The associate professor of strategic communications examined the copywriting career of Margaret Fishback, a highly prolific writer of advertising copy, poems and magazine articles.
Associate Professor Daniel M. “Dan” Haygood will present “Margaret Fishback Takes a Walk Through the Creative Revolution: A Look at the Real-Life Lillian Boxfish and Her Extraordinary Copywriting Career” on Friday, March 19, during the annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising. This year’s three-day event will be held in a virtual format March 18-20.
Haygood’s research explores the copywriting career of Margaret Fishback, whose papers are housed at Duke University’s John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, which is part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Fishback was the highest-earning woman copywriter in New York during the 1930s and 1940s. Her career was the basis of the best-selling novel, “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk: A Novel,” by Kathleen Rooney.
The real person, Margaret Fishback, was a highly prolific writer of advertising copy, poems and magazine articles. Haygood’s research is based on the Margaret Fishback Papers, all archived at Duke.
“When reviewing her copywriting career for R.H. Macy & Co. during the 1930s and 1940s, it occurred to me that her creative work for Macy’s presaged the kind of creative from advertising’s Creative Revolution, which is generally associated with the 1960s and the firm, Doyle Dane Bernbach,” Haygood said.
The research focuses on Fishback’s stint with DDB, a match that should have been made in heaven: two like-minded creative forces from two different generations coming together. However, her time at the creative hot shop of the era quickly spiraled into disappointment.
“I cannot even begin to express how valuable these papers were in telling this small part of Ms. Fishback’s story,” Haygood said. “I spent weeks diving into boxes of her advertising creative work, poems and personal correspondence. Josh Rowley, reference archivist, was extremely helpful and excessively patient in providing support for this work.”
Haygood said this kind of in-depth support has not been the exception at Duke. He has been the beneficiary of the Duke staff’s kindness for many years.
“I first met the director, Jacqueline Wachholz, while I was a graduate student at Carolina and conducting research in the Hartman Center for the advertising class I taught,” Haygood said. “Our paths have crossed many times since then, including her arranging for Hartman Center staff to visit my advertising classes at Elon.
“From that point, I continued to access the Hartman Center resources for various research projects, including work on Rosser Reeves and his Unique Selling Proposition. The Bates agency papers were instrumental in that work.”
Haygood has also used the Eddie Cameron Papers in the Rubenstein Library for his research on the history of broadcasting Atlantic Coast Conference basketball during the early decades of the conference.
“I have been fortunate to continue to have met very helpful people at the Duke Libraries, including the Bostock Library,” Haygood said. “Dr. Kristina Troost, the former head of Duke’s East Asian Collections, allowed me to use Yomidas Rekishikan, a Japanese newspaper online archive that contains digital versions of Japanese newspapers back as far as the late 1880s.”
Each time he walks in Duke’s Bostock Library, Haygood said he is hit with a twinge of nostalgia. “Roy Bostock was the leader of D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (advertising agency) back when I worked for the agency. DMB&B’s archives are now housed in the Hartman Center. It is really one of those ‘circle of life things.’”
American Academy of Advertising
Known as “the Three A’s,” the American Academy of Advertising, “disseminates research findings and scholarly contributions to advertising education and the profession.” AAA is comprised of academics, advertising professionals and students, and publishes the Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising and the Journal of Interactive Advertising.