Confessions of an Advertiser (Commemorative Edition), by David Ogilvy, translated by Lin Hua, CITIC Publishing Group, November 2021 edition.
What exactly does advertising do?
Not so long ago my sister, Mrs. Sir Hendy, tried to convince me that advertising should be abolished. I find it difficult for me to talk about this very threatening suggestion, because I am neither an economist nor a philosopher. But I can at least point out that there are many opinions on this issue.
The late Anelin Biwannel Biwan said: "Advertising is a sinful business. Arnold Toynbee said, "I can't think of any circumstances under which advertising can be evil." Professor Galbraith argues that advertising tempts to waste money that would otherwise be applied to public utilities on buying "unnecessary" things.
But it would be a mistake to think that all liberals have the same views on advertising as Biwan, Toynbee, and Galbraith. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a different view: If I could live again and choose a career, I think I would enter the advertising world. Without advertisements to disseminate high levels of knowledge, the general improvement of the level of modern civilization of people of all strata of the past half century would not have been possible.
Sir Winston Churchill shared The view of Mr. Roosevelt: advertising fosters human spending power. It sets the goal of striving for a happy family, for a better dress and a better diet for oneself and for the whole family, and it stimulates personal effort and stimulates production.
Almost all serious economists, whatever their political color, believe that advertising plays a useful role in informing new products. Anastas Mikoyan of the USSR said: "Our Soviet advertisements provide people with precise information about the goods sold on the market, promote new needs, cultivate new preferences and demands, promote the marketing of new products and explain to consumers the use of new products. The primary task of Soviet advertising is to provide a true, accurate and appropriate description of the nature, quality and characteristics of the products advertised.
The Victorian economist Alfred Marshall also praised "informative" advertising for new products, but accused what he called "combative" advertising as waste. Walter Taplin of the London School of Economics notes that Marshall's analysis of advertising "shows a bias and excitement about advertising that no one, not even a classic economist, can shake off." Of course, Marshall was a little cautious. His most illustrious student, Maynard Keynes, once described him as "utterly ridiculous." Marshall's remarks about advertising have been cited by many economists since then, and it has become the orthodox belief that "competitive" or "persuasive" advertising is economic waste. Is this really the case?
Stills from the movie "The Genius" (1990).
From my own business experience, the kind of advertising that academic titans praise for conveying information and seeking truth from facts, in terms of sales results, do perform better than the ads they accuse of being "competitive" or "seductive". The self-interest of business coincides with the insights of scholarship.
If all advertisers stopped using exaggerated and boastful propaganda and moved on to the factual, informative advertising I made for Rolls-Royce Motor Company, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Shell Oil, they would not only expand sales, but also get a good reputation and be loved. The more informative an advertisement is, the more persuasive it is.
Hill & Knowlton recently conducted an opinion survey of intellectual leaders on the topic "Should Advertising Tell the Truth?" The number of people who voted positively to uphold this solemn proposition was staggering:
Religious leaders 76%
High-level publication editing 74%
Executive leadership at institutions of higher learning 74%
Economists 73%
Sociologists 62%
Government officials 45%
Provost of the College 35%
Business Leaders 25%
We can see from this that people generally think that realistic advertising is a good thing. But the vast majority of economists followed in Marshall's footsteps and denounced "seductive" bidding between brands. Rexford Tugwell, who has always been admired by me for his commitment to Puerto Rico's economic renaissance, accused "advertising that tries to drag the business of one company to another is a huge waste". Stuart Chase has the same view:
The advertisement instigates people to stop buying brand A's soap and buying brand B's. In fact, the vast majority of ads compete for products of very similar quality.
Economists such as Pigou, Braswaite, Buster, Vaughan, Fairchild, Morgan, and Bolting have all affirmed this view, arguing that most advertisements advertise the same quality of the same product, and the difference is only the brand name of the product.
I can tell these academic authorities a little secret. The "competitive" ads they condemned did not produce sales results that were as "informative" as they endorsed.
