Edward S. Jordan - Advertising Mind

Advertising Mind

However it was Jordan’s flair for turning a phrase that raised his cars above the din of makes that were available to consumers in the 1920s. Automotive writer Beverly Kimes states in the Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1946 that "there had to be a Jordan (automobile) if for no other reason than to allow Ned Jordan the unfettered license in the prose that he chose to extol it. And how the man could write, lyrically, romantically, emotionally."

While major automobile companies wouldn’t embrace automotive styling as a major factor in their cars until the arrival of the LaSalle in 1927, advertising for all automobiles to 1922 was based on extolling the benefits and features of the automobiles themselves. Ned Jordan took another path - towards evocative advertising copy. Jordan’s style and wording captured the feeling of the restless "lost generation" that F. Scott Fitzgerald would gain fame from writing about. The ad that changed the automobile advertising world did so through sweeping prose and lack of detail about the car itself.

Appearing in the June, 1923 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, the ad promoted the Jordan Playboy, with art by Fred Cole showing a car driven by a cloche-wearing flapper hunkered down behind the wheel in abstract fashion, racing a cowboy and the clouds.

"SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting girl who knows what I’m talking about.

"She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome.

"The truth is - the Playboy was built for her.

"Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.

"She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.

"There's a savor of links about that car - of laughter and lilt and light - a hint of old loves - and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing - yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue.

"Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.

"Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight."