March 4th is the day to March Forth on our dreams. The March Forth movement started nearly two decades ago when, as a partner of then Babbit & Reiman Advertising, I wanted to give our employees a day for themselves to do nothing but focus on their dreams – on where they really wanted to go in their lives.
In the 1980s it was fashionable to work 24/7. I was one of those workaholics. I even had a sign prominently displayed in my office that read, “Sunday is the day of rest, for the rest.” So what do you give the most dedicated and determined workers on your staff? Their own day to take action on their own dreams.
Thinking is only half the equation. Doing is the other. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer Inc., says “Great ideas ship!” And you are that idea. But we all need a chance, a motivation and a day to motivate us. Only when we March Forth can we turn ideas into “I Dids.” The best ideas are in graveyards. They are buried with the people who had those great ideas when they were healthy but never took action.
Winning ideas that stay in our heads are losers. All of us have a book, a movie, a dream house, a prince charming, a great job within arms reach, but we don’t grab it. So I instituted a new holiday. “Don’t take the day off, take it on!” I would bellow from my pulpit.
Little did I know that this extra day I used as a bonus for working hard would become the symbol of dreams becoming reality, the beginning of a sojourn. It became a day for people who’s jobs were too small for their spirits, a time for them to leave an oppressive environment and mobilize energies to take a leap of faith, knowing full well that the net would appear.
Those who want to take action celebrate March Forth. The literal definition of power is the ability to act. Action is the great divider between whining and winning, loners and lovers, the happy and the hapless and between living your dream or someone else’s.
Benjamin Franklin believed there were three classes of people: those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move. March 4th is Valentine’s Day for what you really love. It’s a day to turn your hobby into a job. It is Mother’s Day and Father’s Day for new ideas. March 4th is Independence Day to declare your authenticity and to tell your co-workers or your boss who you really are. (Many who’ve written to me say they use this day to tell abusive, autocratic managers to take a hike. And others just go hiking.)
March 4th is Halloween for what scares you. This is the time to insert the word “excited” for “afraid.” It is Election Day to vote for yourself and Christmas because you get to open up the greatest gift of all – you.
March 4th is your day to take the first step toward a better you.
The first year we gave people the day off on March Forth was also my first year in business. My colleagues went skydiving, to cooking schools, one signed up to become a missionary in Guatemala, one got engaged, another separated. People forgave others and others called those forgotten.
That was a financially difficult year for me. Like many entrepreneurs, I was strapped for cash. I was living off my Visa card. That morning, I decided to fly standby – that’s all I could afford – to my hometown of New York.
Though I only had a few pennies in my pocket, my heart held the dream of making it big in advertising. Arriving in Manhattan, I made my way to see my agent who represented me and other struggling copywriters. I showed her my work and she asked if I would be interested in sharing it with a gentleman who was in New York for just one day March 4th.
He l looked at my new agency’s television spots and, three weeks later, he acquired our company, made us millionaires and catapulted us into careers only seen in the movies.
So what will you do this March 4th?
BrightHouse is the original Ideation Corporation. We are a global consultancy of thinkers creating commercial success through social value. We're creating a world where new ideas reign, where corporate values mirror human values and where higher earnings link with higher purposes.
Case Study: Secret
SituationBrightHouse first partnered with P&G's antiperspirant and deodorant brand for women, Secret, to elevate its purpose—helping women be more fearless—by linking it to the brand's ethos. Later, BrightHouse helped the brand bring its purpose to life through an act that blew people away (a "BPA").
Action
BrightHouse partnered with Secret to link its story of origin as the first antiperspirant made specifically for women to its purpose of helping women be more fearless and supported the team in articulating guardrails to define exactly what fearlessness means to the brand.
Through the BrightHouse luminary network, we identified the opportunity for Secret to partner with Diana Nyad, a 60-year-old world class swimmer planning to be the first person to swim 103 miles from the Florida Keys to Cuba without a shark cage. Diana attempted the same swim in the 1970's but to date had not been able to complete it.
BrightHouse recognized that Diana's fear that at 60 her best days were behind her was shared by many other women, and her fearless effort to accomplish a dream that had eluded her was a perfect fit for Secret. BrightHouse arranged and managed Secret's $50K sponsorship of Diana's swim, including partnering with the Secret team and their digital agency, imc², to execute engaging communications that brought Secret's Fearless Platform to life.
