Hello and welcome back to Advertising and Society. Today we begin a consideration of how ads get made. This is perhaps one of the most perplexing questions of all to those of us outside the world of advertising. It's something of a mystery, is to where they come from because what we all, all, all of what we see in the end is the finished product. Perhaps a print out advertisement in a magazine or a television commercial, or a banner advertisement on the computer screen. But how do they get made? What is the process by which they come in to being? To understand these things, we need to switch gears somewhat from our focus on looking at advertising from a more objective scholarly point of view, and get inside the world of advertising and look at things from the point of view, of those who actually create ads. That's what we'll be doing in this series of lectures in which we consider how ads get made. I want to begin this discussion by talking about the four classical divisions, of an advertising agency. Now by saying the four classical divisions, I don't mean that every advertising agency is organized precisely like this, nor even necessary that they use these names. However these are the classical functions that an advertising agency has done and me might think of them as departments, or sections, or parts of an advertising agency all of which work together. In a large agency there will be many, many, many departments with different functions. But in a small agency, people may overlap a great deal, and some of them may perform more than one of these functions. So there are actually four, let's begin talking through what these are and try to understand the role they play in creating ads. First there the, there are the account executives, these are the business people. There job is to run the agency and especially to manage the relationship between the client, who is hired the advertising agency to produce it's ads, and the people who work in the agency and thereby produce ads. Second there is the creative department, these are the people who actually make the ads themselves, they consist of artists and writers and various people who work together to produce the actual ad that we end up seeing. The third department is the research department. Now this research department differs from an academic one, because in every case the research that's done in an advertising agency is applied research. It's done in order to serve some purpose in producing or evaluating or understanding an ad. Research department can be, doing questions that are in the service of their creative department, or it can be assessing the way the paper respond to advertising, all these kinds of functions, take place in an ad agency. And, together we can lump them all under the functional area of research. And finally, there is the media division. And this is the, part of the organization sometimes even outside the organization in a separate organization, but it is the part of the advertising agency process that places the ads. It will decide along the way whether the ads are going to be in print. Whether they're going to be in television, whether they're going to be in the internet or in some other medium. And it will go about the business of managing the budget and placing the ads, in order to get the advertiser, who has hired the advertising agency, to get their message out to the public. Now as I said the creatives are the people in the advertising agency, who actually make the ads. The typical backgrounds of people who do this kind of work are, they are trained as writers, graphic designers, artists of various sorts, musicians, all kinds of things like this, and these people work together. In teams of some sort put together for the special purpose of making an ad to create that advertising. But the question is, how do they actually do their work? Do they follow some game plan, or do they just think up stuff on their own or how does it work? Well, most ads originate in this way. First, the client company hires an advertising agency. It hires it because it needs the assistance of the agency, to get its message out to the consumer. Then the client in association with the advertising agency agree upon a strategy. That is a game plan for what it is they're trying to say and to whom they're trying to say it. Then, together they produce a document usually referred to as a creative brief. This is the a, a short document but it is one that lays out the strategy, the idea. What the product is about what the brand issues are. And all of these things are then passed along to the creative people. The creatives work from this creative brief to produce the actual ads, commercials and other features of advertising campaigns, whatever those might be. Now, here's an example, one that I like very much, of the creative process. It's a classic example from actually 1964 but it illustrates a great deal about how the creative process works. Now, the situation then was that Levy's bakers, a New York concern. Hired the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency, also of New York City. Because they wanted to increase their sales. They already had quite a popular following. Among a large segment of the New York community. But they wanted to be bigger and better and sell more to different people. To extend beyond their present customer base. So together Levy's the company and DDB the agency, agreed on a strategy. Of how to advertise Levy's baked goods to a wider and more diverse audience. The creative brief that is the document you up together stated quote Levy's bread and baked goods are widely known and purchased by members of the Jewish Community. Community in New York. The goal of advertising is, is to reach out beyond this community, and to find new consumers and to do so without losing the present, strong consumer base. Now at this point after the strategy has been put in place, the creatives take over. They put on their thinking caps, so to speak. They brainstorm, they talk among themselves, they try the product, get to know it. They listen to what the research says about consumers, who buys it and what they like about it. And then they think some more. This is how they talk, actually, about the creative process, so I want to emulate. And a little bit for you. They think some more. They try out ideas. Then they throw everything out. They start all over again. Until they produce an ad that they finally like. And here's what, in this particular case, that ad looked like. It was simple and to the point. You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's, real Jewish rye. And in this case it shows a Native American eating a sandwich made of rye bread and smiling as he does this. Now, he doesn't quote, look Jewish. He probably isn't Jewish. But this is a way of kind of making a joke about. The company sells mostly at present to the Jewish community. And that is not just for that community that this product is prepared and aimed and could be used. And so by being humorous here this campaign communicates simply, straightforwardly. And memorably. That's very important about it because when people saw this campaign they remembered it. They also talked about it. It got a lot of press. It became rather