Creativity in Advertising

[Editor's Note: This article is a part of ADText.]

Fig. 1.

An Elegantly Simple and Highly Effective Ad from the 1960s¹

Advertising agencies typically have creative departments where print ads, TV commercials, and other marketing communications are produced. These departments are staffed by writers who craft the words in advertisements, graphic artists who plan and construct visual layouts, and other specialists who help in the transformation of strategy into actual advertisements. The creatives (as they tend to be called by insiders) are the artists hired by advertising agencies to use their creative and expressive talents in the service of producing advertisements.²

1. What is Creativity?

Creativity tends to be one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things that eludes a specific definition. Many people who others have considered highly creative have attempted to explain the creative process. Here are some of their ideas:

C. G. Jung, Psychoanalyst

The creative aspect of life which finds its clearest expression in art baffles all attempts at rational formulation. Any reaction to stimulus may be causally explained; but the creative act, which is the absolute antithesis of mere reaction, will forever elude the human understanding.³

Nina DiSesa, Chairman, McCann Erickson New York

I tell my creative people to use their talent and judgment to solve the problem, because if the advertising isn't uncommon and imaginative, no one will like it. Only your mother. And even she will get bored in time.⁴ The reason people often say they think of things in the shower is that it's the only time we allow our brains to relax and open up. We're so intense. We're so driven. We also drink a lot of water. Because when you drink a lot of water, you go to the bathroom, and when you come back, you say to your partner, “Hey, I just got an idea.”⁵

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Musician

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer—say, travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them.⁶

Bill Bernbach, Former Chairman & CEO, Doyle Dane Bernbach (now DDB)

Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics is not being creative. The creative person has harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes make more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.⁷

Charles Mingus, Musician

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Robert Weisberg, Psychologist, Temple University

Early scholars, among them Plato and Aristotle, speculated on how creative ideas came about. It was proposed originally by the Greeks that creative ideas were gifts from the gods. Specifically, the Muses—nine daughters of Zeus, each of whom was in charge of a separate domain—played a central role in producing novel ideas. This meant that not only did the ideas originate outside the normal thinking process, they actually originated outside the person. The person served as the messenger or conduit through which the ideas were presented from the gods to the rest of us.⁸

These ideas highlight some critical features of the creative process. First, it is extraordinarily hard to define precisely how creativity works. Second, creativity is an art that is not subject to specific rules. Third, creativity cannot simply be called into existence. Fourth, creativity often means proposing elegantly simple expressions of complex issues. Fifth, truly creative people express ideas that are not just personal opinions but also expressions of essential truths.

2. Creativity in Advertising Today

FYI...
Familiarize yourself with the meaning of terms used in the business of advertising by visiting this or this website.

A typical creative team might consist of a writer, an art director, an account planner, and an account manager who work together to produce ads, commercials, and other marketing communications. The team begins with a strategy that has been agreed upon by the agency and the client. A strategy is a statement of the goal of a campaign, such as communicating a particular message about the brand to a particular group of consumers. The strategy, which operates at a general level, can be expressed in specific creative briefs, or directives to creative teams about the specific message they need to communicate, and to whom they are to direct it. It then becomes the work of the creative team to devise ways of communicating the message.

The team, or possibly some portion of it, will begin concepting—in other words, brainstorming—about possible ways to communicate the message to the intended audience. For some of the team's best ideas, the art director will draw images or even storyboards and the writer will produce the headlines and words to accompany them. The account planner will attempt to keep the team focused and on mission by feeding in information about how consumers use the brand, what market research reveals, what the competition's advertising says, and so on. The account manager coordinates and oversees the team's work.

Eventually, when a number of working ideas have been developed by the creative team, they are presented to the client, who responds to them. When the client and agency agree upon a proposal for consumer communication (that may take the form of a print advertisement, a TV commercial, a billboard, a website, etc.), the creative process moves into production. Throughout the production phase, the creative process continues as new words and images are revised and additional information helps tweak the final product.

Before the creative idea is communicated through appropriately selected media (such as TV, outdoor, digital, etc.), various other steps may be taken. The communication may be tested, reedited, or otherwise adjusted to the point where both agency and client believe they have produced the best communication strategy for the brand.

Fig. 2.

A Sticker Placed on a High Voltage Box in Malaysia is a Creative Way to Communicate with Consumers⁹

Fig. 3.

These Images on Shopping Bags Are an Innovative Way to Attract Consumer Attention¹⁰

3. The Creative Revolution of the 1960s

The concept of creativity in advertising was not discussed much until the 1960s, when a sea change in the way of producing advertising transformed the field forever. The central feature of this Creative Revolution was that creativity came to be valued over the formulas and research that previously drove the production of ads.

Creative teams, a mainstay of nearly all agencies since the 1960s, did not exist prior to that time.¹¹ The reigning paradigm was reason-why advertising that spoke to consumers in terms of unique selling propositions (USPs). The chief proponent of this approach was Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Advertising Agency in New York City. In retrospect, Reeves must be considered one of the great figures of 20th-century American advertising, but both he and his approach lost favor as the Creative Revolution got underway.

