Highlights
1. Overture
When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative.’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product. p1
Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on. All over the world. p2
2. How to produce advertising that sells
Study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it. When I got the Rolls-Royce account, I spent three weeks reading about the car and came across a statement that ‘at sixty miles an hour, the loudest noise comes from the electric clock.’ This became the headline, and it was followed by 607 words of factual copy. p7
Now consider how you want to ‘position’ your product. This curious verb is in great favor among marketing experts, but no two of them agree what it means. My own definition is ‘what the product does, and who it is for.’ I could have positioned Dove as a detergent bar for men with dirty hands, but chose instead to position it as a toilet bar for women with dry skin. This is still working 25 years later. In Norway, the SAAB car had no measurable profile. We positioned it as a car for winter. Three years later it was voted the best car for Norwegian winters. p9
Writing advertising for any kind of liquor is an extremely subtle art. I once tried using rational facts to argue the consumer into choosing a brand of whiskey. It didn’t work. You don’t catch Coca Cola advertising that Coke contains 50 per cent more cola berries. p10
You can do homework from now until doomsday, but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. p11
I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career as a copywriter I have not had more than 20, if that. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. p11
It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions:
Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?
Do I wish I had thought of it myself?
Is it unique?
Does it fit the strategy to perfection?
Could it be used for 30 years? p12
There are no dull products, only dull writers. p12
In the past, just about every advertiser has assumed that in order to sell his goods he has to convince consumers that his product is superior to his competitor’s. This may not be necessary. It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is positively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours. p13
Henry Ford once said to a copywriter on his account, ‘Bill, that campaign of yours is dandy, but do we have to run it forever?’ To which the copywriter replied, ‘Mr Ford, the campaign has not yet appeared.’ Ford had seen it too often at too many meetings. p14
Search the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees p15
The Benton & Bowles agency holds that ‘if it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.’ Amen. p20
Mozart said, ‘I have never made the slightest effort to compose anything original.’ p20
I resigned the Rolls-Royce account when they sent 500 defective cars to the United States. p25
Good ideas come from the unconscious. p34
For a long time, the idea that women might drink liquor as well as men affronted American puritanism sufficiently to keep women out of liquor ads. I was the first to break this taboo. p37
3. Jobs in advertising – and how to get them
‘Most good copywriters’, says William Maynard of the Bates agency, ‘fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end.’ If you are both killer and poet, you get rich. p41
Most of the work you do will be routine maintenance. Your golden opportunity will come when you rise to a great occasion. p43
Don’t discuss your clients’ business in public places. Keep their secrets under lock and key. A reputation for leaking can ruin you. Learn to write lucid memoranda. p44
The senior people to whom they are addressed have more homework than you do. p44
In the words of the Scottish proverb, ‘Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.’ p52
A few advertising people regard advertising as an unworthy occupation. Thus the head of the agency in Paris that helped François Mitterrand become President of France called his autobiography: Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency – she thinks I play the piano in a whorehouse. p52
4. How to run an advertising agency
Get rid of sad dogs who spread gloom. p60
Brains? It doesn’t necessarily mean a high IQ. It means curiosity, common sense, wisdom, imagination and literacy. Why literacy? Because most communication between agencies and clients is in writing. I don’t suggest that you have to be a poet, but you won’t climb the ladder very high unless you can write lucid memoranda. p63
Never hire your friends. I have made this mistake three times, and had to fire all three. They are no longer my friends. p64
Never hire your own children, or the children of your partners. However able they may be, ambitious people won’t stay in outfits which practice nepotism. p64
Crusade against paper warfare. Make your people settle their fights face to face. Start a luncheon club within the agency. It turns enemies into friends. p65
Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. p66
Never leave the bridge in a storm. p66
Most of the great leaders I know have the ability to inspire people with their speeches. If you cannot write inspiring speeches yourself, use ghost-writers – but use good ones. p70
