Mr. Charles Moss
Wells Rich Greene Inc.
Vice President and Creative Director(at the time)
chuukyuu Did you move to Jack Tinker from ? Could you tell us why you went to Jack Tinker? What accounts did you handle at Jack Tinker?
Mr. Moss Why did I go to Jack Tinker? Well, a combination of things. I felt at that time that I had to break out of Doyle Dane Bernbach because I had started there as a trainee, and I felt I would really never be able to overcome the image of a trJinee even though I had started to make more money there. Also Tinker was being run creatively by Mary Wells and Dick Rich. And Iknew them vaguely from DoyIe Dane Bernbach. I felt I probably would be in good hands. Also they offered me a lot more money. At that time Braniff had just come into Tinker and they needed a writer and an art director to head that account, and so I did go. Braniff International Air Line was the account that I handled there.
chuukyuu What do you think you learned at DDB and Jack Tinker?
Mr. Moss A method of looking at problems. I don't think anybody can teach someone how to write, really. They can teach you a view point or an attitude toward problems, and a discipline toward solving problems. At Jack Tinker, I suppose, I learned from Mary and Dick and Stu, how they look at problems.
They look at problems a little differently from Doyle Dane Bernbach. Mary had much more of an eye for promotion. At Doyle Dane Bernbach when I was there, advertising was the thing, the ad was everything.... But at Tinker, I learned that sometimes you can do something such as painting planes, that would not only provide you with something to talk about in your advertising, but would also create publicity so that the client would get maybe ten times as much for his money, because he is getting articles written about him constantly in newspapers and magazines, and that was exactly what happened with Braniff International Air Lineat Tinker.
chuukyuu When did you come to Wells. Rich. Greene and what is your present position at the agency?
Mr. Moss I came to Wells Rich Greene about three days after it was formed. I think I was the fourth employee aftee the principals and I am now vice president and creative director.
chuukyuu Who is the art director for American Motors?
Mr. Moss A very talented fellow by the name of Stan Dragotti who was originally at Young & Rubicam and did a lot of the Eastern Airlines commercials. We've been working on American Motors from the beginning and we work very well together. We both worked on the TV commercial in which Mustang was destroyed. It was the first commercial we did.
chuukyuu The commercial is now drawing much attention in Japan. What was the general reaction to the commercial in America?
Mr. Moss Our problem at the time American Motors came in as briefly as possible, was that we had very little time in which to put together commercials because we started working on the account July 4th and we had to be on the air early September... We had about a week to do the creative work and present it to the client and get an approval and start making the commercials. One of the American Motors main problems was that nobody knew what cars they made. When you said American Motors people thought of the Rambler, while American Motors made more than just the Rambler.
They made Ambassador which is a large car and they made Rebel which is an intermediate-size car. And there was a new sporty car that they were making, Javelin. So the first problem we had was to position their cars in the market place so that when you said Javelin. people would know what you were talking about. This was one of the primary reasons that we made that particular commercial. We wanted to make sure that everybody in America knew that Javelin was a sporty car and that it would compete with the leader which happened to be Mustang. and we felt that by attacking the leader we would be not so much hurting the leader but helping us. And that's pretty much what happened.
It did cause quite a reaction in America. partly because Detroit doesn't usually advertise that way... and Detroit. the city of Detroit itself and the big car makers were aghast, to say the least. But it got us a lot of comment, and flew back.
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