FYI...
The very name Rosser Reeves stands for an approach to writing advertisements that was popular in the 1950s.

A look at one of Reeves's best known TV commercials shows the essence of his approach. Reeves graphically depicted different pains and claimed that Anacin would relieve them all. This no-nonsense approach specified a USP: Anacin relieves all types of pain. Reeves (and those who followed him) produced hard-hitting advertising of this sort; it worked by hammering messages into consumers' minds, sometimes rather literally. Consumers did not like these ads much, even if they understood the messages. Critics within advertising felt the ads lacked any subtlety, finesse, or creativity. A new wave in advertising style in the 1960s would produce ads that were both highly communicative and liked by consumers.

Video 1.

An Example of Rosser Reeves's USP Approach to Advertising¹²

Click to view video

In addition to the hard-sell of Reeves's USP advertising, other 1950s ads focused entirely on aspirational culture. They featured dreamy, romantic visions in which the problems of everyday life magically disappeared and happiness reigned. These ads credited the advertised products with the ability to effect magical transformations of reality so that the affluent and satisfied consumers in them could live in perfect families and immaculate houses. For example, the ad in Figure 4 features a Leave-It-to-Beaver-like happy family that drinks 7-Up. In the 1950s, ads for other products, like cigarettes and automobiles, were similarly detached from the reality of everyday life.

Fig. 4.

This 1950s Ad Idealizes the American Family¹³

Fig. 5.

The Soft Tones of this Ad Evoke a Romantic Image of 1950s Femininity¹⁴

Fig. 6.

1950s Advertising Presented Lily-White Images of Americans¹⁵

While ads played by accepted rules, those who created them were recruited from a rather closed fraternity of men who had been educated in Ivy League and other elite schools. Nearly all had white, Anglo-Saxon establishment backgrounds. Few women held positions of importance in advertising at that time. Most were secretaries and administrative assistants. There were virtually no Jews, Italians, African Americans, or other “minorities.”

The Creative Revolution changed not only the ground rules for making advertising, but also the kinds of people who were recruited into the business. The kingpin of the revolution was Bill Bernbach, originally an advertising copywriter, who became one of the most charismatic and revered figures of 20th-century advertising. In retrospect, he may have been the single most important figure in 20th-century American advertising.

FYI...
Bill Bernbach's name is synonymous with the revolution in advertising creativity that took place in the 1960s.

Bernbach's genius lay in placing creativity before research. He abhorred rules and turned away from programmatic approaches to advertising. He believed that advertising needed to respect the public's intelligence and communicate through simple, clear, and precise images and words. His work was often as witty as it was sophisticated. The ads he created for Volkswagen in the 1960s are typically cited as the most famous advertising campaign of the 20th century, and they are credited with transforming a German-made “people's car” into an American icon. His stark black-and-white photographs of the car against white backgrounds broke all the conventional rules. His well-chosen words, “Think Small” and “Lemon,” communicated forcefully. Bernbach also opened recruitment policies of his agency (Doyle Dane Bernbach) to the most qualified people he could find, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. By the 1970s, other agencies began adopting his approach and policies.

Fig. 7.

Think Small¹⁶

Fig. 8.

Lemon¹⁷

Instead of simply presenting the product benefit, Bernbach's advertising developed the product's image. He positioned the Volkswagen as the anti-establishment, economic alternative to the gas-guzzling cars Detroit was producing. In another campaign for Levy's Jewish Rye (Figure 1), he proposed what would today be called an inclusive approach. His ads for Levy's communicated the simple message that “Jewish” rye bread could be enjoyed by people of all sorts. Today, this campaign would resonate with contemporary issues concerning diversity, but at the time it was revolutionary in that ethnicity was brought into advertising and spoken of in positive, inclusive language.

Bernbach articulated his philosophy of the preeminence of creativity over formulaic advertising in a memorandum to his company, “It is our belief that every other activity in our business is a prelude to the final performance, which is the ad.”¹⁸ The effect of this statement was to place creativity before the other services of an advertising agency—market research, media analysis, and other support functions.

FYI...
David Ogilvy was known for his definitive rules about how to write good advertising.

In his book, The Conquest of Cool (1997), historian Thomas Frank credits two other figures with major roles in the Creative Revolution—David Ogilvy and Leo Burnett.¹⁹ Ogilvy first worked in market research before designing ads and eventually heading his own agency, now known as Ogilvy & Mather. He wrote Confessions of An Advertising Man (1963), an enormously popular book with the American public. He took readers inside the world of advertising by talking to them about his ideas of what great advertising is. Unlike Bernbach, Ogilvy proposed rules for good advertising. These rules about how ads should be written broke with many previous ideas.

Different from Bernbach's, Ogilvy's ads were also highly creative. They worked by finding new ways to attract the attention of customers and to communicate simple, clear messages that they would remember. Ogilvy created the Hathaway Man to sell Hathaway shirts, and Commander Whitehead to sell Schweppes. These intriguing figures helped the respective brands achieve iconic status. Ogilvy's ad for Rolls-Royce is typical of his approach—a single illustration followed by long copy explaining the brand to the reader. His best-known slogan for Rolls-Royce, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock,” may not have sold many cars, but it greatly enhanced the prestige associated with owning one. The Rolls is a symbol of affluence and luxury. Ogilvy's advertising was designed to keep it that way.