The leader must have infectious optimism, and the determination to persevere in the face of difficulties. He must also radiate confidence, even when he himself is not too certain of the outcome. p70
When a client frets about the price of his agency’s services, he ends up getting a low price and poor advertising. p73
A boss who never wanders about his agency becomes an invisible hermit. […] Remember the French saying: ‘He who is absent is always wrong.’ p75
5. How to get clients
My policy has always been that of J.P. Morgan – ‘only first-class business, and that in a first-class way’ – but at first I had to take anything I could get, to pay the rent. A patent hairbrush, a tortoise, an English motorbike. p81
Rehearse before the meeting, but never speak from a prepared text; it locks you into a position which may become irrelevant during the meeting. Above all, listen. The more you get the prospective client to talk, the easier it will be to decide whether you really want his account. A former head of Magnavox treated me to a two-hour lecture on advertising, about which he knew nothing. I gave him a cup of tea and showed him out. p83
I have resigned accounts five times as often as I have been fired, and always for the same reason: the client’s behavior was eroding the morale of the people working on his account. Erosion of morale does unacceptable damage to an agency. p85
Don’t trust your own ears; you will only hear favorable opinions. p87
6. Open letter to a client in search of an agency
Ask what the agency charges. If it is 15 per cent, insist on paying 16 per cent. The extra one per cent won’t kill you, but it will double the agency’s normal profit, and you will get better service. p95
Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself. Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one. p95
7. Wanted: a renaissance in print advertising
On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 per cent of your money. The headlines which work best are those which promise the reader a benefit – like a whiter wash, more miles per gallon, freedom from pimples, fewer cavities. p100
Headlines which contain news are sure-fire. The news can be the announcement of a new product, an improvement in an old product, or a new way to use an old product – like serving Campbell’s Soup on the rocks. On the average, ads with news are recalled by 22 per cent more people than ads without news. p101
I advise you to include the brand name in your headline. If you don’t, 80 per cent of readers (who don’t read your body copy) will never know what product you are advertising. p101
Specifics work better than generalities. When research reported that the average shopper thought Sears Roebuck made a profit of 37 per cent on sales, I headlined an advertisement Sears makes a profit of 5 per cent. This specific was more persuasive than saying that Sears’ profit was ‘less than you might suppose’ or something equally vague. p101
When you put your headline in quotes, you increase recall by an average of 28 per cent. p102
When you advertise in local newspapers, you get better results if you include the name of each city in your headline. People are most interested in what is happening where they live. p102
The kind of photographs which work hardest are those which arouse the reader’s curiosity. He glances at the photograph and says to himself, ‘What goes on here?’ Then he reads your copy to find out. p103
When you don’t have a story to tell, it is often a good thing to make your package the subject of your illustration. p103
Do not, however, address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular. p106
It pays to write short sentences and short paragraphs, and to avoid difficult words. I once wrote that Dove made soap ‘obsolete,’ only to discover that the majority of housewives did not know what the word meant. I had to change it to ‘old-fashioned.’ When I used the word ineffable in copy for Hathaway, a reporter telephoned to ask me what it meant. I hadn’t the faintest idea. Nowadays I keep a dictionary beside my telephone. p106
I advise you to avoid analogies. Gallup has found that they are widely misunderstood. If you are writing copy for a face cream and say, ‘Just as plants require moisture, so too does your skin’ readers don’t complete the equation. If you show a Rembrandt and say, Just as this Rembrandt portrait is a masterpiece, so too is our product,’ readers think you are selling the Rembrandt. p107
Stay away from superlatives like ‘Our product is the best in the world.’ Gallup calls this Brag and Boast. It convinces nobody. p107
Most copywriters believe that markdowns and special offers are boring, but consumers don’t think so. They are above average in recall. p108
I believe that all copy should be signed by the agency. This is never done in the United States, on the ground that manufacturers buy space to advertise their products, not their agencies. Short-sighted. My experience suggests that when agencies sign their ads, they produce better ones. When Reader’s Digest asked me to write an advertisement for their magazine (see this page), they specified that I had to sign it. Golly, did I work hard on that ad. Everyone was going to know who wrote it. p108
