Blogbytes: when strategy is execution

In New York in the early 1960s, a truly seminal ad campaign broke. Posters in the subway, showing different ethnic types eating sandwiches. Black, Chinese, Italian, Irish, Native American. Above each one, the headline: ‘You don’t have to be jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye’.

Maybe right now that doesn’t seem so daring. But remember this was the ‘Mad Men’ era of advertising. The time when everyone, in all the ads, aspired to be a WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant). Men were only shown wearing suits and ties, women wore pinafores and had ponytails, and all the children were blonde and freckled.

So it was actually really daring to do advertising that featured ethnic minorities.

Not only that, it was rare to do advertising that made a big deal about the fact that the product wasn’t made by WASPs; and that actually had the word JEWISH in the headline.

These ads celebrated the fact that New York was more ethnically diverse than anywhere else. I always knew they were among the best advertising I’d ever seen, but I only recently heard the whole story. And it has as much to do with the strategy as the creative. It started when Doyle Dane Bernbach was still a tiny agency. One of its accounts was Levy’s Bakery in Brooklyn. Whitney Ruben, the head of Levy’s, told Bill Bernbach they had a problem with rye bread, because it was sold packaged.

Rye bread wasn’t so much a Jewish bread as an immigrant bread. And the immigrants preferred it fresh. So they’d go to the local bakery for it, instead of getting it packaged, from the supermarket.

Bill Bernbach said: ‘The problem is, you need to appeal to a wider audience than just immigrants. Where are you running your ads?’ Ruben told him they ran the ads in the New York Post because it had an 80% Jewish readership. Bernbach said: ‘But Jews already know about rye bread; we need to get to the people who haven’t tried it yet.’

And he persuaded them to advertise in the food sections of the World-Telegram and the Journal American. And it worked: sales took off.

Then, in a master stroke, Bernbach persuaded them to change the name. ‘We need to make it more ethnic, give it more credibility. We need to change the name to Levy’s Real Jewish Rye.’ Whitney Ruben was horrified. He was scared about an anti-Semitic backlash from the retailers. Bernbach said ‘For God’s sake, your name is Levy’s. They’re not going to mistake you for High Episcopalian.’

And eventually they agreed. And they ran the ads that not only changed New Yorkers’ eating habits, they celebrated New York’s ethnic and cultural diversity. And in fact they were the precursor of the ‘I (heart) NY’ campaign.

"Then, in a master stroke, Bernbach persuaded them to change the name"

Customers at delis nowadays routinely specify particular bread. People automatically add ‘on white’ or ‘on rye’ with their pastrami, or tunafish, or bologna. And, incidentally, at the same time Bernbach had repositioned the competition. He called Levy’s ‘Real Jewish Rye’, thereby sewing the doubt that not all rye bread was ‘Real Jewish Rye’. Levy’s became the biggest selling brand of rye bread in the city. Then the biggest in the state, and eventually in the entire country. At delis all over America, sandwiches are now offered on ‘New York Style Rye Bread’.

Bernbach moved rye bread beyond being merely a type of bread, to being a symbol for New York City.

Dave Trott writes a monthly article on The Marketing Society’s blog.

http://blog.marketing-soc.org.uk [email protected]