Fig. 9.

Ogilvy's Ads Typically Had Long, Engaging Headlines²⁰

FYI...
Leo Burnett created a distinctive “Chicago” style of advertising.

Leo Burnett, taking a different tack in his Chicago-based agency, created many of advertising's greatest icons for his clients during the 1960s. Ronald McDonald, the Keebler Elves, the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Clean, Tony the Tiger, and the Pillsbury Doughboy all appeared out of Leo Burnett's creative shop. Burnett's advertising using them developed brand recognition, favored status among consumers, and marketplace loyalty.

Frank argues that the Creative Revolution was advertising's response to the momentous changes and social transformations taking place in the wider society during the 1960s. Just as a distrust of the establishment characterized a major trend in American society, the advertising revolutionaries of the 1960s balked at their own establishment and its rules. Ads poked fun at advertising and refused to continue promoting dreamy, romantic visions. Instead, they talked openly to consumers for the first time; they urged them to “think small” and look beyond fluff and empty promises. The 1960s was a period in which advertising underwent its own transformation—one that more-or-less paralleled the changes occurring in the wider society.

4. Creativity in Contemporary Advertising

FYI...
View Clio award winners for recent years at the AEF website.

Each year the advertising industry recognizes the work it considers to be its best. The Clio Awards and the International Advertising Festival at Cannes use panels of international experts to decide which advertisements (film/TV, print, and other forms) are the most outstanding in terms of creativity and other aspects. Winning one of these awards is a mark of high prestige for an agency, team, or individual.

The best advertising spots are also recognized each year during the Super Bowl when the public voices its opinions. USA Today as well as numerous television stations and other newspapers and magazines play up this event, in part because it is advertising that supports these media outlets, but also because the public seems to enjoy this singular opportunity to give its direct feedback about what is good and what is bad in advertising.

The remainder of this chapter is devoted to case studies of two advertising campaigns widely judged by both advertising practitioners and the public to be creative and effective communications. These are the GEICO automobile insurance campaigns and Old Spice's body wash campaign.

5. Kudos in Creativity: The Martin Agency's Work for GEICO

FYI...
Visit The Martin Agency to learn about its history and clients and to view some of its work.

While it is true that advertising agencies tend to be concentrated in New York, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas in the United States, some highly creative shops can also be found in smaller cities like Portland, Minneapolis, Boulder, and Richmond. The Martin Agency, located in Richmond, Virginia, is a full-service advertising agency that has produced some of the most creative and memorable American advertising in recent years. GEICO, a car insurance company, has been one of its key accounts since 1994.

The location of GEICO's headquarters in nearby Maryland facilitates interaction between agency and client, but the more important fact may be that Martin's employees live in a moderately-sized city where many people actually own cars, unlike the bigger cities where many people do not. The trade publication Creativity sized up the Martin Agency's location in Virginia this way:

In this wired world, the Martin Agency's location doesn't pose a creative or competitive disadvantage (the shop does have two small New York offices for some of its broadcast media and interactive work); in some ways the company sees its Richmond digs as a distinct advantage. It's a notion that may garner more than a few industry sneers, but both [President Mike] Hughes and [Creative Director Steve] Bassett say because the minivan-and-mall lifestyle rules in Richmond, it puts them closer to the average American consumer…. says Hughes, “I think it helps all of us that we live like our audience lives.” Bassett adds, “If you're single, don't have a car and hang out in bars every night, you may not be in touch with a woman in Ohio who needs to buy diapers.”²¹

The agency uses a somewhat unusual method for getting GEICO's message to potential consumers: they run several different campaigns simultaneously. These differing approaches cast a wider net than any single approach can. Four of these campaigns will be described below: “Gecko,” “Good News,” “Testimonial,” and “Cavemen.” Behind each of these campaigns lay some very simple, but fundamental propositions: (1) switching car insurance is easy, and (2) switching can save money. Almost all GEICO approaches carry the tagline, “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.”

Even the early commercials that The Martin Agency produced for GEICO were as unconventional as they were humorous. One featured a squirrel giving a “high five” to another squirrel after successfully dodging what might have been an accident. Another featured a faux reality show in which a couple lives in an impossibly tiny house for a year.

Video 2.

An Early Martin Agency Commercial for GEICO (2001)²²

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Video 3.

This GEICO Commercial Parodies Reality Shows (2004)²³

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As the relationship between the client company and the agency matured, the advertising strategy became more sharply defined. This definitional process was helped by insights from focus groups and other consumer research. The research identified barriers that inhibit people from switching their car insurance from one company to another. Using this information, the agency and the client worked together to develop a specific strategy—to break down the barriers that keep consumers from switching. Specific targets included widely held consumer beliefs like:

• • Insurance is scary, and I don't want to think about it

• • It's hard to switch and will take a lot of time

• • It's not worth my time

• • Insurance is boring—who wants to talk about insurance anyway?

