Great Ads Come From Old Typewriters and Unibomber-style Hoodies...

Okay, so where am I?

Yesterday's email from the Telly Awards letting me know that I am now an 11-time winner launched a quickie celebration until the very next email reminded me of the pending deadlines I have on a handful of  projects, each demanding their own slice of greatness.

Great.

Just great.

Where to begin?

So now I'm hunkered down Unibomber style with a hoodie on covering my forehead, face barely visible as I chug caffeine trying try to craft that unicorn of a big idea I drone on about endlessly.

It's been a process on my old 1940's typewriter as I pound out rotten idea after crummy thought after regrettable copy. Yeah, the creative process can be drag, but usually it all works out at the 11th hour. I love to work alone in the middle of the day, blinds closed with a stray light somewhere near and talk radio blabbing on about everything and nothing at the same time. When I work in a team, I tend to drive people a bit insane. I talk and talk a lot once I grab the floor of the conversation, filibuster-style, never relenting long enough without recapping a life of dreams, with just the right blend of decades-old agency stories and ex-wife nightmares. Or so I think at the time. This is, after all, my strong suit. I love to lecture about our moral responsibilities in advertising.

Sometimes being alone allows me just the right space to find the right mix of genius and tact necessary to deliver a winning campaigns.

One thing I've discovered is that the first step to creativity is knowing how to ask the right questions; and it doesn’t have to happen on a hilltop while meditating in Zen mode during deep Buddhist chanting while birds chirp the rhythm of your future jingle.

No...creativity comes out when you need a solution -- and none of the old solutions work. That’s when you get imaginative.

A Harvard Business Review article on creative thinking says it this way:

...Imagine ways out of the fix you’re in by imagining that the circumstances blocking your progress are being lifted one by one. This produces different versions of the challenge. One of these new hypothetical versions may well resemble a type of problem that you have solved in the past. Your mind will then fire out a whole new set of solutions, one or more of which may work. If the solution you select for the new version of the challenge is untypical for the original version, it can certainly qualify as a creative solution to the new one...

It’s like dreaming. One of the theories about why we dream states that we dream to prepare ourselves for things that maaaaaaaaybe, just maybe, will happen to us. This exercise in creativity goes the same way: by reimagining our situation to appear a tiny bit different, maybe we’ll see an out -- or an in -- that we couldn’t imagine before. You know, goof old fashioned mental magnet flipping.

When I'm stuck I pull out the typewriter and churn out lyrics from the Rolling Stones or The Dave Clark Five. It gets the melodies flowing in my head and the creative flows a bit better. Another motivational tool is looking at classic ads to reveal the brilliance and spark new thinking.

I stumbled across “Madman,” a Nike running classic from 1990. The mind can only remember so much, so when I see this ad, I can't but marvel at it's everything. The photography, the copywriting, the concept...it's one of the seminal pieces of advertising craft.

It's perfectly crafted with an economy of words that somehow has always driven my core feeling that less is more and more is less:

Mothers, there a mad man running in the streets,

And he’s humming a tune,

And he’s snarling at dogs,

And he still has four more miles to go.

Just do it.

Click to enlarge

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy
Art Director: David Jenkins
Copywriter: Jerry Cronin
Photography: Arthur Meyerson
First Published: Runner’s World, January 1990

California Dreamin'

Okay, so where am I?

I'm at the local 7-11 buying my twice weekly Powerball tickets. My grandfather always said I was going to win the lottery and I believed him. Today I have good reason to buy a couple of $2 orange tickets because the jackpot is worth about $447 million dollars.

Yes, a boy can dream!

Speaking of dreaming...What makes a winning ad? In a today’s advertising world, nearly anything can be turned into an ad. It doesn't seem to matter what's in the ad—geckos, puppymonkeybabies, talking cows—there’s still nothing quite like a little gambling fantasy to to remind you of the fundamentals of great copywriting and art direction.

On my way to the 7-11 I heard the California Lottery Powerball Commercial on the car radio and it is magical, yet the "Snowfall" television spot is even better.

From the first strike of the piano keys, the commercial sends chills through your imagination cortex.

The commercial shows white lottery balls falling from the sky like snow. The lotto balls fall in some of California's most famous landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, at the truck of the Sequoias, and Downtown Los Angeles. The balls fall in a swimming pool as a woman looks out the window, unsure of what she's seeing. People everywhere are looking up at the sky, watching the "snowfall". One man is standing in the pouring down lotto balls, when he holds out his hand and catches the red Powerball.

Yes, a boy can dream and sometimes dreams do come true.

The California Lottery wanted to go beyond showing the great things in life you can do with a lot of money, and focus instead of the possibility of winning the lottery -- a 1 in 175,223,510 shot , according to the Powerball website.

But still, you can't win without trying, and you won't try unless you believe in something bigger than yourself. The Scala and Kolacny Brothers' "California Dreamin'" cover sets the tone for this dreamy ad and the lyrics, perfectly composed by Mamas & Papas icons John Phillips and Michelle Phillips still conjure up the perfect image of a better life...

Voiceover

(Lyrics) All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)

And the sky is gray (and the sky is grey)

I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk)

On a winter's day (on a winter's day)

If I didn't tell her (if I didn't tell her)

I could leave today (I could leave today)

California dreamin' (California dreamin')

On such a winter's day

California Dreamin'

On such a winter's day

California Dreamin'

On such a winter's day

Written Text over Final Bumper

Believe in something bigger

Powerball Logo

Jackpots starting at $40 Million

Scratching the Back of the Hand that Feeds You

Okay, so where am I?

