1. P. T. BARNUM:
P. T. Barnum is world famous in advertising history as the “Prince of Humbug”. He was the master of creating hype, and had a way of translating everyday wit into commercialized guile. Barnum lives on in phrases like it’s a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity and you can’t afford to miss it as he sold stories, and not just products. In advertising circus spectacles, such as the one shown, he spoke not of just an elephant but of an elephant from the deepest heart of Africa where a hundred men died in the process of capturing it. By creating a story and gathering a crowd, he held his audience in place and only then delivered the pitch. He believed that anyone could attract attention with a number of pants-dropping escapades, but it is a talent to hold an audience still and attentive. Very often what quiets them is an outrageous promise; I will show you something you have never seen before.
As quoted by James Twitchell, the author of the book, Barnum’s legacy included; “the manufacture of hype, the conjunction of redemption and consumption, the exploitation of new media and imagery, the exchange of story for value and the saturation of language with audacious promise.”
2. LYDIA E. PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND
Lydia Pinkham’s Compound is one of the most popular patent medicines of all time. The concoction promised to be a saviour for all women who suffered “female problems” (it claimed it could cure moodiness as well as dissolve tumours). It was supposedly a wonderful medicine that husbands enjoyed because it made women “so much easier to live with”. Lydia’s face appeared on almost all of the advertisements and trade cards and she became synonymous with the relief of monthly female illnesses. Eventually it was not the product that was hero, but Lydia.
The idea is that of personalizing the corporate face. Plain products such as vegetable compound are not nearly as appealing as ones sold by a memorable individual. As the godmother of this trend, Lydia gave way to likes of Colonel Sanders, Ronald Macdonald and even a modern Steve Jobs.
3. PEARS SOAP
In advertising jargon, what Pears did with its soap ads was begin the trend of “associated value”. Associated value is the reason why if you want to sell a Mercedes, you picture it outside an exclusive golf club. When you want to borrow value for an object, you insert it near objects of established value. Proximity implies similarity. Andrew Pears’s son-in-law, Thomas J. Barrat, was the master mind behind one of Pears’s most famous ads where one of the first works of ‘associated value’ is illustrated.
Pears positioned his soap to appeal to the English upper class of that time and their desire to lighten their skin colour, and hence separate themselves from those who toiled out in the sun. The lower classes didn’t use this soap. The problem was, that you couldn't say that. The trick would be to associate the soap with an upper-class product or interest, something already acknowledged as acceptable and desirable, so that you wouldn’t have to say anything. What Barrat did was he took John Millias’s portrait of his cherubic grandson called A Child’s World – eventually re-titled Bubbles – and turned it into an advertisement by adding Pears soap to the foreground and branding it. During that time, around the 1880s, Millias was one of England’s richest and most famous painters. Art too, was a highly respectable valuable to own and everyone in the upper classes wanted it in their homes. So by associating Pears with high-class art, Barrat made the soap prized in the eyes of his target. This set the principle of associated value into motion.
4. PEPSODENT
“The magic of the preemptive claim”.
Claude Hopkins was a genius man, marveled for his ability to transform modes of expression in advertising history. His use of the preemptive claim, however, is what threw him into the spotlight. It’s quite simple. What Hopkins did is he took a product that had almost exactly the same features and benefits as its competitors, and disguised it from them by taking ownership of one of those benefits. In this Pepsodent ad, Hopkins claimed that it removed film from one’s teeth. What he didn’t say was that every other brand of toothpaste also removed that film.
The preemptive claim is about claiming the ordinary as unique to your product and taking ownership of it. This was famously used too, in the tagline “It’s toasted”, of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
5. LISTERINE
As James Twtichell of the book quotes: “here is one of the first times that advertising really did create a cure”. But of course to make the cure, they first had to create the disease. It was said that Listerine “did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis”. In advertising terms what Listerine did, which would long live on, was sell the need, not the product.