The Martin Agency developed the now famous tagline to communicate the essence of GEICO. In the tagline are two specific promises to consumers. First, “15 minutes” promises that getting a rate quote will be quick and easy. Second, “save 15 percent or more” promises that it will be worthwhile to get a rate quote from GEICO. These themes echo throughout the campaigns.

The Gecko

GEICO began to use a talking gecko to get its message out in 1999. Originally planned for only a single commercial, the gecko soon proved useful; when actors went on strike the following year, the gecko allowed Martin to continue producing commercials for GEICO. The public response to the gecko proved highly positive, and the company extended its use in advertising communications, including print, billboards, and gecko-branded merchandise. Since his introduction, the talking gecko “spokesperson” has become one of the most identifiable and recognized advertising icons of all time—ranking alongside the likes of Ronald McDonald, Juan Valdez, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Tony the Tiger.

The story of how The Martin Agency came up with the gecko reflects the inspirational and serendipitous nature of creativity in advertising. Steve Bassett, Creative Director of The Martin Agency, explains:

He was actually drawn on a napkin in a Santa Monica restaurant by an art director²⁴ after a shoot. The client was saying, “You know, we really have a hard time with people remembering the name GEICO. It's hard to pronounce. Wonder what we could do about that?” And the art director drew this little gecko character and said to the client, “Maybe we could do something with this to help people remember.”²⁵

Fig. 10.

The Original Gecko Was Drawn on a Napkin by an Art Director in 1999²⁶

Although the commercials are planned at Martin's offices in Richmond, the agency goes outside for artwork and voicing. Looking for the best voice to give to the gecko, the creative team auditioned tens of voices—with British accents, California surfer dude accents, Bronx accents, Western farmer accents, etc.—before finally settling on a British upper class accent. There was apparently no particular rhyme or reason for the choice, other than the fact that the creative director in charge at the time liked a British accent more than others and decided to go with it.

Video 4.

This Commercial Features the Gecko's Original Accent (2000)²⁷

Click to view video

Steve Bassett joined the GEICO account as creative director after the gecko had been introduced. One of his refinements, in his own words, was “to shift the humor from Benny Hill to David Letterman, making it more cerebral, more sophisticated, and letting consumers connect the dots for themselves.” He felt these changes would engage consumers more and increase the power of the humor in communicating GEICO's message.

Under Bassett's watch the gecko character has continued to evolve. His accent has changed, and he's been given more facial expressions. The voice remains British, but it is more everyday and less aristocratic. Innovations in computer graphics have allowed the artists to give him eyelids and facial lines, providing the gecko with a greater range of expressions.

Video 5.

The Gecko Has Evolved in this Commercial (2005)²⁸

Click to view video

The story of the gecko illustrates several general points about advertising creativity. First, the creative process is typically driven by the overall strategy worked out collaboratively by the client and the agency. Second, the specific creative product frequently emerges in an unpredictable way rather than through the application of some specific formula. Third, the creative product in successful, long-running campaigns itself often evolves over time in order to sharpen its effectiveness in communicating. Fourth, the creative process involves a lot of hard work from its beginnings in strategy to the finished advertisements that potential consumers see.

Good News

Pleased with the success of its advertising and the growth of the company, GEICO continued its relationship with The Martin Agency and called on them to expand the advertising. Through negotiations between the agency and the client, the new advertising was again to focus on saving money on insurance with GEICO.

Bob Meagher relates the story of the origins of the creative idea that became the basis of the Good News campaign:

In the course of concepting, Cody²⁹ told me a very funny joke. It was kind of a new twist on the good news joke. I thought it was one of the funniest jokes I'd ever heard. What was so great about it was that the good news had nothing to do with the person he was telling it to. It had to do with the person giving the news. I said, “Gosh, well what if we just used that joke and changed the good news to be, ‘I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to GEICO'?”³⁰

Video 6.

This Spoof Turns Out to Be a GEICO Commercial (2005)³¹

Click to view video

This campaign posed a specific challenge for the creative team—each new execution needed to be fresh and surprising. This meant finding ways to involve people in the commercials in such a way that they did not see the joke coming.

Video 7.

Another Unexpected Beginning for a GEICO Spot (2005)³²

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Perhaps one of the most memorable and initially surprising in this series of commercials involves a soap opera-like situation where a man tells his crying girlfriend about his “good news.”

Video 8.

This Soap Opera Parody Has a Surprise Ending (2004)³³

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Testimonials

Testimonials from satisfied customers are an old standby technique of advertising. They work for print, radio, and TV and can even be used in the newer outlets like Internet and viral advertising. The idea for testimonials as a part of GEICO's advertising package came from Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, GEICO's parent company. According to Bassett, Buffett pointed out to the company that they receive a lot of testimonials and should consider using them in the campaign. Enter The Martin Agency and its way of tweaking an idea until it comes up with a genuinely original approach.

The approach in this set of commercials is to take a real person who is not an actor and have a celebrity jazz up their presentation. The trade journal Adweek praised the GEICO commercials and awarded them runner-up status in 2006 for Best Commercial of the Year.