This BPA Act not only provided financial support to make Diana's dream possible, but it also enabled Facebook fans to send her well wishes and virtual gifts to help her overcome her fears such as shark repellant, snacks and clear skies. BrightHouse also arranged to share fans' motivational messages with Diana and her team throughout the swim.
Results
By linking Secret's ethos to its purpose, BrightHouse ensured that Secret's purpose was truly authentic, inspiring and ownable. Clearly articulated purpose guardrails have enabled Secret to align its organization and provide structure to future ideations and activations.
Secret's partnership with Diana Nyad elevated the brand's point of difference—helping women feel confident in their antiperspirant—to a point of view—helping women be fearless in their lives. Diana's inspiring story garnered national media attention, and Secret engaged women of all ages through ad buys, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Upon launching a Facebook page that enabled Secret fans to send well wishes to Diana, Secret saw an immediate and dramatic increase in Secret Facebook fans—today, they have nearly 600,000! Women saw themselves in Diana and were thrilled that Secret was making her swim possible.
The partnership was specifically linked to Secret's Clinical Strength Waterproof SKU, which led to a significant bump in purchase intent and sales versus the same time last year, even thought the SKU has been on the market for 2-years.
With weather conditions worsening, Diana was fearless enough to put her dream on hold once again, postponing her swim until 2011. When she's ready to dive in, Secret and women everywhere will be right beside her both financially and emotionally supporting her fearless dream.
Purpose: The Future of Advertising
There likely weren’t many well-established marketing firms that read Danielle Sacks’s recent article in Fast Company, "The Future of Advertising: Mayhem on Madison Avenue," that felt vindicated. Yet, rather than abdicating our four hundred thousand year-old upright posture and skulking around on ancestral all-fours like the ad execs in the article, we stood erect, chests out, chins up, fists in the air.
BrightHouse has been a proponent of reaching individuals through meaningful and direct methods versus mass media for nearly two decades. Hardly adversarial with advertising agencies, we frequently partner with and help them become believers in our long-standing conviction, “If you’re paying for the media, you have the wrong message.” Not as sexy as Fast Company’s quotation from Jon Bond, but equal in character, "Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it."
The media landscape will continue to change and become increasingly complex as technology progresses at its mind-warping speed. But there is a constant, a Rosetta Stone that we use with clients from Bounty to Secret to Carlsberg, that helps determine where to be, when, how and with whom.
It’s called purpose, or as we named it twelve years ago, the Master Idea. If your company or client has an authentic purpose, one that’s relevant to your ethos, culture and values, then you have a lens, magic goggles, through which to view this daunting digital landscape—and everything else, for that matter, from innovation to HR. This perspective helps ground you, like a foot on the floor during a bad case of the bed spins. It will help you create, edit and make decisions in real time because you’ll know exactly why you’re here. And if you know your why, you can deal with any what, who, where or when.
The other piece of good news is on the content for this revolution — movies didn’t replace theater, the Kindle didn’t replace books. Content that feeds the soul—that helps people become part of something bigger than themselves, purpose-inspired content, will always be craved. So, if your company or client has an authentic purpose, then no matter whether the content is crowd-sourced, for a media event, a motion picture or a picture on a package, it will be guided by this authentic purpose that meets a need in the world.
Human truths, not taglines, purposes that help improve not just public perception, but also public life—these are the things the marketing world will need to adapt to if it wants to stand tall and keep evolving.
Cathy Carlisi is leader of the BrightHouse creative engine. Cathy has worked for agencies such as Carmichael Lynch and Fallon in Minneapolis, as well as for several agencies in Atlanta, including Babbit and Reiman. Cathy’s work has appeared in national and international award shows such as The One Show, Communication Arts, The New York Art Directors Annual, Graphis Advertising Annual, Print Regional Design Annual and the Addys—including Best of Show. She has worked for world-class organizations such as CNN, Delta Air Lines, Rollerblade, Schwinn, Energizer, The Cartoon Network, Graco, Children's Defense Fund, Georgia-Pacific, and Coca-Cola. She is also a published poet and graduate of The University of the South—Sewanee, where she received Magna Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa distinction.
BrightHouse has been a proponent of reaching individuals through meaningful and direct methods versus mass media for nearly two decades. Hardly adversarial with advertising agencies, we frequently partner with and help them become believers in our long-standing conviction, “If you’re paying for the media, you have the wrong message.” Not as sexy as Fast Company’s quotation from Jon Bond, but equal in character, "Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it."
