hey whipple, squeeze this! | Luke Sullivan | (2012)
Bear with me for a throwback while I sum up the main points of my undergraduate career in advertising. During my time at UT, Sullivan’s book was “recommended reading” in every single one of my major classes and required in one. Needless to say, it’s marked up and earmarked quite a bit.
(Salesmen Don’t Have to Wear Plaid)
5:
On it’s heels came the concept of the unique selling proposition, a term coined by writer Rosser Reeves in the 1950s, and one that still has some merit. It was a simple, if ham-handed notion: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.” The benefit had to be one that the competition either could not or did not offer, hence the unique part.
“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting, and you won’t be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.” -Bill Bernbach
8:
“The more intellectual you grow, the more you lose the great intuitive skills that really touch and move people.” – BB
As John Ward of England’s B&B Dorland noted, “Advertising is a craft executed by people who aspire to be artists, but is assessed by those who aspire to be scientists. I cannot imagine any human relationship more perfectly designed to produce total mayhem.”
12:
“However much we would like advertising to be a science – because life would be simpler that way – the fact is that it is not. It is a subtle, every-changing art, defying formularization, flowering on freshness and withering on imitation; what was effective one day, for that very reason, will not be effective the next, because it has lost the maximum impact of originality.” - BB
13:
As Hall of Fame copywriter Ed McCabe once said, “I have no use for rules. They only rule out the brilliant exception.”
(A Sharp Pencil Works Best)
16:
… good advertising is about the worst thing that can happen to a bad product.
17:
You’re writing something most people try to avoid. When people aren’t indifferent to advertising, they’re angry at it.
18:
“The many competitive brands [of beer] are virtually identical in terms of taste, color and alcohol delivery, and after two or three pints even an expert couldn’t tell them apart. SO the consumer is literally drinking the advertising, and the advertising is the brand.”
19:
A guy named James Webb Young, a copywriter from the 1940’s, laid out a five-step process of idea generation that holds water today.
1. You gather as much information on the problem as you can. You read, you underline stuff, you ask questions, and you visit the factory.
2. You sit down and actively attack the problem.
3. You drop the whole things and go do something else while your subconscious mind works on the problem.
4. “Eureka!”
5. You figure out how to implement your idea.
[This process of creativity is] what author Joseph Heller (a former copywriter) called “a controlled daydream, a directed reverie.”
20:
“Creativity is a manic construction of absurd, unlikely, irreverent thoughts and feelings that somehow, when put together, change the way we see things” – Hegarty on Advertising
22:
“I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.” – BB
23:
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
(A Clean Sheet of Paper)
46:
McCabe’s work was often so compellingly put, it was as if you could tack the words “…you shmuck” at the end of his headlines; for example, this one for Volvo: “A car you can swear by, not at.” (You schmuck.)
57:
Come up with an idea that makes you say, “We can’t do that, can we?” That’s a sign it’s a strong idea. The other question to ask is: “Will somebody talk about this idea if we do it?”
Running a small-space ad with a headline “Fur Coat Storage Services” isn’t naughty. Well, it is when you know the rich ladies who called the number got a recorded message from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals about the cruelty of the fur business and how they should “donate” their fur for proper burial.
“Inside every fat ad there’s a thinner and better one trying to get out.” - Tony Cox
(Write When You Get Work)
114:
You can’t be creative and be tense.
115:
Get off the stinkin’ computer.
David Fowler agrees: “Try it…It’s just different. The connection between your hand and the page via a tiny strand of ink imparts something that’s somehow closer to your heart.”
117:
At a SXSW Interactive seminar I chaired, most folks in the audience agreed failure is the new black. “Fail forward, fail harder, fail gloriously.”
119:
Remember, you aren’t saving lives... It’s just half a piece of paper in a magazine, and somebody else is buying the other side.
120:
“Be orderly in your normal life so you can be violent and original in your work.” I don’t know much about novelist Gustave Flaubert, except he said the cool line you just read, and it seems to fit in right about here.
121:
In a business where we all try to avoid clichés, a lot of people buy into this cliché-as-lifestyle. I can assure you it is an illusion. As is all that crap about how writers need to “work from pain.” Oh, puh-leese, it’s a coupon ad for Jell-O.
“A writer should be joyous, an optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer, and cynicism is rejection of life.” –George Gribbin
122:
“What are you doing, honey?”
“Oh, I’m in here analyzing the psyche of my culture – absorbing the zeitgeist, as it were, I can’t be bothered.”
(Concepting for the Hive Mind)
The point here is: digital is not so much a media channel as it is a way of life. People live digitally. There is no “digital revolution” anymore. It’s over and digital won.
To launch the memoir of rockstar Jay-Z, Droga5 hid pages from his memoir in outdoor spots in 13 cities (mostly in the form of enlarged page-shots). The cool part was they embedded these pages in or on spaces relevant to the content of the page. The first people who found the pages and logged onto a website got a chance at two lifetime tickets to Jay-Z’s concerts.
At R/GA they have a house rule: when you’re reviewing your ideas, ask yourself, “Is what I’m creating adding something to someone’s life? Is it useful, entertaining, or beautiful?”
Social media is where ideas, which become experiences, go to become immortal.
SouthWest Airlines’s social media officer says her rule of thumb is, “Be honest, be real, be fun, be quick.” – the quick part being particularly important because tweets are perishable and have a shorter lifespan than a suicidal mayfly.
Build a small, cozy fire with the rule books. Start with this one. So I repeat: Learn the rules in this book. Then break them. Break them all. Find something new. It’s out there.