My experience is that it is relatively easy for advertising to convince consumers to use a new product. However, consumers' advertising of products that have been launched for a considerable period of time is quite indifferent due to the lack of new information in the promotion. Therefore, our advertising agency earns more money advertising for new products than advertising old products. Once again, the arguments of academia coincide with the interests of business itself.
Will advertising cause product prices to rise?
Will advertising cause prices to rise? Superficial views of this complex issue, both for and against, are plentiful, while there is little serious research into the impact of advertising on prices. Professor Neil Borden of Harvard University has looked at hundreds of cases. With the help of an advisory board of 5 high-level professors, he came to some conclusions that should be studied extensively by more academic authorities and then fleshed out into the economics of advertising. For example, "in many large industries, mass production is carried out in part because of advertising, and mass production plays a role in reducing the cost of production."
Another example is that "the use of advertising or other promotional means to build a market can not only enable large companies to reduce the price of their products to attractive levels, but also create opportunities for cheap and unnamed small brands." Indeed, after I die you will find that the infarction in my heart is not the Calais that Marie Tudor said that the infarction killed her, but a whole bunch of nameless brands. Nameless small brands are the natural enemies of our advertisers. Now 20% of sales in department stores come from smaller brands run by retailers. These goods are not advertised, and they are really hateful parasites.
Stills from the TV series Mad Men (Season 1) (2007).
Professor Boden and his advisers concluded that advertising, while certainly not immune to criticism, is by no means an economic liability but an economic asset. In this way, he agreed with Roosevelt and Churchill. However, they do not support the full range of Madison Avenue's actions. For example, they argue that advertising does not provide enough information for consumers. My practical experience leads me to agree with this criticism. It's worth listening to what people who spend a lot of shareholder money advertising have to say about how advertising affects prices. Here's a quote from Lord Heyworth, the former chairman of Liver Brothers:
With the implementation of advertising, the result is a saving effect. On the sales side, it accelerates the turnover of funds, so that the retail price can be reduced without affecting the retailer's profits. In terms of production, this is a factor that makes large-scale production possible. Who can't admit that mass production leads to lower costs?
Recently, Howard Morgens, president of Procter & Gamble, said much the same thing: In our company, we have repeatedly confirmed that advertising offers far more savings on new products than the total investment spent on advertising. ...... Use advertising campaigns to clearly receive an effect on the public in reducing prices.
For many products, advertising costs account for less than 3% of the money consumers spend on such products in retail stores. But once advertising is scrapped, the amount of money you spend on finding something right far outweighs the little money you save. For example, if there are no ads on the weekend page of The New York Times, you'll spend a decent amount of money on the newspaper. Think about how boring a newspaper would be like that. Read only one newspaper, and it is "more advertised than it publishes." Most housewives say the same thing.
Does advertising encourage monopolies? Professor Boden found that "in some industries, advertising promotes the concentration of demand and thus becomes a factor that leads to the concentration of supply in dominant companies". But he concluded that advertising is not the basic cause of monopoly. Other economists argue that advertising drives monopolies. I agree with them. It's getting harder and harder for small companies to launch new brands.
Advertising costs are high, and huge investments must be made to achieve benefits. This can only be afforded by large, well-established companies. If you don't believe me, you might as well try launching a new brand of detergent for less than $10 million in advertising dollars to see if it works.
In addition, big advertisers can buy pages and hours at a much cheaper price than smaller competitors. Because the media gives them big page discounts. This large-format discount in turn prompts big advertisers to buy small advertisers. They spend 3/4 of the original price to do the same advertising, and earn 1/4 of the money.
Does advertising corrupt editors? yes. But there are fewer corrupted edits than you might think. Once, the publisher of a magazine complained to me in a sensed tone that he had done a 5-page report for one of my clients, but only received two editions of the advertisement. However, the vast majority of editors are able to adhere to professional regulations.
Harold Rose despised advertising, and once suggested to his publisher that the ads in The New Yorker magazine should all be concentrated on one page. His successors were equally stale in their attitudes and never missed an opportunity to belittle what he called an "advertiser." Not long ago, he published a satirical article attacking two of the ads I had created, completely ignoring the fact that I had published 1,173 pages of very elaborate advertisements in his magazine. The magazine accepted my advertisement on the one hand, and then wrote articles attacking it, which I think is a sign of a very bad attitude, which is nothing more than inviting people to dinner while spitting in people's faces.
