Till death us do part.
It may be beautiful to die for love in a poem.
But it's ugly and stupid to die for love in a car.
Yet how many times have you seen (or been) a couple more interested in passion than in passing ? Too involved with living to worry about dying?
As a nation, we are allowing our young to be buried in tons of steel. And not only the reckless lovers---the just plain nice kids as well.
Everyone is alarmed about it. No one really knows what to do. And automobile accidents, believe it or not, continue to be the leadling cause of death among young people between 15 and 24 years of age.
Parents are alarmed and hand over the keys to the car anyway.
Insurance companies are alarmed and charge enormous rates which deter no one.
Even statisticians (who don't alarm easiIy) are alarmed enough to tell us that by 1970, 14,450 young adults will die in cars each year.
(Just to put those 14,450 young lives in perspective, that is far more than the number of young lives we have lost so far in Viet Nam.)
Is it for this that we spent our dimes and dollars to all but wipe out polio? Is it for this that medical science conquered diphtheria and smallpox?
What kind of society is it that keeps its youngsters alive only long enough to sacrifice them on the highway? .
Yet that is exactly what's happening. And it's incredible.
Young people should be the best drivers, not the worst.
They have the sharper eyes, the steadier nerves, the quicker reflexes. They probably even have the better understanding of how a car works;
So why?
Are they too dense to learn ? Too smart to obey the obvious rules? Too sure of themselves? Too un-sure? Or simply too young and immature?
How can we get them to be old enough to be wise enough before it's too late?
One way is by insisting on better driver training programs in school. Or after school. Or after work. Or during summers. By having stricter licensing requirements. By rewarding the good drivers instead of merely punishing the bad ones. By having uniform national driving laws (which don't exist today). By having radio and TV and the press deal more with the problem. By getting you to be less complacent.
Above all, by setting a decent example ourselves.
Nobody can stop young people from driving. And nobody should. Quite the contrary. The more exposed they become to sound driving techniques, the better they're going to be. (Doctors and lawyers "practice;" why not drivers?)
We at Mobil are not preachers or teachers. We sell gasoline and oil for a living and we want everyone to be a potential customer.
If not today, tomorrow. And we want everyone, young and old, to have his fair share of tomorrows.
Mobil We want you to live.
In addition to his appointment as Creative Director, Bob has been elected to the Board of Directors of the agency. And at he annual stockholders' meeting, he made his first directorial speech, the entire text of which follows:
"What should be clear now is that the thing that matters in an advertising agency is how good the work is.
"As you all know, ours is very good indeed; we think the best there is.
"We win more than our fair share of awards with it; actually the lion's share.
"But awards aren't what make an agency successful. Results come first.
"No client ever said, 'Gee, I know I'm giving up 1 percent or 2 percent of my sales, but all those plaques sure look swell on the agency's wall.'
"If anything, the opposite is true.
"Fortunately, we've never had to make the choice between award-winning work and resultful work.
"They've generally been one and the same.
"We do what we do because it works better. Not just as well.
Better Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it.
"And if awards come our way, that's just fine. We haven't run out of wall space yet.
"So what I will be doing from now on is to continue the hard searching that we've always done to stay at the forefront of the new, the inventive, the different, the moving techniques that bring us clients and fame and glory. In that order.
"In the meantime, I've had this job since yesterday, and the agency was closed yesterday.
"And here I am this morning - talking about it instead of doing it.
"All I can say is, I'm very anxious to get started."
