Back in the early-60s men mainly wrote ad copy. So when Joan Maisel landed a job at a major ad agency in New York City, she got stuck doing secretarial work even though she was better educated than most of the male copy writers. Joan had earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature at Bryn Mawr.
Ad copy drafts routinely crossed her desk, and Joan had to avoid commenting about their deficiencies. Because even when she offered the most ginger of suggestions, they were roundly dismissed.
Also see ‘1953-73 Chevrolet Corvette ads gingerly showed changing gender roles’
Joan would get particularly frustrated with ads that were supposedly targeted at women. “Most of these guys wouldn’t know a carburetor from a clitoris,” she fumed to a fellow secretary.
One day Joan heard that her agency had been commissioned to develop a campaign for the 1962 Jaguar XK-E. She had a number of female friends who owned the car and absolutely loved it. So Joan asked them a lot of questions and then secretly came into the office after hours to mock up her own ad.
This ad was placed on the boss’s desk — but showed no trace of who did it.
Joan was smart to not admit that she had written the ad because her boss went ballistic over it. “Who spewed this pornography?” he yelled while ripping up the ad in a staff meeting.
You can see the ad that was eventually approved by top management here.
After that, Joan took no more chances in her job. She stuck around for a number of years, until she heard about Mary Wells Lawrence forming her own ad agency (Wikipedia, 2023). It was only there that Joan found opportunities to show what she could do as a copy writer, and rose to become one of the firm’s top talents.
NOTES:
This post is a parody. For further discussion about what is real, go here.
RE:SOURCES
- Wikipedia; 2023. “Mary Wells Lawrence.” Page last modified June 28.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Jaguar XK-E (1962)
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