Lucas Hendrickson:  Hey, it's Lucas. And we want to thank you again for checking out Around the Barrel. And especially if you subscribed, rated, and reviewed us on your favorite podcast app. We also want to hear from you. That's why we've set up a dedicated email address, podcast@JackDaniels.com for your feedback and suggestions. Who would you like to hear interviewed on the show?  Who has got a great story to tell as it relates to Jack Daniel's? What can we improve on? Or what do you love and we shouldn't mess with one bit? Let us hear from you, again, at podcast@JackDaniels.com. We thank you in advance and now on with the show.

 

Ted Simmons: I think that's something about Lynchburg that's interesting is, there's so many stories there that just kind of linger in the air and bind the generations.

 

Lucas: To many, the act of writing advertising copy involves making up things out of whole cloth. For more than four decades, Ted Simmons got to shape the idea of an American institution made by people wearing bib overalls. On this episode, we talk to one of the people most closely tied with creating national and international awareness for Jack Daniel's through an ongoing series of print ads that came to be known as "Postcards from Lynchburg." Those ads set a tone that has framed how the public talks about Jack Daniel's to this day, including discussions happening here, Around the Barrel.

 

Welcome back to Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. Advertising is one of the few man-made forces that impacts us throughout our entire lives. From an American perspective, it surrounds us, shaping our awareness of items both new and familiar. It can delight us, outrage us, intrigue us, and move us to action. And we say this knowing full well that this show, this single-sponsor podcast focused on a well-known brand, is a form of advertising too. We are nothing if not self-aware. Most of the time. Ted Simmons was one of the creative minds who helped shepherd awareness for Jack Daniel's through a meticulously written and photographed series of ads known as "Postcards from Lynchburg." For him, and for the millions who would come to know Old Number 7 and Tennessee whiskey through those words and images, the story of Jack Daniel's was always about a certain and very real sense of place. Ted Simmons, welcome to Around the Barrel. 

 

Ted: Thanks a lot. Great to be here . 

 

Lucas: With this podcast, we are trying, or we are continuing to try to make sure that we are treating Jack Daniel's and Old Number 7 Tennessee whiskey as this quintessentially American brand, a lot of that came from the advertising and the messages that you helped to start create for this brand. Tell us about that journey. When did you learn about the distillery, where were you brought on to the project and the product and what were the challenges in those early days of of advertising for Jack Daniel's? 

 

Ted: Well, it goes back to 1965 and that's when I was working at an advertising agency in St. Louis called Gardner Advertising, and they had the Jack Daniel's account. Jack Daniel's at that time was a very small brand, hardly national, and really no one wanted to work on the account because it was all print and television was the big rage in those days, but I was taken down to Lynchburg by my creative director who created the campaign and he said the way to understand the kind of ads that you need to write for this brand is just to hang around. Hang around Lynchburg, Tennessee. And so, that's what I did that first year, just walk into the hardware store and sit around the pot-bellied stove with some of the guys that were there, or go drink coffee at the Iron Kettle restaurant or go in and cash a check at the Farmers Bank and go to The Filling Station and talk with whomever was sitting there. And out of those conversations, came a lot of ideas for Jack Daniel's advertising. I'd also go up to the distillery, which was just a stone's throw from the town and talk with the barrelmen and the head distiller and the rickers and all the people that were involved in making the product and from those conversations. You could pretty well sense the pride that these guys took in making the product that they made, making it just the way their fathers before them had made it, their grandfathers, many of them. And so, and that was the center point of the Jack Daniel's advertising campaign in the early years, the place where the product is made, the people who make it, and the method of manufacture which was called charcoal mellowing. And what was unique about those ads is that they were so different from the way that liquor advertising in that era was being done. Most every distilled spirit advertiser in that era showed big color photographs of good-looking men sitting around the fire at the country club, smoking their pipes in their tweed jackets. And that was the way that every single bourbon tried to sell themselves. So into that sea of conformity, Jack Daniel's advertising pictured guys in bib overalls who clearly didn't care about how they dress, didn't care about what club they belong to, what kind of car they drove, what kind of home they lived in, all they cared about was making whiskey, making it as good as they could make it. So that was sort of our, the theme that we picked up on and continued for many years. 

 

Lucas: And the choices that you made again in the imagery themselves, and there's plenty of examples on the internet to this day, you know of those classic ads, black and white, no flashy logos or slogans or anything like that. It was just very easy to approach, easy to read, and you know, a great read in a handful of sentences. I mean, and that is a challenge and an art then, and certainly a challenge and an art today. Talk about how you know, creating those individual messages, how that worked, what kind of revisions did you have to go through? What kind of themes, keywords if you will, you centered on, along with place, as part of creating those ads? 

