Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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More than an artist
I worked at Scotts for 24 years. During that time, I worked with a lot of talented artists and graphic designers. Some were Scotts employees, while others were ad agency people. But they all had one thing in common – they were art specialists, and they didn’t often venture into other areas.
During that time, however, I worked with one artist whose talents went far beyond his artistic skills. His name was Don Blass, and I think a lot of readers will remember him from his years in Marysville.
Before coming to Scotts, he worked at the Columbus Dispatch as a graphic artist. But the newspaper officials soon recognized that he had other talents as well. They wanted to develop European tours for their readers, and Don was asked to spearhead the project. He traveled through Europe and developed sightseeing tours for Dispatch readers. Then he came back and created ads to sell the tours. He even accompanied the sightseers, as the tour leader.
A few years later, he came to Scotts, and we began working together. I wrote copy for print ads, and Don created the layouts. At the same time, the lion’s share of Scotts corporate advertising dollars was spent on TV ads. The commercials ran in markets all over the country. The ads were placed by a New York advertising agency. The management at Scotts realized there were great savings to be made by creating an “in-house” agency.
So that’s what they did. It was called the “Weimer” Agency, and Don was asked to lead it. He did everything from selecting the markets where each commercial would run to selecting the channels and time slots. He even booked the commercials himself. He was a one-man ad agency, and in the process he saved Scotts a bundle of money that went right to the bottom line.
As a personal note, his birthday cards were one of my favorite memories of him. He sent me a birthday card every year, not a card he bought in a store, but a card he made himself. And each one involved something that Don and I were doing at the time.
For example, in 1973, Don and I were part of a group of Scotts guys who played volleyball every Wednesday night in the gym of Trinity Lutheran School. I don’t think any of us were really great volleyball players, but some of our games got pretty competitive. In my efforts to spike the ball, I often jammed some fingers. That was really painful, so I started putting wooden splints on the jammed fingers. Don thought that was pretty funny, so the volleyball caricature he put on my card (shown above) contains all those splintered fingers.
His cartoon character was pretty accurate. I was a tall skinny guy with a mustache and a mop of hair. And if you look closely, you can even see the splints on my fingers.
Don Blass was a multi-talented artist. He was also a pretty good volleyball player.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at
williamboyd514@gmail.com