the stores was immediate. “They tickled people,” he said. “They were talked
about at parties.” And since orders came rolling in, the elder Bronfman
allowed the rest of the campaign to proceed, even though, according to
Lois, “Massa Sam never laughed.” In fact, Lois recalled when showing him
an ad in the series headlined “Taste my screwdriver” he seemed stunned.
“For California,” Lois explained.
Decades before Absolut ruled vodka, Wolfschmidt absolutely
owned the market. This was not only a testament to the power of smart
advertising, it was one hundred percent proof that wit and humor could
capture market share. Ultimately, even conservative distilleries began using
humor in their ads. Lois notes that the first woman appeared in a primary
role in a 1961 Ronrico Rum ad. It featured an eighty-one-year-old “Aunt
Agatha,” holding a glass of the liquor. “It was a very funny concept,” he
recalled, “but got the Daughters of the American Revolution up in arms.”
The Wolfschmidt campaign continued for three years and
included ten different print ads and a couple of posters. However, it
abruptly ended, according to Lois, in a dispute when Edgar Bronfman
acquired a handful more Seagram brands and did not award any of the new
accounts to Papert Koenig Lois. Julian Koenig was furious and summarily
pulled the agency off the Wolfschmidt account. It was the end of that
relationship, but Lois left behind a remarkable legacy that set the standard,
not only for a genre of liquor advertising practiced today, but for helping to
inaugurate a period in advertising history when wit and humor were the
state of the art.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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