The media landscape will continue to change and become increasingly complex as technology progresses at its mind-warping speed. But there is a constant, a Rosetta Stone that we use with clients from Bounty to Secret to Carlsberg, that helps determine where to be, when, how and with whom.
It’s called purpose, or as we named it twelve years ago, the Master Idea. If your company or client has an authentic purpose, one that’s relevant to your ethos, culture and values, then you have a lens, magic goggles, through which to view this daunting digital landscape—and everything else, for that matter, from innovation to HR. This perspective helps ground you, like a foot on the floor during a bad case of the bed spins. It will help you create, edit and make decisions in real time because you’ll know exactly why you’re here. And if you know your why, you can deal with any what, who, where or when.
The other piece of good news is on the content for this revolution — movies didn’t replace theater, the Kindle didn’t replace books. Content that feeds the soul—that helps people become part of something bigger than themselves, purpose-inspired content, will always be craved. So, if your company or client has an authentic purpose, then no matter whether the content is crowd-sourced, for a media event, a motion picture or a picture on a package, it will be guided by this authentic purpose that meets a need in the world.
Human truths, not taglines, purposes that help improve not just public perception, but also public life—these are the things the marketing world will need to adapt to if it wants to stand tall and keep evolving.
Cathy Carlisi is leader of the BrightHouse creative engine. Cathy has worked for agencies such as Carmichael Lynch and Fallon in Minneapolis, as well as for several agencies in Atlanta, including Babbit and Reiman. Cathy’s work has appeared in national and international award shows such as The One Show, Communication Arts, The New York Art Directors Annual, Graphis Advertising Annual, Print Regional Design Annual and the Addys—including Best of Show. She has worked for world-class organizations such as CNN, Delta Air Lines, Rollerblade, Schwinn, Energizer, The Cartoon Network, Graco, Children's Defense Fund, Georgia-Pacific, and Coca-Cola. She is also a published poet and graduate of The University of the South—Sewanee, where she received Magna Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa distinction.
The Most Exciting Time to be in Marketing
Not since the birth of our nation has there been a more exciting time to be in marketing. America has its roots in marketing. Thirteen brands, then called colonies, had their own cultures, values, strategies, logos (flags) and taglines (mottos).
Philosopher, statesman and arguably this nation’s first great account planner, Ben Franklin, brought all thirteen brands together at a conference in Philadelphia, which sported his pithy theme: "If we don't hang together, we will surely hang separately." This message roped them in rather quickly by offering this disparate group of brands something bigger than anyone of them - the purpose of "We The People."
Our purpose proved that some ideas are bigger than others and have the ability to galvanize and unify a fledgling nation, let alone brands. Purpose stands the test of time as well. Unlike positioning statements that come and go, purpose never changes. It is our North Star, our secular religion and a symbol of what we can be. “We the people” means as much today as it did way back then, just as Southwest will always stand for democratizing the skies.
Purpose is the new profit. This week the Association of National Advertisers returned to the roots of its own industry by reclaiming the power of purpose and all the profits that come with it. As Dell's former CMO put it, "Purpose isn't just good for the soul, it’s actually good for the bottom line."
In Firms of Endearment, Rajendra S. Sisodia, David B. Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth define Firms of Endearment as companies that “seek to maximize their value to society as a whole, not just to their shareholders.” These firms, which include such purpose-driven juggernauts as Google, Patagonia, Southwest and Whole Foods, returned 1025% over the last 10 years, compared to only 122% for the S&P and 316% from the companies profiled in Good to Great.
Purpose turns brands into stands. And what you stand for allows you to play in a larger space. Take Graco as an example. What Graco knew intuitively, but had not articulated since the founder’s passing, was that its most important role was caring for caregivers. Once the organization rallied around this sense of purpose, it grew from a $450M juvenile products company to a $1.3B baby and parenting essentials company.
Finally purpose allows us to work in the company of something greater. When John F. Kennedy asked a janitor at NASA what he did for a living, he replied, " I am helping to put a man on the moon by the end of this decade.”
As one of the leaders of the purpose movement who has worked on purpose for more than eighty Fortune 100 companies, I can attest to the power of purpose for people, products and profit. Purpose is back and promises to elevate the role of marketing from seller to servant, and in doing so will transform brands, companies and this planet.
Philosopher, statesman and arguably this nation’s first great account planner, Ben Franklin, brought all thirteen brands together at a conference in Philadelphia, which sported his pithy theme: "If we don't hang together, we will surely hang separately." This message roped them in rather quickly by offering this disparate group of brands something bigger than anyone of them - the purpose of "We The People."
