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Speaker 1: Have you ever asked yourself if there's a limit to

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Speaker 1: your dreams? Maybe you think you're not talented enough, or

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Speaker 1: connected enough, or you're gonna have the right looks or

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Speaker 1: background to make it to the top. Well, guess what,

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Speaker 1: You are only limited by yourself. None of the rest

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Speaker 1: of it matters. And the person I'm going to tell

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Speaker 1: you about proves it. Ever heard these from the golden

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Speaker 1: age of Madison Avenue ad agencies? I love New York. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm a bad voice. Sorry, PLoP plup, fizz fizz. Oh,

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Speaker 1: what a relief it is. Well, they came from a

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Speaker 1: really surprising source. I'm Patty Steele. This kid from Youngstown,

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Speaker 1: Ohio became the most powerful and wealthiest woman in the

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Speaker 1: ad world at a time when women were not really welcome.

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Speaker 1: Mary Wells Lawrence believed in herself and the future. That's

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Speaker 1: next on the backstory. The backstory is back. Okay, you're

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Speaker 1: just a shy, middle class kid from Youngstown, Ohio. But

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Speaker 1: within in a few decades, you become the most powerful

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Speaker 1: woman in the ad industry's mad Men era with iconic

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Speaker 1: ad campaigns, and you have spectacular homes around the world

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Speaker 1: and a massive yacht in the Mediterranean sounds like my

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Speaker 1: kind of life. And imagine being a part of the

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Speaker 1: impossibly glamorous world of Madison Avenue advertising in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. I love the show mad Men. You

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Speaker 1: sort of get a peak at all that glamour, but

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Speaker 1: you also get a peek at the prejudices that put

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Speaker 1: up roadblocks for so many talented people in those days.

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Speaker 1: Mary Wells Lawrence was one of them, but she wasn't

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Speaker 1: going to let anybody stop her. Mary created some of

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Speaker 1: the most iconic advertising of that time period. For Ford

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Speaker 1: Quality is job one for Alka Seltzer PLoP PLoP, phizz fizz. Oh,

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Speaker 1: what a relief it is, Midas Muffler Trust, the Midas Touch,

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Speaker 1: also Twa pan am Hertz, IBM, Procter and Gamble, and

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Speaker 1: notably the State of New York. You know the tune

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Speaker 1: I Love New York. And she completely rebranded Braniff, an

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Speaker 1: unsuccessful regional airline, making it into the airline of the

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Speaker 1: jet set through brilliant advertising, fresh customer relations, and a

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Speaker 1: colorful makeover of its jets and flight attendant uniforms. Then

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Speaker 1: she married the CEO and continued to grow her own business.

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Speaker 1: She was the first woman to found own and run

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Speaker 1: a major ad agency, and the first female CEO of

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Speaker 1: a company that traded on the New York Stock Exchanges

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Speaker 1: Big Board. Okay, now, let's go back to that shy

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Speaker 1: little girl. An only child growing up in a middle

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Speaker 1: class family in Youngstown, Ohio, a world away from all

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Speaker 1: the glitz of post World War II New York City.

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Speaker 1: Her dad sold furniture, and her mother wanted Mary to

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Speaker 1: be an actress, enrolling her in music, dance, and acting classes, all,

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Speaker 1: as it turned out, useful in the world of advertising.

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Speaker 1: In her late teens, her dad took married to New

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Speaker 1: York City to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Think

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Speaker 1: what that must have been like in nineteen forty five.

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Speaker 1: She'd never seen a person of color, a really big city,

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Speaker 1: or even an ocean before a year later, at eighteen,

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Speaker 1: she headed to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh

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Speaker 1: to study business. Eventually, while working as an ad copy

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Speaker 1: writer back in Youngstown, she got married and then divorced.

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Speaker 1: Several years later, she moved to New York City working

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Speaker 1: in Macy's ad department, and then came her career at

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Speaker 1: several iconic ad agencies. From there, she just kept moving up.

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Speaker 1: During those years, she and her team came up with

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Speaker 1: iconic ads, including one for Braniff, which at the time

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Speaker 1: was a struggling regional airline. The CEO asked her to

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Speaker 1: put Braniff in the news, and so that's what she did.

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Speaker 1: She said, Braniff's terminals looked like a prison camp, the

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Speaker 1: planes were drabbed, and flight attendants dressed like nurses. But

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Speaker 1: it was the nineteen sixties, and she said, I saw

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Speaker 1: Braniff in a wash of beautiful color. The airliners were

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Speaker 1: painted in those brilliant colors, interiors were redone in gorgeous

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Speaker 1: mods sixties fabrics. Terminal lounges were redesigned with primitive art,

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Speaker 1: and flight attendants were dressed in Emilio Pucci fashions, clothing

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Speaker 1: and sexy designs, all in brilliant colors that were removed

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Speaker 1: in layers during the flights. An idea she called the airstrip.

