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Al Van Dine
Year of induction: 1998
Bio:
Long ago someone asked Al Van Dine what he wanted to be when he grew up. “I was good at answering questions,” he said. “If there had been help-wanted ads for question answerers, my fate would have been sealed.” But since there was no call for question answerers, Al did the next best thing. He became a writer, an occupation which allowed him to pose his own questions, then answer them with a dizzying deftness.
Al graduated from Duquesne in 1957. He began his career in advertising in 1962 as a copywriter at BBDO/Pittsburgh where he was assigned to do a trade ad about packaging that protected a glass martini set. The headline – “This Eight Piece Martini Set Arrives in Eight Pieces.” – was his first…and according to Al, his best. After this high point, he contends, he failed to improve for the next 35 years.
Few would agree. He’s won countless awards for creativity and advertising readership, including Addys, One Shows, you-name-it. He was also singularly responsible for conceiving what is arguably the most successful direct mail campaign in history: Tangents. Done for the Koppers Company, this was series of wise and wonderful essays on architectural hallmarks – topics that Kopper’s architect customers found irresistible, attested to by consistent response rates of 20-25% over a period of nearly 20 years! (Doubleday subsequently published the series as a book entitled The Unconventional Builders.)
In 1970 Al joined designer Rick Horton, account man Dan Manges, and gadabout Jack McNamara to create the very successful Van Dine, Horton, McNamara & Manges – which later merged with Humphrey, Herbert & Alber to become Van Dine, Humphrey, Herbert, Alber & Manges. All this to the consternation of everyone (including the principals) who thought the name was way too long.
It’s too bad this tribute is about advertising, because it leaves little room to expound on Al’s true love: humor and the human condition. Though he writes advertising superbly, he’s even better at writing poetry (both serious and wildly funny); essays (both thoughtful and tongue-in-cheek); books (both published and unpublished); and the best damned memos you ever read in your life.
Al once said that writing was nothing more than thinking, and that therefore, anybody could write. But he’s spent a career proving himself wrong. Virtually everybody thinks, but nobody I’ve ever met writes nearly as well as Al Van Dine; perhaps that’s because nobody I’ve ever met thinks nearly as well as Al Van Dine.
With affection,
Steve Alber
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