Odorous Sizzle

What's wrong with U.S. advertising? Most admen have turned a stony ear to outsiders who have grumbled that ads were too extreme, inane and misleading. But in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria last week, at the annual meeting of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, admen squirmed as an insider, in the simplified and exaggerated terms of an eye-catching ad, told them off. Said Miss Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, advertising director of Gimbels: advertising stinks.

A onetime reporter, Bernice Fitz-Gibbon switched to advertising when she found out that the advertising manager made more than the city editor, and eventually landed at Macy's. There her copy (such as Macy's famed slogan, "It's Smart To Be Thrifty") established her as the store's highest paid copywriter. She went on to Wanamaker's, then to Gimbels. As its No. 1 huckster for the last six years, stout, bosomy Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, "almost 50," earns almost $100,000 a year for such sloganeering as "Gimbels HAS," "NOBODY but nobody beats Gimbels," and "The horse with the hansom behind doesn't come to plain, old Gimbels."

No Toil, Trouble, Disease. In even plainer copywriting words she told the admen:

"Advertising is in bad odor today. Many are denouncing it as an out and out menace. . . . Now, we are all to blame, of course, but . . . it's the agency writers that are pulling down the whole shining edifice. There's too much sizzle and too little steak. . . . [They] blithely take over the field of morals, metaphysics, and theology. . . . [They] guarantee that [the reader] and everyone dear to her will live happily and untouched by tragedy for the rest of their natural days if she only has this jar of skin cleanser. . . . The unclogging of the pores north of her nostrils will shield her from toil, trouble, disease, disaster, and divorce. . . .

"The things we have to sell won't take the place of the Ten Commandments. . . . Copy can be casually optimistic, but no more. . . . National ads . . . are all loused up with overexcited, overeager, overhappy faces. .. . Another mortal sin is the four-color food spreads [of] so-called salads of marshmallows and sliced pineapple trapped in a bed of mint-green gelatine topped with maraschino cherries. I am certain these monstrous double-trucks have set American cookery back 50 years."

When it was all over, agency men could only weakly mumble that Gimbels is not completely blameless either. Latest sample of Gimbels' "overexcited, overeager, overhappy" copy: "Nothing but sweet-as-Petit-Suisse dreams could come of time spent in a gown and jacket like this. Princess Pat's rayon sheer gown is diaphanous as wisps of clouds floating over a pale June moon."

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