I often want to punish editors who insult my clients. Once we advertised the British Exposition in the Chicago Tribune, and it also published an article by Colonel McCormick attacking Britain. I really wanted to withdraw our ad from this newspaper. Helplessly, doing so will cause a gap in our position in the Midwest, and may also cause a bout of criticism that the advertising industry is pressing on editors.
Is the ad a bunch of lies?
Will advertising impose inferior goods on consumers? Painful experience has taught me that it is never possible. On a few occasions, we advertised certain products that proved inferior in consumer testing to be inferior to other similar products, and the results were disastrous. As long as I try to write, I can certainly persuade consumers to buy some kind of inferior product, but I can only be fooled once - and most of my customers are expecting consumers to keep buying his products for profit. Phineas T Barnum, the first to observe this, said: "You can advertise a deceptive commodity and lure many people to buy it once." However, they will slowly rebuke you for being a liar. Alfred Politz and Howard Morgenth said, "The quickest way to eliminate a brand of extremely inferior quality is to market it in the most aggressive way, and people will see how inferior it is with the same speed." ”
He goes on to point out that advertising also plays an important role in improving product quality: researchers are of course constantly trying to improve the products we buy, but believe me, many of the stimuli, impetus and suggestions for product improvement come from advertising. Surely, this will only be the case, and the success of a company's advertising is complementary to the achievements of its product development activities.
...... Advertising and scientific investigation have enabled extensive and close cooperation in production. It is consumers who benefit directly, and as a result they are given an unprecedented opportunity to select better products and services.
I have repeatedly persuaded my customers not to rush to launch a new product without demonstrating that it has a clear advantage over existing products on the market.
Advertising is also a force that guarantees quality and service levels. Sir Frederic Hooper of the Soft Drink Company wrote:
Advertising is a guarantee of quality. A company spends considerable sums of money to promote the merits of its products, making consumers accustomed to consistently high standards of what they buy. Such a company does not dare to reduce the quality of its own products in the future. Sometimes the public loses credulity, but not to the point of endlessly buying inferior products.
When we started advertising for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, we said the company was "punctual" and "reliable", and their top authorities sent a notice to their own crew reminding them to abide by the promises we advertised.
It can be said that a good advertising agency represents the interests of consumers.
Is the ad a bunch of lies? No more. At the moment everyone is afraid of being caught by the Federal Business Council. The Federal Commission of Commerce publicly discloses in the newspaper the cases it hears. Fear of the Federal Chamber of Commerce has reached such a level that one of my clients recently warned me that if any of our television commercials were found to be deceptive by the Federal Commerce Commission, he would immediately transfer his business to another company. General Foods lawyers also made serious requests that only our copywriter confirm that the oven barbecue sauce did have a "traditional flavor" that he allowed us to include this innocuous statement in the advertisement. Consumers are getting far more protection than they know.
Stills from the TV series Mad Men (Season 4) (2010).
I can't always keep up with the ever-changing rules and regulations that govern advertising from various agencies. For example, the Canadian government has a set of regulations governing the advertising of patented drugs, and the U.S. government has a completely different set. Some U.S. states prohibit the labeling of prices in whisky ads, while others insist that they must be marked. What was banned in this state became a must in another state. I could only hide in a rule that always governed my work: never do ads that I didn't want my family to see.
Dorothy L Sayers (1893–1957), author of detective fiction and pamphlets promoting the teachings of anglo Catholic, was a British woman writer. - The translator's note has also been advertised before. "Blatant lying is dangerous," she said. In the end, we have to resort to the two hands of 'fictitious hints' and 'avoidance of the truth'. "I've been guilty of 'fictional hints' once. Two years later, though, a chemist saved my conscience by proving that my "fictitious" cues were actually true.
Yet I want to confess frankly that I have constantly committed the sin of "evading the truth." Of course, isn't it too much to expect advertisers to render the shortcomings of their products? A person who only talks about his best skills should be forgiven.
