In 1914 Cadillac introduced its first eight-cylinder automobile in a bid to outstrip the V-6 Packard. But the new model was prone to short circuits and fires. Theodore McManus, the star copywriter for General Motors, devised a unique advertisement to compensate for the bad publicity surrounding the Cadillac. An ad with no mention of General Motors or Cadillac ran once in the 2 January 1915 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It read in part, "In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity . . . when a man's work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. . . . There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions — envy, fear, greed, and ambition, and the...