The success of “Testimonial” lies in its canny, and extraordinarily campy, use of nearly forgotten celebrities including Charo, Burt Bacharach and Little Richard, giving dramatic interpretations of people's experiences with the insurance provider. Among our favorites: Bacharach, dressed in a tuxedo, noodling on a piano and fashioning lyrics from a woman's tale of being rear-ended by a GEICO customer, and Little Richard in true crazy-eyed falsetto form singing, “Mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce! Whooo!” when a woman relates how she hit a deer on Thanksgiving.³⁴

Video 9.

Burt Bacharach as Celebrity Spokesperson for GEICO (2006)³⁵

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Video 10.

Little Richard as Celebrity Spokesperson for GEICO (2006)³⁶

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The Cavemen

In 2004, the strategy shifted to another aspect of GEICO's approach to car insurance—the simplicity and ease of use of GEICO.com. Unlike many other car insurance companies, who use agents to sell insurance to consumers, GEICO primarily approaches potential customers through the telephone or Internet. At that point in time, the company wanted to play up the ease of getting a rate quote online. Hence, the creative brief was simply stated as: GEICO.com is easy to use. With this, the creative department at The Martin Agency put on their thinking caps and began discussing possible ways to communicate this message. Steve Bassett recalls the birth of the idea to use cavemen:

When Joe Lawson and I started working on the strategy, he said, “You know, who can we say is dumb—so easy a blank could do it? So easy a baby could do it? So easy a monkey could do it? So easy a child could do it?” We always make a joke with GEICO that about the only target you can make fun of is you and me and that's about it. Advertisers are always worried about offending. We're all worried about offending everybody in a very PC world.

So everyone agreed: “Let's use cavemen. We won't get any letters on cavemen.” What I really like about the campaign is that we took that notion and twisted it by saying, “Well, what if cavemen were still around and GEICO didn't realize it?”—which I think is brilliant! I think that if it had been just cavemen in animal skins like you see in New Yorker cartoons, it would not have been nearly as interesting because we've seen that joke a thousand times. But to make a statement like, “So easy a caveman could do it,” and then see that modern-day cavemen are still around and that they are offended by that, and to see how that plays out—to me, that's just brilliant. And also the strategy is so tied to the message in this particular case that it's hard to pull out: “GEICO.com—so easy a caveman can do it”—That's basically the message, and it's hard to pull that apart, you know. So that's why it's such a strong campaign.

Video 11.

The First Commercial Featuring a GEICO Caveman (2004)³⁷

Click to view video

FYI...
A visit to a GEICO caveman's website presents an alternative way of involving consumers with the brand. Innovative commercials attract free buzz , talk and publicity for the brand.

Newsweek reported that the cavemen will have their own half-hour sitcom in the fall. “As if the poor guys weren't already in danger of overexposure, along comes ABC, which has ordered up, cringe, a sitcom pilot centering on the awkward lives of the out-of-time characters, who will live in Atlanta and date beautiful women.”³⁸ The actual success of a sitcom featuring the cavemen would be an enormous advertising coup for GEICO. It is no longer necessary to insert the name GEICO with an image of one of these cavemen. That link has already been made in the minds of viewers. This mp4ement from TV commercial into TV program is reflective of the continual search for new media and new ways of communicating commercial messages to potential consumers.

The New York Times offered a more analytic commentary on the news of an upcoming cavemen sitcom, asking what it really means when an ad campaign spawns potential sitcom characters. The conclusion the NYT analysis reached makes a strong case for the study of advertising and society:

The recent news that ABC was willing to entertain the possibility of a sitcom starring the GEICO cavemen seemed a sort of watershed. Here were characters dreamed up as part of an advertising campaign potentially crossing over into a venerable form of mainstream, pop-culture entertainment. While that sounds momentous, it misses a larger point. As characters of a successful advertising campaign, the cavemen are already a part of mainstream pop culture. More so, in fact, than characters in most current sitcoms… In fact, what the caveman ads really reveal is just how potent a form advertising can be—not just as a selling tool but also as a cultural communication (or as a “text,” if you like).³⁹

Video 12.

The Caveman Saga Continues in this Commercial (2004)⁴⁰

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Video 13.

This Commercial Is Reminiscent of The Graduate (2006)⁴¹

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Video 14.

This Commercial Is Reminiscent of The Sopranos (2006)⁴²

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Fig. 11.

Ad Age Determined that the GEICO Campaign Strategy Was Successful⁴³

6. When Good Ads Go Viral: Wieden+Kennedy's Work for Old Spice

FYI…
Visit Wieden+Kennedy's website to learn about its history and clients, and to view some of its work.

Old Spice, a 75-year-old brand of men's toiletries, became one of the hottest brands of 2010 as a result of a popular advertising campaign. The original, 30-second TV commercial for Old Spice body wash was an instant hit with consumers and won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. A follow-up, interactive campaign featuring YouTube responses to user comments about the brand went viral and reached millions of viewers via the Internet.

The advertising slogan, “if your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist,” draws on the long history of Old Spice brand men's toiletries. First introduced as an aftershave lotion in 1938, Old Spice probably was the brand used by many younger men's fathers and grandfathers.

Fig. 12.

