In 1972, Italian typewriter company Olivetti launched a marketing campaign created by legendary ad man George Lois that featured “Olivetti Girls,” secretaries who were supposed to be more competent than their peers because of the “brainy” electric typewriter they used. It was developed as the firm faced competition from IBM. According to Lois: “We had to make the Olivetti typewriting famous for secretaries to accept it.”

Unfortunately, while sales of Olivetti typewriters “went through the roof,” secretaries and feminists were outraged by the series of tv and print ads.

Time magazine reported in its March 20 issue: This week a group of New York City secretaries, backed by members of the National Organization of Women, plans to picket the headquarters of Olivetti Corp., which is running ads that infuriate feminists. The ads promote “brainy” typewriters that are supposed to eliminate some typing errors made by dippy-looking secretaries, who presumably lack the brains to avoid them in the first place. In the TV commercial, the secretary is shown as a vacuous sex kitten who finds that she can attract men by becoming “an Olivetti girl.

This rare archive documenting the protest includes photographs of the women protestors carrying signs outside Olivetti headquarters. Additional photos show a man setting up the “Olivetti Weary Protestors Relief Bar,” where “the liberator” was served: “one part orange juice, one part Cointreau, one part champagne.”

Lois—in large part the inspiration for Mad Men’s Don Draper—responded to the protestors with a TV ad featuring Joe Namath as the “Olivetti girl” to a real-life woman executive who is so impressed with Namath’s typing that she hits on him in the end.