During a 30-year career at McDonald’s Corp. that began when company founder Ray Kroc hand-picked him to build the firm’s marketing department from scratch, Paul D. Schrage oversaw every aspect of marketing at the fast-food chain, including the development of the fast-food restaurant’s famous Golden Arches logo.
Schrage also spearheaded many marketing campaigns and icons, including launching the Ronald McDonald character in national advertising, promoting the chain’s Happy Meals and Value Meals and developing product tie-ins such as the Monopoly game. Schrage also was instrumental in building McDonald’s relationships with the U.S.-based 1984 and 1996 Olympic Games, the 1994 World Cup and with basketball superstar Michael Jordan.
“He was one of the best brand leaders in marketing in the business,” said Dean Barrett, a retired McDonald’s senior vice president of global marketing.
Schrage died of natural causes on Jan. 28 at his Tempe, Arizona home. He was 90.
His death, not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by his son, Buzz. Schrage, who had battled pancreatic cancer, had previously lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, and in Oak Brook.
Born in 1935 in Chicago, Paul Daniel Schrage (pronounced SHRAHG-hee) grew up in Palatine and graduated from Palatine High School, where he played baseball, basketball and football. In 1957, he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Valparaiso University.
After college, Schrage worked for the Yellow Pages before returning to school and earning a master’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1959 to 1961, he worked as a media buyer for the Young & Rubicam advertising agency. In 1961, he joined Chicago-based Quaker Oats, where he worked as a brand manager, including for a line of dog food. He left Quaker in 1965 to become a Chicago-based sales representative for This Week magazine, and the following year he joined the D’Arcy advertising agency as associate media director, where he worked on Midwest accounts including Quaker Oats, Standard Oil, Anheuser-Busch and McDonald’s.
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In 1967, Kroc hired Schrage from D’Arcy as the company’s first-ever chief marketing officer and executive vice president of marketing. Over the next three decades, Schrage put his stamp on every aspect of McDonald’s public messaging. Though the concept of McDonald’s Golden Arches had predated Schrage’s time with the chain, he amplified them as a key part of the company’s brand through advertising campaigns and messaging.
In 1970, he hired the Needham, Harper & Steers advertising agency to produce creative campaigns, including the iconic “You Deserve a Break Today” campaign that appeared from 1971 until 1976.
“He was instrumental in ‘You Deserve a Break Today,’” Barrett said.
In a surprise move, McDonald’s switched from Needham, Harper & Steers in 1981 to Chicago-based Leo Burnett. McDonald’s was not displeased with Needham’s creative work, but Schrage and his colleagues had felt that the chain needed more in-depth account supervision and overall marketing help. In 1990, Schrage rehired Needham (later rechristened DDB Needham) in a dual-agency setup.
“I learned more from him than anyone in my career,” said retired Leo Burnett chair Cheryl Berman, who called Schrage a mentor. “I was a young copywriter at Leo Burnett when I met him and I was the chairman and chief creative officer — Leo’s old job — when he retired. I learned good enough is never good enough. Paul was tough but extremely inspirational. He inspired me to raise the bar. He made all of us at Burnett want to reach new heights of our creativity in our advertising for McDonald’s, forever beating out any competitor.”
Berman recalled working closely with Schrage on the famed Super Bowl commercial “The Showdown,” a 1993 spot showing Jordan and Larry Bird making ever harder shots across a basketball court in an effort to win a Big Mac and fries.
Jordan and Bird weren’t the only big names endorsing McDonald’s. From the start, Schrage felt committed to aligning McDonald’s with major brands and stars. He publicly presented Cubs legend Ernie Banks with an inscribed gold baseball in 1970, honoring his 500th home run.
“You can’t measure it,” he told the Tribune in 1984, describing the impact of the Olympics alliance’s impact on McDonald’s. “It’s one of those things you know intuitively. For us, at this point in time, it’s the right thing to do.”
Schrage’s work extended across both national and local advertising and messaging, and included introducing a national Ronald McDonald and the restaurants’ iconic McDonald’s Playlands. He also was the point person for sales promotions like Monopoly and Beanie Babies.
“The secret to Paul’s success was his genuine love for the brand and how he made other people comfortable with the brand,” said Bradley Ball, a former McDonald’s senior vice president of marketing. “What he did was help those who joined, whether they were agency people or franchisees or operators on the supply chain side, to believe in the brand. As much as a cliché as that sounds, it’s true. And if you got Paul’s blessing, you knew you had a good shot at doing something not just with his approval but that he analyzed as being good itself.”
Schrage retired from McDonald’s in 1997 but returned briefly as a consultant in 2002. He also chaired Ronald McDonald House Charities’ board both during his career and in retirement.
“There would be no Ronald McDonald House without Paul,” Berman said.
Barrett said Schrage was committed to encouraging greater involvement by McDonald’s franchisees in their communities.
“I lecture at universities on marketing, and I say that when I was at McDonald’s with Paul Schrage, we had more kids around the world wearing McDonald’s on their baseball, football and soccer uniforms because our franchisees were involved in what we call local store marketing,” Barrett said. “Paul taught people how to be Mr. and Mrs. McDonald’s in their communities, and part of that was getting involved in youth sports.”
Schrage was a major benefactor to his alma mater, Valparaiso University, which named him to its Hall of Honor in 1985 and gave him an honorary doctorate the following year.
He was a longtime supporter of Valparaiso’s men’s basketball program, and had been a close friend of the university’s former men’s basketball head coach Homer Drew. Schrage and his wife funded the Schrage Basketball Wing, which is an addition to the university’s Athletics-Recreation Center that houses the men’s and women’s basketball offices. The couple also established an endowment to provide ongoing support for the facility, and they recently committed $1 million for a separate fund that helps pay for items like team travel and nutrition.
In 1982, Schrage was named the Merchandising Executives Club of Chicago’s Merchandiser of the Year, and he was named Chicago Ad Person of the Year in 1988 by the Chicago Advertising Club. In 1997, he was elected to the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Fame.
Outside of work, Schrage enjoyed golfing and traveling, his son Buzz said.
“He’d tell you he’s most proud of his family,” Buzz said.
In addition to his son, Schrage is survived by his wife of 68 years, Jan; another son, Gordon; and five grandchildren.
A service was held.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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