A magnificent commercial. Read this before you try to do something like it.

A beautiful piece of video showed up in my Facebook feed the other day. But before I share it with you, I feel it’s my duty to give you a little background.

Any piece of communication has two components –– the rational and the emotional. The rational component is the message. What you want people to believe. The reason why.

But what makes a piece of communication amazing is always –– always –– the emotional bit. Not the message, but the way it’s delivered.

Remember Apple’s ‘1984’ commercial? (Probably not. You weren’t even born in 1984, were you?) Created by Chiat/Day (where I used to work as a copywriter, by the way), it’s still held up as one of the –– if not the –– greatest television spots ever made. What was the message? Apple’s new computer is going to change the world.

Yawn.

It’s exactly the same strategy that every single computer manufacturer has used for every single new product introduction ever.

There are tons of really forgettable ways that message could have been –– and has been –– delivered. Microsoft’s Surface introduction comes to mind. Samsung’s ‘Next Big Thing’ campaign, too. I’m sure there are other good examples, but, well, like I said they’re mostly forgettable.

The way Apple chose to do it in 1983 –– having a blonde chick heave a sledge hammer at a TV screen –– that was the amazing part. (It also helped that the Macintosh happened to be truly revolutionary, but that’s the subject of a different post.)

Every once in a while, somebody who realizes the truth of what I just said will go, “Well, if the  emotional component is the part that really matters, why should I even bother with the rational bit? I mean, who needs a strategy, anyway?”

You do.

Little reason: Because your competitors are staking claims and not to do so would be stupid. 

Medium reason: Because knowing what you’re trying to communicate rationally will liberate your creative teams to come up with an amazing way to do it.

Big reason: Because nobody knows. Seriously. Nobody can consistently and reliably create amazing emotional bits, especially in the absence of rational bits. 

Sure, there are a few geniuses who are pretty good at it. And they have a better record at making amazing stuff than most. But in spite of what every single ad agency tells every single client, it’s impossible to control for all the variables or to know what’s going to resonate. 

Don’t believe me? Then explain to me why the video for Gangnam Style managed to accumulate more than two billion views on YouTube while the follow up video for the same artist, directed by the same director, and benefitting from the all the press and fame and confidence and revenue of the first, couldn’t come close?

Please. Whatever you do, don’t abandon strategy and attempt to make a spot for your version of baked beans like this exquisite little piece of perfection: 

Because biggest reason: It’s not a commercial for beans. It was written and directed by Animator Alvise Avati and produced by Animation Director Eamonn Butler as a commercial for Cinesite, demonstrating their creature animation skills. 

Oh look. A strategy: “We do really good creature animation.”

Now that you know what this video was actually created to do, go back and read through my list of reasons. Suddenly, strategy makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?

Brian Belefant is a copywriter and director currently looking for his next assignment. Please call (503) 715 2852 or email belefant@me.com.

Why simple is not so simple.

It's one of the basic tenets of advertising: simple messages communicate more powerfully than complicated ones. 

And yet.

Back when I was a baby copywriter, we used to bitch about how the creative briefs we were given kept getting bigger and bigger. Yes, even at a storied ad agency like Chiat/Day, a place famous for creating simple, powerful advertising. Sometimes the brief for a single ad or commercial would run to four pages.

Whenever we were given a brief, the first thing most of us in the creative department would do is flip through it, skipping over all the background and demographic stuff to the one important line item: What’s the single most compelling thing we want readers/viewers to take away? A simple answer there would mean we’d been given a good assignment. Not because the solution would necessarily be easy, but because even an idiot would be able to determine whether we’d met the criteria. 

It’s hard to keep an assignment simple. Clients who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ad feel as if they’re being asked to pony up for a Ferrari, but not being told whether it will even turn left.

