Track Ad Places Last in Facts

In promoting Yonkers Raceway’s 40th anniversary, an ad agency had more trouble getting the right facts than a bettor might have trying to figure out the winner of a harness race.

“The year is 1950, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower is President,” according to an ad prepared by the Lipman, Richmond, Greene ad agency and broadcast on New York radio stations. “The Army-McCarthy hearings are going full blast.”

Wrong, and wrong again. Harry Truman was President in 1950. The Army-McCarthy hearings began in 1954.

A corrected ad was broadcast. Truman replaced Eisenhower, and Bobby Thomson’s famous home run for the New York Giants replaced the hearings.

Nope.

Thomson’s “shot heard ‘round the world” resounded in 1951.

“So, we were off by a year or two here and there,” said a beleaguered Richard Lipman, head of the agency.

The first two mistakes were made by an agency employee, Lipman said. The Thomson date was provided by the raceway. In the end, a third version of the commercial dropped the reference to Thomson and did not replace it.

“We finally gave up on trying to be factual,” Lipman said.