This 1960 Ad Features Several Old Spice Products⁴⁴

In 1990, the Shulton Company, which had owned the brand from its inception, sold it to Proctor & Gamble. Shulton's original fragrance had a reputation somewhat like the original Listerine brand of mouthwash—both had really strong aromas and both stung a little when used. However, both the aftershave and the mouthwash promoted their scents and harshness as virtues rather than flaws. Listerine ads argued that, “it wouldn't work so good if it didn't smell so bad,” and Old Spice encouraged men to slap it on their faces after shaving. Proctor & Gamble modernized the brand by changing both the packaging and the scent. The original clipper ship logo was replaced by a racing sail boat and a variety of Old Spice fragrances were introduced: Swagger, Aqua Reef, After Hours.

Fig. 13.

Proctor & Gamble Introduced the Sail Boat as the Logo for Old Spice⁴⁵

In 2006, Proctor & Gamble hired Wieden+Kennedy, a Portland, Oregon, advertising agency, to manage the brand. Their goal was to modernize the brand while maintaining its strong masculine appeal. Although W+K had produced a number of award-winning ads for Old Spice, it was only in 2010 that they produced a campaign that the public really loved, got wide media coverage, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, and eventually went viral via the Internet.

The Creative Brief for “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”

In late 2009, the client and ad agency agreed upon the essential elements of a campaign strategy that would celebrate the masculine scent of Old Spice and do so in a way that gets couples talking about body wash. Both the client and the agency knew that women often purchase men's toiletries for their husbands, boyfriends, brothers, and sons. Thus, it was important to draw women into the advertising message. Although the essence of the strategy was straightforward, it would take some effort to turn it into effective advertising.

The Commercial

The W+K team devised an idea for a commercial for Old Spice body wash that featured handsome Isaiah Mustafa in a humorous, single-shot spot in which he transitions from being in a bathroom, to standing on board a boat, to sitting on a horse—all the while, talking about the brand. The finished commercial contains the elements called for in the brief—the focus on the scent of Old Spice and the engagement with both women and men.

Video 15.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like⁴⁶

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The Genesis of the Idea

The task of turning strategy into an actual ad mp4es through the various levels of an advertising agency: account executives work with client companies to formulate the strategy, then creative directors decide on the best ways to translate the strategy into creative executions, and finally specific creative people are given the task of coming up with the words, images, and vignettes that will make up the actual ad.

It is at this latter point where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. It becomes the work of specific creative people to brainstorm, work with one another, try out this or that idea, and finally to give outlines of their ideas back to the creative directors. The idea begins to make its way back up the chain of command. Creative directors work with and tweak the concepts and eventually work with account executives to develop a presentation for the client in which typically a small number of possibilities will be discussed.

When the client has approved one of them—in other words, when the client gives the go-ahead and agrees to pay for the production of the commercial—the production work begins. The creative team invites a few directors to make proposals about how they would film the commercial. These must include plans for solving any technical problems—in this case, the transition from bathroom to boat to horse—and so on. A selection is finally made and the actual work begins.

In this particular case, Craig Allen and Eric Kallman were the creatives who were assigned the task of coming up with specific ideas. They spent a week bouncing ideas around and finally had a script, the basics of which were: “Hello ladies! Look at your man, now back at me, now back at your man.…” It had one of the critical key elements of the strategy: addressing the women who often buy toiletries for men. It also cleverly involved men as well: “Look at him, look at me, look back at him.” It also had the other key element of the strategic plan—a focus on the masculine scent of Old Spice: “Sadly he isn't me, but he could smell like he's me.” This was the first step in the development of the idea. Allen claims that the concept came to him while he was in the bathroom and that he rushed back to Kallman to tell it to him. Kallman loved it and they ran with the idea, fine-tuning and developing it until they pretty much had the full script.

The next stage came in imagining that it might be possible to turn what was essentially a radio commercial into a TV spot. But how would they accomplish the transition from bathroom to boat? Wider discussions with their bosses and the entire creative team helped develop the solution. Some were skeptical that it wouldn't be possible to pull all these transformations off in a single-shot commercial, but others believed that it could be done.

After consulting a number of directors about how they would propose to film the commercial, the creative team settled on Tom Kuntz who figured out a way to effect the changes smoothly so as not to break the flow. The commercial was shot in Los Angeles over the Christmas break in 2009.

Choosing the Spokesperson

The W+K team faced a challenge in finding the right man to represent Old Spice in a relatively short time frame. They needed to produce the commercial in time for the Super Bowl season. They settled on Isaiah Mustafa, a thirtyish, aspiring actor who had had a brief career in the NFL. He had the right combination of characteristics: charisma, attractiveness, humor, great delivery, and athleticism.

Finding the right person and casting him in the role of brand spokesperson is always one of the most difficult parts of making any commercial. With the wrong person, the entire spot fails. With the right one, however, the commercial comes to life and becomes an effective vehicle for the client company to communicate its advertising message to potential consumers.

