• Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 10:50 AM

Phil Rosenthal writes that long before Leonardo Di Caprio dreamed of planting ideas into the deepest reaches of our brains, an ad agency that got its modest start in Chicago 75 years ago this week was doing just that. "Your stream of consciousness includes runoff from [Leo] Burnett brainstorms," he says.

The pantheon of characters created by the agency would include, of course, the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, the Maytag repairman, the Keebler elves, Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and the Pillsbury Doughboy. What a party that would be ... if you didn't succumb to the heebie-jeebies first.

Burnett, a former Peoria Journal reporter who became a vp at Erwin Wasey & Co., borrowed against his life insurance and mortgaged his family's home to launch the shop with some colleagues on Aug. 5, 1935, at 360 N. Michigan Ave. The Green Giant Co. was its first client.

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