How Joe Namath Came to Replace Shere Hite in the Olivetti Typewriter Ads (By the ‘Mad Man’ in Charge of the ‘Olivetti Girl’ Campaign)

While writing my last post, I suspected there would be some reaction suggesting Shere Hite’s subsequent criticism of 1972’s stereotypical “Olivetti Girl” advertising campaign was fair and reasonable. Having read closely the wording in each and every one of the "Olivetti Girl" ads, I had no doubt – before publishing – that Hite had every right to be offended by them. HOWEVER, that was never the point of the post. If I failed to get across to readers my objective, I apologise. Perhaps I should have been more straightforward. The post was about the media, which over a period of 43 years from 1977 to 2020 misquoted the wording of the ads, and in the process distorted the truth. The fact is, having read what the ads ACTUALLY said, I remained far more offended by what Hite and others claimed they said than what they really did say. There remains, in my opinion, a significant difference between “The typewriter is so smart she [the Olivetti Girl] doesn’t have to be” and “What can an Olivetti do that other typewriters can’t do? It can think for itself.” A HUGE difference! So my main concern here is the repeated reference to the incorrect wording, especially at a time when there are so many claims about “Fake News” and such a great loss of faith in the accuracy of the media. Running obituaries for Hite which contain the invented wording does nothing if not undermine trust in the media.

       I thank Craig for his compliment and Richard Polt, Bill MacLane and Marcin Wichary for their comments. Bill is right to say that objections to the wording of ads across a very wide range of products were common in 1972. Richard suggested it was understandable that Hite may have – in the period between 1977 and 1982 - misremembered the exact wording of the 1972 ads, or may have paraphrased the ads. Of course, that’s not to excuse journalists for taking Hite’s word for it, and repeating her words rather than checking what the ads actually did say. In relation to Richard’s comment about the very apparent sexism in the ads, and the use of the word “girl”, I will go into some background about the ad campaign later. Marcin commented on phrases that are “very much [like]” but “said with different words”, which is all very well EXCEPT they WEREN’T the words used. I believe the difference in the inferences are very clear. And the actual wording is what should have appeared in stories and obituaries. My analysis was never meant to include a history of sexism, merely to prove that the ads were misquoted. Marcon talks about ads “dripping with sentiment” and about “privileged white men”, all fine in retrospect. But let’s look at what happened at the time.

       In 1972 there was a strong reaction from feminists about the wording of the ads – and responses and justification from Olivetti and its advertising agents. In June of that year a lengthy article by Barbara J. Siegel appeared in the [MORE] journalism review*, titled, “The new woman and the advertising industry”. Part of it was devoted to the Olivetti ads, under the sub-heading “Typewriters and putdowns”. Siegel said the Olivetti Girl campaign had “made feminists particularly indignant”. She said the tagline “Once an Olivetti Girl, always an Olivetti Girl” suggested “that women do not aspire to move on to better positions but accept being secretaries”. (*For more on [MORE], here is a useful link.)

       Siegel went on to report that before the Olivetti Girl campaign was launched, the executive managing editor of Art Direction, Joyce Snyder, was given an advance look at it in order to build publicity around the ads, but “the publicity that resulted was not exactly what the agency had in mind”. So Snyder arranged a meeting with George Lois  of Olivetti’s agents Lois Holland Callaway, Olivetti’s New York corporate advertising manager Gil Wintering, and representatives of the feminist movement. (Lois was in large part the inspiration for Mad Men’s Don Draper). The feminists wanted the campaign cancelled, and Lois certainly had initial misgivings. After the meeting he wrote to Snyder saying, “We are going ahead with the campaign, but I did want to tell you that you got to me enough that I did kill one of the commercials.”

George Lois

       Lois justified the campaign as a “breakthrough” in that it was the first of its kind to appeal directly to secretaries. “Normal women wouldn’t object to it,” he said, which is in itself offensive. Another group to object to the campaign was the 28,000-member National Secretaries’ Association, whose international president Angeline Krout told Olivetti, “Your current campaign … appears to be at 180 degrees variance with our concepts, especially where the ads refer to secretaries.”

       (The City College of New York says, “Lois’ Olivetti campaign proved to be controversial with many, and especially caught the attention of the 1968-formed National Organisation for Women due to his stereotypical portrayal of a woman’s career limitation through his 1972 Olivetti Girl campaign. As a response, Lois followed up with using Joe Namath in lieu of the female secretary and a flirtatious female boss to demonstrate that the gender struggle is about the power dynamic instead of the sexual. Remarkably this did not assuage the NOW organization, who persisted in viewing the struggle as sexual by nature.”)

In September 1972 Eileen Foley, writing from Detroit for the Times-Miami Herald Service under the headline “Few ads get pat of approval from women”, pointed out that according to a chapter of the National Organisation for Women (NOW), “pat” stood for “praise for advertising truth” and “pan” for “protest of advertising nonsense”. Olivetti had received a “pan”. Foley said NOW rated the Olivetti Girl ads the “second worst for promoting negative images of women”. But she quoted Wintering as saying, “These commercials were not done to offend women, just the very opposite. We are the first I know of in our category (of product) that puts women in the decision-making position.  That campaign was directed to the woman. It is essential that we talk to her. It was done with breeziness, humour and charm – all qualities we associate with women. We used the word ‘girl’ rather than ‘woman’ because we wanted to create the type of feeling of The Girl of My Dreams or The Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad. We felt that two brains were better than one.” Wintering added that comments about the campaign “all came from the National Organisation for Women”.

       Lois himself said Olivetti's effort to break down IBM’s market monopoly came about because “secretaries felt that IBM gave them status”. “So we conceived the Olivetti Girl, who would out-status everyone. We told secretaries that Olivetti was the typewriter to type on. And we were putting across a message that was being seen by her boss, her girl friends, and all those reluctant purchasing agents. We produced six ads and nine TV spots that showed the Olivetti Girl as the star performer in her office, as the secretary who typed faster, neater, sharper, as the girl most likely to succeed. (One of our headlines summed it up: ‘When you want to do something right, give it to the Olivetti Girl!’) In a few weeks, brand awareness of Olivetti leaped, and sales of Olivetti typewriters went through the roof.

“The Olivetti campaign burst on the scene in 1972, just as the National Organisation for Women was flexing its muscles. NOW attacked the campaign for stereotyping women as underlings (they were furious that only men were shown as bosses while only women were shown as secretaries) and they called me a male chauvinist pig. They picketed the Olivetti building on Park Avenue and sent hecklers up to my office to unnerve me. Something had to be done. Who can fight a woman’s fury? I capitulated. I would do an ad and a TV spot, with a woman executive giving orders to a male secretary. I cast an actual woman exec (not an actress) as the boss. I cast [New York] Jets great Joe Namath as the secretary (because he could type). I invited the women of NOW to view the spot, but when they saw the boss ask her secretary for a date at the conclusion of the spot, they were aghast. (‘You do very good work, Joseph. By the way, what are you doing for dinner tonight?’) ‘It’s an old story,’ I said. ‘The boss always tries to make the secretary.’ They cursed me (I swear), walked out and never bothered this male chauvinist pig again.”