Our purpose proved that some ideas are bigger than others and have the ability to galvanize and unify a fledgling nation, let alone brands. Purpose stands the test of time as well. Unlike positioning statements that come and go, purpose never changes. It is our North Star, our secular religion and a symbol of what we can be. “We the people” means as much today as it did way back then, just as Southwest will always stand for democratizing the skies.
Purpose is the new profit. This week the Association of National Advertisers returned to the roots of its own industry by reclaiming the power of purpose and all the profits that come with it. As Dell's former CMO put it, "Purpose isn't just good for the soul, it’s actually good for the bottom line."
In Firms of Endearment, Rajendra S. Sisodia, David B. Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth define Firms of Endearment as companies that “seek to maximize their value to society as a whole, not just to their shareholders.” These firms, which include such purpose-driven juggernauts as Google, Patagonia, Southwest and Whole Foods, returned 1025% over the last 10 years, compared to only 122% for the S&P and 316% from the companies profiled in Good to Great.
Purpose turns brands into stands. And what you stand for allows you to play in a larger space. Take Graco as an example. What Graco knew intuitively, but had not articulated since the founder’s passing, was that its most important role was caring for caregivers. Once the organization rallied around this sense of purpose, it grew from a $450M juvenile products company to a $1.3B baby and parenting essentials company.
Finally purpose allows us to work in the company of something greater. When John F. Kennedy asked a janitor at NASA what he did for a living, he replied, " I am helping to put a man on the moon by the end of this decade.”
As one of the leaders of the purpose movement who has worked on purpose for more than eighty Fortune 100 companies, I can attest to the power of purpose for people, products and profit. Purpose is back and promises to elevate the role of marketing from seller to servant, and in doing so will transform brands, companies and this planet.
The Five Last Bastions For Thinking
Thinking no longer has a place in American culture. Daydreaming is frowned upon. Fast solutions are rewarded. And the workplace is the last place where you’ll find real live thinkers. Ideas don’t like offices and no insights come from off sites. The cubicle should be spelled CUBEBIKILL because ideas die in those cells. Time to think outside those boxes!
Here are the last five place you can do that:
When Albert Einstein was interviewed at Princeton University, he was asked how he spent his day. The professor calculated that 20% of his time was spent teaching his students and 80% was invested into looking outside his window. Ponder that!
Here are the last five place you can do that:
- The Car: Turn off the radio and turn on those wheels in your brain. As someone who is paid for his big ideas, I think of MPG as Millions Per Gallon! On the road we are both relaxed and alert. Our brains are geared for this neutral mode. Ideas start popping up everywhere. And stop sign are gifts to let you write down those thoughts.
- The Shower: It’s enclosed, private has got a great sound and is warm. It’s a womb for ideas! That’ s why we have so many in the shower. I actually installed a shower in my office with the letters T-H-I-N-K etched in five tiles. Baths work too. After soaking in a tub all day Archimedes conceptualized “volumetric weight.” Leeping out of the bath he screamed “eureka!”
- The John: Rodin’s famous statue “The Thinker” assumed the position for good reason. Sitting on the john is a time of release in more ways than one or two. This can be a time for deep contemplation rather than just a waste.
- The Park: Nietzsche would take long walks in the park tom generate his super thoughts. Unfortunately many of us have NDD- Nature Deficit Disorder. but nature has all the big ideas. Imagination was born here. Get outside your head and head outside.
- The Church: I was born Jewish but when I need a big idea I go church. Nothing beats it for divine inspiration because their architecture is built on the idea of getting as close to the heavens as humanly possible. Hence the tall spires.
When Albert Einstein was interviewed at Princeton University, he was asked how he spent his day. The professor calculated that 20% of his time was spent teaching his students and 80% was invested into looking outside his window. Ponder that!
Advertising – The First Million Years
A little more than 1 million years ago, an artist watched a man battle a mean dinosaur. Returning to his cave, the artist sketched the scene on his wall. “Sportsman In Loincloth Battling Triceratops,” he titled it. Later that evening, over cocktails, his friends saw what was probably the world’s first print ad.
