Fairfax Mastick Cone

Background

Fairfax Mastick Cone was born on February 21, 1903 in San Francisco, California, United States. He was the son of William H. Cone, a mining engineer and prospector, and Isabelle Williams, a former teacher.

Education

His mother supplemented the family's income by tutoring students and taught her sons at home through the sixth grade. Cone attended University High School in Oakland, California. Cone enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in 1921, flunked out twice in his first two years, then settled down and received better grades. He studied literature with the intention of becoming an English teacher. While in college he held a summer job as a copy boy on the San Francisco Bulletin.

Career

At sixteen, Cone signed on as a merchant seaman with the SS Haxtum, a transatlantic freighter. In later years, he claimed that his eight months aboard the Haxtum had provided him with a touchstone for testing the effectiveness of his advertising copy. In 1926, a friend from college, William Randolph Hearst, Jr. , son of the publisher, helped him get a position as a want-ad clerk, writer, and illustrator for the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner, a post he held for three years. His first work for an advertising agency was with L. H. Waldron, where he was an artist. The major break in Cone's career occurred in 1929, when he was hired to work as a copywriter in the San Francisco office of one of the most famous and successful advertising firms of that time, Lord and Thomas, then owned by industry pioneer Albert D. Lasker. Cone rose through the ranks to account executive and then to manager of the San Francisco office in 1939. In 1941, Lasker moved Cone to New York City, made him vice-president in charge of the agency's creative work there, and gave him the Lucky Strike cigarette account. With the president of American Tobacco, George Washington Hill, Cone developed the famous slogan, "L. S. /M. F. T. --Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. " Later, Cone was made vice-president in the firm's office in Chicago, where he was to spend the rest of his career. When Lasker retired and dissolved Lord and Thomas in late 1942, three vice-presidents--Cone in Chicago, Emerson Foote in New York, and Don Belding in Los Angeles--picked up the firm's clients and formed a new agency, Foote Cone and Belding (FCB). Among the memorable advertising campaign slogans with which Cone and his agency were associated were "You'll wonder where the yellow went" (Pepsodent toothpaste); "When you care enough to send the very best" (Hallmark cards); "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everybody did?" (Dial soap); "Raid kills bugs dead" (Raid insecticide); and "Does she or doesn't she?" (Clairol hair coloring). Cone was chairman of FCB's executive committee from its founding until 1948 and again after 1958. He was chairman of the board from 1948 to 1951, and president from 1951 to 1957. In 1963, FCB became the second advertising agency to sell stock ownership to the general public. From 1967 until 1975, five years after his retirement from FCB, Cone remained a director of the company. Cone's reputation for honesty and integrity and his outspoken criticism of advertising practices he abhorred earned him praise. Time magazine called him the industry's "most respected scold. " David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy and Mather, called him advertising's "most admirable statesman. " Leo Burnett, another midcentury advertising great, referred to him as "the Abraham Lincoln of Advertising. " Business Week said he was one of the "authentic heroes of advertising, " and Advertising Age called him "one of the true giants of the 20th century advertising world. " Cone understood the need for honesty in advertising, the skill of the average consumer in assessing advertised products, and the fundamental selling nature of the advertising process. Cone committed many of his ideas about advertising to his "blue streaks, " memos to his staff. Some of those memos written between 1948 and 1969 were the subject of his book The Blue Streak (1973).

Achievements

• Cone served as chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (1950 - 1951) and of the Advertising Council (1951 - 1952). He was for many years a director of the Advertising Federation of America (now the American Advertising Federation). Active in civic affairs, he was a member of the Chicago Board of Education (1961 - 1963) and chairman of the University of Chicago board of trustees (1963 - 1970). Cone was named "Ad Man of the Year" by Printer's Ink in 1956 and elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame of the American Advertising Federation in 1975. He was also a Berkeley fellow at the University of California.

Works

More photos

• book

  • WITH ALL ITS FAULTS. A Candid Account of Forty Years In Advertising.

Views

Quotations: "Many a time in writing advertising, " he wrote, "I have asked myself whether everyone on the Haxtum would know what I was trying to say. If I thought the answer might be no, I changed the copy. "

He wrote, "No one has yet developed better judgment than the average woman standing in the middle of a supermarket thinking about her money she is not going to be led into any foolishness by any advertising. She may be cheated once in a while, but she always gets even. "

"Advertising is a business. It is not a profession and it is not an art its sole purpose is to substitute for personal salesmanship. "

Connections

Cone married Gertrude Kennedy, a teacher, on June 29, 1929. They had one child.

Father:

William H. Cone

He was a mining engineer and prospector

Mother:

Isabelle Williams

She was a former teacher

Spouse:

Gertrude Kennedy

She was a teacher

Friend:

William Randolph Hearst