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Dear Bill,

Now that time passed I can tell you: I was really angry at you. I guess you do not even remember me. I was 30 years old when my boss (his name was Luigi, he used to work with you) called your friend Bob to ask him to take me as an intern in your headquarters in New York. Bob was kind and answered he could. But then he called again, dismayed, to tell that you did not agree. You did not agree because you were about to open an overseas branch of DDB in Milan and all your fans working in other agencies were potential competitors. I hated you as an abandoned son could hate you. In all of my years of work I never thought “big” nor “small”: I just thought Bill.

But then I forgave you, and here are the reasons:

1. Hating you for a moment is ok, but hating you for a whole life is stupid;

2. You have been and will always be the father of good advertising;

3. You are dead;

4. Everyone respects you, even those who did not understand anything about you;

5. I take the side of people who “try harder”, even when they retire.

Now I try to teach young people the things I learned from you. I teach at university to revive your memory, because to Italians students you are nobody. They all focuse on “Archive” and “www”. And not only the new generations ignore you – yes, many people knows the “Lemon” ad, or the “We’re only Number 2″ and “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s” lines, but do not deceive yourself: your popularity is not a proof that your ideas are understood. Let me say it, Bill: a few people, even among my peers, understood your thought.

Yes, I know what you are trying to tell me. This is the fate of every revolution. How could I prove you wrong? Revolutions raise a fuss in our contemporaries hearts, but their life is short and then they give way to degeneration or re-establishment. What about you? Unnoticed, without yelling claims or bearing a flag, you turned Madison Avenue inside out. You were born in the Bronx from a Jewish family, you were a pariah in a society where Ivy League Mad Men looked down on any person whose appearance did not yell “wasp” from head to toe. And yet you opened the world of advertising to a bunch of long-haired guys with strange surnames. We took a certain pride in Italy: we went through the Art Directors annual of New York and were delighted reading Italian names such as Gargano, Travisano, Della Femmina – the numerous cousins that succeeded in the US. The reputation of Italian immigrants, damaged by people such as Anthony Anastasia and Al Capone, thanks to you was becoming better.

When I talk about you to my students, to put it in a nutshell I say: “Bernbach is the most loved and the most betrayed of our masters”. The worse misunderstanding about you and your followers was to define you as “admen”. Yes, admen in the highest sense of the word, but it is a way too reductive label. “Think small” and “We try harder” lines are not only about advertising: they are advice on life. That was your real lesson, my dear Bill. It was useful to someone, totally unuseful to someone else, no matter what your old – and new – followers think about it.

Do you remember that Howard Luck Gossage guy, the rebel copywriter? He was – let me say it – even more subversive than you. His behaviour was so extreme he did not even try to conceal his intentions. He had always been explicit as for what was advertising: an intellectual job. Just like writing books or columns, it was about debating on communication and sweeping away clichés. He wrote: “Most ads plat it safe and do not express any opinion. There is no connection with the audience, you never know if you touched people, whether they cheered, booed, or if they just didn’t hear you. As long as advertisers won’t understand that there is someone out there in the flesh, as long as they won’t speak to them (not in “advertising language”, but in their plain and simple mother tongue), we will develop not even a half of the sense of responsibility towards the public and ourselves a third-rate stripper has”.

In arguing that advertising is banal when “it does not express any opinion” Howard was sparking off a row. Opinion-makers! Here’s what you were, you and him. Here’s what you tried to do. Changing the world, just like children, artists, philosophers, and statesmen would. And you tried to do this by using an unusual medium: advertising – the fifth wheel in the car of history.

People like you have tried to spread, through advertising, the idea that we can take a critical look at the world we live in even when we buy a loaf of bread or we get petrol. They tried to teach us that consumption should be not a passive activity, but a conscious effort in agreement to specific principles. There are no “consumers” but people, people, people.

I hope you’re not jealous of Howard. It would be pointless, since he was less lucky than you, in spite of his middle name. Not only because he died at only fifty-two, but also because he is lesser known and you can count his followers on the fingers of one hand. Now I’m going to quoting you too. Here’s the most inspiring of your statements: “All of us who works in mass media contributes to shape society. We can make it more vulgar. Or more banal. Or we can help to make it better”.

Everyone can easily understand the ethical weight of this statement. I want to point out its implicit “technical” connotation: when someone buys an advertising space in newspapers, billboards, TV or radio, he/she becomes – for better or for worse – a cultural worker. He/she is not just a car manufacturer or drinks dealer, but also an opinion-maker, trend-setter, columnist, teacher, propagandist – someone who spreads his/her views and principles on the world we live in. Anyone who buys advertising space should be aware of the bomb he/she holds in his/her hands and use it carefully. He/she has acquired a power that cannot be justified just by his/her knowledge of marketing. He/she knows by heart all the ingredients and the taste of the sweets he/she sells, the target market, the competitors, the likes and passions of “consumers”, actual and potential sales channels, the goals of his/her company. But he/she doesn’t know, because no one has ever taught him/her, that what he/she is going to do is not just selling a product, but shaping consumers’ view of the world.

Dear Bill, you have been too cautious. You were a man of action, but you did not go over your “think small”. You should have said it loud that advertising is not only the armed wing of marketing, but is a publishing activity, with all its ethical, aestethic and philosophical load. The message was partially read: that\’s why your revolution has collapsed and may disappear, just like giant pandas. What can I do now? I would like to come and see you and maybe sing on your grave, just like the enraged Judas Iscariot portrayed by Tim Rice:

“All your followers are blind / Too much heaven on their minds. / It was beautiful, but now it’s sour”.

Don’t take it personally. You know I’m a fucking optimist. What I really think is the opposite. Only the dead may believe that the message of Bill belongs to the past. But I am sure that time has not come yet, my dear Bernbach. Now, in my agency in Cologno Monzese in Milan (my own Madison Avenue), my colleagues will make fun of me for trying to make a messiah out of you, but it’s not religion nor faith I’m talking about. I’m talking about young people and future. Because young people have to bear the weight of all the things we have neglected. And now the youngsters face a task which is harder than any advertising campaign: the task of rethinking not only creativity, but also economics and the whole meaning of life.

With persistent respect and love,

Pasquale Barbella

Pasquale Barbella, copywriter, since 1999 he is member of the Hall of Fame of Italian Art Directors Club.