Leo Burnett Company, Inc.

Prudential Plaza
Chicago, Illinois 60601
U.S.A.
(312) 565-5959

Private Company
Incorporated: 5 August 1935
Employees: 4,064
Billings: $2 billion worldwide

No other advertising agency in the world has created so many memorable and marketable “product characters” as the Leo Burnett Company. The Jolly Green Giant, Morris the Cat, and Charlie Tuna are all Burnett inventions. And that is only the beginning of the list. The near-unemployed Maytag repairman, the Pillsbury doughboy, Tony the Tiger, and the legendary Marlboro Man are also examples of the Leo Burnett agency’s talent for giving a product an image that endears it to the consuming public.

The operating philosophy at Leo Burnett does not, however, involve instructing agency staff to merely foster recognizeability for a client’s product. Equally if not more important is the concept of “familiarity.” In its advertising campaigns the Leo Burnett Company tries to establish a special rapport between producer and buyer and between agency and client. For this reason, Leo Burnett has been consistently more successful than its competitors in retaining customers for extended periods of time. Of its 29 United States accounts, half of them have been with the firm for 20 years or more.

Currently, the Chicago-based Leo Burnett Company is the eighth largest advertising agency in the world, the eighth largest in the United States, and one of two top-ten Amercian agencies not headquartered in New York City. Ironically, the firm has never made growth one of its major goals or priorities. Rather than actively pursuing numerous, varied accounts, or increasing business by extending its services through diversification, it tends to take a more conservative approach to the business of advertising. It concentrates on winning a few “blue chip” accounts and keeping them for decades. Then, as the business and advertising expenditures of its clients expand, Leo Burnett also grows.

This approach to advertising is characteristic of Leo Burnett. Born in St. Johns, Michigan on October 21,1891, Leo Burnett attended the University of Michigan where he graduated with a degree in journalism. After college he obtained a position with Cadillac as the editor of an in-house publication and then became advertising manager in 1919. Later, he worked at Homer McKee Advertising in Indianapolis. In 1930 he was hired away from McKee by Erwin Wasey & Company of Chicago to assume the position of vice president/creative head. Five years later Leo Burnett left Wasey & Company to form his own company.

When Mr. Burnett first started his business in August of 1935 he had one account, a staff of eight, and a bowl of apples on each desk in the reception lobby. The agency’s only client was the Minnesota Valley Canning Company which had formerly been with Leo Burnett’s old firm. It had moved over to the fledgling Burnett agency because the management at Minnesota Valley liked Leo Burnett personally. “I want the little guy with dandruff and the rumpled suit,” said the president of the company. To reward this display of confidence and loyalty, Burnett created the Jolly Green Giant.

In an industry centered in the high fashion area of Madison Avenue in New York City, the Leo Burnett Company of Chicago was something of an oddity. Rather than eastern sophistication, its ads tended to reflect a certain mid-American homeliness. The Green Giant and Kellogg campaigns typify this technique. Both have historically been aimed at the emotions of their respective audiences, protraying the products with a large degree of human warmth. Burnett used what he himself called “sod-busting corniness”—language and imagery that drive home a point by conveying a feeling of straightforward honesty. However, the “Chicago School” was more than just a creative philosophy. It was a commitment to a certain type of research and brand of workaholism.

Burnett was a firm believer in research but often felt that the questions traditionally asked in consumer surveys did not provide the advertising agency with enough information. Most surveys were conducted in order to determine which products and therefore which advertisements sold most effectively. While recognizing the importance of this type of investigation, Burnett wanted more. He wished to know whether his ads were “liked” by the consuming public. Always seeking a combination of image and language that would evoke the most positive emotional response, Burnett was one of the first to seriously use Motivational Research (MR) in advertising. This is not to say that the Burnett agency put advertising popularity above product sales. Burnett simply felt that if he could find out what people liked, he could more successfully create effective ads. Motivational research became popular among a number of advertising firms in the late 1940’s and 1950’s, but the technique itself came under fire in the 1960’s with the rising power of consumerism. Motivational Research was thought to be what gave advertising agencies the ability to influence buying patterns and behavior through psychological conditioning. That, of course, was not what Leo Burnett meant when he spoke of motivational research. He was constantly making public speeches imploring the advertising industry to be socially responsible and never to surrender the invaluable commodity of integrity. Nevertheless, motivational research was all but abandoned in the 1960’s, although during the interim Leo Burnett had learned some of what he wanted to know about the American consumer’s likes and dislikes.

During this time the atmosphere around the agency ranged from the hectic to the frenzied. Stories abound of Leo calling up his copywriters at various Chicago bars on Saturday nights to ask them to come in Sunday morning to rewrite still imperfect ad campaigns. What is more, the stories go, the writers were always eager to take Leo up on his “invitation.” Leo Burnett either surrounded himself with like-minded, overly industrious people or his work-aholism was contagious. He himself described the grueling creative review committee meetings as “being nibbled to death by ducks.” The work, however, always paid off with ad campaigns that “stuck” in the mind of the consumer. Don Tennant, former worldwide chief creative officer, says of the agency, “They put their stamp on these brands and put a stamp on the American consciousness.”

During the decade of the 1950’s, the years of “I like Ike” and Pax Americana, the Leo Burnett Company was able to reflect the American values of strength, tradition, comfort, and family in its advertising campaigns. This talent won for the agency a number of new and profitable clients and secured those accounts already in the Burnett agency. A good example is the work the agency did for United Airlines. United, although it had a large market share of the passenger air travel business, was feeling the pressure of new carriers coming into the industry. For years United had been associated with the cold stainless steel of its airplanes and began for the first time to worry about its image. When it received the account, Burnett focused on the people who ran the airline rather than on the plane itself. This gave rise to the “Fly the Friendly Skies” campaign. Similarly, the thematic catch phrases of “the best to you each morning” for Kellogg’s and “you’re in good hands” for Allstate carry with them a familial warmth and all-American appeal.