 

Ted: Yeah. There was a distinct tonality to the messages and we thought was important to the way they connected with people, and we call them postcards because they were not written in the way that an advertising copywriter might have written them. So much as they were written the way a prideful Tennesseean who actually lived in Lynchburg might have written them, with the purpose of just talking about life at Jack Daniel's Distillery what was happening there, what was happening in the town? What was happening up in the rickyard? Who's, you know, what new employee had just been hired? It was just little stories about what actually was happening at the at the distillery, delivered in a friendly, conversational, almost self-deprecating way. And we felt that the quiet confidence that those ads had were a part of their appeal. 

 

Lucas: How important was that mix of the magazines that these postcards went into, how important was that in the overall kind of success of the ongoing campaign?  Obviously the messages and the way they were crafted and the imagery that went along with it were very important. But like you said, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and GQ, the mix of magazines that they would appear in, how did that contribute to the overall kind of success of the campaign? 

 

Ted: Well, I think Jack Daniel's is a great example of the power of print advertising, especially when it's done consistently with a consistent look and a consistent place over a long period of time, we felt we had the right message to the right target at the right time, and we supported it. We communicated it consistently, and spent behind it, you know, enough that the message got out there. And Jack Daniel's is a great example of a brand that flew on the wings of print advertising and we were in 40 publications and we always had the right hand side of a spread, which I was... 

 

Lucas:  And the literal physical location of that obviously makes a huge deal and a difference in that message coming across.

 

Ted: Yeah, there was no other advertising on the spread and because we were a big enough advertiser, we were able to demand and get that agreement from the magazines that there'd be no other competitive ad on the spread where we appeared, and I think that that helped gain readership because you knew the people are going to be reading that page, and then they'd see this ad over there on the right and maybe read that as well.

 

Lucas: Yeah, there are some great things in the content and advertising world about evergreen content, things that you can come back to year over year. But if you know, you're the only one creating those messages for X number of years, how did you keep that approach fresh for yourself and not only for yourself but also for the brand, I mean, we think there's going to be a lot of stories that we can get to tell on this show over the years. hopefully, you had a story that you were you were telling, you know, you were seeing some of the same things year over year, how did you keep it fresh?

 

Ted: Well, I don't know if I did keep it fresh, because it's the same, so much the same story right? But you just try to find variations on the theme, and just talk about different things that are going on in the hollow. I never got bored going down to Lynchburg and making photographs and finding words that fit the photo, and it also allowed me to start my own agency. Which is every ad guy's dream, we started in the 80's with Jack Daniel's as a cornerstone account, right and then built other accounts on top of that. But Jack Daniel's was our bedrock. And so continuing the print, doing TV, doing a lot of the below the line, and the Tennessee Squire letters, and that was something that I spent a lot of time on

 

Lucas: Now were you also involved in the rollout and launch for Gentleman Jack, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year?  What were the challenges of launching a brand new brand within this company that had hung its hat obviously on a single product for so long?

 

Ted: Yeah. That was a tricky one, what to say about Gentleman Jack, whether or not to distance it from Jack Daniel's or to tie it in, at first we wanted to just have a brand that was more mellow than Jack but that wasn't something to talk about, because it sounded like it was denigrating the mellowness of Jack itself. So it was tricky to find a message for, but we did a fair amount of consumer research and found that consumers wanted a brand that you know, were very accepting of another brand from Jack Daniel's. Jack Daniel's had so much quality going for it. 

 

Lucas: What was your relationship with the photographers that were creating those images for you? How much direction did you give them personally?  Did you travel with them and just kind of watch them work? Or were you just kind of seeing their their end result and writing to it? 

 

Ted: We would go to Lynchburg with a shot list of photographs that we wanted to get, because they were stories that that I had written and I thought would make good stories, now we needed a picture, so we'd give that to a photographer and the photographers would find the location and the right people and the right props and we'd make that picture, and then that generally would be an ad that worked. Sometimes we'd never find the location. They were already, we'd find the location one year but the weather wasn't right, and some of those locations you had to be there, you know, they were only there for a two-week period. You only had two weeks in which to make that photograph. And if you weren't there, you didn't get that photograph. So we'd come back next year and shoot that, try to get that photograph at the right time, and we always allowed time for the photographers to grab-shoot, and get what they wanted to get. And a lot of them were came up with some terrific stuff that then later I would put words to, but the shot list always came first. Some of the photographs were a romancing of reality. I mean we had sure we had a storage bank over in Tullahoma where we kept props of old country stuff and bib overalls and weathered clothing and just country stuff that kind of made the pictures more interesting, but pretty much we took shots of what was really there and Jack Daniel's is a story about a real place as opposed to say Marlboro Country, which is a state of mind, a total figment of an ad agency's imagination, but still powerful advertising that was very believable. And I know when I saw those cowboys riding around out there in Wyoming, I bought into that imagery. 

