The adman for Reagan and GM, dies at 75

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Hal Riney, the iconoclastic copywriter who helped build San Francisco into a creative centre for advertising with low-key, upbeat campaigns for Saturn cars, Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers and the re-election of President Ronald Reagan, died on Monday at his home in San Francisco. He was 75.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Elizabeth Sutherland Riney, said.

Riney spent almost 50 years in advertising, all in San Francisco, in a career arc that began in a mailroom and ended with him as chairman and chief executive of his own agency and ranked No 30 on a list compiled by the trade publication Advertising Age of the top 100 ad figures of the 20th century.

Three of Riney’s campaigns appeared on another Advertising Age list, of the top 100 campaigns of the 20th century: Saturn, the start-up division of General Motors, with the theme “A different kind of company, a different kind of car”, at No 37; the campaign to re-elect Reagan in 1984, featuring the commercial called “It’s morning again in America,” No 43; and the Bartles & Jaymes ads for E&J Gallo, featuring a fictional pair of vintners named Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes, No 88.

Riney’s work—some of which featured him delivering the lines in commercials in his own mellifluous voice—was characterised by its direct and sincere tone, often laced with humour. The ads epitomised the so-called soft-sell approach to peddling products (or presidents). Riney honed his style as the creative director of four San Francisco agencies that became known as breeding grounds for creative talent. By one count, more than two dozen ad agencies were founded by copywriters, art directors and creative directors who had worked for Riney at those agencies.

After retiring, Riney said in a 2007 interview with Adweek that advertising in general had lost its sense of fun, originality and the human element, adding, “I don’t watch TV shows because I don’t want to see the ads.”