Advertising agencies usually set their headlines in capital letters. This is a mistake. Professor Tinker of Stanford has established that capitals retard reading. They have no ascenders or descenders to help you recognize words, and tend to be read letter by letter. p115
Another mistake is to put a period at the end of headlines. Periods are also called full stops, because they stop the reader dead in his tracks. You will find no full stops at the end of headlines in newspapers. p115
You may think that I exaggerate the importance of good typography. You may ask if I have ever heard a housewife say that she bought a new detergent because the advertisement was set in Caslon. No. But do you think an advertisement can sell if nobody can read it? You can’t save souls in an empty church. As Mies van der Rohe said of architecture, ‘God is in the details’. p117
Ads with news are recalled by 22 per cent more people than ads without news. It does not have to be the announcement of a new product. It can be a new way of using an old product, as in this advertisement. p118
8. How to make TV commercials that sells
When you pick loyal users to testify, avoid those who would give such polished performances that viewers would think they were professional actors. The more amateurish the performance, the more credible. p155
Studies conducted by Ogilvy & Mather found that commercials which name competing brands are less believable and more confusing than commercials which don’t. There is a tendency for viewers to come away with the impression that the brand which you disparage is the hero of your commercial. p155
As a former door-to-door salesman, I shall go to my grave believing that, given two minutes on television, I could sell any product on the face of the earth. Any offers? p156
When Maxim Instant Coffee was launched, the commercials said Maxim was superior because it was freeze-dried. Nine out of ten advertising people will tell you that consumers don’t give a hoot about how products are made. They may be right, but the process of freeze-drying was sufficiently new and interesting to persuade many viewers to try the coffee. p157
Products, like human beings, attract most attention when they are first born. p157
consumers also need a rational excuse to justify their emotional decisions. So always include one. Above all, don’t attempt emotion unless you can deliver it. p158
Testimonials by celebrities. These are below average in their ability to change brand preference. Viewers guess that the celebrity has been bought, and they are right. p158
Commercials which end by showing the package are more effective in changing brand preference than commercials which don’t. p159
People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. You know that great things are about to happen, but the viewer doesn’t. She will never know; she has gone to the bathroom. p160
Many people use music as background – emotional shorthand. Research shows that this is neither a positive nor a negative factor. It does no harm and it does no measurable good. Do great preachers allow organists to play background music under their sermons? Do advertising agencies play background music under their pitch to prospective clients? p160
Research shows that it is more difficult to hold your audience if you use voice-over. It is better to have the actors talk on camera. p161
If you want the viewer to pay attention to your commercial, show her something she has never seen before. You won’t have much success if you show her sunsets and happy families at the dinner table. p161
Copywriters specify that a commercial should be shot in Bali When it could equally well be shot in a studio for half the price. They insert expensive animation into live-action commercials. They insist that original music be composed for background purposes, as if there were nothing suitable in the whole repertoire of existing music. Worst of all, they use expensive celebrities when an unknown actor would sell more of the product. I have no research to prove it, but I suspect that there is a negative correlation between the money spent on producing commercials and their power to sell products. My partner Al Eicoff was asked by a client to remake a $15,000 commercial for $100,000. Sales went down. p163
9. Advertising corporations
‘With public opinion on its side, nothing can fail’—Abraham Lincoln p172
Most corporate campaigns are short-lived because they don’t start with any clear objective, and because research is not used to track their progress. p173
Present your case in terms of the reader’s self-interest. p177
In most cases your only hope of making a dent on public opinion is to advertise to the public at large – and to use television. Television is the battleground on which public opinion is formed. p179
11. The secrets of success in business-to-business advertising
Some copywriters, assuming that the reader will find the product as boring as they do, try to inveigle him into their ads with pictures of babies, beagles and bosoms. A mistake. p211
12. Direct mail, my first love and secret weapon
