The feature article in the January, 1982 issue of New York Magazine was
headlined "The Hottest Ad Agency in Town". The agency was Backer and
Spielvogel and Backer was described as "a creative legend in the
business ... though few people know what he looks like ... everyone
knows his work."
After prep school in Virginia and two years in the Navy, Backer
graduated from Yale in 1950 and after three years of writing jingles and
selling real estate, he joined McCann Erickson as a trainee in the
mailroom. It was there and at Young and Rubicam that the Backer brand of
advertising began. As he later on explained in a book he wrote, called
"The Care and Feeding Of Ideas", he looked for basic needs or wants in
peoples’ lives that were bigger than the product, but which the product
could help satisfy and in doing so, grow in importance. The early
efforts included, "Little girls have pretty curls, but I like Oreo," and
"I’m not talking while the flavor lasts." (Beech Nut Gum). But it was
when Backer pointed out to the world that "Things go Better with Coke"
and put that promise to contemporary music, that his career took off.
Backer then began to compose a series of original 60 second songs about
situations that went better with Coca Cola. He called them "song form"
commercials, had them performed by the leading pop singers of the day,
and used the tracks in both radio and television. One of them became,
arguably, the most famous commercial of all time. In it, the first ever
united-chorus-of-the-world sang, Coke in hand, "I’d Like to Build the
World a Home ... I’d Like To buy the World a Coke, etc." Backer then
went on to name American’s beer drinking time "Millertime". He reserved
special occasions for Lowenbrau with "Here’s To Good Friends, Tonight is
kind of special". And he had Campbell’s Soup join the good food category
with "Soup Is Good Food". All of which he put to music and lyrics for
both TV and Radio.
Unable to come up with music and lyrics for a new beer, Miller Lite, he
cobbled together a tough guy script to be used as a short term
introduction in a few test markets. The results were successful and as a
result, the Miller Lite All Stars, with their famous argument of "tastes
great" versus "less filling", became one of the longest lived and best
liked campaigns in the history of advertising.
In the late 70’s, Backer became disenchanted with being vice-chairman
and creative director of a big agency. He felt his duties were taking
him too far away from what he entered the business to do ... ie.,
create, help shape, and promote advertising. He left McCann and while
mulling over the idea of opening a select "creative" music company, he
ran across another McCann resignor, Carl Spielvogel. The result, after
much talk and many more meetings, was what Backer termed "a return to
the classic agency." Backer and Spielvogel, was launched June 18, 1979
with a promise to all future clients that it was to be an agency where
any and all principles would be "hands on" workers at the Client’s
business, rather than their own.
To quote New York Magazine ... "Backer and Spielvogel became the fastest
growing agency in ad history. In two years, a name that hadn’t even
figured in the agency rankings before, was listed as the twenty-ninth
largest among U.S. Agencies worldwide and billed more than 200 million."
That figure had become nearly $500 million when the agency sold itself
to Satchi and Satchi seven years later.