New England Life and Rowland B. Wilson

 

"My insurance company? New England Life of course. Why?"

This is an example of what you can learn from a page out of a magazine ...

This advertisement was from a series of print ads run by New England Life Insurance, showing a person in a potentially life-threatening situation, seemingly unaware of their predicament.  The tag line was "My insurance company? New England Life of course. Why?"  The situations were inventive, and I liked the artwork.

I had collected a series of these - sadly it seems this is the only one I still have.  Like many of the ads I saved as a kid I cut off the date and ad copy (yeah, I know!). From what I can find the campaign ran during the 1970's - I have been able to date this to before 1972, due to the North American Rockwell/Hatteras Yachts adverisement on the other side.  Rockwell sold Hatteras to AMF in 1972. (More on that ad to come).

Fortunately I did NOT cut off the artists name - Rowland B. Wilson.  So I Googled him and what did I find?

Rowland Wilson (1930-2005) had been a cartoonist for The New Yorker and Playboy Magazine; worked as an animator for TV, including Schoolhouse Rock; did pre-production design for Disney including Little Mermaid, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules and Tarzan; and had mentored Tim Burton!

A list of his accomplishments can be found in his obituary, here.

All this from a 40-year-old magazine advertisement.