Howie Cohen, whose Alka-Seltzer ads became a source of slogans, dies at 81

Advertising copywriter Howie Cohen often said he had a congenital indigestion. So perhaps it was natural that in the 1970s he and a colleague at the ad agency would come up with a catchy slogan that not only sold more Alka-Seltzer but also became a punchline in American pop culture: “I can’t believe I ate all of it.”

This bedside lament by comedian and dialectician Milt Moss — he really said it This thing on camera — transferred from a 30-second TV ad to sweatshirts, supermarket windows and even church marquees.

It turned out to be even more popular than “Try it, you’ll like it,” was the first Alka-Seltzer advertising slogan, which Mr. Cohen came up with with his business partner, Bob Pasqualina, art director of the Wells Wealthy Greene agency in Manhattan.

Mr. Cohen, who helped popularize products and companies such as Petco (“Where the Animals Go”) and the fast-food chain Jack in the Box (exploding his clown mascot in a TV ad announcing a novel, more sophisticated menu), died on March 2 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.

His death, which was not much talked about at the time, It was announced On Facebook, his brother, Jerry, stated that the cause of the illness was cancer.

Alka-Seltzer’s original advertising had already been a success in the 1950s and ’60s. It introduced the Speedy mascot and its “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle. It introduced “bellies” to TV ads. And it played on cultural stereotypes (“that’s a peppery meatball”), offending some viewers. But by the early ’70s, sales were sinking.

Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pasqualina, who recently joined Wells Wealthy Greene, were tasked with creating a campaign that would run until the agency developed a long-term strategy to make the Alka-Seltzer brand a household name again.

Mr. Cohen recalled in his 2019 memoir that the two popular ads, which the partners conceived in 1972, were inspired by his upbringing in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the East Bronx.

As he himself wrote, the slogan “try it” came from a request from his mother, who, during dinner, asked him to eat the liver and onions that regularly congealed untouched on his plate.

“We only had 30 seconds, so we couldn’t make it too complicated,” Cohen told The Up-to-date York Times in 1972. “One of us had this idea: ‘Try it, you’ll like it.’ We kept saying it over and over again because we couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the repetition became a habit.”

In the ad, Jack Aaron, a stage actor who has appeared in commercials, plays a man sitting in a restaurant and talking about a meal he once ate—which turned out to be indigestible—at the urging of a waiter who kept saying, “Try it, you’ll like it.”

“I used to work part-time as a waiter,” Mr. Aaron told The Times in 1972. “Now I eat at Sardi’s and the waiters say, ‘Try it, you’ll like it.'”

If “try” was inspired by Mr. Cohen’s abstinence, “the whole thing” came from his overeating. He, Mr. Pasqualina and the production team were in London, gorging themselves at an Italian dinner hosted by director Milos Forman, who had shot the Diet Rite cola ad that the two admen had created.

“I’m a nice Jewish kid from the Bronx, so I ate everything until I couldn’t fit any more in my body,” Mr. Cohen often recalled. “I leaned back in my chair and said, ‘I can’t believe I ate everything.’ And my wife said, ‘Here’s your next Alka-Seltzer commercial.’”

In the ad, a woman trying to sleep urges her pajama-clad husband, who is groaning on the edge of their bed, to take two Alka-Seltzer tablets to settle his stomach after overeating. She repeats the “whole thing” line over and over.

Both ads were honored in the Clio Awards Hall of Fame.

A marketing study found that about 85 percent of Americans recognized Alka-Seltzer by its “whole thing” slogan, which was later immortalized in the game Insignificant Pursuit and the animated television series “The Simpsons.”

“They say the best lines come from the heart,” Cohen wrote in his 2019 book I Can’t Believe I Lived the Whole Thing: A Memoir From the Golden Age of Advertising. “’I can’t believe I ate all that’ came out of my stomach.”

Mary Wells Lawrence, one of the founders of Wells Wealthy Greene and Mr. Cohen’s mentor, described Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pasqualina as “two of the most talented people we’ve ever had.”

Mrs. Wells Lawrence, who died in May, wrote in her memoirs that earlier Alka-Seltzer ads were attention-grabbing and entertaining but “were not as believable, as sincerely forthright, and therefore not as convincing as the sweet, entertaining Howie and Bob ads — especially the ‘I Ate the Whole Thing.’

Howard Stephen Cohen was born on September 25, 1942, in the Bronx, the son of Samuel and Jeannette Cohen. The elder Cohen owned a steel-working business that he had inherited from his father.

Howie Cohen wrote in his memoir that he grew up in a one-room apartment next to an elevated train. When he was 13, he received a tape recorder as a bar mitzvah gift and began producing commercials. After graduating from Up-to-date Rochelle High School in Westchester County, he attended the University of Miami and earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Up-to-date York University.

Destined to inherit his father’s company but unwilling to do so, he applied to advertising agencies and in 1965 got a job as a trainee in the photocopy department of Volkswagen’s Doyle Dane Bernbach.

He joined Wells Wealthy Greene in 1967; left to start his own firm with Mr. Pasqualina; returned to Wells Wealthy Greene as chief original officer; became president of the Los Angeles office; and started another agency with adman Mark Johnson, which he sold to Phelps Group in 1997. He remained a partner and chief original officer until his retirement in 2017. He also wrote a blog called Mad Mensch.

In addition to his brother, the deceased is survived by his wife, Carol (Trifari) Cohen, whom he married in 1972; two children, Jonathan and Johanna; a stepdaughter, Cristina; and a granddaughter.

In 2012, Google asked Mr. Cohen to design a novel version of its “I Can’t Believe I Ate Everything” ad. 21st century digital version.

“I look at the tools and technologies we have online and I see invigorating novel ways to express ideas,” he said. Los Angeles Times. “But emotion will always trump algorithms. Advertising is about connecting in a human way.”