Next to the positioning of your product, the most important variables to be tested are pricing, terms of payment, premiums and the format of your mailing. p215
Asking for the full price and cash with the order will reduce the number of people who respond. But it may turn up more customers who are likely to stay with you over the years. p215
Once you have evolved a mailing which produces profitable results, treat it as the ‘control’ and start testing ways to beat it. p215
My brother Francis wrote a letter in Greek to the headmasters of private schools, selling cooking stoves. When some wrote back that they could not read Greek, he sent them another letter – in Latin. This produced orders. p216
Long copy sells more than short copy, particularly when you are asking the reader to spend a lot of money. Only amateurs use short copy. p217
The better the program on which your commercials appear, the fewer sales you make. When viewers are bored by an old movie, they are more likely to pick up the telephone and order your product than when they are riveted by an episode of Dallas. p219
13. Advertising for good causes
The purpose of the campaign was to change attitudes from ignorance and fatalism to understanding and optimism. Only then could people be persuaded to have regular check-ups at the free clinics of the Society. The theme was one of hope: ‘Life after cancer … it’s worth living’. The advertisements showed real people who had been cured. Within two months, the number of check-ups given by the clinics tripled. p226
14. Competing with Procter & Gamble
They never enter small categories unless they expect them to grow, and they set out to dominate every category they enter. By building huge volume, they achieve lower manufacturing costs than their competitors, and this gives them higher profit margins, or permits them to sell at a lower price. p233
Their test-marketing is unbelievably thorough – and patient. p233
‘Patience,’ says their President, ‘is one of the virtues of this company.’ They would rather be right than first. p233
Their Achilles’ heel is their consistency. They are always predictable. It helps to win battles when you can anticipate the enemy’s strategy. p236
12. 18 Miracles of research
Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatever. p240
Keep in mind E. B. White’s warning, ‘When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair’ p241
Nobody has been able to demonstrate a relationship between recall and sales. p241
Respondents do not always tell the truth to interviewers. I used to start my questionnaires by asking, ‘Which would you rather hear on the radio tonight – Jack Benny or a Shakespeare play?’ If the respondent said Shakespeare, I knew he was a liar and broke off the interview. When Gone With the Wind was a runaway best seller, we asked a cross-section of the adult population whether they had read it. The number of yes replies was obviously inflated; people did not want to admit that they hadn’t read it. The following week we put the question differently: ‘Do you plan to read Gone With the Wind?’ It was easy for those who hadn’t read it to answer yes, they planned to read it, while those who had already read it said so. This produced a credible result. p244
16. What little I know about marketing
It helps if the point of difference goes hand-in-hand with a chord of familiarity that links the new product to the consumer’s past experience – a disposable diaper, a light beer, a diet cola, a paper towel. p253
There are three kinds of names:
Names of men and women – like FORD, CAMPBELL and VEUVE CLICQUOT. They are memorable, they are difficult to copy and they suggest that your product is the invention of a human being.
Meaningless names like KODAK, KOTEX, and CAMEL. It takes many years and millions of dollars to endow them with any sales appeal.
Descriptive names like 3-IN-ONE OIL, BAND-AID and JANITOR IN A DRUM. Such names start with sales appeal. But they are too specific to be used for subsequent line-extensions.
p253
If it is important that the name appear as big as possible on a package, choose a short one like TIDE, and not a long one like SCREAMING YELLOW ZONKERS. p253
Most marketers spend too much time worrying about how to revive products which are in trouble, and too little time worrying about how to make successful products even more successful. It is the mark of a brave man to admit defeat, cut his loss, and move on. Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers. p255
Most young men in big corporations behave as if profit were not a function of time. When Jerry Lambert scored his breakthrough with Listerine, he speeded up the whole process of marketing by dividing time into months. He reviewed progress every 30 days, with the result that he made a fortune in record time. p255
Dr. John Treasure agrees: ‘The task of advertising is not primarily one of conversion but rather of reinforcement and assurance…sales of a given brand may be increased without converting to the brand any new consumers, but merely by inducing its existing users, those who already use it at least occasionally, to use it more frequently.’ p259
I once heard Marvin Bower define marketing as objectivity. I cannot beat that. p259
