Medicine Ave

I n-H ouse A dvertising Departments While the emphasis of this brief historic survey is on the work of specialized agencies, important contributions have been made also in the advertising departments of pharmaceutical companies—sometimes in collaboration with an agency, at other times entirely "in house." Every major company employed copywriters and at least one art director in its advertising department. Thus, E.R. Squibb honed the talents of Arthur E. Sudler, Matthew J. Hennessey, Robert A. Becker and Dr. Felix Marti Ibanez, the future founder of MD magazine, while Schering's advertising department launched the career of Dr. Arthur M. Sackler. Outstanding examples of internal agency operations are the two Swiss companies CIBA and Geigy. In the postwar years the American subsidiary of CIBA was headed by Paul Erni, a brother of the well known Swiss artist Hans Erni. Aware of new trends in the graphic arts, CIBA commissioned James Fogelman to create its corporate image, including company logo, packaging and letterhead, as well as advertising. For a number of years, CIBA provided, as educational materials, the work of the talented illustrators Frank Netter and Paul Peck in the CIBA Symposium series. Geigy, too, only rarely turned to outside help. Under the direction of Bob Baldini (later to become president of Key Pharmaceuticals), Geigy staffed its in-house agency with a brilliant group of writers and art directors. The company's worldwide advertising was stylized by the noted designer Gottfried Henecker. Equally autonomous were the advertising departments of Smith Kline & French and Abbott Laboratories under its advertising manager William Pratt. At Abbott, Charles S. Downs developed the publication What's New, which was distributed to physicians as an element in the company's promotional program. He recruited notable authors and artists as contributors—such famous names as Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan, Ben Shahn and Thomas Hart Benton. Other widely distributed house organs were Upjohn's Scope, Sharp and Dohme's Seminars, and Roche's Image. While the Upjohn Company relied heavily on the service of the McAdams agency, some of its most significant innovations originated in Kalamazoo. What had been started by Lester Beall was continued by Will Burtin. Trained in the Bauhaus tradition, Burtin had fled Hitler's Germany in 1938. He became design

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