well-known, and even a famous advertising campaign. And if you go back and look at the history of big and famous advertising. Campaigns in 20th century America. This one will usually be quoted. Now if the client happens to like this, then it's a go. They produce ads probably a pool of them, several versions of this. And they make a campaign out of all these different ads and they run it for awhile in the media. That they've agreed on. And here are some of the ads that were produced at that time in this advertising campaign, where the same kinds of things are done, but with different ethnicities. In this case, Buster Keaton appears and it says the same thing. You don't have to be Jewish to love this bread. And here, a little Asian boy same thing. And here this Asian man. All of these people not being typically identified as Jews in people's minds. And it's a way of saying, this product is for people. Far beyond the jewish community and there smiling and they all love it. And this was as I said a very successful campaign and note that it worked because the client and the agency had a grade at the beginning at the outset on what there strategy was. It was to maintain the consumers that they had and to extend this to other groups who were not presently apart of their consumer base. Their creatives took over they played around with it they came up with this. The client liked it and it was a go it was used, and it was a very successful. Advertising campaign. This is the essence of how most advising companies work. They're not just something that a single individual thinks up on the spot. Or, sometimes, people have said to me. students, gee I thought that was a great idea. i think i'll send it in to the company and see if they want to use it in advertising. Well, there's much more to the process than just, this is a good idea, There is a strategy that lies behind it, a strategy that's agreed upon. And it's that strategy that's put into effect, ultimately by the creative people and made into an advertisement. Now a little history about all of this. In Post World War 2 America, advertising tended to be a particular way. It tended to show romantic lifestyles, idealized cultures, perfect families, and a rather harmonious society. You can see in these images on the screen how idealized life is. You an also see how these are intact families. They are the traditional family of mom, dad and the kids. They're middle class, they're white. And this is what advertising primarily consisted of, these kinds of romantic images. But there was a shift in all of this in th 1960s. It's referred to as the creative revolution that took place in American advertising at that point in time. It was led by a man by the name of Bill Bernbach of the Doyle Dan Bernbach agency in New York City. What his ads did was they broke through the clutter of these romantic images in. Images of idealized society and perfect families and perfect society. And they became realistic, truth telling, and hard hitting. Now here's an example of one of his most famous ads. It's a black and white ad for Volkswagen, which was being. Introduced into America. And on a largely white page, but a very small image in black and white of a car that wasn't particularly beautiful. Some people now think the Volkswagen is quite lovely, but at the time it was strange and rather peculiar. And the ad says simply, think small. So instead of those big, big cars like you saw in the previous ad, this was an advertisement that asked you to do something different. And the ad itself was revolutionary, because the images were different, the ad was hard hitting, it pulled no punches and it got right to the point. This one even more so, where it shows this Volkswagen and calls it a Lemon. If you go in and you read the copy, what you discover is there's a scratch in the glove box of a car and the company doesn't want any of it's cars to come out, and be sold to the public unless they're absolutely perfect. But again, this is a very different kind of advertising, and it's a realistic ad. It it's a different kind of thing, and the public was much attracted to this. It started to work and ads began to change a great deal. And thus, what we think of as the creative process changed from that idealization, and romanticization in ads. An aspirational, imaginary kind of culture of what life could be like in a dreamy sort of way. To a much more realistic presentation that began with these particular ads, and others just like them. And pulled no punches, as I said. Now, there was another advertising genius at the same time who did his work in a very different way. This was David Ogilvy, founder of the Ogilvy and Mather Advertising Agency, now usually known just as Ogilvy. He wrote a very popular book in the 1960s called, Confessions of an Advertising Man. In this he described his style of advertising, which was a very different style of creative work from that of Bernbach. What he was famous for were long copy ads, again, black and white and this one is for a Rolls Royce. But look at the headline and, and notice what it says. At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the tick of the electric clock. And this, this is something new, it's different. But for Ogilvie it was important to give the consumer a lot of information. Not to be so in your face about it, but to create interesting ads, memorable ads. And in his book he put out a series of rules about what he though would work. And these were things that were mostly treat your consumer with great respect. He even said think of yo, the consumer as your wife. Think of this as someone you're talking to, and be respectful of them. And then give them information that they're interested in. So that book laid out the creative process. It became a kind of standard window on what advertising was like, where for the first time the American public was treated to an inside view. Of how advertising actually works. Here's another of his famous ads where he created this image of a man wearing a patch on his eye, to go along with his ads for the Hathaway shirt company. Before the next lecture I'd like to ask you to think about which campaigns you've seen recently, you think are generally creative. Which ones are memorable? Which have you seen recently that break through the clutter, that, do things in original and interesting ways? I'd like you to think about that, and, the next lecture, what I want to do is to turn to a recent campaign in America, that did get a lot of acclaim for being highly creative. It was again, one that people talked about, like the Levi's campaign was talked about, and we have some information about the behind the scenes process that went on there. And I'll share with you to give us some further insight, into what actually happens behind the ads that we see every day. In the meantime, I'd also like to suggest that you turn to ad text, and read the unit on creativity. You'll find that there's a great deal of information there about the creative process, more details than I've been able to give you here. But some things to think about, concerning how the process of creativity works in advertising. This course is a collaborative venture of, Duke University and the Advertising Educational Foundation.