14. Is America still top nation?
British commercials tend to be less direct, less competitive, more subtle, more nostalgic, funnier and more entertaining. Techniques which work well in the United States – like talking heads and slice-of-life are seldom used in Britain. The London agencies produce relatively far-out, trendy commercials. After spending four years in London, my partner Bill Taylor wrote, ‘There seems to be a realization in England that maybe, just maybe, the product being sold is not the most important thing in the consumer’s mind. The decision as to which dishwashing liquid to buy, which beer to drink or which toaster to purchase, is not a life-and-death decision. Realizing this, the British are able to present their product to the consumer in perspective. They joke about it, sing about it, and often underplay it. In short, they have a sense of proportion.’ p262
In 1978 the Indian Cancer Society used advertising to persuade people to have regular check-ups at its free clinics. The advertisements, by the Bombay office of Ogilvy & Mather, showed real people who had been cured. Within two months the number of check-ups tripled. p276
18. Lasker, Resor, Rubicam, Burnett, Hopkins and Bernbach
When [Albert Lasker] first joined Lord & Thomas, then the third biggest agency in the country, they employed only one half-time copywriter and paid him $15 a week. Then John E. Kennedy, a Canadian policeman turned copywriter, came into his life and persuaded him that advertising was ‘salesmanship in print’, a definition that has never been improved. p282
‘When the Kotex people came to us, the business wasn’t growing as fast as they thought it should. We didn’t have to make investigations among millions of women. Just a few of us talked to our wives and asked them if they used Kotex, and we found they didn’t, and in almost every case it was because they didn’t like to ask the druggist for it. So we developed the simple idea of putting plain wrapped packages on the dealer’s counter so that you could walk into your dealer and walk away with a wrapped package without embarrassment. The business boomed by leaps and bounds.’ p283
[Albert Lasker] combined a sense of detail with a gift for grasping the big picture, and that he had a genius for predicting the reactions of consumers. In addition, his vitality and magnetism were irresistible, and he worked fifteen hours a day. p284
[Albert Lasker] once said, ‘I didn’t want to make a great fortune. I wanted to show what I could do with my brains.’ p285
[Raymond Rubicam] did, however, leave behind an aphorism which appeals to the present generation at Young & Rubicam: resist the usual. Or, as his copy chief Roy Whittier put it, ‘In advertising, the beginning of greatness is to be different, and the beginning of failure is to be the same.’ p293
[Leo Burnett’s] attitude to the creative process can be summed up in three things he said:
‘There is an inherent drama in every product. Our No. 1 job is to dig for it and capitalize on it.’
‘When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.’
‘Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.’
‘Looking back over our greatest achievements, I recall that few of them were generated in an atmosphere of sweetness, light and enthusiasm, but rather one of dynamic tension, complicated by off-stage muttering.’ p295
[Leo Burnett] did not admire originality for its own sake, and used to quote an old boss of his: ‘If you insist on being different just for the sake of being different, you can always come down in the morning with a sock in your mouth.’ p295
“During the 36 years I have been in the agency business I have always been naïvely guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, we are not completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others.”—Leo Burnett p296
When asked why he was smoking a not-too-popular brand of cigarette which his company advertised, [Leo Burnett] replied: “In my book there is no taste or aroma quite like that of bread and butter.” p297
[Claude] Hopkins was a prodigiously hard worker, seldom leaving his office before the early hours of the morning. Sunday was his favorite day, because he could work without interruption. p298
A few of his conclusions have been disproved by later research. We now know, for example, that [Claude Hopkins] was wrong when he said, ‘In every ad consider only new customers. People using your product are not going to read your ads.’ The fact is that users of a product read its advertisements more than non-users. p298
Rich as he became, [Claude] Hopkins was notoriously stingy, and never paid more than $6 for a pair of shoes. p297
“Ad writers forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.”—Claude Hopkins p299
[Bill Bernbach] once told me that he never stayed in the office after five, never took work home, and never worked at weekends. ‘You see, David, I love my family.’ p302
“Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion years. Only the superficial things have changed. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man – what compulsions drive him, what instincts dominate his every action, even though his language too often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man, you can touch him at the core of his being. One thing is unchangingly sure. The creative man with an insight into human nature, with the artistry to touch and move people, will succeed. Without them he will fail.”—Bill Bernbach p302
What’s wrong with advertising?
We don’t feel ‘subversive’ when we write advertisements for toothpaste. If we do it well, children may not have to go to the dentist so often. p311
Nobody suggests that the printing press is evil because it is used to print pornography. It is also used to print the Bible. p311