You see in those early days, there was no such thing as bad breath. A lot of people obviously had unpleasant mouth odour, but it was not considered socially offensive. Remember that until the 1920s most Americans only bathed once a week and soap often smelt worse than body odour! So what Gerard Labert, the mastermind behind the Listerine ads, did was he “created” bad breath, or made it something of concern. What he did was he put halitosis into every American mouth. And he would soon create ads as drastic as women being deprived of marriage because of their breath. But with that, he gave them a cure. Listerine. And everyone wanted it – they wanted to be free of bad breath or halitosis, in fear that they may never be married or even be refused a job because of the way their mouth smelt. Sales sky-rocketed! Soon, the germ-free mouth belonged to Listerine as perfumed skin to Palmolive and the shaved face to Gillette.
6. THE QUEENSBORO CORPORATION
Queensboro Corporation was a real estate company founded by Edward A. MacDougall that played a major role in developing the Jackson Heights area of the present-day Queens borough in New York City. It was the first company ever to advertise on radio.
Radio was the first electronic medium of communication and one thing it was not predicted to be, was a stage for advertising. Radio was proposed as an educational platform, “the university of the air”, which is why in the weeks following the first ad by Queensboro Corporation the influence it had was hard to believe. On August 18 1922 M. H. Blackwell, a representative of Queensboro Corporation, stood before a microphone at WEAF in New York City and spoke for fifteen minutes promoting the sale of cooperative apartments in Jackson Heights. It would cost him fifty dollars. Three weeks later the Queensboro Corporation had sold all its property in Hawthorne Court in Jackson Heights, and the fifteen minutes Blackwell had spent on air generated $27 000 in sales for the company. And so it began. Blackwell’s success sealed the fate of radio, television and the World Wide Web, as the biggest platforms for the ad industry that thrives and still shocks us today.
7. THE KID IN UPPER 4
The Kid in Upper 4 is an ad created for the New Haven Railroad during the early part of World War II by Nelson Metcalf Jr. It has been called the “most famous single advertisement of the war and one of the most effective of all time”. In the advertising realm, The Kid in Upper 4 gave birth to Advocacy Advertising.
What this does is create an association with a cause that enhances the product. It distracts the customer’s attention from the product itself and some of its negative aspects, and makes them in favour of it because of the psychological association. In this case, the lousy service of the New Haven Railroad is being shadowed by the young soldier off to war and the customer’s sympathy toward him. In most cases, the customer will take to the ad in sympathy, instead of looking at it and immediately disregarding it because of the train’s lousy reputation.
Advocacy advertising is often used by cigarette, alcohol and oil companies. Mobil Corporation, for example, sponsors public television in places like the UK. The shows have nothing to do with oil, but the viewers may think better of Mobil because of the positive content in the shows and the association to this ‘positivity’.
8. DE BEERS
In 1948, N. W. Ayer created one of the most recognizable slogans of the 20th century A diamond is Forever. His agency was assigned to De Beers when it was experiencing one of its most drastic downfalls and the price of diamonds was falling rapidly. There was little interest in diamonds in the UK at the time of the downfall, so Harry Openheimer (founder of De Beers) decided to advertise extensively in the US where interest was high. After consulting his partners, Oppenheimer made a deal with Ayer that if he could pull off a successful campaign he would allow Ayer to be the exclusive agent for De Beers’ American interests. Ayer, motivated by this proposal, suggested that De Beers move the American spending demographic towards larger and more expensive diamonds. He needed it to take off.
To successfully achieve this goal, Ayer reinforced the relationship of diamonds love and romance. He established desire. For young women during that time, there was nothing they desired more than marriage – they wanted a loving faithful husband, a family and a promised future – and what symbolized this more accurately than a ring? A diamond ring was a promise to all of the things they desired. The diamond too, was seen as a testament to your immoral love as it is passed through generations and becomes an heirloom. So when the male buys the diamond he memorializes his undying love, which is so desired by women.
The campaign proved outstandingly successful, as both men and women were caught in the relationship of diamonds being a gift of love. And the slogan lived on for decades.
9. COKE AND CHRISTMAS
“The best advertising time-bomb by far is Coke’s Santa Claus” James Twitchell.
