Paula Green

Articleissues
notable = September 2007
unreferenced = September 2007

Paula Green (born September 18, 1927) is an American advertising executive, best known for writing the lyrics to the "Look for the Union Label" song for ILGWU and the Avis motto, "We Try Harder".

Green, born in Hollywood, California, is the advertising executive who conceived of the WE TRY HARDER campaign for Avis. Her father, Myron, was a Russian emigrant who worked days and studied at night to become a civil engineer. Her mother, Elizabeth Green, worked as an executive secretary until Paula was born.

Paula attended UCLA, then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley where she received a Bachelor's degree in English. After college she moved to New York. Her first job was as a secretary for the sales promotion manager at Fawcett Magazines. By the time she left the magazine, she held the position for which she once served as secretary. From there Green moved to Grey Advertising, where she worked as a sales promotion copywriter. Green then worked as a copywriter for Seventeen Magazine. Her work helped boost the young magazine's image and tried to change to stereotypical perceptions of young women at the time. After two years, having moved up to Seventeen's promotion director, Green moved to L. C. Gumbinner agency.

Paula Green noticed the work that Doyle Dane Bernbach was doing, and wanted to work there. She applied and was hired as a copywriter. It was at DDB were she worked on the famous Avis campaign and many others. She became a group head at the agency and the first woman creative management supervisor.

By the end of 1969, She had reached a position were there was no where higher to go. She decided to leave to start her own agency named Green Dolmatch. Green ran the agency with her partner Murray Dolmatch and her husband. After 8 years, the agency evolved into Paula Green Advertising, Inc.

Quotes from Mrs. Green:"I like combative advertising that hits competing products head-on," "Girls smiling seductively from bathtubs appeal to art directors, not women customers."

About Avis:“Well it is because we had to find a place for it. When we took on the account they very proudly showed us at our first meeting a three-page logo that they had done in a magazine and they thought that was terrific advertising. A three-page logo! Avis across a double page spread plus a gatefold. And I was totally aghast because that wasn't advertising, that was a sign. But the sign didn't mean anything, the name Avis didn't mean anything. Rental cars were in terrible disrepute by the people who had to use them all of the time. And what we did in creating the ads, the first ads was really creating an operating manual for the company which said you had to have a clean car, it said your windshield wipers had to work, you had to have a full gas tank. You had to have all of these things that therefore the people who service the car had to do. It created a guide, not only a guide but an operating manual basically for people running the business. And at first, of course, it was resented because we were telling people they were going to get these things and the guys looked at each other and said, "yeah, and we gotta do it!"

But, the most important part about that campaign probably is in terms of research. We did not have everybody even in the agency who loved that campaign . In fact there were guys who thought that the number two was kind of a put-down. They didn't like it. So they sent the research department out with little 3x5 cards with the copy of the ads and they came back, they had gone to airport s and places like that, and they came back with the answer that 50% of the people thought that number two meant that "we weren’t as good as." And thank God for Bill Bernbach because he said, "What about the other 50%?" And if you think about that, you don't get 100% of people, but there are people who say, "Hey, that's interesting." Even on little file cards, I mean they didn't see the ads, they didn't see the type. You didn't get . . . they weren't in the medium they looking at. They weren't in the magazine. On little file cards! That's a terrible way to test something as fragile as a new idea, and it was so new. It wasn't new in people's operating really . . . business men and salesmen had known this all the time. It was certainly new in advertising to do something that said without apologizing that we are not the number one and how that was an advantage”