Ad Man Made Longs a Part of Our Day

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Hawaii Aloha Travel > Blog > Ad Man Made Longs a Part of Our Day

JAMES WINPENNY III • 1935-2009

By Erika Engle Reposted from The Star Bulletin

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, May 14, 2009

Longtime advertising man Jim Winpenny died Tuesday of congestive heart failure and emphysema at Straub Clinic & Hospital, his daughter Shannon said. He was 73.

An award-winning advertising copy writer and creative director, Winpenny’s career stretched from New York’s legendary J. Walter Thompson agency to large and small Hawaii agencies. He was the creative talent behind many long-running and memorable slogans, jingles and campaigns.

He wrote “You call it the world, we call it home” — a slogan Pan American World Airways used internationally — and “Make Longs a part of your day,” jingle lyrics he crafted decades ago for Longs Drugs that are still in use.

He also worked for the political campaigns of Govs. George Ariyoshi and John Waihee, and U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka and former Sen. Spark Matsunaga.

Under the pen name Winvelle James, he won Hawaii Publishers Association Pa’i Awards for “Man on the Street” editorial cartoons in Island Business magazine, of which his late-wife, Mary, was the longtime publisher. She died April 24, 2007.

He wrote online that his career started in the “volatile, breakout decade for advertising in the New York ‘60s.”

He loved the show “Mad Men” about Madison Avenue advertising executives of the time, but “he never actually told me” with which character he most identified — “maybe the handsome pretty boy, the creative director,” daughter Karen said.

Born in Pennsylvania, Winpenny came to Hawaii in 1971 to visit his father, retired sportswriter James Bolton Winpenny II, “and never left,” she said.

He started his own business in the late 1980s and “he found the 25th hour in the day.… I don’t think he ever slept when he had a project,” said Marty Schiller, of The Schiller Agency LLC.

“He loved working on political campaigns and he had an analytical mind when it came to, ‘What should we say and how should we say it.’ He was good. He was good,” Schiller said.

Winpenny was not a limelight seeker, said Richard Ma, owner of Presentation Resources.

“He certainly has contributed a lot to the ad community,” but was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy whose “work always had an understated elegance.”

Although long retired, Winpenny was lead blogger for online travel agency hawaii-aloha.com. He compiled his posts into “The Hawaii Vacation Playbook,” an e-book that went on sale about 10 days ago.

Winpenny is survived by daughters Karen and Shannon; son James “Jamie”; hanai son Kevin Muir; sisters Louise, of Missouri, and Angela, of Florida; and hanai granddaughter Camille Muir. Services are pending.

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