Early Career

First Foray Into Advertising

          After the 1939 World's Fair organization disbanded, Bernbach approached Bill Weintraub about a copywriting position in his agency, was given the job and partnered with Paul Rand. Rand was an artist with whom Bernbach collaborated on a number of books. In working with each other, they discovered the value of working on ideas together as opposed to the two-step process commonly used by most agency creative teams. Bernbach said that the end product of their collaborative efforts were far more powerful and integrated than they would have been working apart. Their collaboration focused most notably on campaigns for Airwick and Dubonnet. This spirit of partnership spilled over into Bernbach's personal life as it was during this period that he proposed to and married his wife, Evelyn. After a brief, unsuccessful period in the military, he went to work for Grey Advertising in 19456, rising quickly from copywriter to copy chief to creative director in only four years.

Grey Advertising Leads To Blue Skies

         Grey Advertising was one of a few Jewish-owned advertising agencies in New York and owners Arthur Fatt and Larry Valenstein were especially secretive about their ethnic origins. This was the first time that Bernbach's ethnicity (he was also Jewish) was mentioned in most literature, but certainly not the last. At Grey, Bernbach's work centered around retail campaigns for shirts, liquor, watches and most notably Orbach's department store.

         While his name was being circulated through the New York advertising circles, Bernbach began to feel stifled by Grey's increasingly research-dictated campaigns. He established his position with Grey management in a 1947 letter which stated, "I'm worried...that we're going to worship techniques instead of substance...I don't want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, good writing can be good selling," (Millman, 1988). Seeking to develop an environment based upon the primacy of creativity, Bernbach, along with Ned Doyle and Mac Dane formed Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in 1949. Fortunately for DDB, one of Grey's largest clients, Orbach's sought Bernbach's creativity regardless of where he called home, making the department store DDB's first client and springboard for future success.