Linda Kaplan Thaler Looks Back at the Aflac Duck, Toys ‘R’ Us Jingle & ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ Ads

After working a lifetime in advertising and marketing — creating unforgettable campaigns like Clairol’s “Yes! Yes! Yes!”; the Aflac duck; Kodak’s memorable moment; and the Toys ‘R’ Us song — Linda Kaplan Thaler is sharing her wisdom in her funny and deeply personal memoir, My Life in 30 Seconds.

Kaplan markets her book as “bite-sized wisdom from a lifetime in advertising,” but it’s far more than that. She gets that the world’s attention span is shrinking, and today we’re giving things only about eight seconds before we turn to the next “squirrel” looking to capture our attention. There’s something wonderfully performative of her writing style, almost like you’re watching a really good stand-up comedian who’s doling out their story beat by beat, and you are leaning in to get to the punchline.

Kaplan grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s, and she remains proud to be part of the 1.5 million who made up the “have-nots” of the community. Her family wasn’t wealthy, but she lacked for nothing and took full advantage of the public school system that offered her an opportunity via the City College of New York.

In My Life in 30 Seconds, Kaplan playfully introduces us to her humble beginnings, sharing her stories in, of course, bite-size chunks that allow readers to easily dip in and out at leisure. She starts with her work on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and an awkward wrong-person phone conversation, followed by an internship at a law firm where she made a massive slip-up. Each experience becomes a reflection on life, culminating in a thoughtful, relatable affirmation.

A favorite: “One of the smartest things you can do is to remind yourself of how dumb you can be.”

A bit of luck and a referral played into her first advertising gig at New York’s oldest and most renowned ad agency, J. Walter Thompson. It is there that she realized that resilience would be her biggest asset and fueled her creative juices.

In the early 1990s, Kaplan and her agency were trying to win the business of Nice ‘n Easy, which was owned by Clairol, the leading hair color brand in the country. Kaplan took one look at their current advertising and deemed it boring. She had ideas for making coloring your hair fun and transformative, but the male-dominated ad universe needed to be educated.

“I picked up 20 copies of Deborah Tannen’s No. 1 bestseller You Just Don’t Understand, which revolutionized the diametrically opposing ways men and women communicate and, along with our account director, Melissa Murphy, boldly handed them out to the all-male board of directors at Clairol,” Kaplan explains, and then told them: “Your advertising is proof positive that you don’t have a clue how to communicate with women, understand their priorities or know what makes them tick.”

Of course, it worked, and months later she was working with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (just as she was starting on Seinfeld) as the brand’s spokesperson, and Nice ‘n Easy hair colors started selling out.

Kaplan sums her advertising career as “filled with victory, failure, exhilaration, rejection and even some well-timed orgasms (think of that ebulliently cheerful girl in our Herbal Essences “Yes! Yes! Yes!” commercials).”

You don’t have to be an ad exec or even a creative to enjoy her words of wisdom. Reliving these past, iconic ad campaigns and the people involved with them in Kaplan’s behind-the-scenes style is truly a retro treasure. You can preorder her book now on her website, pick it up at a bookstore or read via Amazon Kindle beginning Sept. 8, 2026.

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Vintage Brands

June 2023

Look back at memorable celebrity endorsements, network sponsorships and just plain bizarre ads over time

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