Robert C. Pritikin (May 6, 1929 – February 13, 2022)[1] was an American advertising executive, creative director, author, art collector, and bon vivant[2] active on the San Francisco social scene.
[4][1] In the early 1960s, Pritikin was the Creative Director of Fletcher, Richards, Calkins & Holden (FRC&H) advertising agency in San Francisco, responsible among other things for landmark Folgers Coffee television commercials for which he was the voice in the ads for many years.
The hotel, consisting of two Queen Anne mansions connected by a hallway, was decorated eclectically with caged and uncaged birds (including a Macaw sometimes said to be the reincarnation of the house's original owner), pig memorabilia, life-sized stuffed dolls of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Richard Nixon's letter of resignation as United States President and Gerald Ford's letter of pardon[citation needed], fresh flowers and candy in every room, a central music system that always played classical music, and a player piano that was supposedly played by "Claudia", a ghost.
[8] Pritikin opened the hotel on election days as a local polling station, encouraging voters with music, an ice sculpture in the shape of an eagle, layer cake and caviar.
In 1986, Pritikin built a French neoclassical facade mansion at 47 Chenery Street for himself in the quiet residential neighborhood of Glen Park, San Francisco.
[11] In 2014, Pritikin claimed in a self-biographical video that he stands at the origins of the word "Google" because he used it decades ago in a headline of an ad in the Sierra Club, "don't muddy up the googol".