Still More Advertising to Mad Men

Picture your average investment manager, then picture Warren Buffett. On Madison Avenue after WWII, you had your average Mad Man, and then you had the great Scot, David Ogilvy.

Read Ogilvy's Wikipedia entry to understand what a real-life Don Draper would have been up against.

To sell Hathaway shirts, Ogilvy hired a European count and photographed him wearing an eye patch. To sell Schweppes tonic water, he didn't have to hire anyone. Commander Edward Whitehead, president of Schweppes USA, served as a superb personification for the brand. Half the women in America must have believed – well, hoped – that a bottle of tonic water could turn their husbands into a well-tailored, bearded hunk.

Like ad agencies, investors and their vendors had to adjust to astonishing social changes in the 1960s. Here, Merrill Lynch takes a deep breath and looks on the bright side of the Great Society. Unfortunately, stock-market gains weren't among the benefits. The great postwar run-up in stock prices was over. After hitting 1000, the DJIA would move mostly sideways until 1982.

April 16 is Patriots' Day, commemorating the battles at Lexington and Concord that marked the start of the American Revolution. Here's a 1965 Chase nest egg ad featuring a suitably patriotic carving.