Events like Halloween, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Secretaries day and even some like Super Bowl Sunday, the Oscars and Saint Patrick’s Day all have something in common. They have all been taken over by commercial interests. Companies like Nestle have been able to “own” holidays like Easter and seasonally they make more profits from chocolate-selling than they make for the rest of the year put together. It is to Coca Cola that these companies owe their success. Coke was the first company to come up with the idea of positioning your products near a certain calendar event.
The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore, nor did he come from the imaginations of cartoonists such as Thomas Nast or Clarke Moore. He came from the yearly advertisements of the Coca Cola Company. Coke released numerous ads with a plumped up Santa relaxing from his travails and drinking a Coke. He was always dressed in Coke’s corporate colours and looked happiest with a Coke in his hand. Kids loved it and Santa was soon seen everywhere – in newspapers, magazines, as toy dolls, on calendars and thanks to the great lithographer Louis Prang, on Christmas cards. Slowly but surely, all ‘other’ Santas were pushed aside as Coke began to “own” Christmas.
10. THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE
The Volkswagen ads of the sixties were one of a kind. They were a refreshing and fun, but what gave them their extreme influence was how strong they were. From their witty word play to the exquisite iconography, the ads of this decade provided a perfect case study on how to re-brand a brand that was in jeopardy. During that time, the Volkswagen beetle was becoming outdated but due to innovative advertising and a growing reputation for reliability, the production figures surpassed those of the previous record holder, the Ford Model T. It was a strong force that began “terrorizing” other brands and started elbowing them aside.
It was their ability to make a reader study their ad that made Volkwagen’s advertising so powerful. They were compared to homework assignments that the reader really had to spend time with. And this is where they would catch you with all of the crucial information most people wouldn’t even notice flipping through a magazine, not stopping to give it thought or time. As illustrated, the beetle is placed as a mere postage stamp with vast space surrounding it. The reader has to work to see it. And the most thrilling part is that the copy didn’t behave like advertising copy. There was no fancy serif typeface, gaudy colour, text blocks etc. People wondered why the company was talking to them in hushed tones. The copy started by saying things like “our car is not big, its not fast, its not beautiful”, but halfway through, the negatives turned into positives. “Our car doesn’t eat petrol, it doesn’t need antifreeze, a big parking spot or high insurance premiums”. And this was the punch. More so than any other care advert, Volkswagen took you into their world for a few minutes and really made you think.
11. MISS CLAIRROL’S “Does she… or doesn’t she?”
In the 1950’s women did not die their hair. Hair colouring was reserved for prostitutes or “fast women”. For the proper ladies of the day, they would rather have had to pull out every grey strand by its root than risk association with bleach or dye. This was the cultural context into which Lawrence M. Gelb, a chemical broker and enthusiastic entrepreneur, presented his hair product to Foote, Cone & Belding. FC&B assigned the account to junior copywriter Shirley Polkhoff (the only female copywriter at the firm). Polkhoff understood emotion and she also knew that you could be outrageous if you did it in the right context. You can be very naughty if you are perceived as being nice. In her words “think it out square, say it with flair”. And it is just this reconciliation of opposites that informs her most famous ad “Does she…. Or Doesn’t She?
The famous line begged the question what does she or doesn’t she do? To men the answer was clearly sexual, but to women it certainly was not. Women, as Polkhoff knew, were finding a different meaning because they were actually looking at the beautiful model women that were always placed at the centre of the ads. The models were exquisite, and almost always, accompanied by beautiful children. While Polkhoff’s headline was naughty, the picture is charming and natural. The stigma attached to hair colour was being counteracted by the wholesome, sentimental image of Clairol. It too sparked a feeling of empowerment in women. To women, what she did (or didn’t do) had to do with going to the hairdresser. Of course, men wouldn’t understand. The ellipsis masked a knowing implication that excluded men.
Polkhoff made hair colouring acceptable, she made it desirable and she made it empowering.
