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Large poster advertising Levy's Bread, appeared in the sixties on New York City Subway's walls. "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's real Jewish Rye," reads the poster, pictured is a non-Jewish American Indian enjoying the bread. The poster appeared with several different nationalities including Asians, Indians, and Afros. Whitey Ruben, owner of Levy's Jewish Rye bread selected DDB for its ad campaign with an annual advertising budget that was less than $50,000, the agency viewed the account as its opportunity to gain attention in the Manhattan advertising community by introducing ethnicity into a marketing campaign. DDB's Levy's campaign elevated the bread maker to the largest seller of rye bread in New York.
William Taubin (copywriter) was inducted in 1981 into the Art Director's Hall of Fame and William Zieff (photographer) went on to direct films in Hollywood, including My Girl, Private Benjamin and The Main Event with Barbara Streisand. In an interview in 2001 regarding these famous images he said, "We wanted normal looking people not blond perfectly proportioned models. I saw the Indian on the street - he was an engineer for the New York Central. The Chinese guy worked in a restaurant and the kid we found in Harlem. They all had great faces. Interesting faces. Expressive faces." These posters were repeatedly copied and parodied by many people. Some of them are part of our nation's permanent collection in the Smithsonian Institution and were featured at the Oakland Museum Poster Exposition in 1999.
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