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Advertising, Age Of Persuasion, CBC, DDB, Digital Marketing, Do This Or Die, Doyle Dane Bernbach, Marketing, Terry O'Reilly, Time Inc
Doyle Dane Bernbach nailed it way back in the 1960′s. In response to a TIME Inc. contest where entries were invited to create an ad that was in the public interest, the DDB submission, written by Bob Levinson, won. The all text full page print ad is below. It still packs a punch.
DO THIS OR DIE
Is this ad some kind of trick?
No. But it could have been. And at exactly that point rests a do or die decision for American business. We in advertising, together with our clients, have all the power and skill to trick people. Or so we think. But we’re wrong. We can’t fool any of the people any of the time. There is indeed a twelve-year-old mentality in this country; every six-year-old has one. We are a nation of smart people. And most smart people ignore most advertising because most advertising ignores smart people. Instead we talk to each other. We debate endlessly about the medium and the message. Nonsense. In advertising, the message itself is the message. A blank page and a blank television screen are one and the same. And above all, the messages we put on those pages and on those television screens must be the truth. For if we play tricks with the truth, we die.
Now. The other side of the coin. Telling the truth about a product demands a product that’s worth telling the truth about. Sadly, so many products aren’t. So many products don’t do anything better. Or anything different. So many don’t work quite right. Or don’t last. Or simply don’t matter. If we also play this trick, we also die. Because advertising only helps a bad product fail faster. No donkey chases the carrot forever. He catches on. And quits. That’s the lesson to remember. Unless we do, we die. Unless we change, the tidal wave of consumer indifference will wallop into the mountain of advertising and manufacturing drivel. That day we die. We’ll die in our marketplace. On our shelves. In our gleaming packages of empty promises. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper. But by our own skilled hands.
Great stuff. Heavy stuff. Read it again and ask how much of this applies in today’s new world of digital marketing and social media? Yeah, all of it.
What do you think?
Hat tip to Terry O’Reilly and CBC‘s awesome Age of Persuasion for dedicating an episode to this topic and A Beautiful Experience for taking the time to reproduce the text.
Michael
much of what DDB said is true
but isn’t the point of marketing 2.0 to go beyond talking at people or even listening to people and moving towards a conversation?
True, there needs to be something to talk about for a conversation to ensue – and part of the problem is the brands don’t know how to converse or are (legally) afraid of conversing. So like the boring cocktail party – we stand around talking about price points or promotions or the time something went wrong with the brand’s service.
In my “Miss Ann Elk” theory of marketing, I have laid out the 4 types of relationships consumers might want to have with brands: Wallet, Mind, Heart, Life
( if interested see:http://miroslodki.wordpress.com/articles/the-anatomy-of-a-brand-purchase-part-1/
the last two, “Heart” and “Life” are where conversations will spark. But its up to the brand to lead the discussion about its role in the community, the progress that the customer (not corporation) defined good works program is achieving, and what possible co-creational things the brand is doing to improve itself (ie Dell Idea Storm)
That being said – I think there is lots to talk about and learn from in order to avoid the fate of ‘dying by one’s own skilled hands’. The problem it seems is as Keynes once noted “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
Cheers
Miro
Miro,
Thanks for the comment. You are correct. My point (although I left it to the imagination of readers) was to link how we think about conversational marketing and engagement today is not far off of the principles outlined in “Do this or die”. At that point in time, advertising was all the rage and was the only game in town.
The huge shift today is what digital allows us to do more effectively and efficiently (it is more than just advertising). However, they spelled out how to do advertising properly. If you change some of the words in the DDB ad, and look at what we now refer to as engagement, interaction and influence in social media and digital – while also having something “remarkable” to speak about, it makes sense. The spirit works just as well today.
Hi MIchael – Thanks for the kind words on our radio show. Mike Tennant and I have written a new book titled “The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture” and it hits bookstores next week, October 27th.
If you’d like to do an online Q&A, or interview, or something, just let us know.
Cheers,
Terry O’Reilly