The Art of Einstein

An Advertising Tale

One of advertising’s most distinguished early practitioners was Commodore J. Walter Thompson. 

With his dignified bearing he was among the first to put forth advertising as a profession.  He was utterly tireless and insisted on making every moment of every day as productive as possible.  In an era of hansom cabs and horse drawn trolleys the quickest way to get around New York was the elevated train system.  So when he had an appointment he often chose this speediest, if not grandest, form of transportation.   

One windy day in March the Commodore found himself seated aboard the “el” when a young man carrying a sandwich boarded the train and squeezed into the seat next to him.

The sandwich board was large and bulky; two-sided and about five feet tall by three feet wide.  One side promoted the virtues of a local restaurant while the other side proclaimed the benefits of painless dentistry. 

As the train rattled on the young man kept glancing at the Commodore, eager to engage this distinguished gentleman in conversation.  But the Commodore remained aloof.

Summoning up all his nerve the sandwich board man finally broke the ice.  “ Good morning, sir,” he said.  “I’m on my way to work, are you?”  The commodore ack nowledged that he too was headed for his job.

“And what is your profession sir?” asked the sandwich board man 

“ I am in the advertising business,” replied the commodore. 

A wide smile lit the younger man;s face.

“What a coincidence," he said. "I’m in advertising, too. Ain’t it hell when the wind blows!”

My good  friend Chuck Francis never tired of telling this story from the files of his Idea Bank.  It cracked him up every time.   

 

Mad Men Stories IV: "Clusterf**ks I have Known"

My friend Dick Clark, erstwhile art director and TV director who's seen it all, writes:  " We   didn’t know we were working in "The Golden Age of Advertising".  We just wanted to do "good", and most of us knew  it when we saw it.

But we were also aware of the “ritual dance”.

One I remember was painfully illustrative of what became known as the “creative clusterf**k”. It was one of those urgent, work-through-lunch exercises making print “roughs” for the truck division of a major automotive account.   I was “partnered” with a very bright copywriter named Charlie, a soft-spoken southerner with the self-mocking sense of humor that comes with confidence. I recollect being pleasantly surprised at how quickly we established a rhythm. We were cranking out “roughs” like a giant letter-sorter at the post office. A constant flow of full page magazine layouts began to paper the floor-to-ceiling cork board of my office.

 We were really humpin’ when  the phone rang. Charlie answered it. The caller was a junior account executive, a prototypical young New York ad man right out of a casting call for Mad Men. (They’ve gotten that part consistently right.) This kid had one of those voices which require the recipient of the call to hold the phone 6 to 8 inches from the ear.   I heard the whole conversation.

Charlie: “Clark’s office . . . Charlie here.”

Junior: “ Charlie! This is Brad! How you guys doin’?”

Charlie: “Well . . . we’re gainin’ on it. Got some stuff.”

Junior: “Terrific! More fuel for the fire, huh?   Got some world-beaters in there? Some break-throughs? Award winners?”

Charlie: “No. Mostly they’re pretty dull. Actually, a few are flat-out awful but one or two might be headed the right direction. We figure to hit ‘mediocre’ just  about dead center.”

Junior: “ . . . (very long pause) . . . Okay-y-y. See you at three.”  Click.

In fact, some of what we did that day became the theme of became a fairly durable campaign.

I don’t think the constant fight to raise creative standards we were continually waging has ever been the plot line for an episode of Mad Men.

Charlie and I said “Hi” a lot and had lunch a couple of times, but he moved on shortlyafter our “clusterf**k”. To Doyle, Dane, Bernbach as I recall.

 

 

 

Mad Men Stories: #2 Another Brilliant Ad by Accident

Bruce Richter, a former LGFE colleague writes: 

Your "Ads By Accident" story reminded me of a Perdue Chicken ad Amy Schottenfels and I did way back at Scali [McCabe & Sloves]. We were working on a campaign for something entirely different one weekend and all we kept hearing from the guys in the bullpen across the hall was, "Where's the beef?", "Where's the beef?", "Where's the beef?" You remember the phenomenon.  [ The Wendy’s commercial that made Clara Peller a household name for at least one Clio season]. And finally one of us just yelled out, "Who gives a sh*t where the beef is!" We looked at each other, threw Frank's face on a page, stuck his name under the edited quote (didn’t even include the logo), and on Monday showed it to Ed McCabe who made it happen practically overnight. 