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Speaker 1: Although they never got naked. The ad slogan the end

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Speaker 1: of the plane plane. Braniff suddenly became the airline of

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Speaker 1: the young jet set and had an eighty percent jump

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Speaker 1: in business. Mary thought she'd earned the right to be

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Speaker 1: her agency's president, and her CEO said, you're absolutely right.

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Speaker 1: We're going to give you all the decision making power

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Speaker 1: and the money of the president. But here's the thing,

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Speaker 1: You're a woman, and a woman president will scare clients away.

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Speaker 1: So she didn't get the title. Mary was livid. She

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Speaker 1: said he could see that I was feeling a red rage,

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Speaker 1: and he said, you wouldn't want to ruin something you bill,

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Speaker 1: would you. That's when I just walked out the door.

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Speaker 1: I wanted my own agency. Her team went with her

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Speaker 1: and they set up shop in a hotel suite. Pretty

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Speaker 1: soon they had clients like Ford, IBM, Procter and Gamble,

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Speaker 1: American Motors, Cadbury, Schwebs, Hurts, Philip Morris and Pan MTWA,

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Speaker 1: and of course Braniff. She then married the brand of CEO.

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Speaker 1: Then came her most far reaching ad campaign of all.

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Speaker 1: It was I Love New York, which began in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy seven when the city was dangerous, filled with garbage

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Speaker 1: and graffiti, there was a serial killer running around, and

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Speaker 1: there was plenty of racial upset. To bring back tourism

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Speaker 1: to the city and around New York State, Mary's company,

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Speaker 1: Wells Rich Green was hired along with a graphic designer

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Speaker 1: who came up with the heart logo to match the

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Speaker 1: slogan I love New York, says Mary. The first ad

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Speaker 1: we made ended with the actor Frank Langella as Dracula

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Speaker 1: outside of Broadway Theater where he was starring as that vampire.

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Speaker 1: He looked into the camera and he said, menacingly, I

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Speaker 1: love New York, especially in the evening. The ad campaign

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Speaker 1: was originally supposed to last just a few months, but

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Speaker 1: it went on for years. One of the most successful

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Speaker 1: in history, Mary Wells Lawrence came of age in an

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Speaker 1: era when deals were made in exclusive New York City restaurants,

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Speaker 1: spectacular seaside mansions in the Hamptons, and in the south

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Speaker 1: of France, where she and her husband owned a chateau,

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Speaker 1: and where her pal, Princess Grace of Monaco would drop

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Speaker 1: in to wow her clients. They spent a lot of

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Speaker 1: time on board their yacht, and in fact, after her

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Speaker 1: husband died in two thousand and two, she sold it

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Speaker 1: and bought a much bigger one, the one hundred and

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Speaker 1: fifty five foot yacht called Strange Love. Mary said, I

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Speaker 1: love to travel. I constantly want to learn things, learn

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Speaker 1: something each day that I didn't know yesterday. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: seven one, she was named Woman of the Year by

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Speaker 1: the American Advertising Federation and inducted into the ad Hall

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Speaker 1: of Fame. In nineteen ninety nine, Adage called her advertising's

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Speaker 1: most widely publicized symbol of glamour, success, wealth, brains and beauty,

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Speaker 1: and she was tough. In the nineteen eighties, she survived

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Speaker 1: both uterine and breast cancer, but Mary Wells Lawrence continued

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Speaker 1: to believe in the future. One of my favorite stories

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Speaker 1: about her came from an interview in the New York

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Speaker 1: Times Real estate section. She was selling this incredible apartment

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Speaker 1: she lived in in New York because she wanted to

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Speaker 1: move to the UK. She said, all my life, I've

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Speaker 1: been where I was supposed to be. I always wanted

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Speaker 1: to live in London and never got the chance. So

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Speaker 1: that's where I've bought a new place. Now here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: She was ninety one years old at the time of

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Speaker 1: that move, and she was looking toward the future. And

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Speaker 1: that is the way to live your life. You gotta

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Speaker 1: believe hope. You're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steele. Follow

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Speaker 1: or subscribe for free to get new episodes delivered automatically

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Speaker 1: and feel free to dm me if you have a

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Speaker 1: story you would like me to cover. On Facebook, It's

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Speaker 1: Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty

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Speaker 1: steel The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the

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Speaker 1: Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is

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Speaker 1: Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes

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Speaker 1: every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to

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Speaker 1: me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at

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Speaker 1: Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces

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Speaker 1: of history you didn't know you needed to know.