The ancient Greeks in 345 BC would write you off for the way you read.

You’d attract more than a little scorn.

Because for them, voiceless reading, sitting back with a buttoned lip, was no way to move down the lines of an engraved clay tablet.

When the ancients read, they read aloud. Always.

They believed magic happened that way as a writer’s spirit is contained in a reader’s breath.

For them, a text had to be rendered in a living voice to be complete.

Fast forward to the Romans and the same thinking applies.

A spiritual connection to the writer’s intentions emerged when the text was read aloud.

As a copywriter, think about making your intentions one with your copy; start by reading it aloud.

Put a red pencil through anything that sounds second-hand, perfunctory and relentlessly dull.

Cross out sentences that clatter with formulaic, monochrome, inert thinking.

The ancients would tell you that second-rate writing is easy to spot in a verbal context.

Fast forward again, this time two millennia, to David Abbott’s work.

If you don’t know it, see his ads for Volvo, the Economist and Sainsbury’s.

He read his copy aloud, as we’ve heard from those passing by his office.

Some thought he was talking to himself.

But It was to ensure the writing had a voice that mirrored his thinking. 

That it sparked curiosity; that it was intelligent, pointed and witty enough to project empathy and drive engagement.

With David Abbott in mind, go back and read the ads you’ve had produced this year.

But give them a David-Abbott-out-loud-reading.

There’s every chance your ears will tell you one thing. 

Your work can be improved.

 

 

 

 

 

From the beer tap on the bar to your glass, you can’t hurry the pour of a Guinness.

While rival beers are served up in a trice and raced onto the beer mat in front of you, you have to wait … and wait for a Guinness.

Blame it on a leisurely two-part pour, plus an extended time-out below the rim for a rest. 

As you may know, this describes the Guinness journey to your glass – but only partially. 

Because it becomes lengthier still as the creamy head is eased on with time-consuming care.

What’s the thinking behind all this palaver?

It’s meant to ensure your pint is presented at its best.

And to do so it comes with a brewery-recommended pour of 119.5 seconds. 

119.5 Seconds? 

It’s often thought of as an inconvenience, a disadvantage that results in an awkward wait.

Nice one, Guinness, but is that any way to treat a pub brimming over with thirsty customers?

Well, as you might know, the Guinness creative team address this with the ‘Good Things Come to Those That Wait’ ad campaign.

Have a look at the the following spot.

It turns cooling your heels, literally waiting forever, into the No.1 selling point for the brand. 

More to waiting, we’re pleased you’ve held on to hear about another brand famous for selling a perceived inconvenience: high cost.

That’s Stella Artois with their ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ campaign.

Sure, it’s pricey beer, but you’re charmed with a film showcasing ice skating priests and a disaster that more than justifies Stella’s value.

Now over to you.

How about the inconveniences of the brand you’re working on?

Could there be an opportunity to turn a nuisance into something edgy?

Trot out the drawbacks, shortcomings and annoyances and explore.

Who knows, you might just come up with something that outshines Guinness and Stella.

Back in the year dot we hiked along the east coast of Tasmania.

Untamed and strikingly beautiful, craggy bushland is fronted by the sea.

Being special and then some, it’s known for the cleanest air in the world and the home of the Palawa people.

The Palawa fascinated early explorers like Captain Cook for the fact they lived by the sea but never entered it.

They didn’t swim, they had no boats, they didn’t eat fish.

Incurious describes their relationship to the water.

But then you can’t help noticing marketers are a bit the same when it comes to creative work.

Many are brilliant in areas like strategy, data and technology but less than inquisitive in understanding what ads work and what don’t.

So the public pays the price. Too often they’re faced with messaging that has all the attraction of a dried-up waterfall.

Sorry for the cheap shot in that last thought, but it also has a bright side. 

In an environment where ads are iffy, the best work stands out with the power to engage people. 

More to that, if you’re a past-master with everything else in marketing, why labor as a troubled soul when faced with briefing and judging creative work.

Especially when so much is at stake.

Because powerful ads make it easier for you to compete and convert one very important customer.

The one who belongs to your competition.

