100 Days of Leo Burnett, the Midwestern Master of Mascots DAY 24

Here’s today’s Leo:

In this agency business we are people talking to people, and that’s what we should keep running through our fingers.” — Leo Burnett

In The Art of Writing Advertising | Conversations with Masters of the Craft, AdAge Interviewer Denis Higgins talks to Leo Burnett:

Q: All the undertakers used Packards, as I recall … they did when I was a boy, anyway…

A: Well, I don’t know that they did, because one of my jobs in the early days of Cadillac was to prepare literature for chassis for hearses — special chassis they had for hearses — and I studied up on that and subscribed to Sunnyside, the “official organ” of the undertaking establishments. So I became quite familiar with the undertaking trade — and I don’t know — we sold a lot of hearses, I know that …

Then, World War I was in progress, and I was in the Navy for a short time — never got to sea; I spent most of my time at Great Lakes, building a breakwater up there, hauling cement.

Continue to Day 25