 

Lucas: So what were the some of the guiding principles or the keywords that you were using when starting to create the "Postcards from Lynchburg?" What was the guiding light on those?

 

Ted: Actually the Jack Daniel's campaign began as many advertising campaigns do begin, with a creedo, or a set of words that sets the tone for what the advertising will be, and that's something that at the agency we write down, and it's usually just a paragraph or two, but it's something that we all put up on our walls and look at when we're making ads.  And in the case of Jack Daniel's it said this: "Jack Daniel's country is well rounded hills, untroubled skies, elm shaded lanes, and long-shadowed cattle standing in the corners of the meadows, it is old families and flowered front porches, dirt roads, screen doors, sunlight slanting on weathered barns, cowbells that are rung when it's time for dinner, and fresh baked pies simmering in the kitchen. Jack Daniel's is about land, time, a whiskey making tradition. The rhythms of the seasons that mark men's lives and stories that linger in the air to bind the generations. Jack Daniels is America, America is Jack Daniel's, a magical mythical place that beckons American men." and that is sort of the bedrock character of the brand that we tried to put into the advertising that we wrote, especially that last line, "a magical mythical place that beckons American men." It was the place that we were selling, almost more than the whiskey itself.

 

Lucas: Speaking of romanticizing an era, in the last decade a certain popular television show depicting the advertising world in the area which you were coming up in, kind of approached you to talk to them about what that time looked like.  Talk about that experience of working with the show-runners and the writers about the creation of that show.

 

Ted: We went, there was about 20 of us that were picked. 20 of us who actually were in advertising in the late 50's and 60's, and they got our names and asked us to come up to New York and just talk with the writers of that series, and this was before any of the episodes ran. So it was a fun day. We went up and talked to the writers, we were interviewed and they were just pushing primarily for what life was like back in that era, and they were going for stories, funny things that happened primarily, not so much the day-to-day work life, but all the stuff that was going on behind the scenes, who got caught making out with who in the elevator, whatever, and so all of us came up with some stories, and maybe they helped these guys is they created that series, and it was a terrific series. 

 

Lucas: Did you watch it when it was on the air? 

 

Ted: Oh, absolutely, I was addicted to it

 

Lucas: Do you recognize anything that they had taken from your conversation and dramatized? 

 

Ted: I did not, I did not, no, no.

 

Lucas: How do you think they did? Did they capture it well, that kind of spirit of that area? 

 

Ted: Well I'd say maybe it was a little over the top but not a lot over the top, and this was New York and I was in St Louis. So I suspect it was an accurate reflection of young guys, you know coming back from the war and trying to make a living and being very passionate about their jobs and working very hard at what they did, but also having their set of imperfections, as all of us do, and I thought all of that was captured very, very nicely and intelligently in that series 

 

Lucas: In now looking at Jack Daniel's as just as a brand and all the universe of products that have emerged underneath that umbrella these days, what's your opinion of the present and future of this brand?  Obviously, it's in so many countries, it's in so many different forms these days and yet it has maintained that sort of mystique and prestige as the brands have expanded. What's your take on the future of Jack Daniels? 

 

Ted: Well, I think the future for Jack is really good. I think it's still a brand that is positioned for the average, everyday, hard-working American man and woman, and it's not a brand that's all about sophistication. I mean, there are brands that offer that benefit, but Jack is still you know, offers its kind of the "whiskey-est whiskey," the quintessential whiskey, the most popular, the best made, the one that we all drink when we were in college and sit down with our best friends when we want to have a serious conversation. And so a lot of that is carried forward in the package graphics. And that seems to be the case outside the United States as well as in, and they have not scratched the surface in countries like China and India. So the opportunities there are big for the brand and they put that black and white package out on a shelf and no matter where they put it, it seems to have some allure, and so I would say that you know, it's been helped greatly by popular culture, what's happened in culture in the United States and people in foreign countries are buying into that. Some of them are, not everyone, but many, many drinkers overseas buy into the American-ness of Jack and certainly there's no bourbon that's that's more American than Jack Daniel's, right?

 

Lucas: Well Ted Simmons, thank you for giving us a template for us to work off here, and thank you for joining us Around the Barrel. 

 

Ted: Yeah, that was fun, I always like to talk about Jack Daniel's. So that was fun. Enjoyed it. 

 

Lucas: We appreciate your time.

 

Around the Barrel is the official podcast of the Jack Daniel's Distillery, follow the podcast on the web at JackDaniels.com/podcast. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, and review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you gather your on-demand audio. Always remember, with great podcast and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. Join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel. Your friends at Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2018, Jack Daniel's, Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.