Just what kind of man would be right for this commercial? W+K wanted a man that women would want and that men would like to be. Sexy, handsome, athletic, and suave Mustafa fit the bill. But did it matter that he was African American? The folks at W+K insist that this was not a major factor in their choice:

He has universal appeal. We're always monitoring the chatter online to see how people are responding. One of the great things about him is that it doesn't seem to matter. Male, female, black, white, green, or orange, it seems like he cuts across all demographics.⁴⁷

Us being two white guys, it sounds like we're trying to be cool when we say we didn't notice it, but it didn't cross our minds. His voice was just velvet smooth. I'm not going to lie and say I'm not aware of people's skin tone being different, because I am, but to me, he was just right.⁴⁸

What seems to have been a bigger issue for the audience were the clothes that Mustafa wore. Capri pants are not very popular among American men, and it seems that a lot of viewers responded to them with comments like, “I would never wear something like that!” Others saw them as another humorous aspect of the commercial, not a suggestion that people should actually wear something like that.

Designing the Set

The setting and props are also critical to the success of the commercial. Working out these details was a group project, involving the writers, the creative directors, and an entire production team. Beginning in a bathroom was a logical mp4e. Research shows that the setting helps people understand the nature of the product. But why a boat and then a horse?

In retrospect, the story that gets told is that a boat is about as far away from a bathroom as you can get, but it is not insignificant that Old Spice has used boats as a part of its logo from its earliest years. A boat is also the sort of romantic place that a man could use to impress a woman—as are diamonds and tickets “to that thing you love.” It might have been another impressive location, say, a mountain top, but a boat is a part of the Old Spice tool kit. The diamonds and the tickets are icing on the cake.

FYI…
View the story of the details of shooting the commercial.

The horse is another matter. The original script did not have a strong ending after all the clever words and visual jokes, so the creative team went back to the drawing board. They needed another amazing thing for Mustafa to do. He had already demonstrated his magic, but could he perform a finale trick equivalent to pulling a rabbit out of a hat? It seemed a little ridiculous to have him effortlessly end up on a horse but it would be yet another dazzling aspect of his performance. Unlike the boat, the horse is has no symbolic ties to Old Spice. It was just one of the many clever things that the man could do.

Audience Feedback

People loved the smartness of the commercial from the very beginning. They liked Mustafa. They enjoyed the humor. And they didn't seem to tire of watching it again. Of course, both the client and the agency were pleased—even surprised—at the success. They knew they had struck gold.

Thinking back about why the commercial proved to be so successful, here are some of the things that W+K people say:

A lot of people have said, “We wish more advertising would work harder to entertain us the way this does. If all advertising was like this, I'd actually watch commercials.” That's something we've heard quite a bit. I keep seeing articles written by marketers saying, “TV is dead. Advertising is dead.” The medium isn't dead. Stop making bad ads and the people will pay attention. This was proof of that.⁴⁹

People say it's smart. The spot doesn't speak down to people. It begs people to watch it over and over again to get to what he's saying and talking about. And executionally, people were marveling at how the hell it was done. Was it really one shot? From a technical standpoint, they wanted to know how we pulled it off.⁵⁰

It's surprising to have something that's that funny and that aspirational. Women genuinely want this guy and men want to be this guy. And yet they're cracking up. It's just ridiculous. What made it go crazy was that the technique of the spot had never been done before—the dialogue technique, the visual technique, all of that.⁵¹

FYI…
Read about Cannes Lions Advertising Festival and Primetime Emmy Awards.

In addition to the public's positive response, the commercial received coveted advertising industry awards. It won the Grand Prix for film at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June 2010 and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial a month later.

The Next Steps

An enormous success also creates a large problem—how to follow it up. W+K created two additional spots using Mustafa. They built on the same type of humor that made the original commercial so popular. However, neither the client nor the agency thought it would be a good idea to make Mustafa “the Old Spice man” in all its advertising. Doing so might limit the broad range of users that Proctor & Gamble wanted for the brand.

Video 16.

Another Commercial Featuring Mustafa⁵²

Click to view video

Video 17.

A Follow Up Commercial Featuring Mustafa⁵³

Click to view video

Although the public liked both of these commercials, neither achieved the success nor got the publicity of the original bathroom-to-boat-to-horse commercial. However, W+K did devise another totally new mechanism for engaging consumers with the Old Spice brand of body wash. In July 2010, the agency produced what they term the “response campaign.” It was based on a simple premise: have Mustafa respond in real time to consumer questions and comments about the brand. Executing it was not so simple but required a skillful orchestration of a team of people.

The response campaign worked like this. The team monitored websites and social media for any mention of Old Spice. The most interesting ones were selected and passed on to a team of four writers who would devise and tweak responses for Mustafa. Within ten minutes of the original posting, Mustafa was on camera delivering a response with help from a teleprompter. After a swift editing job, the response was posted on YouTube. The campaign lasted two days.

The team worked to get the word out about the YouTube responses from Mustafa and the campaign went viral. People looked for the videos. They viewed them, kept looking for new ones, told their friends about them, and forwarded URLs to others. Almost instantly, the Old Spice response campaign became the biggest viral campaign to date.

Video 18.

Isaiah Mustafa Responds to a Comment about Old Spice Body Wash⁵⁴

Click to view video

Video 19.

