Ed Bihl, my dad. Copywriter, Creative Director, Ad guy.
Two creative directors, near Madison Avenue in New York City in the 1960s.
Ed Bihl
My dad used to like to say that he started out in the mailroom at Leo Burnett and worked his way up from there. Was that true? Yeah, maybe. I’m copywriter, not a fact-checker.
Over the course of his career he worked at Burnett (even met the old man himself he said), Benton & Bowles, D’Arcy McManus (before it merged with B&B), Tatham Laird & Kudner and SSC&B before finally going out on his own.
My Dad’s Reel - buckle up for some bell bottoms
He won a Clio for some TV he did for Texaco early in his career, but I think he was proudest of the work he did introducing Morningstar Farms – where he came up with the name, the strategy, the logo and the creative for the introduction of this brand into a whole new category.
In addition to Texaco, he did a ton of work for Procter & Gamble (Bold, Biz), Sunshine Bakeries (Cheezits), Curad bandages and even McDonald’s.
The last decade or so of his life was spent on the research side. He was fascinated by why people did what they did and thought like they thought – and he developed some unique and, at the time unorthodox, focus-group approaches that have since become commonplace.
He also taught me the most important things about writing copy – be curious about everything, and remember, nobody cares about what you’re doing, so you have to make them care.
Edwin O. Bihl
My grandfather, Edwin O. Bihl, outstanding in his field. With my grandmother, Flo.
Before my grandfather got into advertising, his people were all in the steel industry. Not the Andrew Carnegie end of it though. The “standing in front of blast furnaces 12 hours a day and sweating so much that your overalls froze solid overnight in winter” side of it. My father used to tell me that his grandfather (that would be Edwin Otto’s father, Otto), was the guy who used to look into the furnace and decide when the iron was the right color so it could be taken out to let cool.
Which I find really interesting because my grandfather’s job in advertising was as a color separator. He looked at the print ads and argued with the printers about how much cyan, how much magenta, how to dodge the light in certain places, how to bring up the blacks. Same kind of job as his father – looking at colors and making subtle calls – but different industry.
I know he worked at Blackett Sample Hummert (the company who invented the soap opera, actually) in Chicago when my dad was a kid because I have a letter he sent my dad on BSH stationary. But beyond that, it’s a mystery.
But he’s the one responsible for starting the family on this odd journey.