From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [11]
Advertising still downgrades the consumer’s intelligence because the people who are doing the ads are often as stupid as the people they think they’re talking to. The advertising industry is full of thickheaded guys. Just recently a creative director of an old-line agency was quoted in one of the trade papers as saying that this direct method of talking to people won’t work. This guy says that Doyle, Dane, Bernbach is a passing fad; it’s going to go away and quit bothering him someday.
Some passing fad! They passed his agency five years ago. His agency was doing about $125 million a year ago. Who knows what Doyle, Dane are doing? They pick up business so fast you can’t even keep up with it. They’re billing maybe $255 million and they’re booming. They just don’t stop.
Anything Doyle, Dane touches turns to gold – with the exception of beer. They did a great job with the Polaroid Land Camera. If you want to say that anyone could have done a terrific job with Polaroid, because the product is so unique, O.K., let’s not waste time on Polaroid. Take Levy’s Rye Bread. They get Levy’s bread and maybe an ad budget of $100,000 and all of a sudden pictures of Indians are appearing all over town saying, ‘You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Enjoy Levy’s Rye.’ As far as I’m concerned, all rye bread tastes the same, but look what Doyle, Dane did for it. What happens is a guy at General Foods looks at all those Indians and Chinese and pictures of Godfrey Cambridge pushing Levy’s and he says, ‘What the hell are we doing with the agency we have? Look at what these guys are doing for $100,000.’ The next thing you know, Doyle, Dane gets a piece of General Foods. They start doing great work for General Foods and the guy over at Kraft says, ‘Look at this. For years we’ve been hanging around doing nothing. Let’s get somebody like these guys and quit getting killed by General Foods.’ The cry is going out all over town, ‘Give me a Doyle, Dane agency, give me a Doyle, Dane ad.’
Good advertising gets exposure. People talk about it, notice it, think about it. The client is standing up there waiting at the train station for the New Haven to take him into New York and he’s dying to be stopped by his buddies. He is dying for them to compliment him on his new campaign. Everyone wants to be praised. ‘Boy, you’ve got a hell of an ad there.’ That’s what the client wants to hear. Plus the cash register. He loves it when his friends say, ‘You people are really doing a job.’ He wants that desperately. There’s a myth that the client is not interested in awards. Nonsense. Clients love awards because they love recognition just as much as agencies do. They want their accounts to win as many awards as possible.
Doyle, Dane’s advertising has that feeling that the consumer is bright enough to understand what the advertising is saying, that the consumer isn’t a lunkhead who has to be treated like a twelve-year-old. People are more sophisticated today. It’s not just because of television, although that’s part of it. It’s a matter that I’m brighter than my father, and my son is going to be brighter than I am. I don’t understand what the new math is, but my kids will; they’re going to be way ahead of me. They’re much sharper, they know exactly what’s going on in the world. The average consumer, you know, doesn’t buy the junky advertising any more. He doesn’t buy a line like Luckies tasting milder. He doesn’t believe the male model decked out in a fruity sailor suit claiming that the cigarette he’s smoking has that ‘lusty’ taste. It’s archaic. Guys who do this sort of advertising may be twenty years behind their time. In a sense, even Doyle, Dane may