The good news is that help is at hand to make gutsier ads. All it takes is cracking a book.

The Howard Gossage Show by Steve Harrison and Dave Dye. Here you’re rewarded with the opposite of dreary, joyless ads … ads that are like a well-meaning bore who corners you at a drinks party.

Instead you’re educated by Howard Gossage, a quick-witted ad genius whose thinking is on the page for one reason. 

To advance you as an intelligent and confident decision maker responsible for approving warm, intense and uplifting ads.

That should elevate your career and lengthen it.

Books by Dave Trott (start with One Plus One = Three: A Master-Class in Creative Thinking) will make you more valuable to yourself and your company. You’ll learn how to motivate your agency to create ads that are anything but low-wattage and emotionally flat.

Here you’re introduced to thinking with wit, charm and reasoned persuasion. We’re talking relentlessly energetic ads that give you the best chance to stop people and create the moment someone buys.

Well, you want to sell, don’t you?

If it makes sense to wade into the waters of new determination, lively intelligence and more effective creative skills, order these books. 

But the trick is to order them before your competitors do. 

From years back we remember the Sydney store David Jones had spruikers in many of their departments.

Spruikers?

That’s Aussie slang for those who tout a store’s offerings to engage customers and give them reasons to buy.  

Spruikers at David Jones came with a measure of class, adding to an impressive interior that included music from a grand piano, bouquets of lilies in tall crystal vases and floor walkers no less animated in welcoming you than your favorite uncle.

It was all about creating an atmosphere that made a store that first opened its doors in 1838, distinctive.  

Spruikers worked a treat for David Jones, charming customers and giving their inclination to buy a nudge.

That nudge and the sales wisdom behind it … we’re wondering, where is it today when it comes to ads? 

Where’s the wit, charm and reasoned arguments that make a virtue of persuasion and keep customers coming back? 

Of course, everyone who wants to sell something tries to paint a rosy picture. 

But you don’t need me to tell you that the result is all too often an un-rosy daub. Smug writing and unconvincing visuals that make you wish for ad blockers.

You wouldn’t be the first to wonder, why don’t more marketers do something about this?  Why don’t they come up with something the competition can’t come up with?

To coin a phrase, that can be as tricky as trying to grab smoke.

But the good news is that in 240 pages you can learn to maximize the potential of your brand.

Just pick up Paul Feldwick’s book, Why Does the Pedlar Sing?

It’s a call for bumping up creativity and adding a measure of entertainment/likeabilty to your brand. It’s about winning the public’s approval so you can be better able to compete. 

You gain an understanding of why the current state of advertising lacks aliveness and why brands are falling short on connecting with customers.

You get the idea that while many marketers appear to be dutiful, slavishly sticking to logic and rationality can make the work they approve dull.

More to that, instead of being friendly and compassionate too many videos, emails and websites come off as self-regarding and remote from customer problems and desires.

With an in-depth account of the Barclaycard campaign in the UK, Paul Feldwick gives you insights into the ingredients that make ads striking and memorable. The opposite of flabby and doomed.

Well, isn’t that what you were hired for, doesn’t your job depend on it?

Paul Feldwick’s pedlar is, of course, a spruiker.

Without his song, who’d notice him, who’d give a toss? And as Bill Bernbach said, if you don’t get noticed everything else is academic.

Airbrush that piece of ancient wisdom from your best practices list and you’re building on sand.

Because if you can’t stop people and create the moment someone buys, you’re leaving the field open to a group of people just waiting to pounce.

Your competitors.

Do you know about Yul Brenner, the actor?

Yul Brenner died of lung cancer.

No surprise there, it was fully expected.

He was more than a pack a day smoker from when he was a kid. Maybe from age 9.

The result?

Doctors told him he could count his days on one hand.

What was a surprise was a 1986 film he made to convince young people to quit smoking.

It opens with Yul Brenner to camera saying if you’re seeing this I’m dead from lung cancer.

It’s a message from the grave about the dangers of smoking.

Will you find a more effective anti-smoking message? It’s unlikely.

The strength of this approach is being used again.

By Phil Gaimon, a professional bike racer.