(I once had to work on a billboard that had –- and I’m not making this up –– a list of eight things that the brief said needed to be communicated. There’s a general rule with billboards that you don’t want to go over nine words. Which, as the account person nervously joked, gave us the freedom to throw in a gratuitous “the” or “and.” My partner and I actually nailed it, but unfortunately the headline we wrote had twelve words, so our solution was killed before it ever got shown to the client.)

That was years ago. Since then, media has become lots more expensive. And the vast majority of clients have become accustomed to being regularly deferred to by agencies who are so terrified to lose the business that they refuse to have an opinion, much less take a stand. 

All of which adds up to an advertising landscape that’s fetid.

And then there’s this. 

Forget how dazzlingly funny this is. That’s bonus. The genius is that the very structure requires the spot to say only one thing. The single most compelling message. 

I look at this spot and I see not just a brilliant creative solution, but also a healthy agency/client relationship. I know. That's two things. 

See? Even I can’t help but want to make two points.

Way to go, Martin Agency.

Brian Belefant is a copywriter turned director currently looking for his next assignment. Please call (503) 715 2852 or email belefant@me.com. 

Just when I was beginning to think there was no hope for advertising.

I’ve been pretty cranky about the advertising business lately. So much crap; so little good stuff. It’s gotten to the point that I was seriously considering changing careers, but I’m not sure if the Nobel Prize committee is hiring right now.

Lucky for Sweden, I saw this spot for Organic Valley.

You don’t need me to tell you it’s brilliant –– wonderful idea, super well executed. But you might appreciate me telling you why.

To do that, think about the assignment: Sell the benefits of an organic protein drink.

The obvious solution would have been to draw a connection between what consumers want (to improve their health) and what the product offers ( the perceived healthful advantages of being organic).

The ad agency probably presented some work that did just that. And it was probably good. 

But someone (David Littlejohn, Mike Cessario, Stephanie Gelabert, and Sean Davis) came up with this gem of an idea. Someone (the uncredited account executives) convinced the client it was a good idea. And someone (the uncredited agency producer) found the right team (Fancy Rhino) to put it all together. 

Then they came up with the ancillary stuff: The website (http://savethebros.com), the merch, the Buy One/Bro One offer. 

This. This is what an ad agency should do every single time. Sadly, few do anymore. 

My hat is off to you, Humanaut, and all the people who pulled together to make this spot happen. I hope this portends well for the entire business. 

In case it doesn’t, I’m going to brush up on my Swedish.

I have a problem and it involves John Cleese and a camel.

Back when I was first getting into directing, I heard John Cleese interviewed on the radio and he said something incredibly profound. something that helped me to become a better director. A much better director.

Here’s the problem: I can’t find the quote.

I've done Google searches on every version of what I think he might have said and I came up with nothing (although –– kind of random –– I did stumble onto a quote by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that made me laugh out loud).

As far as I know, it might not have been John Cleese who said it. Hell, it might not have even been said, which would be kind of Charlie Kaufman-esque when you think about it, how my understanding of comedy was informed by a quote that was never actually uttered and that somehow, I'm convinced I got to be a better director because of it.

Doesn’t matter. I believe it to be true. And that brings me to the camel.

Watch this spot which you've already seen:



Ask people what the spot is about and they'll tell you it's about a camel that's happy it's Wednesday. Which it is. Only it's more. It's about a camel that's always happy it's Wednesday.

And how do we know that? The camel's office mates.

The camel is funny. Great voice. Perfect performance. Beautiful visual effects. But what's truly funny is that even though it might be our first time hearing him go on about hump day, it's their millionth.

That's what makes this spot work. So well that according to AdWeek, this spot was one of the ten most watched commercials of 2013.

And here's where I finally let you in on you what John Cleese may or may not have told me: People's reactions to something funny almost always make the funny thing funnier.

Take away the coworkers and this spot wouldn't have sucked. But it wouldn't have been nearly as good.

John Cleese knows this. I know this. And now you know this, too.

