Subaru Shifting Direction With DDB, Garfinkel

In 1980, a young copywriter at Levine, Schmidt, Huntley & Beaver wrote a Subaru dealer postcard that declared if the U.S. Mail used the rugged little cars, “this postcard would have arrived sooner.”

That copywriter, Lee Garfinkel—now chairman and CCO of Omnicom Group’s DDB in New York—led the team that last week won the car maker’s $165 million creative and media review.

But this is not the same Subaru as it was in 1980, and Garfinkel since then has gone on to create ads for other car lines, notably Mercedes-Benz.