A Cultural History of Advertising

In the early days of MTV, the ad campaigns were less than successful.

"George Lois, a gregarious and legendary adman, was given the task to come up with a slogan for the new tv station. “Now they want their MTV” reminded him of the Maypo cereal commercials from the 1950s and 1960s, in which a petulant kid hollered, “I want my Maypo!”

"When Marky Maypo first appeared on television in 1956, nobody thought he would be a hit. The cereal he pitched was a type of maple flavored hot mush that had been on the market for decades. The man who created him was a former Disney animator who had been blacklisted in the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Even Heublein, the company that owned Maypo, was hoping that Marky would be a failure, so that they would have some substantial losses to write off. But Marky defied the odds and made his mark on a generation of cereal lovers with his timeless warcry, "I want my Maypo!...Much to the shock of the Heublein management, the sixty-second spot was a smash hit. Instead of hurting revenues as planned, the ad increased sales of Maypo "an average of 78 percent . . . and as high as 186 percent in some markets," reported Sponsor, magazine. Millions of kids across America began yelling, "I want my Maypo!"" (http://www.lavasurfer.com/bchof/hof-maypo.html )

 

and did you know that it influenced George Lois to create I want my MTV...

http://idiotsguides.com/static/didyouknow/popculture/08_01_11_mtv.html