Prize Day

Once a year for the past three years advertising men have gone to Cambridge, Mass., attended a dinner given at the Faculty Club of the Harvard Business School, heard announcements of winners in various advertising contests sponsored by the Business School through the generosity of Edward William Bok (Curtis publications). Agencies take these awards with considerable seriousness; the certificates of merit making excellent decorative units on the walls of agency reception rooms.

Most sought prize is the gold medal for distinguished contemporary service to advertising. It was this year won (and last week awarded) to Rene Clark, art director at Calkins & Holden. Mr. Clark (his name used to be James, the Rene is a nickname which he has legally adopted) has made Calkins & Holden campaigns (Hartford Fire Insurance. Wesson Oil, Snowdrift, Heinz) almost uniformly outstanding examples of advertising layout and illustration.

The $2,000 prize for the best national campaign for a specific product went to the Ford Motor Co., was awarded for the automobile and aviation campaigns prepared by N. W. Ayer & Son. Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, Inc., won $2,000 when its Lewis & Conger (house-furnishings) campaign was pronounced best local. Calkins & Holden took the institutional campaign prize ($2,000) with its series for McCatt's Magazine, and Blackman Co.'s Vacuum Oil campaign was considered best among industrials.

Best headline was "Kill my Cow for an Editor? I Should Say Not" (from Lennen & Mitchell, Inc., for Scripps-Howard newspapers) ; best copy one of freelance Frank Irving Fletcher's advertisements for Atlantic City. A Rockwell Kent drawing for Marcus & Co. (jewelry) was best illustration and most effective typography was contributed by Robert A. Holmes for Dobbs & Co. (hats).