If I were wearing a hat, I'd be tipping it right now to the Martin Agency and the creative team there who worked on it (the spot, not the hat): Joe Alexander, Steve Bassett (who I used to work with back at Chiat and who is truly one of the most courteous people in advertising), Wade Alger, Sean Riley, Ken Marcus, Molly Souter, Samantha Tucker, and Emily Taylor.

But mostly I'd be tipping it to Wayne McClammy, the director. For seeing what the spot could be and letting it be just that.

My Christmas gift to you: Three secrets to making a great commercial

Good ad agencies, like good businesses of any ilk, have a point of view. And back in the 90s, BBDO was one of the best. Their point of view enabled them to do a particular kind of advertising and they did the shit out of it for Pepsi, Visa, Skippy, and Frito-Lay.

I know this well because from 1993 to 1995 I was Senior Vice President/Creative Director at BBDO.

I'm going to tell you a secret. The BBDO secret.

The quintessential BBDO commercial (the agency almost exclusively did TV commercials) relied on three things: 1) Intrigue, 2) Misdirection, and 3) Making the product the hero.

Intrigue means it's a story and the story sucks you in.

Cindy Crawford steps out of a sports car at a desolate gas station and walks over to a vending machine.

I wonder what's going to happen next, don't you? You do. We all do, especially since we establish that two boys are watching her. (Remind me to share John Cleese's brilliant observation about comedy in a post someday.)

Misdirection goes to the dramatic structure. If you know how your story is going to turn out, why would you continue watching? Well, yeah, there are reasons. Like, for instance, it's Cindy Crawford. 

Sure, we know Cindy is going to put money into the vending machine and push a button. Will a Pepsi come out? It does. Will she drink it? She will. But what of the two boys?

Here comes the misdirection: As Cindy slugs down the Pepsi, the two boys watch, slack jawed. One of them comments, "Is that a great new Pepsi can or what?"

Which brings me to making the product the hero. That's shorthand for "the product is not just integral to the story, it is the very thing that makes the punch line satisfying." When your product isn't the hero, you may have something funny –– like shooting gerbils out of a cannon as Outpost.com did in a Superbowl spot back in 1999 –– but you don't really have a commercial.

The hero of the spot with Cindy Crawford is the can. Pepsi had redesigned their can. Implicit in the commercial, whether believable or not, was that Pepsi's new can was even more beautiful than Cindy Crawford's... well... can.

It's twenty years later and the same approach still works magic. A magnificent example is Apple's "Misunderstood" holiday commercial.

We think we're watching a kid playing with his iPhone at the expense of engaging with his family during the holidays. Misdirection. Turns out he's shooting a movie of the family on his iPhone to share with them on Christmas morning. 

As for product as hero, yep. Apple made a big point about its improved video capabilities with the introduction of the new iPhone earlier this year. I'm pretty sure the brief the agency worked from directed them to create a spot that highlighted the feature.

Feature.

That's an important word and it brings me to Secret #4. (I know. Look at me being all generous.) There are features and there are benefits. Features are what a product has or does. Benefits are what you get from having a feature. The ability to make a movie on your phone is a feature. The ability to bring your family together and share memories almost as they're being created? That's a benefit.

This is an extraordinary spot. Beautifully conceived and well-crafted.

I'm grateful to both Apple and TBWA\Chiat\Day (the ad agency) for giving me a gift I so appreciate as this most difficult of all years finally comes to a close: Proof that it's still possible to create truly great advertising.

I'm entering 2014 inspired. I hope you are, too.

Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Advertising I Learned From A First Century Babylonian Rabbi

Rabbi Hillel making fun of crappy advertising. 

My nephew just called with a “quick question”. His high school Spanish teacher gave his class an assignment to create a TV commercial that communicates the value of speaking a foreign language. He wanted to know how to make a TV commercial. 

Oh, and the assignment is due tomorrow. 