Scholars call the period that followed, world history. I call it advertising in the making. And why not? It makes for great copy. In case you didn’t know it, copywriting was actually invented in 3500 B.C. by the Sumerians. But it didn’t catch on until 1800 B.C., when the first popular type face appeared. It was called Canaanite – a precursor to the popular typeface, Helvetica Bold. Some years later, the world’s first logo appeared – the Star of David, only to be followed by a catchy spin-off – the Christian crucifix. Soon, both logos led to “Thank God for God” bumper stickers and an ongoing competitive campaign that was the inspiration for the Coke-Pepsi challenge. The battle also produced the industry’s first memorable continuing character: the Pope.
Meanwhile, in 500 B.C., over tea at a Chinese restaurant, Confucius said: “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” Presto! The philosophy of creative copywriting was born. Examples of the art can still be found in today’s fortune cookies.
Socrates won “Best of Show” the following spring. The assignment was a toughy: sell “contentment.” His ad read: “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” Socrates’ ink was known by everyone – perhaps to his own admission, the business killed him.
Two hundred years later, the world saw its first blockbuster campaign, created by Alexander the Great. Many of Alex’s peers attributed his successes to excellent reach and frequency.
The next thousand years brought with them a creative drought. Sure, St. Paul and St. Augustine came up with a few memorable tag lines, and Genghis Khan got far with a hard-driving campaign, but no one seemed able to score with the Big Idea. Until 1300 A.D. that is, when a handful of pricey Italian boutiques launched the concept of the Renaissance. The art direction was “Clio” from day one. Print got a boost, too, from a guy named Gutenberg, who opened the world’s first type house.
Then, in 1492, Columbus went international with the biggest idea since the Renaissance-untapped markets. And a decade later Leonardo da Vinci advanced the hottest new business theory to date: “If you don’t have the product, invent it.” It was rumored that da Vinci, Michelangelo and Machiavelli would quit their respective agencies and join forces, but the heavy-hitting trio never got it together. Apparently, the two creatives came to believe that Machiavelli was only out for himself.
In the 1600’s, Shakespeare made long copy respectable; Rembrandt walked away with all the art director awards; and Isaac Newton proved empirically that the oldest copy line in the universe -”What goes up must come down,”-was effective against all target demos.
Halfway around the world, Ben Franklin lit up the industry when he and a bunch of account execs got together in Philadelphia to introduce a shaky new product: the USA. Jefferson did the copywriting on the campaign, and Washington was management supervisor. Its U.S.P. was “In God We Trust.” The only trouble was the logo. Account wanted a turkey. Research said the crucifix had high awareness.
Media suggested several symbols, one for each major demographic group. Finally, creative pitched the eagle “because it was bald.” Nobody understood the rationale, but who were they to second-guess genius? Francis Scott Key was brought in to do the music, and the rest is history.
Back in Europe, Napoleon broke his own campaign with one of history’s best-known mnemonics: the Man With His Hand in the Jacket. He hired Beethoven, of Bonn Music, to do the jingle; but, after four submissions, fired the tunesmith, calling him “deaf.” Beethoven turned around and sold his Fifth to Czar Alexander, who used it effectively to trash the French Emperor’s market share.
The battle, however, hardly compared to the clash of Blue versus Gray in the U.S. Civil War. Many considered the mud slinging bad for the industry. Others said it was worth it because the U.S. came out “new and improved.” Indeed a decade later, some of America’s greatest creative work appeared: Bell reached out and touched someone, Edison bought good things to life, and automobiles began to build excitement.
Meanwhile, Marconi claimed that radio was hot; Freud claimed that our ids were hot, and the Wright Brothers forced our industry to double the per diem. Yet even Lenin and FDR, who made revolutionary breakthroughs in the field, couldn’t match the biggest ad blitz of the century” The Third Reich. Armed with a powerful logo, excellent media placement and hard-hitting creative, Hitler’s campaign seemed destined to last a thousand years. There was only one hitch. The strategy-world domination through genocide-turned off the public. And as we all know, if the strategy is wrong, the creative can’t be right.
Once the air cleared following World War II, the industry discovered its most important weapon since the caveman’s club: Television. Like the bombs that proceeded them, TV ads exploded onto the scene in a battle for our attention. With words like targets, campaign, launch and shoot, you would think we agencies were being run by the military.
Finally in the 1990’s, advertising went from postal to digital making it possible for ads to multiply for our undivided attention. In a short 1 million years, humans evolved from homosapiens into homoconsumens. Though come to think of it, advertising has been around since day one. After all, God created man in his own image.