He isn’t dead, but he could have been many times as careless drivers put him in peril while he was on his bike training.

He did a video to tell the story, https://bit.ly/2Hj13aF

It comes with a stopper of a headline: “Please share this when I’m killed by someone driving a car.”

Have a look at the video and … yeah, have a care when you see cyclists on the road.

As you well know, AI is often rubbished as a threat to our jobs.

You might call it the devil in the church.

But does it deserve the bashing it endures?

Here’s a podcast that makes a dark view of technology seem shortsighted.

It’s Tyler Cowen talking to a celebrated writer and thinker who has been dead 279 years.

That’s Jonathan Swift, master of irony and satire with works like A Modest Proposal and of course, in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels.

Swift speaks again.

Thanks to ChatGPT you’re treated to something with more than a little bit of charm.

 Have a listen: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-gpt-swift/

As this use of AI is fascinating and an education unto itself, it makes you think about the possibility of future hosts and their guests.

You could have someone currently at the top of Ogilvy, like Rory Sutherland, interview David Ogilvy on why so many ads today are monochrome, slapdash and lacking in verve and polish.

What a wonderful troublemaker Ogilvy would be in trying to reverse mediocrity.

Mark Ritson could interview Bill Bernbach on the role marketing played in crafting DDB’s 1959 VW campaign.

What was true then about marketing fundamentals carries weight now –  because when you allow yourself to be swamped with data you tear the humanity out of ads like “Think small”.

You could have Steve Harrison host David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach together, talking about why the main purpose of advertising is to sell.

You’ll remember Ogilvy once said, if it doesn’t sell it isn’t creative.

That should be a welcome thought for CMOs who are befuddled when facing demanding sales managers.

With ChatGPT a whole new take on education will be waiting for you.

Because, as with long gone movie stars who are resurrected to appear in TV commercials, nobody’s dead anymore.

Luke Sullivan’s book – we use it to teach young writers and art directors their trade.

As you’ve no doubt memorized it, you know it leads to cluey creative people who can
change things. 

With that, D&AD is another teaching source that kick starts ability.

Especially annuals from the 70s and 80s.

Additionally, there’s the J. Peterman catalogue.

Remember it?

At one point it became the darling of the Seinfeld show as each product story is
relatable and amusing.

An example of that is the J. Peterman vintage football jersey with striped sleeves.

Here, stripes aren’t just ornamental.

The copy tells us they harken back to the early days of football when players added strips of canvas, leather or moleskin to their sleeves to prevent fumbling.

Well, nobody wants the ball squirting out when they’re tackled, do they?

You have an echo of that in the J. Peterman jersey, illustrating the fact that a functional attribute also looks great.

This exemplifies the Peterman philosophy.

“People want things that are hard to find. Things that have romance, but a factual romance about them”.

Before you write your next ad, social media post, landing page or web copy, it might be an idea to search for some of that romance with inspiration from the Peterman catalogue.

That way you’re bound to come up with an emotional narrative that’s insightful and persuasive. 

The opposite of writing that’s fact-resistant, feeble and out of touch with interest.

Classical music has always been an emotive part of theatre, films and commercials.

For many that’s especially true for commercials.

No doubt you’ve enjoyed the Hamlet Cigar spots all the more for the choice of Bach’s Air on a G String .

The piece works as a counterpoint to the humor of the spot while the gentle progression of notes supports Hamlet’s branding as the ‘mild cigar’.

It’s enough to make reformed smokers think again. Well, we did.

Equally, you might remember the music from the British Airways “Face” film.

It’s from Leo Delibes and his Flower Duet in the opera Lakmé.

Few people wish commercials were any longer than they are, but we’re thinking the choice of this track changes all that.

It pairs so well with the visuals, you might want to binge and screen it more than once.

Another opportunity for great music is ahead of us on May 6^th.

That’s Coronation Day.

Westminster Abbey will overflow with pageantry that will be broadcast to the world.

We’re only guessing at this point, but the music of Handel could be chosen to add even more to the pomp and splendor.

George Frideric Handel, born in Germany in 1685, lived most of his life in England and as such is looked upon as an English composer.

