Vintage advertising creative studio with type blocks, photographic prints, camera, and desk lamp.

Leo Burnett Biography: From Journalism to a Chicago Agency

by

On August 5, 1935, Leo Burnett opened a new advertising agency in Chicago with a small staff and three initial clients. The country was still in the Great Depression, and the venture was far from a certain success. Burnett had left an established position to pursue a conviction he later articulated plainly: Chicago could produce advertising as creative and effective as anything made in New York.

A bowl of apples greeted visitors to the new office. The fruit became an agency emblem, while the firm’s work eventually reached far beyond its modest beginnings. Its advertisements would help make the Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, and the Pillsbury Doughboy familiar figures in American commercial culture.

Burnett’s career also encompassed the transformation of Marlboro into a cigarette brand identified with the American cowboy. That campaign demonstrated the reach of his approach to images, but it also made tobacco marketing an unavoidable part of his legacy.

A Quick Look at the Life of Leo Burnett

Biography Summary

Leo Burnett (1891–1971) was an American advertising executive who founded the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago. Beginning in journalism and automobile advertising, he developed a creative philosophy centered on the product’s “inherent drama”: the compelling quality that a simple image or idea could bring into view. He led an agency known for major consumer-brand campaigns, remained influential in its creative work as leadership passed to others, and helped establish a distinctive Chicago tradition in advertising.

Profile

Full Name: Leo Noble Burnett

Born: October 21, 1891

Birthplace: St. Johns, Michigan, United States

Died: June 7, 1971, aged 79

Education: University of Michigan, class of 1914; journalism

Known For: Founding the Leo Burnett Company and advancing visually memorable advertising

Major Roles: Advertising executive, agency founder and creative leader; later founder-chairman

Professional Recognition: Posthumous induction into the ADC Hall of Fame in 1993; inclusion in TIME’s Persons of the Century selections

From a Michigan Storefront to the Newsroom

Burnett’s first experience of commercial messages was close to home. His father, Noble Burnett, ran a dry-goods store in St. Johns, Michigan. Leo saw advertising signs being designed and lettered there, long before he entered the industry professionally. He later recalled watching his father make signs for the shop, an early example of words and images being put to work to attract customers.

At the University of Michigan, Burnett worked on student publications and trained in journalism. After graduating in 1914, he joined the Peoria Journal as a reporter. The transition into advertising came through another form of writing: a company publication at Cadillac Motor Car Company in Detroit.

In 1918, Burnett married Naomi Geddes. He also served for approximately six months in the U.S. Navy during World War I. The couple had three children: Peter, Joseph, and Phoebe.

Cadillac, MacManus, and the Road to Chicago

At Cadillac, Burnett moved from preparing a company publication into advertising responsibilities. Theodore F. MacManus, known for his work on Cadillac advertising, became an important influence. Burnett admired his emphasis on expressing a persuasive idea with clarity.

Burnett later summarized what he took from that example: “MacManus taught me the power of the truth, simply told.” The lesson became a useful reference point for the approach he developed over the following decades.

After his wartime service, Burnett took an advertising-management role with LaFayette Motors in Indianapolis. During the 1920s he moved into agency work at Homer McKee, where he handled automobile accounts. Burnett later credited McKee with influencing his preference for an approachable form of selling that he called the “warm sell.”

The automobile business was an uncertain foundation for a career as the late-1920s financial crisis and declining account prospects disrupted the field. Around 1930, Burnett moved to Chicago for a senior creative position at Erwin, Wasey & Company. In his later recollection, he described leaving Indianapolis as necessary for his own professional advancement.

Among the colleagues Burnett worked with in Chicago was Jack O’Kieffe, who later joined him in establishing a new agency.

Opening an Agency in the Depression

Burnett opened the Leo Burnett Company on August 5, 1935, with a founding group commonly described as eight people. Minnesota Valley Canning, Hoover, and Realsilk Hosiery were among its first clients. The agency had accounts to work on, but little of the scale or security of an established national firm.

He assembled roughly $50,000 in opening capital, taking personal financial risks and bringing in an investor. The company grew gradually as Burnett and his colleagues developed its work and won additional business.

In Burnett’s retrospective account, the founding decision reflected his confidence that he and a small circle of colleagues could give Midwestern advertisers better creative service. His insistence on Chicago was more than a choice of office address. It challenged the idea that national advertising creativity had to be centered in New York.

Over the following years, Burnett gave that new enterprise a distinctive creative direction. He wanted advertisements to find something compelling within a product and communicate it in a form that people would remember.

Finding the Drama in the Product

Burnett called the quality he wanted to uncover a product’s “inherent drama.” Rather than rely on elaborate claims, an advertisement could make its central appeal clear through a strong image or simple idea. This approach became associated with the “Chicago School,” a style of advertising noted for directness and an approachable connection with consumers.

A frequently cited early example came in 1945, when the agency produced an American Meat Institute campaign featuring uncooked red meat against a red background. The unconventional visual approach drew attention to the product itself. It illustrated Burnett’s belief that the right image could carry much of the selling message.

