Foreword

By Andrew Jaffe

The twentieth century did not start on a creative high note. Most advertising consisted of small square ads with a picture of a product, a product claim, and the address of the nearest retailer. "Blair's Pills—Great English Remedy for Gout and Rheumatism," read one. "M. Stachelberg & Co.'s Havana Cigars—-Costliest Because Best," said another. Fame, the early 1900s version of Adweek magazine, quoted a new verse from the Cleveland Baker [sic] Powder Co. appearing in street cars:

The man who lets a lady stand
Where others press and crowd her,
Should have the best and strongest brand,
Some Cleveland's Baker Powder—to raise him.

At the turn of the century, display advertising was a pretty crude medium for expressing a persuasive selling idea. Occasionally agencies would stumble onto something memorable—a wonderful poster illustration or a cartoon figure. Gillette sold razors with a poster showing a hefty baby holding a razor under the line "Begin early." In 1917 James Montgomery Flagg created the still classic recruiting poster showing Uncle Sam with the line "I want YOU for U.S. Army"

Gradually advertising budgets grew, fueling the growth of newspapers and magazines. With the invention of radio and then television, budgets soared. By the end of the twentieth century, while a "dancing banner" on an obscure Web site might cost only a few thousand dollars a month, a 30-second commercial on prime-time television could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Spending $100 million to launch a new product like the Sony Playstation or a new brand of soda or potato chips was not unusual. Nor did that kind of money assure success. Some brands like Colgate, Welch's, Coca-Cola, Gillette, and Levi's survived the 100-year span, but many others like Hudson (cars), Holeproof (hosiery), and Victor's (bicycles) did not.

Advertising soon evolved into "marketing," a much broader concept involving also packaging, price, distribution, and other forms of promotion. Business schools began teaching the ways brands are "built," tracing the relationship between advertising and sales. In 1904 Albert D. Lasker, the Texan who founded Lord & Thomas (later Foote, Cone & Belding Worldwide), one of Chicago's leading agencies, was handed a note from an out-of-work copywriter, John E. Kennedy It said, "I am in a saloon downstairs, and I can tell you what advertising is." Of course, Lasker agreed to see him. Kennedy strode into his office and summed up his discovery in three words, "Salesmanship in print," an idea refined after World War II by Rosser Reeves into "The Unique Selling Proposition," For a long time that is all people thought advertising could be, but eventually, almost by trial and error, those who crafted ads realized they were tapping into something much deeper than what could be achieved by an appeal to mere logic.

In 1924 Philip Morris brought out a new, mild cigarette for women called Marlboro. When it did not sell, copywriters at Leo Burnett suggested marketing it to men using pictures first of race drivers and later of cowboys. Marlboro soon became the best-selling cigarette in the world, and the Marlboro "cowboy" would continue its iconic role throughout the twentieth century. The legendary "1984" ad that launched the Macintosh computer was only shown once—on the 1984 Super Bowl—and did not even feature a product shot. And yet it is considered one of the powerful ad "campaigns" of all-time.

By the 1990s marketing dollars were as much focused on "below the line" specialties like direct marketing, sales promotions, event marketing, public relations, and discounted selling techniques as on mass advertising. The once glamorous world of advertising began to shrivel somewhat under fire from clients who had come to regard advertising as a "commodity" to be purchased from a "vendor" rather than a magical idea capable of driving sales off the charts.

But creativity continued to be prized, and relatively small agencies were able to win huge, global assignments from Fortune 500 companies. Occasionally these creatively focused, midsize shops struck gold. When in 1996 Steve Jobs took over Apple for the second time, the first thing he did—even before overhauling Apple's product line—was to hire a new ad agency and commission a new ad campaign. TBWA Chiat Day's "Think Different" campaign helped boost Apple's stock and gave Jobs a year's breathing space while he shut down costly ventures like the hand-held Newton and developed the wildly popular, colorful iMac computer. In a similar manner, Phil Knight built Nike into the greatest sports marketing company in the world on the back of advertising created by a small, independent Portland, Oregon, agency—Wieden & Kennedy.

Advertising came to be recognized as so powerful that some politicians and academics began to worry about its effect on American culture. Economist Kenneth Galbraith and historian Arnold Toynbee branded it an "evil," but Franklin Roosevelt praised it for "spreading knowledge of higher standards," and Winston Churchill said it spurs "individual exertion and greater production… [and] nourishes the consuming power of men."

David Ogilvy teased his critics: "If you disapprove of social mobility, creature comforts and foreign travel, you are right to blame advertising for encouraging such wickedness… Dear old John Burns, the father of the Labor movement in England, used to say that the tragedy of the working class was the poverty of their desires. I make no apology for inciting the working class to desire less Spartan lives."