I'm checking email and low and behold, hard work pays off sometimes. I just received notification that I am officially a 10-time Telly Award winner.

Always nice to be honored amongst the best in TV and cable, digital and streaming, and non-broadcast productions. In the old days I'd celebrate all week with some of ther other winners I know. Now? I'll toast to the achievement tonight and get back to the business of looking for the next big idea.

Speaking of the next "big idea," that idea was spawned by the genius of David Ogilvy. His formula seemed simple:

Big Ideas = Fame and Fortune

In his book OGILVY ON ADVERTISING, he shared a checklist to help decipher if an idea cqualified as a big idea:

• 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?

Ultimately, I've only have a few ideas that qualified by those standards. Motivation indeed!

Winning awards gives you pause to reflect on big ideas. One of the things I pull out in times of reflection is the "Scratching the Back of the Hand that Feeds You" memo authored by advertising icon Leo Burnett in December of 1958.

When Burnett — a hugely influential force in the industry who had a hand in creating Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, and the Marlboro Man — heard that his admen were driving Fords instead of Chryslers and, goodness gracious, eating Wheaties over Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, he decided to give his staff a piece of his mind.

The three-page memo circulate through his agency reminding his staff of their unwritten duty to at least try the very products they helped to advertise to the nation; the sales of which funded their salaries. The sentiment of the green-papered memo (sorry, all I have is a black and white copy) of “believ[ing] in the products we advertise,” is juxtaposed with Burnett’s condemnation of the employees who eat competitors’ cereals (“I hope he chokes”), makes the memo a must-read. [See transcript after the visuals of the actual memo below.]

Transcript

December 16, 1958

TO: THE ORGANIZATION

FROM: Leo Burnett

Re: Scratching the Back of the Hand that Feeds You

This is a land (and a company) of free choice and free speech.

In this memo I would like to exercise my own right to free speech to express some thoughts about choice. 

I hope you know me well enough to realize that your opportunities with this company have nothing whatsoever to do with your personal way of life or the products you use. Loyalty, obviously, cannot be legislated. 

Nevertheless, I would like to get off my chest some thoughts that have been smouldering for a long time. I present them only as the way I personally feel. If they don't relate to you, that's that, and no harm done. 

As you well know, your income and mine are derived 100% from the sale of the products of our clients. 

During the 36 years I have been in the agency business I have always been naively guided by the principle that if we do not believe in the products we advertise strongly enough to use them ourselves, or at least to give them a real try, we are not completely honest with ourselves in advertising them to others. 

The very least we can do is to remain neutral, and I guess this memo was touched off by two recent incidents. 

Recently I overheard one of our people sound off with some loud and derogatory remarks about what lousy cars Chrysler makes -- how they fall apart -- "I guess I'll stick to a Chevy, etc."

In another instance I heard one of our people who smokes Winstons, I believe, say to a group of outsiders, when offered a Marlboro, "I can't smoke those things!"

I'm sure you'll agree that this is going a bit too far. 

The net of the way I feel is this:

Naturally you don't need to do all your banking at Harris, but you should certainly think of Harris when opening a new or separate account. 

Maybe you don't eat canned vegetables, but if you do, those products with the Green Giant label should find a space in your shopping cart. 

Certainly nobody would suggest that you tear up your insurance program, but shouldn't you look at the Allstate story on any new coverage you want?

If the picture is still sharp on your old RCA, keep on looking, but do look at Motorola when you change. The same applies to vacuum cleaners and washing machines. 

Maybe you have bunions and need a special orthopedic shoe, but you might consider Buster Browns or Robinhoods for those nice, normal feet your kids run around on. 

When you go on your next car-trading expedition, one of the Chrysler lines should at least be on your looking-list. 

Generally, the products of our clients enable us to have a good breakfast, keep the house clean, wash our clothes, fertilize our lawns, neatly plaster up cuts and bruises, gas up the car (one of "ours"), insure it, keep our faces, teeth, and dishes clean, bake a cake or pie, have soup, tuna, spaghetti, peas or corn for lunch or dinner, send our hogs to market faster, make our hens lay more eggs, walk well-shod and relax with a good cigarette while we watch TV or listen to Stereo Hi-Fi.

I recognize the unconscious spirit of rebellious independence that exists in all of us, and the compulsion you or I may have to demonstrate that we wear no man's yoke. I have always felt, however, that there were better and more rewarding ways of doing this than in conspicuously avoiding or flouting the products of the people who pay our way. 

I'll let the kids off the hook. I don't believe in the principle of reminding them of where their living is coming from. (They'll learn soon enough as it is.) If, for example, they are attracted to a premium offered by General Mills or General Foods, bless their fickle little hearts. We'll catch 'em next time. 

I guess my feeling is pretty well summed up in the remarks of the vice-president of a competitive agency. When asked why he was smoking a not-too-popular brand of cigarettes which his company advertised, he replied:

"In my book there is 

no taste or aroma quite 

like that of bread and butter"

Leo Burnett/ms

P.S. Inasmuch as this memo expresses an entirely personal point of view, I can't resist adding that if any of us eats those nauseating Post Toasties or Wheaties, for example, in preference to the products of Kellogg's, I hope he chokes on them; and if any of us fertilizes his lawn without first trying Golden Vigoro, I hope it turns to a dark, repulsive brown. If you smoke cigarettes and your taste is so sensitive that it discriminates strongly between "our brands" and competitive ones, please, as a personal favor, don't put the competitive package in front of me on the conference room table, because it does things to my blood pressure. 

LB

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A couple of my Telly beauties...part of the big idea philosophy.