When I was a kid, I remember a hearing a story in Sunday school about one Rabbi Hillel, who was challenged to explain the entire Torah while standing on one foot. The Torah, in case you didn’t happen to have the good fortune to be raised Jewish, is, to quote Wikipedia, "the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God, which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious obligations and civil laws." It's five books long, plus, oh, 58 centuries of commentaries and interpretations by a people who, to put it mildly, have a thing for commenting and interpreting.

Okay, so what my nephew was asking me wasn’t quite as daunting. If you count the entire history of TV commercials, you can’t really go back before 1939, when RCA began broadcasting TV signals. 

Still, Dude? Seriously? You want me to tell you how to make a TV commercial while standing on one foot?

In the Torah story, the rabbi thinks for a moment, raises one foot, and says, “Do not do anything to others that you would not want done to yourself. The rest is all commentary.”

So I raised my own foot and told my nephew exactly that. Except that I substituted “inflict anything upon” for "do anything to". 

And then I hung up. I have to come up with a commercial for a client that communicates the value of buying something much less worthwhile than learning a foreign language. And the assignment is due tomorrow. 

A 46-year-old advertising lesson and the boneheads who refuse to learn it.

In my capacity as a consultant to a certain automotive group, I was recently asked to review Buick's new TV spots. One features Squaquile O'Neal talking about how spacious his Buick LaCrosse is.

Take a look and see if anything strikes you as... uncomfortable.

See that? The part where he's wedged into the driver's seat? 

The seat is all the way to the back and the poor guy still can't get his legs under the steering wheel. That car isn't going anywhere –– not with Shaq in it.

Here's the deal. Saying that Shaq is a big guy is like saying Donald Trump has a healthy ego. He –– O'Neal, not Trump –– stands 7' 1" tall. (For the record, The Donald is 6' 3", which actually qualifies him as a big guy, particularly compared to an average someone like me who stands 5' 9".)

The LaCrosse may actually be roomy. It probably is. But cramming Shaq into the front seat in order to make that point is ridiculous. Even if you could make it look as if Shaq fits into the front seat of a LaCrosse, the best you can hope for is that 7-foot-tall guys will swing by the dealership, only to have them realize the extent to which you were lying. 

Good for Buick? I'm going to say no.

What makes this spot particularly interesting is how nicely it parallels the situation in 1966. Back then, Volkswagen wanted to convince people that the Beetle was roomy. 

To make the point, Volkswagen hired another very large basketball player: Wilt Chamberlain. 

Guess how tall Wilt Chamberlain was. You got it. 7' 1". 

I know, eerie.

What the folks at Volkswagen understood that the folks at Buick don't is that honesty is more compelling than lying. Rather than try to tell people that Wilt actually fit into a Beetle, they did the opposite. They told people that he didn't. 

Here's the ad:

In case you can't make out the body copy, here's how it starts:

We tried. Lord knows we tried. But no amount of pivoting or faking could squeeze the Philadelphia 76ers’ Wilt Chamberlain into the front seat of a Volkswagen.

So if you’re 7’ 1” tall like Wilt, our car is not for you. But maybe you’re a mere 6’ 7”. 

In that case, you’d be small enough to appreciate what a big thing we’ve made of the Volkswagen.

A lot has been made about how Volkswagen's ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, revolutionized advertising in the 1960s by creating powerfully motivating messages with honesty and empathy.

But the sad truth is that for all Doyle Dane Bernbach and its ilk did to show how mass communications could be created with respect for consumers, that revolution has clearly failed. Forty-six years down the road, companies like Buick continue to create unmotivating, unbelievable turds. And today, unlike those Mad Men days when integrity and conviction were the tools deployed to support decisions made based on common sense, ad agencies and clients alike defer to legions of "consumer advocates", analysts, and brand strategists who rely on "powerful tools" like focus groups, quantitative research, and consumer insight studies to develop messages that "resonate".

Call me old fashioned, but I think there's a really simple way to tell whether any of those experts deserves the six-figure salaries they make: See if any of them would spend their own money to buy a LaCrosse.