 

 

Mad Men Stories : #1 - Ads by Accident

“Einstein, eh?  You must be good at math.”  I hear that a lot.  Just as I hear that I must love the HBO series “Mad Men” because I was in the business back then.  Wrong on both counts.  I am almost totally innumerate.   And “Mad Men” isn’t like it was at all.  

It was more like this.

Tiffany & Co was among our name clients. Walter Hoving, the proprietor was surely the shrewdest shop keeper on Fifth Avenue.  He was also an aristocrat of another age with opinions he had no hesitation about sharing via ads in Tiffany's  franchiser position on page 3 of The New York Times.   

One December Citibank put an aluminum Christmas tree on Park avenue in front of its offices.  As I recall it was about 20 feet tall, absolutely gleamed, and was bathed by blue and magenta spotlights  after dark.  It greatly offended Mr Hoving who promptly wrote an advertisements denouncing it.  I was appalled by the tone of his copy and ever watchful of our agency’s reputation said to Barbara who ran the account “we can’t say this.”  “Well” she said, “If you don’t think we can say it you’d better tell Mr. Hoving because I’m certainly not going to.”   

A day later I was ushered into his intimidating presence, ad in hand.   “It sounds snobby” I croaked.   He looked down at me and said with great deliberation “young man, I want it to sound snobby.”   

Of course the ad ran.  But I made a vow.  “if he wants snobby, I’ll give him snobby.”  And the snobbiest thing I could think of  was ad with no merchandise in it  (this works well for large corporations, but given the option, most retailers choose to put things that are for sale in their advertising ). 

Expecting the worst we laid out the ad you see here.  An empty ring box with a two word headline: ‘Mission Accomplished.’  To my astonishment, Hoving loved it.  Tiffany ran it in newspapers and magazines for several years - a happy advertising accident.

The story came to mind a few months ago when friend Kevin O’Neill who teaches advertising in the Newhouse School at Syracuse asked if I had a copy of the ad.  Now, forty years after it was written he told me he uses it in class.  Why?   “I just love the freakin' ad, “ he said “and have used it to illustrate a couple of things. First, the power of inviting the reader to participate, to complete a story that the ad only suggests.  In this case, the reader provides virtually everything: the candlelight dinner, the quick gasp as the box hinges open, the glint of the jewel itself. As important, it's a splendid example of an ad that unleashes every ounce of a  brand's weighty history,   I flog my students about mastering a brand's back story, mining it for clues to its meaning and, perhaps, finding useful elements for its contemporary advertising. “ 

Nothing so thoughtful occurred to me at the time.  I was just trying to one-up Walter Hoving.   

PS:  If you have a Mad Men story send it and I'll publish it here.  

Oh How I Wish Again That I Was in Michigan - but especially Ann Arbor

Even though I'm a copywriter I’ve always been fussy about type, layout, readability, the sound-track, the voice-over and the message they send.  Because, the non-verbal components of a message really are the body language of a brand.

Some people do a superb job of getting it right.  IBM has a long history of obsessing about design, initiated by Thomas Watson Jr. who hired Paul Rand, Charles and Rae Eames, and other first rank designers to make sure everything about IBM looked better than the competition.    At Apple,  Steve Jobs, to his credit, has been a maniac about design and monitored the details for 30 years.  In both cases, attention to esthetics has paid off at the box office. 

However web designers, with few exceptions, seem to be lousy at body language.  I have loved the simplicity of Google’s landing page from day one.  Malcolm Gladwell’s site is also a treat.  Much of the rest looks like a dog’s breakfast. 

Which brings me to this week’s good news/bad news body language story. 

Betty Crocker's Recipe For A Perfect Website

You may think Betty Crocker is a little "old school."  Think twice.  Betty was created 88 years ago “to respond to customer inquiries  in a more personal manner”  She was, by the way, invented by a small company to talk about a commodity product, baking flour. 

