Neil Drossman, Adman Who Sold With a Smile, Is Dead at 83

Neil Drossman, who introduced a cheeky wit and a tireless work ethic to the award-winning print commercials and tv commercials he wrote for purchasers like Meow Mix cat meals, Teacher’s Scotch whisky and 1-800-Flowers, died on Nov. 25 within the Bronx. He was 83.

His son, Edward, mentioned he died of prostate most cancers in a hospital.

From the late Nineteen Sixties till this 12 months, Mr. Drossman was a copywriter and an govt at a number of businesses, some run by the promoting guru Jerry Della Femina and a few he helped run himself.

“He was one of the smartest people I know, very low key, and he had a passion,” Mr. Della Femina, who employed Mr. Drossman at Della Femina, Travisano & Partners within the early Nineteen Seventies, mentioned in a telephone interview. “He really wanted to win.”

One of essentially the most enduring traces Mr. Drossman wrote was for Meow Mix: “Tastes so good, cats ask for it by name.” That got here on the finish of commercials through which cats appeared to sing (“Meow meow meow meow/Meow meow meow meow”) for his or her hen and seafood.

For Stick Ups, small deodorizing disks made by Air Wick that could possibly be glued wherever in the home, he wrote commercials that had the punchline “This is a good place for a Stick Up.”

For a 1-800-Flowers print advert, Mr. Drossman wrote: “There are 800 reasons for sending flowers. Guilt is 700 of them.”

And for Chemical Bank, to ship the message that every of its branches served its neighborhood otherwise, he wrote, “Flatbush ain’t Flushing.” The line that adopted — “Flatbush is the ghost of Ebbets Field and Jackie Robinson stealing home” — was private: It harked again to his upbringing in Brooklyn, his love for the Dodgers and his anger at their transfer to Los Angeles when he was an adolescent.

Paul Kruger, a artistic director and accomplice at Della Femina Advertising, the place Mr. Drossman labored till just lately, described him as indefatigable.

“He was an idea machine,” Mr. Kruger mentioned. “He would spit out line after line after line and come up with new stuff. He’d say, ‘One more thought, one more thought.’”

In 1973 and 1974, Mr. Drossman ghostwrote full-page testimonials for Teacher’s Scotch within the voices of celebrities like Groucho Marx, George Burns and Mel Brooks. The Brooks advert was written as an interview with Mr. Brooks’s character the two,000 Year Old Man.

“Sir, when was Scotch discovered?”

“It was during the Ice Age. We had so many tons of ice, we didn’t know what to do. So we made drinks, all kinds of drinks.”

The Teacher’s marketing campaign gained Della Femina, Travisano a Clio Award for artistic excellence in promoting. It additionally earned Mr. Drossman a writing award from what’s now the One Club for Creativity.

Mr. Drossman and his colleagues earned Clio Awards in 1980 for 3 campaigns — for Air Wick Stick Ups, Meow Mix and the carpet retailer Einstein Moomjy. His Emery Air Freight advertisements (“It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your package is?”) gained an award from the One Club in 1978.

Neil Arthur Drossman was born on Feb. 26, 1940, in Brooklyn. His father, Edward, owned a jewellery retailer. His mom, Anne (Rosenberg) Drossman, labored on the retailer and took over after her husband died in 1971.

After graduating from Alfred University in upstate New York with a bachelor’s diploma in English in 1961, Mr. Drossman labored at CBS News earlier than starting his promoting profession. Among the businesses he labored for had been Daniel & Charles, Delehanty Kurnit & Geller and Kurtz, Kambanis & Symon.

Mr. Della Femina recalled his response to seeing advertisements Mr. Drossman had written for different businesses. “You look at an ad and you say, ‘I wish I had done that,’” he mentioned. “His portfolio was full of ads like that.”

After working at Della Femina, Travisano and a subsidiary, Drossman Yustein Clowes, for a couple of dozen years, Mr. Drossman fashioned Drossman Lehmann Marino Reveley in 1983. In 1994, he joined Ryan & Partners as an fairness accomplice, and the company turned Ryan Drossman & Partners. In 2002, he and the artwork director Bob Needleman began Needleman Drossman & Partners, which turned a division of Della Femina Advertising.

When Reader’s Digest employed Needleman Drossman in 2003 to refresh its picture, Mr. Drossman pushed that venerable publication into barely risqué territory. One of the advertisements within the marketing campaign confirmed a lady in a bathrobe holding a duplicate of the journal and looking out into the digital camera.

“If we got any closer to our readers,” the headline learn, “we’d have to use protection.”

Mr. Drossman, then the chairman and co-creative director of his company, mentioned the aim of the marketing campaign was “to make people think twice about the Digest.”

In addition to his son, he’s survived by his spouse, Ellen (Danor) Drossman; his daughter, Jill Drossman; his sister, Phyllis Bulhack; and three grandchildren. He lived in Manhattan.

Not all of Mr. Drossman’s copywriting was humorous. In 2008, in a business extolling Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey for rating amongst America’s 50 finest hospitals, a younger boy was proven enjoying alone with a glove and a baseball.

“If every hospital performed that well,” the narrator says, “hundreds of thousands of lives would be saved. Who knows, maybe Finn wouldn’t be alone now. Maybe he’d be having a catch with his grandfather.”