I. CREATIVE PHILOSOPHIES*

* Albert C. Book and C. Dennis Schick: FUNDAMENTALS OF COPY AND LAYOUT, Third Edition, NTC Business Books, Lincolnwood, Illinois USA, 1997.

FAIFAX CONE - Foot, Cone, & Belding (FCB)

Five Rules:
1. Clear Position - People have no time to waste.
2. Proposition must express a well defined value.
3. Present value in personal terms - Consumer's perspective
4. Express personality of advertiser
5. Demand action (from consumer) - mental pledge

WILLIAM BERNBACH - Doyle, Dane, & Bernbach

Sales argument is not enough. You have to startle people into immediate awareness.
Memorability and originality (appeal, likebility) over sales argument (persuasion).

Message has to be conveyed with vitality.
The message (communication) has to be fresh, original, and imaginative (strike the imagination).

LEO BURNETT - Leo Burnett

Inherent drama in very product, publicist has to find it and convey it.

Creativity - Establishing new and meaningful relationships between previously unrelated things in a manner that is relevant, believable, and in good taste, that presents the product (message, activity, information) in a new light.

You don't have to be "off beat" to be interesting. A truly interesting ad or commercial will be "off beat" by its very rarity.

Great advertising writing is always deceptively and disarmingly simple. It has the common touch without sounding or being patronizing


CAMBELL - EWALD Co. - Company philosophy
Understand marketing objectives and advertising strategy before creative activities (production).
Doing your "home work" will bring order to your originality, clarity to your cleverness, and credibility to your creative product.

ROSSER REEVES - Ted Bates & Company

U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition)

1. Advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, or puffery (show), but clear and specific benefits.

2. Proposition must be unique, one that the competition cannot, or does not offer. Something unique to the brand (object, activity, message, information) or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.

3. Proposition must be so strong (important) that it can move the mass, i.e., pull over customers to your product.

DAVID OGLILVY - Oglilvy & Mather

Individual ads are contributions to a larger, long term marketing program based on the product's "brand image."


JACK TROUT - Ries, Cappiello Cowell

The era of "positioning" - Recognizes the importance of product features and the company's image, but stresses, more than anything, the need to create a "position" in the prospect's mind.

Rules for playing the "game"

1. Get players with good marketing sense, "vision", and experience in both.

2. Be brutally frank about your product. Eliminate "ego" decision making (my personal little farm). It clouds the issues.

3. Don't be afraid to change what you have o change. Take advantage of all your resources. And base decisions on the marketplace, not on what's in the company.

4. Establish your "position" and build a program around it that's big enough (appealing enough) to get noticed.

THOMAS DILLON - Batten, Barton, Durstine & Orborn, Inc. (BBDO)

Common sins of advertising: 1. Creativity for the sake of technique - confuses the message , not addressing the specific consumer.

2. No creativity at all - boring and obvious selling message.
Advertising persuasion - to influence consumption/purchase decision.

Creative Process:

1. Identify prime prospect (consumers) - to whom is the message going to be sent.

2. Determine consumer's "problems" (needs, desires etc.) and decision making process.

3. Examine product (service) in light of what you know about the consumer - visualize product from the perspective of the consumer.

The purpose is to develop a "copy concept" (statement) that match up the consumer's "problems" with the characteristics of the product / service. Consumers should be able to "carry" this concept in their memory.

Ad or commercial must be able to: • Get the attention of the consumer.
• Register the memory of your product / service - the content of the copy concept.
• Link the concept to the brand.

EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY CREATIVE PHILOSOPHIES

JOHN MAEDA (Founder MIT Medial Lab, President of RSDI )

I prefer to look out further and beyond, but fueled by the incredible traditional and classical core that represents more of the "what is good" versus just the more technology-centered approach of "what is new." You see it today so often—we desire great experiences, not just new experiences.

10 Laws of Simplicity

1. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. More emotions are better than less.
8. In simplicity we trust.
9. Some things can never be made simple.
10. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.


ALEX BOGUSKY (Crispin Porter + Bogusky)

"Our basic philosophy is we're going to take a brand and make it famous."

I tend to not think about it as entertainment. You can't just entertain and slap a logo on it. The work you do has to be about what the brand is about. You have to be interesting and you have to be surprising--that tends to be entertaining.

Advertising is more like mining. You've got lots of people doing their work, others culling through that work tying to find the gems. There's a lot of just dirt and a few gems.