Several Semi-related Thoughts About Advertising

I'm back.  No one noticed I've not posted for several months.  No tears.  I'll continue talking to myself.  I do that a lot anyway -- or so my wife claims.  

I'm a collector of quotations -- probably because I've never felt accomplished enough to offer something stirring of my own.  It's okay.  I'm comfortable with that fact.  In my office, I have several files full of advertising quotations.  I review them regularly to stoke the fires of my creative idealism.  Here are four that happen to strike my fancy at this particular moment.

From the 1957 Yale Baccalaureate Address:

"Could a commitee have written 'The Odyssey,' or Warhol's soup cans been painted by a club?  Could the New Testament have been composed by a conference?  Creative ideas do not spring from groups.  They spring from individuals."

From Bill Bernbach, advertising icon and DDB founding partner:

"I have spent so much time urging freshness and originality, let me quickly add that doing it differently is not enough.  The pre-eminence of creativity in advertising  is not a license to be pretentious, or to put it as unpretentiously as I can, it is not a license to be phony, to do abstract acrobatics.  Your job is to simplify, to dramatize, to use all your taqlents to make crystal clear and memorable the message of the advertisement.  Yes, your ad ought to make noise, so that it will get noticed, but not a senseless noise."

From Jim Riswold, Creative Director at Weiden & Kennedy:

"Noise is nothing but shouting.  Shouting has been, is, and always will be a fail-safe recipe for bad advertising; it's hollow, braggadocio, vain, boorish, rude and a complete waste of time.  It doesn't care about the consumer.  The best advertising is, if you enjoy fancy terms, a symbiotic relationship, or if you prefer simple terms, a friendship between a brand and a consumer."

From Thelonious Monk, famed jazz musician and "beatnik:"

"I take risks.  The only cats who are worthwhile are the ones that take risks."

Taking Detours, Back Roads & Byways

Back in 1928, as I understand it, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was studying bacteria under his microscope and noticed something odd. A strange mold had appeared on his samples, disrupting his experiment. He then noticed something even more intriguing. Bacteria wouldn’t grow near the mysterious mold. Completely by accident, Fleming made one of history’s great medical breakthroughs – he discovered penicillin.

In advertising, especially during my 15 years at Richter7, I’ve seen that same experience repeat itself over and over. You head off in one direction searching for a solution -- be it creative or strategic -- and a smart, fresh solution suddenly appears while taking a side road in the thought process. (The photo in the accompanying Harley ad perfectly portrays what I'm saying.)

I’ve found, however, the side road doesn’t usually appear until after traveling the main highway for while. Sweat and effort typically precede any magical moments I have had in the creative realm. This process was reinforced by a paragraph I ran across in the Harvard Business Review. It was written by a former Disney V.P. who is now co-chairman of a company called Applied Minds. It went like this:

“Everyone knows that innovation is risky, and it’s rare that you arrive at your expected destination. But maybe that destination isn’t so important. Maybe what you should be paying attention to are the little detours you take along the way: It’s down those back roads and byways that the real payoff usually is found. Maybe, in fact, the biggest risk in innovation lies in sticking too closely to your plans.”

Good food for thought in a business based on creativity.