Governments and nonprofit groups quickly grasped the power of strong images and headlines and began marshaling these tools to influence the public. During World War II Washington cautioned Americans that "Loose lips sink ships." Later Smokey Bear helped cut down forest fires; the line "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" raised millions for the United Negro College Fund; and a long-running campaign talked teenagers out of using drugs with a series of memorable spots, the most famous showing an egg being fried with the simple line "This is your brain on drugs."

Television changed everything in advertising. Companies and agencies at first thought of television as "radio with pictures," and in order to reach most of the country, one simply bought time on the three networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC. "I now know that in television," Ogilvy wrote in his 1963 book Confessions of an Advertising Man, "what you show is more important than what you say." Moreover, by laying coaxial cable to homes, television was able to offer viewers, and advertisers, with a bewildering array of channels—more than a hundred by the end of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, every usable surface became an invitation to advertise. Brands appeared in textbooks, on the walls of restaurant toilets, on the courts of sports events, on skyscraper buildings, and in movie theaters. A company called Free Fone offered to pay the telephone bills of clients who would agree to listen up to 30 minutes of ads a month. The Internet only increased the potential size of this advertising universe. One distributor offered free computers to customers who would agree to use a special browser when cruising the Internet. Customers had to share information about themselves with advertisers, and the browser determined what messages they would view.

By the 1990s ads and brands were an integral part of American culture—having as much impact as movies, literature, or any other form of communication. Ogilvy early recognized the dramatic power of advertising when in the 1950s he gave the Hathaway man an eyepatch. In the mid-1990s Candace Bergen became as well known for being MCI's "dime lady" as she was for her long-running television series Murphy Brown. In the late 1990s Taco Bell became a hot fast-food chain again thanks to the personality of a cheeky little Chihuahua.

This development of advertising was pushed along by creative geniuses who helped break rales and dramatically improve the power of commercial communication. In the 1960s and '70s, for example, Bill Bernbach turned Madison Avenue away from its white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant roots by teaching the trade how to wake up consumers with a fresh message—calling a Volkswagen a lemon and coming up with the line "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's," which was illustrated with a photogenic black kid holding a big chunk of rye bread. Other Americans who played an important role in developing the field include Jay Chiat, Lee Clow, Hal Riney, Phil Dusenberry, Ed McCabe, Carl Ally, George Lois, Mary Wells, arid Leo Burnett, and among the masters from the British advertising scene were David Abbott, John Hegarty, John Webster, Tony Cox, and Charles Saatchi.

The campaigns in this book grew from the agencies these pioneers led and the people they trained, many of whom went on to start their own great agencies. The campaigns are all arresting and smart. That is a prerequisite in a cluttered world where the average urban consumer is bombarded with 2,000 to 3,000 commercial messages a day.

By the end of the twentieth century, the overriding importance of the brand was accepted as gospel. Advertising had become the language of brands. It formed a clear picture in the mind of the consumer—an image that was either reinforced by the purchase experience or destroyed by it. In the 1950s, when research turned to psychiatry to understand what motivated a consumer to sample a brand, advertising was denounced for manipulating behavior through the use of "hidden persuaders." But years later the emotional bonds built by advertising were more commonly viewed as a natural result of effective, honest advertising and not as something evil.

As a result, the best advertising is fresh, honest, and direct. Some of the campaigns in this book may seem a bit dated, but when they first appeared, they intrigued and sometimes even irritated viewers. That is a necessary element to assure that your message is heard and believed. Said New York adman Jerry Della Femina: "Looking creative isn't enough. When you tell the truth, when you're straight and direct with the [consumer], there's some shock involved… But that's good, because you need to jolt people with your advertising… Most great advertising is direct. That's how people talk. That's the style they read. That's what sells products or services or ideas."

This, then, is not only an encyclopedia of advertising campaigns but a history of the growth of the century's great brands. By establishing such iconic brands, companies were able to create special relationships with consumers that transcended the value of the products they manufactured. In this sense brand building, a largely American invention, was at least as valuable in terms of shareholder equity as the discovery of electricity or the development of the motor car. Companies have come to know that great advertising can build sales of good products and destroy the credibility of poor ones. Advertisements provide consumers with vital information about the marketplace and lead them over and over to trusted services and wares.

We have come a long way from fraudulent claims about patent medicine and cures for gout that opened the twentieth century. Advertising has become accepted as a permanent part of the landscape—the essential building block of free media. But to the knowing reader these ads also present a footprint of vital changes in our society over the last hundred years. Advertisements, wrote Harper's Weekly in 1897, "are now part of the humanities, a true mirror of life, a sort of fossil history from which the future chronicler, if all other historical monuments were to be lost, might fully and graphically rewrite the history of time."