Creative Methods Of Creating Great Ads On Entrepreneurship Success

“J. Waiter Thompson did recall studies on commercials that ran during a heavily-viewed mini-series, “The Winds of War.” The survey showed that 19 percent of the respondents recalled Volkswagen commercials; 32 percent, Kodak; 32 percent, Prudential; 28 percent American Express; and 16 percent Mobil Oil. The catch is that none of these companies advertised on "The Winds of War." These words are from the book Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by master copywriter Luke Sullivan. This ....continued below.....

7UP Liiiiight: This is a photograph by 'nagfactor', as posted on Flickr. To view this photographer’s photostream and more, click on Image.

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book looks at the history prescriptions for building a career in advertising and features a real-world look at the day-to-day operations of today's ad agencies.Among the most disparaged campaigns in advertising history, the Mr. Whipple ads for Charmin toilet paper were also wildly successful. Sullivan explores the Whipple phenomenon, examining why bad ads sometimes work, why great ads sometimes fail, and how advertisers can learn to balance creative work with the mandate to sell products. Some interesting words follow….

In the mid-'80s, research told management of the Coca-Cola Company that younger people preferred a sweeter, more Pepsi-like taste. Overlooking fierce customer loyalty to this century-old battleship of a brand, they reformulated Coca-Cola into New Coke, and in the process packed about $1 billion down a rat hole.
"We forget we can mold it."

Research people told writer Hal Riney that entering the wine cooler category was a big mistake. Seagram's and California Cooler had it locked up. Then Riney began running his Bartles & Jaymes commercials and a year later his client had the #1-selling wine cooler in America.
"We forget we can mold it."

Research people told writer Cliff Freeman when he was working on Wendy's hamburgers, "Under absolutely no circumstances run 'Where's the Beef?' " After it ran, sales shot up 25 percent for the year and Wendy's moved from fifth to third place in fast-food sales. The 20,000 newspaper articles lauding the commercial didn't hurt either.
"We forget we can mold it."

And what some call the greatest campaign of the twentieth century, Volkswagen—none of it was subjected to pretesting. The man who helped produce that Volkswagen campaign had a saying: "We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forget we can mold it."

Testing storyboards doesn't work.
Testing, by its very nature, looks for what is wrong with a commercial, not what is right. Look hard enough for something wrong and you'll sure enough find it. (I could stare at a picture of Miss November and in a half hour I'd start to notice, is that some broccoli in her teeth? Look, right there between the lateral incisor and the left canine, see?)

Testing assumes people react intellectually to commercials, that people watching TV in their living rooms dissect and analyze these interruptions to their sitcoms. ("Honey, come in here. I think these TV people are forwarding an argument that doesn't track logically. Bring a pen and paper.") In reality, you and I both know their reactions are visceral and instantaneous.

Testing rewards commercials that are vague and fuzzy because vague-and-fuzzy doesn't challenge the viewer.

Testing rewards commercials that are derivative because commercials that have a familiar feel score better than commercials that are unique, strange, odd, or new. The very qualities that can lift a finished commercial above the television clutter.

Testing, no matter how well disguised, asks consumers to be advertising experts. And invariably they feel obligated to prove it. Finally, testing assumes we really know what makes a commercial work and that it can be quantifiably analyzed. It can't. Not in my opinion. It's impossible to measure a live snake.

Bill Bernbach said, "We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics that we forget we can create them." This simple truth about advertising is lost the minute a focus group sits down to do its business. In those small rooms, the power of advertising to affect behavior is not only subverted, it's reversed. The dynamic of a commercial coming out of the television to consumers is replaced with consumers telling the commercial what to say.

People generally deny advertising has any effect on them. They'll insist they're immune to it. And perhaps, taken on a person-by-person basis, the effect of your ad is indeed modest. But over time, the results are undeniable. It's been said that advertising is like wind on desert sands. The changes occurring at any given hour on any particular dune are small. But over time, the whole landscape changes.

Every year, as long as I’ve been in advertising, Gallup publishes their poll of most- and least-trusted professions. And every year, advertising practitioners trade last or second-to-last place with used-car salesman and members of Congress.

People not only dislike advertising, they're becoming immune to most of it—like insects building up resistance to DDT. The way Eric Silver put it was this: "Advertising is what happens on TV when people go to the bathroom."

When people aren't indifferent to advertising, they're angry at it. If you don't believe me, go to the opening night of a big Hollywood movie. When the third commercial comes up on the screen and it's not the movie, those moans you hear won't be audience ecstasy. People don't want to see your stinkin' ad. Your ad is the comedian who comes on stage before a Rolling Stones concert.

So you try to come up with some advertising concepts that can defeat these barriers of indifference and anger.

