An Interview with Mrs. Phyllis Robinson(8)
from "Great American Copywriter Vol.2"
Tadahisa Nishio
published in March 10, 1971
chuukyuu Which incident, happened in DDB for twenty years while you were, is most impressive to you?
Mrs. Robinson It's very difficult to say. There have been a lot of very exciting days and a lot of days that were mostly drudgery.
One exciting moment was when I was when I was elected to the Copywriters Hall of Fame last(1968) spring. But that's not quite a Doyle Dane Bernbach incident.
chuukyuu There are many women copywriters in DDB now. I wonder if this was true in 1940. Since when did women get to have good positions in this world in U.S.A.
Mrs. Robinson That's really different question.
We opened in 1949. I was the first and the only copywriter, and the first copywriter I hired was a woman, I think mostly because I was very new as a boss, as a supervisor, and I think I felt safest in beginning with another woman. I think I was a little timid at the beginning about supervising men. And then after the staff developed, it was about half and half.
But actually there have been women in the field, successful women for some time. I think of Margaret Fishback, who was advertising manager of Macy's department stores when I was a girl. She later came to work for us for a while. It's interesting. She is a wonderful woman. And there was, of course, Bernce Fitz Gibbon, who was advertising manager of Gimbels. She did a wonderful job of building the image of that store and selling a lot of merchandise. But it was not only in the retail store field that women were successful, because there were quite a few in the agency business -- Jean Rindlauh among others.
But I think one big difference in more recent years is that in the early days, women were used in the stores, where fashions and furnishings were very important and I think even in the agency business they were used for baby products or foods, because they were considered the experts in the home and in the kitchen. And that was woman copywriter's way into the agency business. Well actually I got into the business through fashion and cosmetics but I enjoyed them very much. And I still do. I enjoy the work on Clairol. But I quickly left behind the idea that this was all I could do, because I was looking for new challenges. And I worked on many many different products. In here we really have made no distinction. although naturally on fashion products we would tend to put a woman on it, because she would have a feeling for it, but on other products it doesn't really matter. So the field really has broadened for woman.
