advertising & Memorabilia
MacManus took on the enormous task, the Chrysler account,of changing the damaged Chrysler image in 1921. Chrysler was in disorganization in 1921 due to the take over of Maxwell Motor Car Co. Evidently the business was in bad shape and would have to be completely cleaned out before attempting to introduce a new car. Chrysler requested MacManus for the account since he had been so successful with the Dodge Brothers. MacManus described the situation in Men, Money and Motors as:
"...a case in which a property and its product wer actually discredited all over the United States. Insofar as the world knew - excepting for the sales and advertising policies developed around it - it continued to deserve discredit long after Mr. Chrysler took it in hand. His name was not used, so advertising could not exercise the advantage of pointing to his record and reputation as a reason why the product was improving. No - the old discredited name was retained, and advertising and selling had nothing to fall back upon excepting the artfulness and wizardry of words."(MacManus & Beasley, p. 255)
Although the name was damaged, MacManus's "wizardry" of words changed the old and discredited product to one with a fabulous reputation. When the time came to launch the new car with the Chrysler name, the demand was present.
In Men, Money and Motors - The Drama of the Automobile, MacManus writes of an encounter with Buick head Durant. He describes him as an arrogant man that "ruled his little world". He remarked that the following lampoon was actually a joke on Durant, instead of a joke on Ford.
"I'm glad I'm not a vacuum
I'm glad I'm not a myth
I'm glad I'm not the sort of stuff
They fill pin cushions with.
But most of all I'm glad, O Lord
You did not make me Henry Ford."
(MacManus & Beasley, p. 100)
After years with General Motors, Theodore MacManus ventured into the agency side of the business and established Theodore MacManus Advertising Agency. By 1927 he was head of the ninth largest agency in the United States.
The agency has grown tremendously from the point at which MacManus began. The advertising agency formerly known as D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B), now based in New York, is said to be delivering an end to the practice of ludicrous long company names. DMB&B will now be recognized as the MacManus Group . The change is in response to DMB&B's, formerly D'Arcy MacManus and Masius, recent acquisition, October 1996, to N.W. Ayer & Partners.
The MacManus Group posted worldwide billings of more than $6.3 billion after the acquisition, and now has more than 6,800 employees in 158 offices in 72 different countries (Reuters Financial Service, Lexis - Nexus).
The
"Penalty of Leadership" was MacManus's
most famous advertisement and according to an issue of Printer's Ink
in 1945 was considered by readers in the trade as the greatest ad of all
time. Fox in The Mirror Makers claims that this advertisement established
MacManus as the leader of the school of soft sell, image-style advertising.
Evidently Cadillac for years built its reputation around its four cylinder
engine. Their competitor, Packard, then introduced a six cylinder engine
to the automobile market. To compete with Packard, Cadillac engineered
a high speed V-8 engine. At first the V-8 merely scooted along and was
known to both short-circuit and catch on fire. Packard's advertising then
took advantage of Cadillac's unstable V-8 engine, and therefore lack of
"dependability".
MacManus attempted to remind the consumer of Cadillac's reliable and high-quality image and thus created "The Penalty of Leadership" to draw the consumer back to Cadillac. The "Penalty" ad ran once nationwide on January 2nd, 1915 in the Saturday Evening Post .
Accounts of the day "The Penalty of Leadership" was written are documented in The Mirror Makers . Evidently MacManus created the advertisement late one afternoon. He was said to of paced his office and puffed on a cigar while dictating the copy to his secretary. Although the orignal task (remind consumers of Cadillac's image) was in lieu of Packard's attack on the V-8 insufficiencies the copy suprisingly never mentioned Cadillac's name, the V-8, or automobiles.
The story continues that MacManus received a tremendous amount of criticism from his advertising and automobile colleagues whom described the ad as "corny" and an "implausible piece of fluff". However the ad was an enormous success and sales for Cadillac boomed. For years as many as 10,000 copies of the ad on average were requested. "The Penalty of Leadership" was displayed on walls, included in both sales manuals and meetings, used in direct mail and newspaper campaigns, and handed out to prospective customers by salesmen (Fox, p. 71).
Photo of "The Penalty of Leadership" provided by The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History
Home/Robyn Brooks Tangum/Department of Advertising/College of Communications/University of Texas at Austin
Last updated: November 13, 1996
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