Former ad man recalls time among real ‘Mad Men’ in 1960s

Much like the TV series "Mad Men" on AMC, Summerlin has it s own ad man from that era.

Stan Evans began his career in 1954 with a small agency, where he headed a team that grew a modest advertising account into a very large brand, spending, in today's dollars, almost $150 million a year. That led him to a job with worldwide advertising network BBDO. The fictional ad agency Sterling Cooper in "Mad Men," set in the early 1960s, is supposedly inspired by BBDO, according to the show's creator, Matthew Weiner.

"I was a 'Mad Man' and never knew it," joked Evans, who said the term was never used on Madison Avenue in real life.

Evans is now a Summerlin-area resident and still has his hand in the game with Evans Management. He recalled taking the American Tobacco Co. account from a $2 million client to a $17 million one.

"And these were 1960's dollars," he said.

When Pepsi was thinking about buying Sunshine Biscuits, Evans looked deeper. He researched the company and suggested that Pepsi purchase Frito-Lay instead. It did, and the decision grew into a $15 billion acquisition. Farsighted input like that had him climbing the ladder of success. In a world where most men who headed advertising accounts earned $30,000 to $35,000 a year, Evans pulled in $115,000.

Before everyone realized how unhealthy cigarettes were, he came up with a neverending way to brand his account, Tareyton cigarettes. It had a dual filter, marked by a distinct white ring. Evans' coined the slogan: The Tareyton ring marks the real thing.

"You think, how stupid is this?' " Evans said. "But when you'd see cigarette butts lying in the street, you could tell which ones were Tareytons by the ring."

The result: automatic association ... and a dramatic leap in sales.

"It took a somewhat secondary brand and made it major, like Dr Pepper joining Coke and Pepsi, in the perception stakes," said John Geismar, who also was in the advertising business at that time on Madison Avenue .

When Tareyton sponsored as many as seven different baseball teams, Evans provided game announcers such as Vin Scully, Russ Hodges and Ernie Harwell with many pages of lines such as, "He's safe, and you'll always be safe with Tareytons."

Cigarette ads were banned on TV in the late 1960s, but Evans convinced the president of American Tobacco that the money spent on commercials could now be used for other forms of promotion: point-of-purchase advertising, display ads and promotions on college campuses. Sales continued rising.

Evans headed teams that developed the advertising for a number of liquor accounts, including Smirnoff Vodka, Bell's Scotch and Gilbey's Gin & Vodka.

For the liquor accounts, national advertising had little to no restrictions, but state advertising was a different matter. Oklahoma, for example, allowed a picture of the bottle and the brand name to be printed but no body copy at all. In others, no photo of the product was allowed. Some states' restrictions could vary by county.

"You'd have to use 'weasel wording' to get around them," Evans said, referring to how the copy in the ads was tweaked to follow the rules but still get the point across.

One ad campaign was for Alberto-Culver hair spray. By that time, Evans had worked his way up to a level that the campaign needed only his approval before it got final approval from Alberto-Culver president Leonard Lavin.

He watched the proposed TV commercial: A young woman is at the pool, remarking on her new hairdo. She jumps in the pool and comes out to fluff dry her hair. In the next scene, her hair, now dry, appears -- voila -- styled exactly as it had been before.

Evans asked to see the tests that backed up the amazing claim. None had been done. When he ordered them done, the results were disastrous.

"They found out that water worked better," he said.

Although company officials were ready to launch a national ad campaign, they agreed to kill it before it got any farther.

"It's a perfect example of what I believe makes for good advertising," he said. "You should say the right things to the right people at the right time. But, of course, the product has to deliver."

Truth in advertising is big part of the National Conference of Personal Managers' code of ethics. Evans is currently the national vice president of that organization. Clinton Billups, president, said the Federal Trade Commission can now hold a celebrity spokesperson responsible for claims made in commercials.

"A good manager is always looking to protect his client," Billups said.

Evans recalled how just getting a commercial made was fraught with problems. The production's lights, for example, could make a commercial set sweltering. One time, a model got so hot she used the lunch break to have a cool drink, then another and another. She came back to the set drunk, resulting in a scramble for an immediate replacement.

On one show Tareyton sponsored, "Justice," broadcast live on NBC Sunday evenings, the host, screen actor William Prince, also was the product pitchman.

"Every once in a while he'd be holding the package upside down," he said. "What could you do? It was live TV."

Today, Evans manages entertainers based in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and Las Vegas. Billups said Evans' knowledge of promotion and selling a product was a good fit for Evans' clients.

Contact Summerlin/Summerlin South View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 387-2949.