As successful as these campaign images were, none compares with the impact of the most famous Burnett creation, the Marlboro Man. In his book, On Advertising, David Ogilvy writes that, “Without any doubt, Leo’s greatest monument is his campaign for Marlboro.”

Phillip Morris, the cigarette’s manufacturer, was having trouble selling the new filter-tipped Marlboros to an American public which had grown accustomed to Lucky Strikes. Filtered cigarettes were viewed as unmasculine, and Marlboro could never claim more than 1% of the market share. So Burnett went to work creating a different image for it. He came up with a character that exuded masculinity and American heritage, namely, the cowboy. Sales increased dramatically and Marlboro became the number one selling cigarette brand in the world, a title it still holds today. What was particularly striking about the ad campaign was that it translated so well from television to magazine print and billboard advertising—an absolute necessity after cigarette commercials were banned from network television in the United States in 1970.

Leo Burnett died in 1971 at the age of 79. He left behind more than a successful advertising agency. He also left a personal legacy and a philosophy that encompassed both the business and creative aspects of advertising. The motto at the Leo Burnett Company was and remains, “Reach for the stars; you may not get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” Nothing could possibly capture the homespun wisdom of Leo Burnett better. He kept a file called “Corny Language” and added entries to it whenever he overheard something in a passing conversation that struck him as honest and poignant. Most fundamental to the Burnett creative philosophy, however, was what Leo called “inherent drama.” He thought every product possessed this quality and that it was up to him and his copywriters to uncover it. Inherent drama, he said, “has about it a feeling of naturalness which gives the reader an emotional reward. It is what the manufacturer had in mind in the first place when he conceived the product.”

Yet the discovery and display of a product’s inherent drama is not supposed to make the ad more striking than the product itself. The Burnett agency tries not to create a “Burnett look” that is imposed upon its customers. Instead, the specific client is given a “look” with Burnett’s help. Also, the agency tends to measure the effectiveness of its creativity by way of sales rather than awards, an attitude which occasionally draws criticism from the new breed of “idea” men presently in the industry. Recently, the agency has been criticized for being overly cute, and for creating bland, homogenous advertising. The “Chicago School,” some say, is an antiquated concept that develops only provincial, child-like campaigns. “Sod-busting” honesty, it has been remarked, is passé.

This criticism has not gone unanswered. Both in the creative and business spheres, the Leo Burnett Company has become more aggressive. It pursued and won the lucrative McDonald’s account (stealing it away from Needham and Harper), is actively seeking foreign markets, and is also venturing into the areas of service industries and high tech. In 1985 the firm acquired Hewlitt-Packard as a client. Recognition for creativity has also come to the firm in the past couple of years. For instance, the Leo Burnett Company won more music awards at the 1985 Advertising Age magazine awards banquet than any other agency except J. Walter Thompson.

This shift in posture and attitude does not represent, however, a change in fundamentals. The company will no doubt retain its “blue chip” accounts and the conservative campaigns that have made those accounts profitable. The agency heads do not wish to alter Leo Burnett in any way, just allow it greater latitude in dealing with the changing industry trends. Says present chairman of the board and president John Kinsella, “We haven’t been as active as we possibly should have in the past. It’s a mistake we made. I’m not against growth, but growing just to be bigger is not a goal at all.” The agency intends to develop the best ads it can, but will shirk innovation for the sake of innovation. As Leo Burnett would say, quoting an old boss of his, “If you want to be different, come to the office in the morning with a sock in your mouth.”

It may seem odd for a company with more than $2 billion in total billings to be privately owned. In fact, private ownership is in keeping with the firm’s “family” orientation. There are no anonymous share-holders at Burnett as there are at most other firms. Leo Burnett was not persuaded that public ownership would be good for his business. Indeed, the whole idea seemed counter to the operating philosophy of the agency itself. When most of the other major advertising agencies began to publicly trade shares in the 1960’s, Leo Burnett was one of the few who did not.

Though Leo Burnett has been dead for over 15 years, his presence is still felt at the agency. His picture—a bald man with sloped shoulders, double chin, and a formidable lower lip wearing a crumpled suit—hangs in every office, of which there are 38 in more than 32 countries. His words, “Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches,” still direct the work of the agency’s 8383 staff members. The vice presidents and executive heads in particular are dedicated to the Burnett method of advertising. Nearly all of the chief officers at the firm began their careers with the Leo Burnett Company. The agency rarely goes outside its own doors to hire its executives.

If it is indeed true that the “Chicago School” of advertising is antiquated and on the way out, no one at the Leo Burnett will concede that that is so. Nor will the agency’s clients who, with Burnett’s help, have become some of the largest and most successful in their respective industries. There is good reason for this confidence. “Personality” and “warmth” are the two words which most accurately characterize the long list of Burnett advertising campaigns, and clients can be sure they will not soon go out of style.

Further Reading

Giants, Pigmies, and Other Advertising People by Draper Daniel, Chicago, Crain Communications, 1974; “Leo Burnett: The Solid Sell” by David M. Elsner, in The Wall Street Journal (New York), 12 January 1977; “Leo” by Carl Hixon in Advertising Age (Chicago), 8 February 1982; The Benevolent Dictators by Bart Cummings, Chicago, Crain Books, 1984.