Bill Backer, singing one of his foxhunting ditties while accompanying himself at the keyboard, at the National Sporting Library & Museum. / Douglas Lees photoWilliam M. Backer, a foxhunting man who put phrases and tunes on the lips of people in every corner of the globe, died in Warrenton, Virginia on Friday, May 13, 2016, after a short illness.
A member of the Advertising Hall of Fame, Bill Backer created iconic advertising campaigns such as the 1971 Coca Cola commercial featuring his jingle, “I’d like to Teach the World to Sing.” Click for a televised clip of Bill being interviewed for and playing what is arguably the most famous commercial of all time.
Bill added “Miller Time” to the language of those who needed a substitute for “cocktail hour” and created the long-running television argument for Miller Lite: “Tastes Great; Less Filling,” one of the best-liked campaigns in the history of advertising. For Campbell Soup, he persuaded customers that “Soup is good food.”
Bill was a longtime member of the Orange County Hunt (VA) and served on the Board of Stewards for fifty years, part of that time as President. At his Smitten Farm in The Plains, Virginia he bred and raised racehorses and was an active member of the Jockey Club and the Virginia Thoroughbred Association.
He bred numerous stakes winners, but there is one horse he named Guitar, registered him while still a foal to run in the Breeders Cup, but never even bothered to send him to the track. Lucky for your editor. Guitar was my all-time finest hunt horse, and, at age twenty-nine, is a happy, handsome bay whom I hilltopped last season and still hack out because we both love it. Bill remembered Guitar and always asked about him.
A leader in land conservation, Bill Backer donated conservation easements to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation on both Smitten Farm and Salem Farm at the edge of Marshall, Virginia. In the past decade, Mr. Backer served as the President of the Piedmont Foundation, located in Warrenton, Virginia, supporting conservation and The Piedmont Environmental Council.
Beginning in the 1960s, Bill and his neighbors recognized the potential for the loss of the Virginia countryside to sprawling development. He got concerned citizens to participate in early efforts to plan for future growth and conservation in Fauquier County, Virginia. A focal point of the debate at that time was the proposed development of the North Wales estate west of Warrenton, Virginia. He was a long time supporter of the Citizens for Fauquier County (CFFC) and later The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), founded in 1972. In 1974, along with former Senator John Warner, the late George Ohrstrom, and Pete Porter, Mr. Backer produced The Piedmont Virginian, a local newspaper that provided regular updates pertaining to development, conservation, and agricultural issues throughout the 1970s.
Bill’s long involvement with PEC took on national stature during a 1993-1994 debate over the Disney’s America development proposal near Haymarket, Virginia. He encouraged PEC to focus its efforts on alternative locations for a theme park in the Washington metropolitan area that would have less impact on area traffic, air quality, and history, avoiding the sprawling development that occurred in and around Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida and Disneyland, in Anaheim, California. His ideas became known as the “Disney: Take a Second Look Campaign,” which focused on alternative sites and which became the basis for the Coalition for Smarter Growth’s Blueprint for a Better Region, a vision for transit oriented development in the Washington region.
In 2004, Mr. Backer became President of the Piedmont Foundation, which supports The Piedmont Environmental Council. As President, he lead the first capital campaign, raising over $15 million in gifts and pledges, including funding for the Piedmont Memorial Overlook, a conserved open space site adjacent to Sky Meadows State Park and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, with expansive views of over 100,000 acres of conserved land in Fauquier and Loudoun Counties.
In the late 1970s, Bill resigned his position as vice-chairman and creative director of the global advertising agency, McCann Erikson. He felt his duties were taking him too far away from what he entered the business to do, ie., create, help shape, and promote advertising. He left McCann and while mulling over the idea of opening a select “creative” music company, he ran across another McCann resignor, Carl Spielvogel. The result, after much talk and many more meetings, was what Backer termed “a return to the classic agency.” Backer and Spielvogel, was launched June 18, 1979.
According to New York Magazine, “Backer and Spielvogel became the fastest growing agency in ad history. In two years, a name that hadn’t even figured in the agency rankings before, was listed as the twenty-ninth largest among U.S. agencies worldwide and billed more than $200 million. That figure had become nearly $500 million when the agency sold itself to Satchi and Satchi seven years later.”
Born June 9, 1926, in New York, Mr. Backer grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, with his mother Fernanda Legare Waring and sisters Georgette and Nancy. His father William B. Backer died in 1932. His grandfather, George S. Legare, represented the 1st District of South Carolina from 1903-1913 in the U.S. Congress. His sister Nancy Stevenson was the first women to serve as Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina from 1979-1983. After graduating from The Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia and two years of service in the U.S. Navy, he attended Yale University, graduating in 1950. He married Ann Mudge, a public defender at Legal Aid in Manhattan, in 1983. Click for more details.
A memorial service and celebration is planned for early September. The family has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations in memory of William Backer be made to The Piedmont Environmental Council, 45 Horner Street, Warrenton, VA 20188.
May 26, 2016