page_title: Bill Cosby in advertising
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Cosby in advertising / Career in advertising / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Nat King Cole and Oscar Moore, New York, N.Y., ca. July 1946 (Photograph by William P. Gottlieb)
context_page_description: American comedian Bill Cosby was a popular spokesperson for advertising from the 1960s – before his first starring television role – until the early 2000s. He started with White Owl cigars, and later endorsed Jell-O pudding and gelatin, Coca-Cola, Texas Instruments, E. F. Hutton & Co., Kodak, and the 1990 United States Census. As of 2002, Cosby held the record for being the longest-serving celebrity spokesperson for a product, through his work with Jell-O. In 2011, he won the President's Award for Contributions to Advertising from the Advertising Hall of Fame.
  Cosby was one of the first black people to appear in the United States as an advertising spokesperson. He was known for his appeal to white consumers in the second half of the 20th century, in an industry seen as slow to accept diversity. In spite of making contradictory soft drink pitches and endorsing a disgraced financial company, he continued to be considered effective and believable. In the 1980s, studies found Cosby the "most familiar" and "most persuasive" spokesperson, to the point where Cosby attributed his wealth to these contracts, as opposed to his television series.
context_section_description: The American advertising industry was initially reluctant to use black spokespeople for fear of angering white customers. The Nat King Cole Show (1956-1957), the first nationally syndicated U.S. television series to be hosted by an African American, never found a national sponsor; after its cancellation Cole said, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark".
  Cosby's first advertisement was for White Owl cigars. His agent approached them in 1965, before the debut of I Spy, but after several appearances on the late-night talk program The Tonight Show, a signifier of success in American comedy. He told agent Norman Brokaw of William Morris Agency that he liked their tagline, "We're going to get you." Cosby later said there were no commercials "with a black person holding something, buying a product, so the absence of pictures, in retrospect, said a lot". Despite the stigma among advertisers around using a black spokesperson, sales of the product rose. According to an entry in Ad Age Encyclopedia, the public acceptance of Cosby and Robert Culp appearing as equals on I Spy made it possible for advertisers to show black people and white people together in their commercials.
  The Bill Cosby Radio Program, which debuted in 1968, was sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company. The series was syndicated to over 200 radio stations by McCann Erickson, Coca-Cola's advertising agency.
caption: Nat King Cole plays a piano, 1946, a photo pre-dating his television series.
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