12. THE MARLBORO MAN
Leo Burnett’s brilliant campaign made Marlboro one of the most valuable brands of all time. By creating the ‘Marlboro man’, Burnett transformed what was seen as an extremely feminine brand of cigarettes into a rugged, sexy masculine one in a matter of months. The Marlboro Man was first conceived in 1954. As the all-American cowboy, he was rugged and he was cool. He was the epitome of masculinity. As quoted by Jack Landry, the Marlboro brand manager at the time, “In a world that was becoming increasingly complex and frustrating for the ordinary man, the cowboy represented the antithesis – a man whose environment was simplistic and relatively pressure free. He was his own man in a world he owned”. Burnett too, experimented with other ‘Marlboro Men’- ball players, race car drivers, and tattoo-covered hunks. They were all successful, but it was the cowboy that really ‘shook the world’. The macho spokes-model traveled the world. He crosses cultures and translated ideas of masculinity in a wordless manner, and became one of the most famous icons of all time.
13. THE HATHAWAY MAN
According to David Ogilvy, the mastermind behind ‘the man in the Hathaway shirt’, one of the most effective ways to sell mass-produced objects is to create difference not in the manufacturing but in the language that surrounds them. Whilst you cannot change what the product is, you can change what it means. This is the essence of branding which Ogilvy is most famous for. People have a preference these days for a certain brand of cigarettes, shoe polishes, socks, denim jeans and mineral water, despite the fact that almost all of the other brands produce an almost-identical product. People voluntarily wore shirts with small alligators sewn on them, cars with big chromium statutes on the hoods and shoes with giant swoosh marks. And they were paying big money for the affiliation. David Ogilvy discovered the power of affiliation, and suceeded in branding parity (ordinary) items as tonic water (Schweppes), credit cards (American Express), soap (Dove) and petrol (Shell). The Hathaway man was, however, one of his biggest successes.
Ogilvy needed to distinguish Hathaway’s white shirts as different from the other white shirts in the market. As mentioned above, this would not happen through the manufacturing – a white shirt was a white shirt – but through the advertising. He decided to brand the man in the shirt, not the shirt itself. This, however, had been tried by Van Heusen using Ronald Reagan to show off their shirts but Ogilvy had a different idea. He knew that women were the ones who bought most of the dress shirts at the time, so he had to appeal to the women buying the shirts, but also not forgetting the older men that actually wore them. He needed to find a character that appealed to both. And he found just the man, a friend, Baron George Wrangell who was cast with an eye-patch. The appeal of the eye-patch has been long debated, but Ogilvy always claimed that it was the “story appeal” of the eye-path that drew people in. It was a sign of distinction, of separation and of branding. Both women and men fell in love with ‘the man in the Hathaway shirt’ and wanted to be affiliated to such a smart, classy brand.
From here marked the beginning of “branding” and the rise of terms like brand personality, brand presence, brand esteem. Today, elite brands like Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Armani have replaced the Hathaway Man with their names and logos becoming the brand however his legend lives on.
14. ANACIN AND THE UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSAL
Anacin, a powerful painkiller used mainly for headache relief, was developed by Rosser Reeves in the 1950s. Reeves used the idea that a headache was like a “hammer in the head”, and was so painful it could turn a saint into a sinner. His television ads showed the banging of a hammer into an anvil and how it literally drove the most angelic of mothers crazy, screaming balistically at their children to keep quiet. Repenting, mom would say “Control yourself. Sure you have a headache but don’t take it out on him”. And then a disembodied male voice would tell you, “You need Anacin for fast relief. The big difference in Anacin makes a big difference in the way you feel”. This last voice now delivers what the ad was all about. It tells you that by taking an Anacin, you can stop the pounding hammer, uncoil the spring, and unplug the lightning bolt – all pictured so graphically in the skull-rattling illustration. This is called the Unique Selling Proposal.
By its definition, the unique selling proposal is a unique claim that is made for a product, and repeated continuously so that it is always associated with that product. Reeves earned his place in advertising history for the repetition that hammered home Anacin’s message “for fast relief”. Other examples of USPs include: “the no-upset-stomach” painkiller, the “one of ours is worth two of theirs” and the kind that “two out of three doctors recommend”.
15. LBJ VS BARRY GOLDWATER
There are three kinds of political ads: positive, comparative and negative. The positive tells what a great guy the politician is, the comparative proves it, and the negative explains what rapscallion your opponent is, thereby letting the voter draw the inevitable inferences about you. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 164 ad attacking Barry Goldwater, was one of the first influential negative ads of all time. It is the most compressed and noxious political ad ever made, and derives some of its power from the fact that it never mentions Senator Goldwater by name. In essence, the viewer is doing the nasty work, by doing the thinking.
The ad was dubbed “Daisy”, because in a few seconds it tells the story of an innocent young girl picking the petals off daisies, enduringly stumbling as she goes from one to ten. By the time she gets to nine, an ominous countdown booms in and as it reaches zero the camera freezes and zooms in on the girl’s eye, suddenly cutting to a mushroom cloud explosion and President Lyndon Johnson shouting about the high stakes of nuclear war. If you were living in 1964 you would have heard Goldwater’s idea to use nuclear weapons to defoliate Vietnam. And so the association would have been made between the ad and Goldwater. Johnson’s ad effectively used Goldwater’s words against him, without even saying his name, and it hardened the public’s view of him as reckless and belligerent. The negative ad was a complete success, and was used extensively in politics thereafter.
16. SHE’S VERY CHARLIE
“The politics of scent”.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, popular media images began to reflect the changes taking place in women’s lives. A most significant change was that women were being portrayed as having a life outside the home, with aspirations other than being a wife and a mother. This is where Revlon stepped in. With its astute timing and marketing, Revlon captured the spirit of the women’s movement and capitalized it with “Charlie”. The perfume had a far-reaching influence on not only the advertising industry - it broke industry traditions in its name, packaging, positioning and timing - but on the way in which women viewed themselves.
Some of first Charlie ads featured liberated model, Shelley Hack, in a pant suit confidently striding down a New York street, as a chic New York working woman. She had her own style and oozed confidence. For the first time, female consumers were looking an image of independence, practicality and happiness which was completely departed from original scent ads featuring women lying down and looking pretty in evening attire, quite useless and at the hands of a man. She was always pictured in the day time, doing something fun, something active, and often enjoying her strutting around in her alone time. Revlon really got creative when they featured “Charlie” in an ad tapping the ass of a gentleman walking with her. It is obvious that she is enjoying her dominance and being in charge.
The ads created quite a stir but despite criticism, women were entertained. They felt empowered, liberated and sales sky-rocketed. But more importantly, the women’s movement took off in a way no one had expected. And Charlie was out in front.
17. ABSOLUT
Absolute vodka took advertising to a new mental and conceptual level. Above all else, it combined excellent branding with the implication that Absolut is an anywhere product, useful everywhere and by all different, unique individuals. The key was its precise positioning.
All of the Absolut ads have featured or make sly reference to Absolut’s distinctive bottle, with the stubby neck and see-through label. All also employ variations on the two-word tagline used in the original ad, which showed the bottle with a halo above the words “Absolut Perfection.” The bottle’s profile has been used to mimic, for example, a ski slope, a polygraph’s printout and the rotund frame of Alfred Hitchcock. There have also been regional variations, including a bottle-shaped swimming pool for the Los Angeles market and a bottle in the shape of New York's Central Park. In Philadelphia, Absolut ads offered a likeness of Ben Franklin wearing bottle-shaped spectacles. Its two-word variations (“Absolut Clarity”, “Absolut Magic”) carefully promoted a different attribute of the vodka, whilst relating it to the goings-on of its target group, illustrating how the vodka was everywhere – it was where we lived, it was the people we followed, it was the events we went to, the habits of those around us, it was our opinions, and what we were entertained by.
Running since 1981, the same ad campaign has been running for over thirty years. Whilst keeping the campaign fresh and relevant to the target group, and combining art and advertising, there is no questioning that Absolut’s strategic consistency has made it one of the most celebrated brands in the industry. Consumers were, and still are, gripped by the innovation to keep creating new, contemporary ideas with upon a basis that is so long-lived.
18. APPLE’S 1984
In the third quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl, a strange and disorienting advertisement appeared on the TV screens of the millions of viewers. The ad opens on a grey network of futuristic tubes connecting blank, ominous buildings. Inside the tubes, we see obedient subjects marching towards a hollow auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure preaching from a giant TV screen. But one lone woman remains unbroken. Chased by storm troopers, she runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer with a heroic grunt and shatters the TV image. As the screen explodes, bathing the stunned audience in the light of freedom, a voice-over announces "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like “1984”." The Mac ad transfixed everyone that was watching that day. It was never aired again.
