advertiser copywriter salesman
Raymond Rubicam was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. , the youngest of eight children of Joseph Rubicam and Sarah Maria Bodine. His father, a failed businessman, became a trade journalist. His mother contributed poetry to Godey's Lady's Book. After his father's death, when Rubicam was five, the children were dispersed.
Rubicam's schooling stretched across the country as he stayed with relatives in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and, finally, Denver, Colo. , where he lived with his brother Harry. A troubled youth, he ran away twice. At age fifteen, he left school.
Rubicam went to work full-time as a shipping clerk's helper for $5 per week. Rubicam originally wanted to be a lawyer but, lacking funds for college, became interested in writing. At age eighteen, Rubicam decided to make his way to the ancestral home of his family, Germantown, Pa. It took him a year, during which he worked as a bellhop, usher, movie projectionist, door-to-door salesman, and general hand on cattle cars. At times he lived as a hobo.
In 1912, Rubicam settled with relatives in Philadelphia and submitted freelance feature stories to newspapers there. As a result of these stories, he was able to secure a cub reporting job at a Philadelphia newspaper that paid him $12 per week. Next he sold automobiles, but found the commissions provided too erratic an income for a young man interested in marriage. In 1916, looking for a better-paying job, he chose the field of advertising, which combined his experience as writer and salesman.
Rubicam wrote two ads for Philadelphia companies, a maker of plug tobacco and a truck firm, and tried selling them to the advertisers. The tobacco company referred him to its agency, F. Wallis Armstrong. He visited that agency, sent his ads in with a secretary, and was told to wait. After nine days of waiting, he sent Armstrong an angrily worded note and went home. The next day Armstrong interviewed him, telling him, "Those ads you wrote didn't amount to much, but this letter has some stuff in it. "
Armstrong, who hired Rubicam as a copywriter for $20 per week, treated his employees poorly, ridiculing and threatening them. Despite this, Rubicam lasted three years at the agency before taking a job with N. W. Ayer, also in Philadelphia. At Ayer he wrote "The Instrument of the Immortals" ads for Steinway pianos, a slogan that was used by the company for decades. For the E. R. Squibb Company he developed the slogan "The Priceless Ingredient of every product is the honesty and integrity of its maker. " He also worked on campaigns for Rolls-Royce and International Correspondence Schools.
In 1923, Rubicam and John Orr Young formed Young & Rubicam (Y&R). Young was an account executive and new business solicitor who had shared an office with Rubicam at Armstrong and later moved to Ayer with him. In 1924, Young convinced General Foods to give Y&R its toughest product: Postum, a poor-selling, noncaffeinated hot beverage. Postum became the agency's first major account, and Rubicam's ads stressed its soothing qualities. These ads won the success and earned Y&R numerous other General Foods accounts, including, Jell-O, Sanka coffee, and Calumet baking powder. Other well-known clients were Arrow shirts, the Borden Company, Four Roses whiskey, General Electric radios, Gulf Oil, International Silver, Johnson baby powder, Packard automobiles, Parke Davis drugs, and Travelers Insurance. The Y&R agency developed personalities for its products and eschewed the claim and reason-why ads popular since the time of John E. Kennedy and Claude Hopkins, who wrote for Lord & Thomas during the first decade of the twentieth century.
In 1926, Y&R moved to New York City, and in 1927 Rubicam became its president. He was made chairman in 1944 and retired later that year. He was the agency's chief executive officer and principal stockholder from 1927 to 1944. In the 1970's, Y&R grew to be the country's largest agency, billing more than $1 billion in 1977, the year before Rubicam's death, and $2. 3 billion by 1980. Although Y&R advertising was known for its creativity, Rubicam also introduced intensive, scientific marketing to the business. In 1932, he hired Dr. George H. Gallup away from his professorship at Northwestern University. In the sixteen years Gallup worked for Y&R, he performed numerous surveys and studies of consumer media use and advertising responses for the agency.
Rubicam published an advertising trade publication, Tide, which he bought from Time, Inc. , in 1930. He remained a majority owner of the magazine until 1948. He was chairman of the board of the Audience Research Institute, a public opinion and attitude research company of which George Gallup was president. At age forty, he purchased a farm at Danboro, in Bucks County, Pa. , and bred Aberdeen Angus cattle and Berkshire hogs. He was chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies in 1935 and was named to the American Advertising Federation's Hall of Fame in 1974 and to the Copywriters Hall of Fame in 1975. Rubicam served as special assistant to the chairman of the War Manpower Commission in 1942. He was also a trustee of Colgate University's American Graduate School of International Management from 1947 to 1952. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Rubicam married Regina McCloskey on November 30, 1916. They had three children and were divorced in 1939. On September 16, 1940, he married Bettina Hall. They had two children.
