John Drake

On How Good Art Can Be Good Selling

Letters of Note chose to profile Bill Bernbach's classic 1947 letter to the management of Grey. It was great to re-read.

It's a reminder that we have to talk about the tactics of new channels so that we can understand them. We must measure performance so that we can give people more of what they need and less of what they don't. We need to study the fundamentals of branding and marketing and selling.

Doing this provides us with the confidence to then blaze new trails for ourselves. And it's in this spirit that re-reading this letter from time to time always ignites a spark within.

++++

5/15/47

Dear ___________ :

Our agency is getting big. That’s something to be happy about. But it’s something to worry about, too, and I don’t mind telling you I’m damned worried. I’m worried that we’re going to fall into the trap of bigness, that we’re going to worship techniques instead of substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid fundamentals. I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries begin to set in.

There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

It’s that creative spark that I’m so jealous of for our agency and that I am so desperately fearful of losing. I don’t want academicians. I don’t want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I want people who do inspiring things.

In the past year I must have interviewed about 80 people – writers and artists. Many of them were from the so-called giants of the agency field. It was appalling to see how few of these people were genuinely creative. Sure, they had advertising know-how. Yes, they were up on advertising technique.

But look beneath the technique and what did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It was like worshiping a ritual instead of the God.

All this is not to say that technique is unimportant. Superior technical skill will make a good ad better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability. The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinized men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies In the natural tendency to go after tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather make us look like all the others.

If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.

Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.

Respectfully,
Bill Bernbach

On How Amazon Is Winning

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz talks about how Amazon desks are all made of Home Depot doors. They do this as a constant reminder to employees--all employees--that Amazon doesn't want to spend money on things that doesn't directly help the customer have a great experience.

And now this happened:

Ad insights firm Advertising Benchmark Index (ABX) conducted an online poll in early to mid-November about their shopping intentions for the holidays at each of 10 major retailers and an assortment of "all others", Advertising Age reported.

ABX found Amazon took 21% of "Share of Wallet", narrowly taking it past the 20% allocated to Walmart, with Best Buy coming in third at 11%.

Asking about intentions is just that, an intention. But beating Walmart here is still notable. And it goes along with U.S. Black Friday results which were down nearly $1B for in-store sales, but up 14% online.

At the same time, Amazon's first store opened down the street from me. The store is a good size and all about books. Not huge. Kind of has a neighborhood bookstore sort of feel. The books are organized in a way that blends online and offline. Most popular on Amazon, best reviewed on Amazon, etc.

All of this effort is just surrounding optimal ways to do retail--online and offline.

On Ten Marketing Truths

Richard at Adliterate posts smart stuff. Here's 10 marketing truths we shouldn't forget.

1. Seeking greater penetration is almost always the winning strategy rather than attempting to shift average weight of purchase.

2. Light buyers are your most valuable customers not loyalists. Virtually every brand needs more light buyers.

3. Buying is the desired outcome from marketing not engagement, participation or conversation. We are obsessed by the wrong metrics.

4. People never care enough about brands to want to be followers, friends or fans. Not at a scale that is commercially useful.

5. Brands need to ensure their mental availability but its fanciful and hideously expensive to remain ‘always on’ and few people want them to be.

6. Targeting is not the holy grail of marketing. It’s helpful to a point but rests on assumptions about human behaviour that are unpredictable and misleading.

7. Wastage is under-rated. One way or another wastage is a conversation with tomorrow’s customers.

8. There is no earned media. With a few highly notable exceptions, for most brands, all media is paid for media.

9. There is no one way advertising works. Any campaign can work in many different ways and often in ways that were not explicitly intended. And a great campaign will improve all your metrics.

10. Advertising works best with the consent of people. Consent that is best built when advertising is helpful, enjoyable and interesting. The digital inventory of today is destroying this consent day by day.

On ROI From Emotion

This year at Advertising Week, Ryan Eckel, VP/Brand at Dick's, had some good words about emotion-forward marketing, which has led to some great work by the retailer throughout their advertising:

and in doing their own films:

We Could Be King - Trailer HD from Tribeca on Vimeo.

"Our brand is about this idea that sports makes people better: not just fitness, not just because you're healthier, but because it encourages a work ethic, and discipline, and time-management, and all these amazing qualities. So we look for stories that speak to those values.

"We're a retail marketer, so we have direct mail, we have Sunday circulars, we have all these things that hit pretty hard. But whenever we just tell emotive stories, from ... all the metrics we look at, the storytelling outperforms on ROI … So it's been a business driver as well, even though that wasn't the intention at the beginning."

On Rebranding

That's funny. Courtesy of Strands of Stolen Genius.

On How Your Brand Isn't The Center Of The Universe

Red Bull reportedly spends nearly 30% of their revenue on marketing. It's an incredibly high amount. Most of that goes to events.

Their brand is very strong, but as they do all of these events, drawing huge crowds, they keep in mind that it isn't about them at all:

At no point were people coming to these big Red Bull events because they like the drink and wondered what else we might be up to. They didn’t dislike the drink, but they came because they knew that the event was going to blow their mind — was really a critical part of it. The mistakes that the brands make in this area is assuming that they are the center of the universe and that they can do no wrong. At the end of the day, you’re a f***ing brand. You’ve got to be clear that there’s a lot of human emotion that as a brand, you’re lucky to be part of. But you’re certainly not the star of the party.

On A Turnaround At Arby's

Two years ago, 35 percent of Arby's customers were under the age of 35. Today, 50 percent are under the age of 35. That's significant when your brand is a QSR. "We're driving transactions, which in our industry is hard to come by, and I think we're just getting started," said their CMO.

Focus, is how you get to purpose. Which is a beautiful thing. That what we see with "We have the meats."

True in food advertising, and, really all brands.

Because it's also what helped Taylor Swift keep 1989 free of country. "Let's capitalize on both country and pop markets," the record execs said as they wanted to add some twang to some songs. "No, let’s not. Let’s choose a lane” Taylor said. And 1989 was a smash hit.

Why We Do It

KPMG told HBR how they convinced their employees that they could change the world.

A nice case study in the ongoing conversation around the importance of purpose. 

Marketing Crack

As only he can do, Martin has put together another great one.

Marketing crack from Martin Weigel

You're Still Not You When You're Hungry

When Snickers landed on this strategy it was immediately acknowledged as brilliant. And it was. We know that still because after all this time their ideas remain fresh, yet not too distant or stretching from the original intent. Which is so hard to do. Every year it seems we see one or two new Snickers ideas. There's probably more. Or maybe they're just focused on doing a few, notably well.