Exactly how much money is spent on advertising every year in the USA, is a difficult question as one will get different answers from different folks. According to AdAge the US spent $149 billion in 2007, which equated to $4,717 per SECOND!

$4,717 every second of every minute, every hour, every day! How long is it going to take college graduates before they earn that kind of money per MONTH? The irony is that advertisers spend that kind of money while they have no idea how advertising works. What we do know is that  “it works in some definable ways well enough to make more effective advertising” (Richard Vaughn, 1986).

What is effective advertising? According to David Ogilvy (1911 – 1999), the Father of Advertising, the purpose of advertising is to sell, NOT to entertain. Ogilvy stated that advertisers would not spend that kind of money (nearly $5,000/second) to entertain consumers because if consumers want to be entertained, they have to fork out money … if one wants to see U2 in concert, one has to reach deep into one’s pockets to pay for admission. U2 is NOT going to pay you to attend one of its concerts! Ogilvy was responsible for some of the best advertising ever, the most memorable being his Rolls Royce ad (“At 60 miles per hour …) and the man with the patch for Hathaway shirts.

Leo Burnett (1891 – 1971) created characters such as Tony the Tiger, Morris the Cat, Charlie the Tuna and the Jolly Green Giant to sell products. When he was warned that these characters would move consumers away from the advertising, he responded that, to the contrary, they would pull consumers INTO the advertising, hence the strategy being called empathy!

The strategy of Rosser Reeves (1910 – 1984) was called USP: Unique Selling Proposition. According to his strategy, one had to find a unique element of each product and hammer away at it in the advertising. The most successful example of this strategy was M&Ms’ “Melt in your mouth, not in your hands.”

Given the meaning of the word unique (one of a kind) and that very little (if any) is unique in the 21^st century, many will argue that this strategy has become obsolete? Not so fast … by simply substituting “unique” with “one,” this strategy still warrants its place among the best. All one has to do is to hone in on a selling point, which a competitor may possess, but did not capitalize on … thus, a pre-emptive strategy.

Everyone knows the wonderful Beetle advertising of the 60s and 70s. This advertising which was voted the best ever, was the brain child of Bill Bernbach (1911 – 1982) and based on his “Honesty with a twist” strategy: never lie, he said, simply stretch the truth a little. With his Art Director, Helmut Krone, the Bernbach/Krone team left a legacy of advertising that we will most probably never see again … oh, where are the days?

The foregoing are examples of the four greatest advertising practitioners in advertising history.  It has been 27 years since the last one (Reeves) died. The time has come for more greats … could YOU be the next one?

Given the world in which we live today where so much is controlled (tobacco and alcohol advertising to mention only two), today’s generation cannot imagine an era gone by when tobacco advertising was not only permitted, but was done so darn well that it was “cool to smoke.” (Please, I do not wish to enter into a debate on the negatives of smoking, all I want to do is point out incredible advertising of yester year; especially that for Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes)

Peter Stuyvesant (1612 – 1672) served as the last Dutch Director-General of New Netherland until 1664 when it was handed over to the Brits before it was renamed New York.  A cigarette brand by American Tobacco is named after Stuyvesant and very popular in Australia, Greece, New Zealand and South Africa.

Popular? You’ve got to be kidding me! Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes RULED and DOMINATED the South African advertising scene during the days of smoking. There was not a bigger honor (and for that matter, a lucrative one too!) than writing the jingle for the Stuyvesant commercials.  The commercials all had the same concept: beautiful jetsetters traveling all over the world, with the Stuyvesant music playing in the background, living the good life, the one that so many of us aspire to. Who did not know the tag line:

PETER STUYVESANT, YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT TO SMOKING PLEASURE.

Composing the music for the Stuyvesant commercials was the ultimate prize in advertising in those days. Americans did very well and walked off with the top prize (hear say has it that it was a half a million some 30 – 40 years ago!) time after time. And then one day a call came from a production house with which we had done a lot of work. For the first time in the history of Peter Stuyvesant, the music was NOT by an American team, but rather a South African team and we were all invited to a preview. What an experience (unfortunately I was not able to lay my hands on that commercial, but I remember it so well: night skiing in the Alps to the tune of the incredible Stuyvesant music). Look at the two commercials below: