Ed McCabe is someone to be admired

Here we are with everybody falling all over themselves gushing about the new season of "Mad Men" and the New York Times runs a brief profile on Ed McCabe, one of the great thinkers and copywriters of our time.

You can read it here.

This is the man responsible for that whole "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" thing for Perdue, but more importantly, responsible for the whole branded approach to what had been a commodity.

He also was the genius behind this spot for Hebrew National. Not to mention lots of great work for Volvo and on and on.



Ed might be thought of as old-hat among a lot of the stupidity that passes for advertising these days. Or maybe not. I don't know. But there are a couple of things he said in the article I really like:

“Our advertising was tough. It was not done with nuance; it was done with a stylish hammer in the face.”

and

“Weak advertising tells people what you want them to know. Strong advertising gets people to conclude what you want them to know.”