Monday 29th December 1958

Edward S. (Ned) Jordan (77), American entrepreneur, automotive industrialist and pioneer in evocative advertising copy, died. He is most remembered as a pioneer in evocative advertising copy, which he wrote and used to advertise the automobiles produced by the Jordan Motor Car Company of Cleveland. Jordan’s June 1923 advertisement for the company’s Somewhere West of Laramie for the Jordan Playboy, is considered a breakthrough in the art of writing advertising copy:
“SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there’s a bronco-busting girl who knows what I’m talking about.
“She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome.
“The truth is – the Playboy was built for her.
“Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.
“She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.
“There’s a savor of links about that car – of laughter and lilt and light – a hint of old loves – and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing – yet a graceful thing for the sweep o’ the Avenue.
“Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.
“Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.”