Pioneer's Passing

Last year marked the passing of yet another woman who took a hammer to the glass ceiling and smashed it to smithereens.  

(public domain image)

Laurel Cutler died at age 94 last November. She managed to thrive during the male-driven Mad Men era of the 1960s. Her list of accomplishments is remarkable, but her journey to the top is more interesting than her résumé. 

Cutler's father was a lawyer. Her brother followed in his footsteps, but Laurel was discouraged from doing so. She was told to marry a lawyer instead (which, by the way, she eventually did–and out-earned him.)

While she did give up on the legal profession, Cutler didn't acquiesce to the role of a housewife. She earned her degree at Wellesley College with a major in philosophy and took on the role of cub reporter for The Washington Post. After unsuccessfully trying her hand as a novelist, she turned to writing advertising copy for J. Walter Thompson.

And that's when her career took off. 

Over the ensuing years, Cutler worked her way up the corporate ladder at several prominent New York advertising agencies, picking up impressive awards along the way. In 1985, the Advertising Federation of America christened Cutler "Woman of the Year. "Ten years later, she was "Man of the Year," the first woman to be awarded this title.

Laurel Cutler was a futurist, a role she likened to a fortune teller. So much of advertising has been (and still is) data-driven. While Cutler would use this data, her real talent came from her ability to see emerging trends and predict how they would play out. She and her staff looked for evidence of changes in art and sciences, retailing, fashion, technology and demographics. The patterns they observed became the basis for her predictions. She quipped that "there is no data on the future." 

She was so good at it that in 1988, Lee Iacocca, then-head of Chrysler, appointed her its first vice president of consumer affairs, a position she held in addition to her senior management role at the ad agency FCB/Leber Katz Partners.

While her laundry list of accolades is impressive, I was more taken by the anecdotes I found that illustrated her personality. Here are a few: 

A tire manufacturer did a study that showed women were responsible for most automobile and tire purchases. Their solution was to create a pink tire. Cutler, appalled, told the clueless executives that women wanted a safe and reliable vehicle, not one with tires tricked out in nail polish colors. 

Cutler convinced Campbell's executives to change the name of their spaghetti sauce to "Prego" after flipping through an English-Italian dictionary. "Prego" is Italian for "please" and "you're welcome." But it wasn't just the name change that made Prego a success story. Cutler's agency branded the sauce to compete successfully with Ragu and gain a major share of the market.

And on a personal note...

Ms. Cutler's brother, Lloyd, became a high-powered lawyer in Washington, DC. Laurel attended a reception there, where she met Katharine Graham, then-publisher of The Washington Post. She was introduced as "Lloyd's sister." At which point the chairman of Young & Rubicam, Edward N. Ney, pre-empted the introduction by telling Ms. Graham, "In our world, he's Laurel's brother."

If you're interested in learning more, check out the 1987 Inc. magazine interview with Laurel Cutler. it's good stuff.