I’m very fortunate to have grown up during the Golden Age of Advertising. That was a time from the mid 1950s until the mid 70s when ad agencies on Madison Avenue were riding high, and promotional messages were based on sound conceptual thinking.

Who could forget Mikey who sold us Life cereal by the carload over 50 years ago? Or Mr. Whipple who made toilet paper a desirable commodity? Effective slogans were common back then, and “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” became household words.

In 1971, the TV ad with “The Crying Indian” opened our eyes to the damage done by pollution and encouraged all of us to be better stewards of our environment. That was a low-budget production that was also very powerful, and the organization, Keep America Beautiful certainly got its money’s worth.

The characters created by Leo Burnett Advertising are some of the greatest ever conceived. Those include, The Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, The Marlboro Man, Charlie Tuna and the Keebler Elves. The Maytag repairman became everyone’s trusted friend, and the Pillsbury Doughboy was a mainstay in American kitchens.

The glorious, minimal ads designed for Volkswagen in the early 1960s are still used as classroom examples in advertising curricula at universities. Doyle Dane Bernbach is the agency that created those award-winning ads, and also coined the memorable name “Beetle”.

But times have changed. Advertising nowadays is nothing but a ridiculous foray into frivolous, glitzy software techniques led by a league of amateurs who couldn’t tie their own shoes by themselves. Conceptual thinking is only found in history books, and products are sold with the empty words, “Two for the price of one”.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see a revival of the glory days in advertising. We now live in a society that’s declining rapidly, and advertising is one more casualty on a long list of many.

Craig Malmrose is a North Carolina resident who is formerly of Bemus Point.