The way I picture it is this: it's as if you're riding down an elevator with your customer. You're going down only 15 floors. So you have only a few seconds to tell him one thing about your product. One thing. And you have to tell it to him in such an interesting way that he thinks about the promise you've made as he leaves the building, waits for the light, and crosses the street. You have to come up with some little thing that sticks in the customer's mind.
And then you have what the customer brings to the situation— pride, greed, vanity, envy, insecurity, and a hundred other human emotions, wants, and needs, one of which your product satisfies.

"YOU'VE GOT TO PLAY THIS GAME WITH FEAR AND ARROGANCE."That's one of Kevin Costner's better lines from the baseball movie Bull Durham. I've always thought it had an analog in the advertising business.

There has never been a time in my career I have faced the empty page and not been scared. I was scared as a junior-coassistant-copy-cub-intern. And I'm scared today. Who am I to think I can write something that will interest 8 million people?

Then, a day after winning a medal in the One Show (just about the toughest national advertising awards show there is), I feel bulletproof. For one measly afternoon, I'm an Ad God. The next day I'm back with my feet up on the table, sweating bullets again.

Somewhere between these two places, however, is where you want to be―a balance between a healthy skepticism of your reason for living and a solar confidence in your ability to come up with a fantastic idea every time you sit down to work. Living at either end of the spectrum will debilitate you. In fact, it’s probably best to err on the side of fear.

A small, steady pilot light of fear burning in your stomach is part and parcel of the creative process. If you’re doing something that’s truly new, you’re in an area where there are no signposts yet―no up and down, no good or bad. It seems to me, then, that fear is the constant traveling companion of an advertising person who fancies himself on the cutting edge. You have to believe that you’ll finally get a great idea. You will.

Let your subconscious mind do it.Where do ideas come from? I have no earthly idea. Around 1900, a writer named Charles Haanel said true creativity comes from "a benevolent stranger, working on our behalf." Novelist Isaac Singer said, "There are powers who take care of you, who send you patience and stories." And film director Joe Pytka said, "Good ideas come from God.” I think they're probably all correct. It's not so much our coming up with great ideas as it is creating a canvas where a painting can appear.

So do what Marshall Cook suggests in his book Freeing Your Creativity: "Creativity means getting out of the way.... If you can quiet the yammering of the conscious, controlling ego, you can begin to hear your deeper, truer voice in your writing . . . [not the] noisy little you that sits out front at the receptionist's desk and tries to take credit for everything that happens in the building."

Stop the chatter in your head. Go into Heller's "controlled daydream," Breathe from your stomach. If you're lucky, sometimes the ideas just begin to appear. What does the ad want to say? Not you, the ad. Shut up. Listen.

ABOUT 20 PERCENT OF YOUR TIME in the advertising business will be spent thinking up ads; 80 percent will be spent protecting them; and 30 percent doing them over.

A screenwriter was looking out on the parking lot at Universal Studios one day. It occurred to him, said this article, that every one of those cars was parked there by somebody who came to stop him from doing his movie.

The similarity to advertising is chilling. The elevator cables in your client's building will fairly groan hauling up all the people intent on killing your best stuff.

"They might be right."
According to ad myth, Bill Bernbach always carried a little note in his jacket pocket. A note he referred to whenever he was having a disagreement with a client. In small words, one sentence read, "They might be right."

Here's my advice, and it starts a few rungs further down the humility ladder: Always enter into any discussion (with clients, account executives, anybody) with the belief that there is a 50 percent chance you are wrong. I mean, really believe in your heart that you could be wrong.

I often think of the analogy of the two kinds of ministers I have seen. A quiet and anonymous minister at a small church who invites me to explore his faith. And the noisy kind I see on TV, sweaty and red-faced, telling me the skin's going to bubble off my soul in Hell if I don't repent now.
Which one is more persuasive to you?
Someone named John Maynard Keynes once wrote that people are often at their most dogmatic when they are most unsure. Kinda makes sense to me.One more thing to consider, again from my old boss, Jerry Della Femina.
Some ad agency people think clients are dumb because they may not know about type, art, illustration, media, the rest of it. Look, how dumb can some guy be when he's managed to build a business that's worth millions? [Many] agencies aren't big businesses. So they ought to have a lot of respect for people smart enough to build big businesses. Remember, success for an agency is a sale in someone's conference room. But clients have to succeed in the open marketplace.

Some Interesting Ads featured in the book :

1. On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat sank a passenger ship, the Lusitania, killing some 1,190 civilians, many of them women and children. America was finally too angry to stay out of the Great War, and enlistment posters began to appear in shop windows, one of which is shown below. Most other World War I posters were not as visual and instead used headlines like “Irishmen, Avenge the Lusitania!” and “Take Up the Sword of Justice.” Seems to me, all these decades later, they’re not nearly as powerful as this one simple image, this one word.”

2. An ad for PETA.

       

3. An ad promoting Tourism.

---excerpted from the book Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads by Luke Sullivan.