Handel was not only a prolific composer, his work was also admired by Beethoven and Mozart.

But what Handel piece will take pride of place on the day?

Again we’re only guessing, but it could be an anthem called Zadok the Priest.

It’s been performed at every English coronation since 1727.

Here’s a preview:

With a world audience (swelled by the popularity of productions like Downton Abbey and The Crown) there’s every chance Handel’s coronation anthem will become widely known.

So in future it might just be the thing to add a celebratory note to TV spots and videos.

Who knows, maybe it’ll be your spot that benefits from music that’s so timely and distinctive.

We spotted a solution to a problem that surprised and delighted us.

It’s in the headline above, used by a house painter.

What a strong thought. 

But can we really get the job done and get rid of the effing inconvenience
in one short day?

We went on the painter’s Website to see.

There were reviews, but many were negative.

It reminded us of something Bill Bernbach said:

“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster.
It will get more people to know it’s bad.”

That’s spot on in this case.

It seems there are plenty of telling Bernbach quotes online.

They could serve as a marketing and advertising course you could call Improvement in One Day.

So why not set aside one day.

Get your team together and use Bernbach’s thinking as talking points.

Read out the quotes then let the comments flow.

And with that, relevant stories about your brand and how you can improve
everything from competing in the marketplace to short termism in creative work
vs long term brand planning.

Bill Bernbach hasn’t been around for eons in advertising years but his thinking about
why we’re in business remains.

Thanks to him, in one day you could save painting yourself into a corner.

PS. To start you off, here’s a Bernbach thought that should resonate with your CFO:
“The purpose of advertising is to sell. That is what the client is paying for and if that goal does not permeate every idea you get, every word you write, every picture
you take, you are a phony and you ought to get out of the business.”

You might have seen a piece we posted recently about ageism.

It aims to help senior art directors and copywriters avoid the push by planning for a second career.

Here’s the link showcasing two senior creative people, Geoff Stevenson and Mark Denton: http://whybetonto.com/your-second-career-get-cracking-on-it/

You don’t need me to tell you it’s a bumpy road for art directors and writers in their 50s. 

The threat of ageism has been likened to an Arctic chill.

Given that, what’s your plan? 

 You can freelance, but you already knew that, so let’s move on.

The few who are chock-a-block with talent and contacts (George Tannenbaum is one – see his Ad Aged blog) can start their own company. 

By answering only to yourself you’re bound to feel all your Christmases have come at once.

But then there’s also further education. 

That may be more viable with business school as another option.

On offer are executive education programs that don’t require the time, commitment or the eye-wateringly high tuition costs of an MBA. 

Business schools are keen for working professionals to apply and many programs are structured with customized learning paths. They can be part-time, in-person, live online and online at your pace. Please yourself.

Subject matter includes marketing, strategy, leadership, management, social enterprise and finance. And you can earn a certificate.

With that certificate in hand you can begin to lower the barriers to future employment, develop immunity to further ageism and assert your value. 

We spotted on-going benefits for you, starting with marketability.

You gain skills, strengths and business cred well beyond what’s on your resume. 

Cred translates as resourcefulness to employers and sets you apart. 

You learn from professors who know their stuff with courses that are applicable to your professional development.

The idea is to build your knowledge so you can pivot to another industry.

You benefit with networking — other program participants are likely to come from diverse industries, roles, geographies and backgrounds.

You’re bound to find friends, allies and long-term business contacts among them. 

You can also call on alumni – you’ll have commonality there, a strong starting point with MBAs who could turn out to be future employers.

One other thing.

Business schools have career centers.

So there’s every chance you’ll benefit with professional coaching and maybe even introductions to hiring managers.

Recruiters troll business school career centers to find talent – who’s to say you won’t be the next gem they turn up. 

If there’s a spark of an idea here, research business schools in your area. 

Have a look at several programs, speak to admissions people one-on-one, attend an on-campus event, chat to existing students, read student blogs, see if there’s a scenario that makes sense for you and your lifestyle.

At the very least this is an idea you can mull over. Hope it helps because whatever your choice, we don’t want you disappearing from view.