Jerry Della Femina Biography Quotes 6 Report mistakes

Overview

Jerry Della Femina is an American advertising executive, author, and entrepreneur whose name became synonymous with the swaggering creative revolution on Madison Avenue in the late 1960s and 1970s. Famous for his incisive wit and unvarnished candor, he helped push U.S. advertising toward bolder language, sharper humor, and a more conversational relationship with consumers. His career bridged agency leadership, bestselling authorship, and later ventures in restaurants and local media, and he cultivated a public persona that both celebrated and critiqued the industry he loved.

Early Life and Entry into Advertising

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, Della Femina grew up in a working-class, Italian American household that prized hustle and self-reliance. New York City, with its newspaper stands, transit ads, and neon marquees, formed the backdrop to his early fascination with snappy language and quick-turn persuasion. He entered advertising from the ground up, first taking junior roles and then moving into copywriting, where his sharp headlines and feel for colloquial voice attracted attention in a field being remade by creative-led agencies.

Finding a Voice During the Creative Revolution

As advertising moved away from hard-sell formulas, Della Femina embraced the era's irreverence and plainspoken style. He allied directness with humor, often puncturing pretension. He cultivated a reputation for speaking precisely what colleagues were thinking but were reluctant to say, a sensibility that would later infuse his writing and become a hallmark of his public commentary on the business.

Founding Della Femina, Travisano & Partners

In 1967, he co-founded Della Femina, Travisano & Partners with art director Ron Travisano. The agency grew quickly, distinguished by a willingness to take creative risks on behalf of mainstream products. Della Femina and Travisano complemented each other's strengths: a sharp-tongued copy chief on one side and a visually driven partner on the other. Together they assembled teams that turned small budgets into outsized cultural moments.

Signature Campaigns and Cultural Impact

The agency earned national attention with work that was funny without being glib and brash without losing clarity. Among its most widely remembered efforts were the witty Blue Nun wine campaigns; the shop orchestrated memorable celebrity-driven advertising that leveraged comic timing and social observation. Performers Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara became familiar voices for the brand, their banter helping to reframe a once-stodgy imported wine for an American audience. Years later, the firm helped create the "Joe Isuzu" ads for Isuzu, fronted by actor David Leisure as a gleefully unreliable pitchman; the spots used comic exaggeration to make the product's real claims stand out, and they became a pop-culture touchstone.

Author and Public Persona

In 1970, Della Femina published From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War. The book offered unfiltered anecdotes from agency life, told with a reporter's eye and a copywriter's timing. It simultaneously celebrated creative daring and exposed the posturing, egos, and late-night brainstorming that defined the business. The provocative title, drawn from a line used to illustrate the impolitic jokes that circulated behind closed doors, sparked debate about the industry's ethics and its casual gallows humor. Decades later, when popular culture revisited mid-century advertising, his book remained a canonical, insider account of what the job felt like in its rambunctious prime.

Leadership Through Growth, Mergers, and Nameplates

As the 1980s ushered in consolidation, Della Femina's agency moved through acquisitions and rebrandings typical of the period. The firm's identity at times reflected new partners and holding-company structures, including alignment with the WCRS banner, yet Della Femina's voice and standards remained central. He mentored younger creatives and account leaders, arguing that the best work blended plain talk, a strong product promise, and a human truth that audiences could recognize immediately.

Restaurants, Local Media, and Community

Beyond Madison Avenue, Della Femina became a fixture in the East End of Long Island. He opened a namesake restaurant in East Hampton, turning his flair for hospitality and storytelling into a convivial dining room that mirrored his knack for reading what people wanted. With his wife, journalist and television personality Judy Licht, he invested in local journalism, co-owning and publishing The Independent, a community newspaper that covered civic life, arts, and business. He also wrote a long-running column, "Jerry's Ink", whose essays mixed industry recollections with observations about politics, culture, and neighborhood life. The column reinforced the persona readers knew from his book: candid, combative when necessary, and animated by a belief that words should land with a point.

Style, Philosophy, and People Around Him

Colleagues often described Della Femina's leadership as a balance of creative impatience and strategic discipline. He demanded that a headline earn its keep and that an idea be strong enough to survive an honest conversation. Ron Travisano's partnership helped anchor that culture in the early years, turning rooms of clashing opinions into coherent work. In production, he relied on performers like Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara to deliver copy with credible humor, and on actors such as David Leisure to embody satirical brand characters that the public would remember. At home and in public life, Judy Licht was a steady collaborator, bringing a reporter's sensibility to their joint media ventures and moderating, in her own journalistic way, the bombast that sometimes trailed a famous adman.

Reputation and Legacy

Della Femina's reputation rests on more than a few famous campaigns and a best-selling book. He exemplified a generation of New York ad leaders who believed that selling, at its core, is a human conversation in which wit, empathy, and a clear promise matter more than jargon. His oft-quoted line that advertising is "the most fun you can have with your clothes on" captured the job's giddy, high-wire energy, while his work evidenced a sober respect for craft. He influenced peers and rivals alike, and for younger creatives, his career remains a case study in how a distinctive voice can carry from the conference room to the culture at large.

Continuing Presence

Long after the height of his agency's fame, Della Femina stays engaged as a commentator and raconteur. He has written about the industry's changing technologies and the constants that outlast them: a clean idea, well told; a product benefit honestly expressed; and a brand personality that can sit across the table from a consumer and make its case. Through his businesses, his writing, and his public appearances, he has remained connected to the people who shaped his life's work, partners like Ron Travisano, collaborators like Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and David Leisure, and, centrally, Judy Licht, ensuring that his story is also the story of a creative community that learned, argued, built, and sold together.