Remembering Legendary Ad Exec, Diane Rothschild

Legendary advertising executive Diane Rothschild, whose work at DDB and her own Grace & Rothschild for Volkswagen, J&B and Land Rover was iconic, has lost her battle with lung cancer.

As I began my career in advertising, Rothchild's work to launch Land Rover was inspirational. It showed me how advertising could be highly targeted, but universally appreciated. I never met an advertising connoisseur that didn't hold her work in high regard. The Land Rover campaign became a Harvard Business School case study.

Rothschild was a copywriter by trade, of the ilk of David Ogilvy. She began her ad career in 1967 at Doyle Dane Bernbach eventually becoming creative director and then serving on the agency's New York board of directors.

In 1986, she joined with her DDB creative partner, Roy Grace, to start Grace & Rothschild in New York. That shop launched the first campaign for Land Rover and Range Rover, which inaugurated the SUV category.

Adweek notes that one print ad showed four pictures of a white Range Rover that started out caked in mud and after being cleaned was scratch and dent free. The copy read: "Everything you hear about a Range Rover is true." Another ad showed a Range Rover driving through a stream. The copy read: "We brake for fish."

Artist Chuck Close, Rothschild's friend for 25 years, is quoted in Adweek as saying, "She was as compassionate and thoughtful and caring a person as anyone I've ever known. She was one of my only Republican friends. If there's such a thing as a compassionate conservative, she was one because she really cared about people."

Comments

[STU HYATT]

Diane was my ex-wife and best, best frend over the past 40 years. The Chuck Close apercus says it as well as it could be said. (I could do without the conservative dis. as could Diane )

I've had the priviledge of knowing a lot of people you could care about or admire. However.in my book,Diane is all by herself