The Peculiar Truth about the 1st Woman Ad Exec
- Dan Spencer
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read

“Plop Plop Fizz Fizz.” “I Love New York.” “Trust the Midas Touch.” “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” “At Ford, Quality is Job One.”
If those famous advertising slogans ring a bell, you can thank Mary Wells Lawrence. She was a Madison Avenue icon, a pioneering corporate executive, and she broke the glass ceiling for women in her field.
Her ad agency created memorable ads for AlkaSeltzer, Braniff Airlines, American Motors, and more.
No other woman before her owned and operated a major US advertising agency. In the 1970s, no other advertising executive earned as high a salary as her - female or male.
She was born Mary Berg in Youngstown, Ohio in 1928. As a teenager she sold hats for a local department store. Working in retail gave her an education in what customers wanted.
She attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, studied theater, got married to Bert Wells, and went back to the same store - this time in the advertising department. In 1949, Mary and her husband moved to New York.
Throughout the 1950s, she worked in advertising for several major department stores and finally landed at Macy’s. She wrote copy about women’s fashion. It was in that hectic nonstop Macy’s environment that she developed her expertise.
In the 60s, Mary applied her fashion sense to Braniff Airways. In her eyes, the planes and airports were dull. So she added color to the Braniff logo and the planes as well. Seats were remade with colorful fabrics, and drab airport lounges were remodeled. It was Mary’s idea to dress flight attendants in Italian fashions. She called her ad campaign “The End of the Plain Plane.” It was so successful that other airlines followed suit.
Mary also created a TV campaign for Braniff called Air Strip in which flight attendants removed layers of winter clothing to reveal summer dresses in a mock strip tease.
1966: She was working at another ad agency when she created Alka-Seltzer’s famous Plop Plop Fizz Fizz jingle. That won her a Clio, the ad industries version of an Emmy Award.
With the wind in her sails, Mary then formed her own agency, Wells Rich & Greene. Her clients included Cadbury, Pan Am Airlines, and IBM.
1967: After divorcing Bert Wells, she married Braniff Airways president Harding Lawrence.
She became the first woman CEO whose company appeared on the New York Stock Exchange.
Automaker Henry Ford and Princess Grace Kelly were among her many friends.
1971: Mary became the first woman to be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame as well as the youngest inductee ever.
In 1977, when New York City was wallowing in financial despair, she cemented her name in advertising lore with the simple and enduring I [heart] New York campaign.
Mary sold her ad firm in 1990. She went on to own multiple residences in New York, Texas, Arizona, and the French Riviera.
She published her memoirs A Big Life (In Advertising) in 2002. In it she attributed her success to risk-taking and imagination.
Mary Wells Lawrence died in 2024 at age 95.
ALSO:
She was the inspiration for the character of Peggy Olson on the TV series Mad Men.
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