Ex-Vice President & Copy Supervisor of Wells Rich Green
<<An interview with Mrs. Carole Anne Fine(1)
chuukyuu What in particular did you learn at DDB and other agenices?
Mrs.Fine Well, DDB is the only other agency I've been at. Oh, that's a hard question to answer. Because I learned everything there. I'm sure that so many writers before me have talked about Bill Bernbach and the whole DDB school of advertising. How shall I put this?
chuukyuu How about human relationship or human structure?
Mrs.Fine That's a hard one to answer. I do know that DDB was and still is the most swinging of all the American agencies.
My agency is also great but in another way. It's smaller, it's a little wilder. But I think that advertising is a funny business. Probably 97% of American advertising is really bad, no I won't be that hard on it. Let's say 90% is really bad. It's bad because the agencies are probably kind of feudal. I mean people are afraid of what the people above them, their things and they're really afraid to be free and argue with the client. They're afraid to explain to the client that the client knows how to make a product and you know how to make advertising. They're just afraid. So I think that's why 90% of advertising is bad. They're all these old standards and all these old things that are supposed to be true and are really untrue. It's 1ike, you can say this and you can't say that. That's not true. There's nothing you can't say. But somebody's got to do it first, somebody's got to innovate. I think Helmut Krone whom you know about was the one of earliest people to start really doing his own thing. Somebody said,"You can't use that type face in this ad" and he said, "Of course I can use this type face and it's beautiful". And he did. I think at the beginning with me at Doyle Dane Bernbach, I was afraid too because first of all I was so impressed by the agency and by Bill Bernbach, by the whole thing that I said. Oh, how can I be working there, I'm the dummiest one there and everybody else must be great to be here but not me. But after a couple of years I started to really do my own thing because Bernbach believes so much in hard sell, sound sell but tremendous freshness.