Betty and her mission came to mind the other day as I looked at a friend’s website.  I shall call my friend Tim and fudge some of his business details to protect what has always been a cordial relationsip.  

Tim is smart, honest, and focused.  He sells quality things.  Shake his hand and you know he’s a person you want to do business with.  Like most companies, what’s unique about Tim’s isn’t what’s on the shelves.  It’s his values, policies, and people that set Tim’s company apart.   Unfortunately his website does not convey this competitive advantage.  The site lacks what I call humanility - that combination of humanity and personality that elevates communication beyond features and benefits and into the realm of the intangibles that differentiate one business from another. 

There’s no recipe that applies unconditionally to every business - but Tim’s website could be a lot better if he followed what I think of as Betty’s recipe.

Why Advertisers Lie

 It’s no longer the outraged consumer who’s accusing advertisers of playing fast and loose with the truth.  It’s advertisers themselves!  A front-page article in the NY Times lays out a story of big brand mud-wrestling - hilarious if it was’t so sad.

AT&T is suing Verizon.  Fedex is after UPS.  Pantene is after Dove.  Campbell’s Soup is calling out Progresso.  So far this year, brands you know and presumably trust, have filed 87 complaints so far this year with the Better Business Bureau  about the truthfulness of one another’s advertising. 

Quibbling isn’t good for business.  In some countries even a mention of your competitor in ads is verboten.  Ironically,  in Campbell’s vs. Progress both parties have lost the argument.  Sales of both company’s non-condensed soups have hit the skids - a decline one analyst says is due “largely to the advertising battle.”  

So, what’s so bloody hard about telling the truth? 

Bailing a Leaky Boat

I have been heads down on a couple of projects and haven’t been paying attention to anything else for the past 6 weeks - this blog included.

But out of the corner of my eye I did notice that the the big cheeses of adland have been wringing hands in public lately about when the business will bounce back. 

They may be worrying about the wrong thing.

Instead, if I were Maurice Levy or Martin Sorrell I’d be worryied about Jeff Bezos and his kind.  A few years ago Bezos decided his ad dollars were wasted.  (With all the media opportunities available these days it’s easy to dump $50 million into a campaign that disappears without a trace).  Bezos, in what I think is a flash of genius, decided to deep-six his ad budget and invest the money in doing good things for his customers.  If providing a better customer experience worked, he figured the news would get around.  So, the dollars that once bought TV time went into free shipping - and the rest is history.  Customers responded, Amazon’s business went through the roof, and, by the way, changed the game for other Internet retailers. 

“Free Shipping” may not be the most creative headline but it's supported by a brilliant creative idea.

And Bezos is anything but a wild duck.  Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos says  “we actually take a lot of money that we would have normally spent on paid advertising and put it back into customer experience.”

In the Internet era, the way to build a brand is to get people to your store ( a.k.a. your website ) and give them something they can’t get in the real world.  Sometimes the offering is unique - like Twitter or Facebook (I have never seen an advertisement for either).  Sometimes it’s a commodity like books or shoes.  In any case the way to build a brand in the 21^st century has less and less to do with advertising, as we once knew it.  It’s about treating people with over-the-top care and consideration so that they 1) can’t bear not to come back and 2) can’t resist spreading the word. 

Advertising and the agencies that flog it aren’t going away in my lifetime.  But the ad biz is a leaky boat, and that’s what I’d be gloomy about if I were sitting in Martin’s chair.

 

 

 

 

Teaching Advertising? Yes, but on the other hand…

A few weeks ago I several beers too many with old friend and former colleague Kevin O’Neill.   Kevin is now an associate professor of advertising at The Newhouse School at Syracuse University and seems to be having a grand time up there far from the toils of Madison Avenue. 

He’s enjoying himself partly because he’s a terrific teacher.  I’m sure of it.  He’s one of the few people I know who can walk into a room and capture the audience almost before he opens his mouth.    In five minutes you know you’re in the presence of a man who’s kissed the Blarney stone.  This is a gift, like perfect pitch.  You can’t teach charisma anymore than you can teach Wilt Chamberlin to be tall.  You want to take people like Kevin and start a religion with them. 

His students are not only entertained, but get a good dose of  practical knowledge and come away