Growing Beyond a Small Chicago Agency

Burnett’s agency gained the Santa Fe Railway account in 1942 and developed important relationships with consumer-goods advertisers, including Pillsbury, Kellogg, and Procter & Gamble, during the 1940s and 1950s. As television advertising grew, its simple visual ideas reached a national audience.

Creative instinct had to work alongside client research. Procter & Gamble’s emphasis on pretesting pressed the agency to become more systematic. Burnett reviewed creative work closely, while writers, artists, researchers, and production teams helped turn ideas into campaigns.

In 1956, the firm moved into Chicago’s Prudential Building. By the late 1950s, annual advertising billings—the value of advertising business the agency handled, not its profits—exceeded $100 million.

The Characters That Made the Agency Recognizable

One of the agency’s earliest assignments was to advertise Minnesota Valley Canning. The company already used a Green Giant character. Burnett’s team reworked that earlier figure into the friendlier, smiling Jolly Green Giant that became widely recognizable.

When Kellogg became a client in 1949, the agency gained another opportunity to give a product a distinctive personality. Tony the Tiger debuted in 1952 for Sugar Frosted Flakes. Art director Eugene Kolkey is principally credited with the original concept, one of the many contributions made by the artists working within Burnett’s agency.

The Pillsbury Doughboy, also known as Poppin’ Fresh, made his debut in 1965. Rudy Perz originated the idea while working at the agency, and Milt Schaffer contributed to its character design. Pillsbury’s corporate history also describes Perz pitching the concept to Leo Burnett and receiving his approval. Additional production and animation work helped turn the concept into a finished advertising character.

Charlie the Tuna and the Maytag Repairman also became associated with the firm. Such campaigns gave the agency a reputation for translating brands into recognizable personalities, with different creative teams developing the ideas.

The Marlboro Cowboy and a Complicated Success

The agency’s influence extended beyond cheerful product mascots. In 1954, Philip Morris sought to change Marlboro’s image from a filtered cigarette historically associated with women to one appealing to men. Burnett and his colleagues, including Draper Daniels, participated in developing a new advertising direction.

The campaign launched in 1955 with photographs of masculine figures, among them a cowboy. Over time the cowboy became the dominant figure. The broader western landscapes and identity of “Marlboro Country” followed in the early 1960s; the Smithsonian dates the named Marlboro Country campaign to 1963.

The repositioning became a major commercial success. Marlboro grew into a dominant cigarette brand, and its cowboy imagery became one of the best-known examples of image-driven marketing. The campaign developed over years through the work of Philip Morris and Burnett’s agency.

That achievement had a profound public-health counterpoint. The 1964 U.S. Surgeon General’s report established major dangers of cigarette smoking, including its connection to lung cancer. Marlboro’s compelling imagery helped promote a harmful product. The campaign remains a case in which exceptional advertising effectiveness and the consequences of tobacco promotion must be considered together.

In 1965, after The New Yorker told Burnett it would stop accepting cigarette advertisements, he objected. In his reply, he argued that he could judge advertised products for himself.

An Editor of Ideas and the Handoff of Leadership

As the agency expanded, Burnett continued to review copy and concepts closely. Colleagues remembered his exacting eye, while Burnett described much of his own contribution as identifying ideas, encouraging talented people, and editing their work. His creative leadership increasingly depended on the work of the larger organization.

In 1967, Burnett stepped away from top day-to-day management and became founder-chairman. Philip “Phil” Schaff took over as chairman and chief executive. The change separated formal executive responsibility from the founder’s continuing presence; Burnett still visited the office and retained an informal creative influence.

On December 1, 1967, he delivered a farewell address remembered as “When to Take My Name off the Door.” It described the circumstances in which he believed the company should stop using his name. Among his concerns was a future when colleagues spent “more time trying to make money and less time making advertising.”

For Burnett, the name on the door stood for creative ambition, integrity, and respect for the people who made the advertising. Those were the standards he asked his successors to uphold.

International Expansion and His Final Years

With day-to-day leadership in other hands, the company continued expanding. In 1969, it merged with the London Press Exchange, extending the agency’s international network. Burnett was initially hesitant about the transaction but ultimately supported it, according to a later account of the firm’s history.

He continued visiting the agency in 1971. On June 7 of that year, after spending part of the day working, Burnett died of a heart attack at his home near Lake Zurich, Illinois. He was 79.

The agency Burnett left behind was far larger than the venture of 1935. A contemporary obituary reported $389 million in billings for 1970.

A Legacy of Creative Influence and Uneasy Questions

Burnett received recognition after his death, including induction into the ADC Hall of Fame in 1993 and a place among TIME’s late-1990s selections of notable twentieth-century figures. His emphasis on memorable symbols and readily understood images became an influential part of how advertising history described the Chicago School.

That influence has also drawn criticism. Advertising historian Stuart Ewen credited Burnett with making visual symbols central to modern marketing while questioning the consequences of persuasive methods that can work around an audience’s critical judgment. The Marlboro campaign makes the tension especially concrete: a powerful and durable advertising idea was used to promote cigarettes.

