Doyle Dane Bernbach was Polaroid's advertising agency of record in all the years I worked for them. It was the work of Bob Gage, and later, Krone, who motivated me to think I could help Stan Calderwood bring up the taste level of collateral material to what these extraordinarily talented art directors were doing with Polaroid's national advertising.
Clive Challis wrote a wonderful, profusely illustrated biography entitled Helmut Krone. The Book, published in the U.K. by The Cambridge Enchorial Press in 2005. I had wanted to buy the book but the cover price of $85.00 really put me off, mostly because I had no way of actually seeing a copy. It is out of print in the USA and unavailable now except by interlibrary loan from our public library system. Amazon UK posts that it has it new for £44.95: Amazon USA has two used— like new—at $85 and $180.
It was curious to read in the book that Krone was kept at arm's length from Calderwood, who is reported to have said that Krone called him "The Destroyer."
These are the ads I remember being run in national magazines in the early years of my involvement over at 119 Windsor Street in the old factory building that housed the ad and sales departments where Stan Calderwood eventually ran the roost. The little guy in the large photo is comedian Arnold Stang. There's a small box of film shown at the bottom of the shot so it just might be that DDB had something to do with that crappy package design and why they never showed mine in their ads in all the twenty-plus years I did them.
Salvador Dalì did his schtick for Bert Stern or one of the excellent photographers doing national ads for DDB.
These are later ads, where Helmut Krone flaunted one of the basic rules of typography by setting body copy dropped out of a black background. It's too difficult to read. By this time, firing for effect was apparently more important than comprehension—a triumph of the art director over the copywriter.
This is one of a series of double-page spreads promoting the new Polaroid Time-Zero Supercolor, which at the time I found unreadable. I still do. By this time Calderwood's successors were heavily into celebrity advertising on television hiring stars such as Sir Laurence Olivier and Candace Bergen and this kind of shocker for print. I think they were talking to themselves. I doubt that Stan "The Destroyer" would have played along.
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