Top Ten

Which are the most memorable and effective ads of recent times? Last week Fairfax Mastick Cone, 56, executive committee chairman of Foote, Cone & Belding (annual billings: more than $100 million), listed his favorites of the past decade, limiting the field to magazine ads (he considers them the most demanding) and excluding his agency's campaigns.*"Fax" Cone's top ten:

P: Pillsbury mixes (explained Cone: "This series says as clearly as anyone could, 'You can make a cake just like this' ")

P: Ladies' Home Journal's "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman."

P: Life Savers (said Adman Cone: "How loud can you shout, how much can you claim for a 5-c- candy? Life Savers knows exactly").

P: Hathaway shirts' man-with-the-eye-patch series (probably no other campaign "has been so widely copied in seeking a startling device to break advertising monotony").

P: Columbia Broadcasting System's program advertising ("It depended on simple, authoritative reporting of facts, and it continues to build for CBS a feeling of confidence in its way of saying and doing things").

P: Jell-O ("If the illustrations have changed through the years from molded gelatin desserts and from animals to hungry children to characters out of Andersen and Grimm--and back again to puddings and pie fillings--the personality has never changed. The confidence with which various Jell-O promises have been made has never varied. Even with all the opportunities in more exciting foods, Jell-O advertising has been outstanding in its basic simplicity").

P: Johnson & Johnson baby powder ("The confidence that it inspires extends to all things that bear the maker's label").

P: Polaroid Land camera ads showing pore-fine portraits of famous persons ("It has neither a headline nor a signature. So strong is its personality, so clear is its individualism and its character that it needs neither one").

P: Kraft preserves and jellies ("It leaves nothing to be desired in an advertisement. I only want some of those [as the ad says] 'peaches you see here, grown sweet and tender in the long summer sun, quick-cooked in Kraft's very special way' ").

P: Armstrong linoleum ("It illustrates precisely that a really good approach need never be changed but only varied. Armstrong's promise has never changed. It is what you can do in a house or a room or an attic with imagination and with Armstrong's help").

*Among them: Clairol's seductive "Does she, or doesn't she?", Hallmark Cards' "When you care enough to send the very best."

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