The organization bearing Burnett’s name continued to evolve after his death. In 2002, Publicis acquired Bcom3, the agency’s holding-company parent. On January 14, 2025, Publicis announced Leo, a combined creative network uniting Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide.

Burnett’s influence can be seen in the agency’s memorable characters and its use of simple images to give products an identity. Marlboro offers the more troubling side of that achievement. Together, these campaigns show both the reach of his advertising philosophy and the importance of what such persuasive work is used to promote.

Timeline

These milestones trace Burnett’s career and the agency’s major developments, with selected later events showing how his name continued to be used.

Timeline.

1891

Leo Burnett is born on October 21 in St. Johns, Michigan.

1914

Graduates from the University of Michigan and begins his professional career in journalism before moving into Cadillac’s publications and advertising work.

1918–1920s

Marries Naomi Geddes in 1918 and serves in the U.S. Navy during World War I. Works for LaFayette Motors and later the Homer McKee agency in Indianapolis.

Around 1930

Moves into a senior creative role at Erwin, Wasey & Company in Chicago.

1935

Opens the Leo Burnett Company on August 5 with a small founding team and early clients including Minnesota Valley Canning, Hoover, and Realsilk Hosiery.

1942–1945

The agency wins the Santa Fe Railway account in 1942 and produces the American Meat Institute’s striking red-on-red meat campaign in 1945.

1949–1952

Kellogg becomes an agency client in 1949. Tony the Tiger, based on an original concept credited to Eugene Kolkey, debuts in 1952.

1954–1955

Philip Morris commissions Marlboro’s repositioning; the new campaign launches with masculine imagery, including the cowboy.

1956

The agency relocates to Chicago’s Prudential Building.

1963–1965

The named Marlboro Country campaign is dated to 1963. The U.S. Surgeon General’s landmark smoking report appears in 1964. The Pillsbury Doughboy debuts in 1965.

1967

Burnett becomes founder-chairman as Phil Schaff assumes top executive leadership. On December 1, Burnett delivers “When to Take My Name off the Door.”

1969

The agency merges with the London Press Exchange, broadening its international organization.

1971

Burnett dies on June 7, aged 79, at his home near Lake Zurich, Illinois.

1993–1999

Burnett is inducted posthumously into the ADC Hall of Fame in 1993 and receives recognition in TIME’s Persons of the Century project in the late 1990s.

2002

Publicis acquires Bcom3, the holding-company parent of the Leo Burnett agency.

2025

Publicis announces Leo, a combined creative network uniting Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide.

FAQs

Question: Why did Leo Burnett start his own advertising agency in Chicago?

Answer: Burnett believed creative advertising did not have to be centered in New York. After working in Detroit, Indianapolis, and Chicago, he opened his own Chicago agency in 1935 with colleagues and clients who joined his venture. His explanation of the decision came from a later recollection of what he hoped the agency could do.

Question: Did Leo Burnett personally create Tony the Tiger and the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Answer: Both characters came from the agency he founded, but their individual creation involved other people. Eugene Kolkey is principally credited with Tony the Tiger’s original concept. Rudy Perz conceived the Pillsbury Doughboy, with Milt Schaffer among the artists who developed its appearance; Burnett approved Perz’s pitch.

Question: Did his agency invent the Jolly Green Giant?

Answer: The Green Giant identity existed before Minnesota Valley Canning hired the Leo Burnett agency. The agency transformed the earlier character into the friendlier, smiling Jolly Green Giant known from later advertising.

Question: How did the Marlboro Man differ from Marlboro Country?

Answer: The Marlboro campaign introduced several masculine figures, including a cowboy, in 1955. The cowboy became central, and the later Marlboro Country campaign expanded that imagery into a broader western setting. The Smithsonian dates the named Marlboro Country campaign to 1963.

Question: What did Burnett mean by “When to Take My Name off the Door”?

Answer: In his December 1, 1967 farewell address, Burnett described situations in which he believed the agency would no longer deserve his name. He emphasized creative standards, professional integrity, and respect for colleagues rather than an exclusive focus on money or size.

Question: How did the Leo Burnett agency change after his death?

Answer: After Burnett died in 1971, the agency underwent later changes in ownership and structure. Publicis acquired its parent company, Bcom3, in 2002. In January 2025, Publicis announced a new creative network called Leo, uniting Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide.

Interviews

Chicago Stories: The Real Mad Men of Chicago

This WTTW/PBS documentary brings together historians and firsthand voices, including people with connections to the agency’s history. It places Burnett’s career within Chicago advertising and explores the people and collaborations behind the well-known campaigns. The recollections also help viewers distinguish a founder’s influence from the work of creative teams.

Watch the documentary

Leo Burnett’s 1967 Farewell Address

“When to Take My Name off the Door” is Burnett’s own statement of the standards he wanted associated with the agency. Delivered on December 1, 1967, the address focuses on creative work, colleagues, and integrity during his transition out of top daily management. The agency-hosted reproduction includes the speech text and video material.

Read or view the address

Sources