Len Sirowitz, an award-winning advertising art director whose creative work in the 1960s included memorable print ads for the Volkswagen Beetle—one of which said, “Ugly is only skin deep”—and a campaign for Mobil in which a car into a 10-story building to highlight the dangers of speeding, died March 4 at his Manhattan home. It was 91.
His daughter, Laura Sirowitz, confirmed the death.
Mr. Sirowitz joined the influential advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, known as DDB, in 1959, at the age of 27, and spent the next 11 years at the company capturing the look of advertising for many accounts with spirit and passion.
“It was pretty early in my career that I started to realize that my message not only had to be bold and daring, but it had to come from the truth… and touch people’s emotions,” he told Dave Dye, who runs the advertising blog From the Loft, in 2015.
Volkswagen was perhaps Mr. Sirowitz’s most important account, and the homegrown Beetle, nicknamed the “Bug,” was the muse of the car and copywriter Robert Levenson. Their collaborations for the German automaker included the commercial “Will We Ever Kill the Bug?” in which they placed a beetle turned up on its roof, like a dead bug. The answer to the question: “Never.” (Though, after a few shots of the car, its roof collapsed.)
The pair also devised an ad showing a motley Beetle made of green and beige fenders, a blue hood and a turquoise door, which were cobbled together by models between 1958 and 1964. The ad highlighted the ease with which owners could find spare parts.
For Sara Lee, Mr. Sirowitz and Mr. Levenson created a television ad in which people faced annoyances like haircuts and traffic jams, then consoled themselves with a piece of the company’s pie, presenting a constant jingle: “Everybody doesn’t like something / But nobody likes Sarah Lee.”
For Mobil’s public newspaper and television commercials on highway safety, Mr. Sirowitz explained how a 60 mph crash would have the same impact as a car falling 10 stories. “And it will take you to exactly the same place – the morgue,” said the narrator.
Another TV ad for Mobil showed a couple chasing in a car as the man drives against the blinding lights of oncoming traffic, eventually leading to a crash. A narrator says: “We at Mobil sell petrol and oil. We are for driving and love, but not at the same time.”
And for the Better Vision Institute, an association of lens and frame manufacturers, Mr. Sirowitz did dozens of promotions that ran in Life magazine persuading people to get their eyes checked more often. One particularly dramatic ad ran in all black with copy by Leon Meadows that read: “This is how yellow daisies on a green field against a blue sky look to many Americans.”
Bob Isherwood, former global creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, called Mr. Sirowitz a “heroic art director” for his flow of fresh ideas and diverse approaches.
“It was just an idea he put on the page,” he said in a telephone interview. “When you see ads like this, you think, ‘Oh my God, I wish I had done that.’
Leonard Sirowitz was born on June 25, 1932 in Brooklyn. His father, Avraham Sirovich, immigrated from the Ukraine in 1905 and held various jobs, including taxi driver and jewelry polisher. His mother, Sadie (Schoenwetter) Sirowitz, ran the household.
Mr. Sirowitz’s passion for design led to study at the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan at age 12 and, two years later, acceptance to the High School of Music and Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). There, he met his future wife, Myrna Florman, a music student known as Mickey, when he was 17 and she was 14.
Mr. Sirowitz graduated in 1953 from Pratt Institute with a degree in advertising. He spent the next two years in the Army, mostly at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and married Miss Florman during his tour of duty in January 1955. She survives, along with his daughter. a son, Michael; and a grandson.
After his discharge from the military, Mr. Sirowitz worked at the pharmaceutical advertising agency LW Frohlich as well as Gray Advertising, CBS and Channel 13, New York’s public television station.
As well as working for DDB’s commercial clients such as Sony, where Mr Sirowitz created a whimsical campaign based on the portability of its four-inch wide TV, he also took up political causes as a volunteer.
A 1965 full-page newspaper ad for the National Committee for a Sound Nuclear Policy featured a cockroach on a white background with the headline: “The Winner of World War III.”
Another ad in 1968, for the Coalition for a Democratic Alternative, carried, in huge letters, the headline “For what?” Underneath it, text by Dave Reider, a columnist, described the hopelessness of the Vietnam War, called for President Lyndon B. Johnson to resign, and argued that Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is the Democratic nominee for president.
Mr. Sirowitz was DDB’s senior vice president and associate creative director when he left in 1970 to start his own agency, Harper Rosenfeld Sirowitz as co-president and co-creative director. (He was renamed several times over the years.) By then he had been voted Art Director of the Year for 1968 and 1970 in national polls by Ad Weekly. He was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1985.
His agency clients included Swissair, McDonald’s, Smith Corona and Royal Caribbean Cruises. However, in 1995, the firm closed after losing several accounts, and Mr. Sirowitz joined the agency Ryan Drossman & Partners as a vice president.
He soon retired and returned to the Art Students League, where he painted large-scale nude portraits four days a week.
“I strive for bold, dramatic interpretations of the model’s pose, drawn with spontaneous sweeping lines, and most importantly it must be part of a strong, well-designed composition,” he told the foundation’s magazine, Lines from the League, in 2012. -13 issue.
His compositional style was evident in his advertising campaigns, including one in 1991 for America West Airlines, in which he played improvisational comedian Jonathan Winters—appearing tough and wearing camouflage—in a parody of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who had recently commanded American troops in the Gulf War.
The ad stated “Announcing Air Superiority for Civilians” and offered up to 40 percent off airline tickets.
The campaign, however, was criticized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization for being in bad taste, and America West soon after filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
“To me, great advertising should make your palms sweat,” Mr. Sirowitz told The Associated Press. “America West is the smallest of the major airlines. We wanted to do the kind of advertising that would put them on the map in one fell swoop.”