Isaiah Mustafa Delivers a Marriage Proposal⁵⁵

Click to view video

Video 20.

Isaiah Mustafa Responds to Ellen Degeneres⁵⁶

Click to view video

A huge viral campaign is the dream of modern advertisers, but it is not so easy to engineer one. “Interactive” communications are built into many campaigns, and most agencies have either dedicated staff who work in this area, or an allied agency that handles such work. Here is the story of how the Old Spice response campaign developed:

We were sitting around trying to think of what to do digitally interactive to go with the campaign. We knew from that, millions of people watched the original spot and thousands and thousands were leaving comments online. So we know when we put out the second and third commercials that people were going to flood to YouTube to see them and there were going to be a lot of comments. We were talking through that out loud, and at some point Iain Tate, our interactive creative director, joined us. We were all bouncing ideas off of one another and he said, “Well, since we know people are going to be leaving these comments anyway, why don't we get Isaiah in a room and have him post live video responses to the comments?” And we were like, “Wow! That's genius. That's never been done. We should do that.” From there we got the whole team involved. Ann-Marie Harbour, the producer, was the one that really figured out the technical aspects and figured out how to get Twitter involved and Facebook and YouTube and bring it all together. She worked out all the tremendous technicalities that had to be pulled off. So it came after the second phase of the campaign [the two follow up commercials featuring Mustafa]. We launched the log-rolling spot and let the moment develop for five days. Then, without any announcement or telling anybody, we got Isaiah in the studio and started putting out video responses to people's comments.⁵⁷

Our community managers figured out a way to disseminate it without us having to make a big stink about it. We loved the idea that he was doing this organically, so it didn't feel like putting out an ad that says “Hey Everybody! The Old Spice Man's going to talk to you online.” We liked the idea that it trickled out and people caught on to it. We wanted this thing to go viral so we wrote specific videos to specific online communities that we knew would pick up on them and get excited about, because it was such a fresh approach to digital. So we seeded it with a few spots within those communities and a few response videos to celebrities like Ellen and Oprah. Knowing if we tweeted these out to them and put it on anonymous.com or boingboing.com that they would host it, because it was such a special thing made exclusively for them, talking directly to them, engaging them by responding to a comment that they had made. It caught fire pretty quickly. People caught on and started coming over to our side. Any time we'd see an opportunity to write a response that would could bring in even more folks, we'd jump on it—like the group wanting an answering machine message. They wanted to be able to make an answering machine with Isaiah's voice. Knowing that they'd build the engine and then put it back out there, we immediately had Isaiah record answering machine type messages, and say all the numbers and things like, “Call back later, I'm on a horse.” And, “The tickets are now diamonds.” Different sign-offs and so on. Within an hour they'd built that answering machine. OldSpiceAnsweringmachine.com or something?⁵⁸

The whole goal was to make sure the response videos were something you'd want to share, that you'd want to post on your Facebook page, that bloggers would want to post on their blogs, that Ellen would want to talk about and interact with. As much as we wanted to focus on non-celebrity, there was quite a bit of celebrity involved. We made sure to hit them too, because we figured if we did something with Perez Hilton, then he'll put it on his blog and his followers would come over and see what's going on.⁵⁹

What's next? Old Spice as a brand of men's toiletries operates in a highly competitive market. Men are increasingly focusing on caring for their bodies and advertisers know this. Old Spice has been around for a long time, but it has managed to modernize and reinvent itself. The campaigns of 2010 have been very important. It's not just the brand that dad and granddad once used. It's a force to be reckoned with and a brand with a strong identity.

W+K have not decided whether to use Isaiah Mustafa in additional ads or not. However, the basic strategy is not likely to change. The issue will be finding new executions that will maintain and even build on current brand equity. As for the two creatives, Eric Kallman and Craig Allen, who developed the specifics of the original commercial, when asked what's to come, they responded: whatever our bosses assign us next.

7. Some Additional Insights into the Creative Process

Several articles published in Advertising & Society Review contain additional behind-the-scenes analyses of the creative process in advertising. Here is a list of some articles where creativity is discussed from the point of view of those who make ads:

• “The Airbrushing of Culture”—McCann-Erickson creative director Marcio Moreira discusses creativity in the context of global advertising.

• “‘No, No' to Making a Cake in a Rice Cooker”—Market Researcher George Fields explains how the creative process ran awry in Japan.

• “Scott Ellsworth Interviews Emil Gargano”—Creative Director and Former Agency Head Emil Gargano discusses creative work for Pepsi.

• “William M. O'Barr Interviews Paul Cappelli”—Creative Director and Agency Head Paul Cappelli tells where he got some of his best creative ideas.

• “Robin M. Akert Interviews Nina DiSesa” — Creative Director and Agency Head Nina DiSesa discusses creativity at McCann-Erickson New York.

8. Conclusion

The successes of the Creative Revolution in the 1960s and the contemporary GEICO and Old Spice campaigns underscore the importance of innovation in advertising communications. The creative process itself follows no prescribed formula, but rather its genius lies in the ability of teams of writers, art directors, planners, and managers to find simple and elegant means to express their clients' messages in ways that will be noticed and remembered by potential consumers.