Scholars call the period that followed, world history. I call it advertising in the making. And why not? It makes for great copy. In case you didn’t know it, copywriting was actually invented in 3500 B.C. by the Sumerians. But it didn’t catch on until 1800 B.C., when the first popular type face appeared. It was called Canaanite – a precursor to the popular typeface, Helvetica Bold. Some years later, the world’s first logo appeared – the Star of David, only to be followed by a catchy spin-off – the Christian crucifix. Soon, both logos led to “Thank God for God” bumper stickers and an ongoing competitive campaign that was the inspiration for the Coke-Pepsi challenge. The battle also produced the industry’s first memorable continuing character: the Pope.
Meanwhile, in 500 B.C., over tea at a Chinese restaurant, Confucius said: “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” Presto! The philosophy of creative copywriting was born. Examples of the art can still be found in today’s fortune cookies.
Socrates won “Best of Show” the following spring. The assignment was a toughy: sell “contentment.” His ad read: “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” Socrates’ ink was known by everyone – perhaps to his own admission, the business killed him.
Two hundred years later, the world saw its first blockbuster campaign, created by Alexander the Great. Many of Alex’s peers attributed his successes to excellent reach and frequency.
The next thousand years brought with them a creative drought. Sure, St. Paul and St. Augustine came up with a few memorable tag lines, and Genghis Khan got far with a hard-driving campaign, but no one seemed able to score with the Big Idea. Until 1300 A.D. that is, when a handful of pricey Italian boutiques launched the concept of the Renaissance. The art direction was “Clio” from day one. Print got a boost, too, from a guy named Gutenberg, who opened the world’s first type house.
Then, in 1492, Columbus went international with the biggest idea since the Renaissance-untapped markets. And a decade later Leonardo da Vinci advanced the hottest new business theory to date: “If you don’t have the product, invent it.” It was rumored that da Vinci, Michelangelo and Machiavelli would quit their respective agencies and join forces, but the heavy-hitting trio never got it together. Apparently, the two creatives came to believe that Machiavelli was only out for himself.
In the 1600’s, Shakespeare made long copy respectable; Rembrandt walked away with all the art director awards; and Isaac Newton proved empirically that the oldest copy line in the universe -”What goes up must come down,”-was effective against all target demos.
Halfway around the world, Ben Franklin lit up the industry when he and a bunch of account execs got together in Philadelphia to introduce a shaky new product: the USA. Jefferson did the copywriting on the campaign, and Washington was management supervisor. Its U.S.P. was “In God We Trust.” The only trouble was the logo. Account wanted a turkey. Research said the crucifix had high awareness.
Media suggested several symbols, one for each major demographic group. Finally, creative pitched the eagle “because it was bald.” Nobody understood the rationale, but who were they to second-guess genius? Francis Scott Key was brought in to do the music, and the rest is history.
Back in Europe, Napoleon broke his own campaign with one of history’s best-known mnemonics: the Man With His Hand in the Jacket. He hired Beethoven, of Bonn Music, to do the jingle; but, after four submissions, fired the tunesmith, calling him “deaf.” Beethoven turned around and sold his Fifth to Czar Alexander, who used it effectively to trash the French Emperor’s market share.
The battle, however, hardly compared to the clash of Blue versus Gray in the U.S. Civil War. Many considered the mud slinging bad for the industry. Others said it was worth it because the U.S. came out “new and improved.” Indeed a decade later, some of America’s greatest creative work appeared: Bell reached out and touched someone, Edison bought good things to life, and automobiles began to build excitement.
Meanwhile, Marconi claimed that radio was hot; Freud claimed that our ids were hot, and the Wright Brothers forced our industry to double the per diem. Yet even Lenin and FDR, who made revolutionary breakthroughs in the field, couldn’t match the biggest ad blitz of the century” The Third Reich. Armed with a powerful logo, excellent media placement and hard-hitting creative, Hitler’s campaign seemed destined to last a thousand years. There was only one hitch. The strategy-world domination through genocide-turned off the public. And as we all know, if the strategy is wrong, the creative can’t be right.
Once the air cleared following World War II, the industry discovered its most important weapon since the caveman’s club: Television. Like the bombs that proceeded them, TV ads exploded onto the scene in a battle for our attention. With words like targets, campaign, launch and shoot, you would think we agencies were being run by the military.
Finally in the 1990’s, advertising went from postal to digital making it possible for ads to multiply for our undivided attention. In a short 1 million years, humans evolved from homosapiens into homoconsumens. Though come to think of it, advertising has been around since day one. After all, God created man in his own image.
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