The reason it is so appreciated today is because the legendary commercial took advertising to the next level of spectacle. It was like no other. The style was cinematic, as if a whole movie could be filmed about the product. What caught people was that it was not just an advert, but it was not a movie either. They guessed it had to be something else, some other genre. That was when people starting describing it as an event. And this ‘event’ did something that advertising has since repeatedly attempted. It got talked about. A lot. And in doing so, it got into communal consciousness. It became part of cultural literacy. The Mac ad became an artifact for Apple and its advertising history is one for the books
19. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE INFOMERCIAL
Infomercials are indicative of hard sell advertising, which is done through television. The history of the infomercial is long-winded but James Twitchell describes the phenomenon by how it rose, fell and rose again. Typically infomercials are known as the scum of the advertising world. As a consumer, most people think “What is it selling now?” Worthless vitamin supplements, scalp paint that makes you look less bald but more ridiculous, knives that can cut through rocks? Chances are that success is coming your way “if you just call now”. Money back guaranteed. Infomercials have given “As Seen on TV” a bad name. However, as kitch as they may appear to be, the art of crafting a sales pitch for television has to be recognised.
When infomercials were first released, they were revolutionary. They transformed the act of interactive shopping. Similar to Claude Hopkins’ development of the coupon, infomercials allowed companies to trace results, put a needle on the dial of desire, turn the machine off and on. The distance between “you’ve got to have one” and “yes send me one” was seconds-quick. For the marketer, they could tell exactly how each version of their ad was pulling in the demographic part of the audience since 75 to 95 percent of all calls were made in the first thirty minutes of the broadcast.
Unfortunately, by the 1940s, the Federal Communications Commission was insisting that all such commercialism be separated from the programming, and since they controlled the licenses, it was. But this did not hold it back for long. Soon, smaller stations began getting away with placing infomercials into the slots where bigger stations were playing the same re-run of a particular series. Knowing that people would most likely watch it off the bigger station, they used the slot to fill with advertising and started to make big money. Slowly but surely, the infomercials rose again. Quick and easy to produce, infomercials soon looked exactly like real programs that it was only in the last few minutes did you realize that the show you were watching that was making you afraid to go out onto the street, was really trying to sell you a stun gun. They had to pretend they were something else because the bane of all television advertising is the remote-control click that shuts you down.
Although only one in ten infomercials really succeeded, this was a bonanza for products that sold for over thirty dollars and cost under five. Hit it big and you could make millions.
20. NIKE AND MICHAEL JORDAN
According to James Twitchell, what you see when you look at any of the Michael Jordan/Nike adverts is the “Holy Grail” of modern advertising: the synergy of two “power brands” woven together in flight. Michael Jordan was not just the most recognized athlete in the world at the time, he was also the most recognized pitchman anyone in the world. We are at his feet, not only because it puts the shoe at eye level, but because he performs a central oxymoron of our times – he is a man that flies. He is a hero, and it was Nike that provided his liftoff. It was possibly the greatest success of celebrity marketing ever, and has been used ever since.
Nike’s advertising agency, Weiden & Kennedy, utilized two of advertisings most revered sayings “if you have nothing to say, have a celebrity say it” and “always present the product the hero”. Clive James has pointed out in this book Fame in the Twentieth Century that people used to be famous for what they did. Then, in the modern world they became famous for what they were doing whilst they did what made them famous. However, James Twitchell argues that since the 1960s you are not known for what you did, or what you were doing whilst you did it. According to him, you were famous for what you endorse while doing what you did that used to be what made you famous. That is the one reason why we are continually told how much the endorser is making to shill the product. We now think that if a Michael Jordan is using the product and if he is being paid outrageous sums to do it, then the manufacturer must be making something really good.
In a universe of interchangeable products, the celebrity endorsement has become a central part of commercial magic. Nike and Michael Jordan made this phenomenon famous.
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