Just when you thought you’ve seen every Gene Schwartz print ad there is, another one creeps up from his seemingly endless oeuvre!
This one promotes the Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Newsletter which looks like it had a modest run between 1968 and 1970.
Gene was probably a partner on this one and you’ll notice one of his easy to identify corporate name selections, Human Development Corporation, as well as the ubiquitous Schwartzian word, “instant,” in the copy: “INSTANT SEX.”
(Darn, I was too late to register the domain!)
Supposedly, McLuhan had a casting call for several Madison Avenue agencies before settling on Eugene Schwartz.
There was an even shorter lived collaboration with the Buddhist author and thinker, Alan Watts, who Gene wrote a successful ad for — his best-selling, The Book, through the same corporate entity.
Marshall McLuhan Says That TV Killed Bob Kennedy
He also says that:
The TV Generation of students will continue to battle colleges (and the rest of the Establishment) until they rule them! (A Mcluhan warning: The real activists are only fourteen years old, and have not yet reached the scene of action!)
Mini-skirts are only the first step towards “Instant-Sex”!
Experience is now of no use in business. Therefore, look for a twenty-year-old president of IBM!
Here’s what Media Power wrote of the ad and newsletter.
Marshall McLuhan Says That TV Killed Bob Kennedy!” reads the headline of a full-page advertisement for McLuhan’s expensive newsletter in mid-1969. “Kennedy misused television,” explains the copy. “Although he was supremely aware of its strengths, he was fatally unaware of its dangers. Thus-by heating up this essentially cool medium at a critical point- he practically begged for a try on his life.” McLuhan’s thesis, as usual, is dubious, to say nothing of his taste, but his commercial sense, as always, is infallible: The life-and-death connection between the Kennedys and the media is a fact that surely must have intrigued his potential customers.
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