Can advertising make people buy things he doesn't need?
Can advertising make people buy things he doesn't need? If you think people don't need deodorants, you're free to criticize the advertising campaigns that persuade 87 percent of women and 66 percent of men in the U.S. to use deodorants. If you don't think people need beer, then it's not bad that you criticize advertising campaigns that convince 58% of adults to drink a variety of beers. If you disapprove of social activities and certain enjoyments of life such as traveling abroad, then it is also legitimate that you accuse ads of encouraging these bad things. If you don't like a well-fed society, it's understandable that you blame advertising for encouraging the masses to pursue material life.
If you are such a Puritan, I have nothing to say to you, and I have no choice but to treat you as masochists, praying only like Archbishop Leiden: "O Lord, I was born a wise and good man, please free me from it." ”
John Burns the Venerable, father of the British workers' movement, often said that the tragedy of the working class lies in its widowhood. I have no regrets about encouraging the workers to strive for a better life.
Should advertising be used for politics? I thought it shouldn't be. It has become fashionable in recent years for political parties to hire advertising agencies. In 1952 my old friend Rosser Reeves advertised General Eisenhower as if the general were a tube of toothpaste. He produced 50 television commercials in which the general read handwritten replies to a series of hypothetical questions posed by imaginary citizens. Like what:
Citizen: Mr. Eisenhower, what about the problem of the high cost of living?
GENERAL: My wife, Mami, worries about the same thing. I told her we were going to change that on November 4th.
In between filming, someone heard the general say something like this: "Think about it, I, a veteran, have come to do such a thing." ”
I refuse anything that asks my company to advertise for politicians or political parties. The reason is this:
1) Advertising to promote politicians is a very vulgar thing.
2) If we advertise for a Democrat, it's unfair to republicans in our company' employees, and vice versa.
However, I encourage my colleague to work for his party as an individual to do his political responsibilities. If a political party or a candidate technically needs advertising services, such as buying time to broadcast political mass gatherings, he can appoint volunteers with professional knowledge to assist in temporary shifts.
Should advertising be used for non-political public good causes? We advertisers also get a satisfaction from the public welfare cause. Just as surgeons spend a lot of time on poor patients without pay, we spend a lot of time advertising for public good causes. In recent years, we've created ads for the Cancer Society, The United States Committee for United Nations, the Citizens' Committee for Clean New York City, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. We spent $250,000 on these causes, which is equivalent to our $12 million in turnover profits.
TV series "Global Advertising Agency: Sell Your Life!" (2017) Stills.
In 1959, John D. Rockefeller III and Clarence Francis commissioned me to raise the visibility of Lincoln Center, which was still in the planning phase, among the public. Surveys show that only 25 percent of New York adults have heard of Lincoln Center. A year later, by the end of our campaign, 67 percent of people knew about Lincoln Center. When introducing our advertising program I said:
If New Yorkers think that Lincoln Center is unique to the upper classes, then those who nurtured the idea of Lincoln Center, especially the big foundations that funded the center, must be very frustrated. ...... Therefore, it is important to establish the correct image that Lincoln Center is for the masses.
By the end of the campaign, this democratic goal had been achieved. We prompted each of the people surveyed to explain which view they agreed with, and the findings were:
76 percent of respondents agreed that "it is likely that most people living in New York and its suburbs will visit Lincoln Center sooner or later."
4% of respondents believe Lincoln Center is just for the rich.
Most public service announcements are volunteered by a single advertising agency, but Lincoln Center is a great and harmonious quartet by BBDO, JanRobik, Benton & Bowles. The TV commercial was produced by BBDO, and New York Television donated $600,000 worth of advertising time. The radio ads were produced by Benton & Bowles, and the radio station donated $100,000 worth of advertising time to broadcast them. Print ads were co-produced by Jan Lopika and we published them for free in Reader's Digest, The New Yorker, Newsweek and Cue.
By the time we volunteered to take over the campaign to maintain cleanliness in New York City, the clean streets had risen from 56 percent to 85 percent. The people who live on the streets that are still littered with garbage are probably a bunch of extremely irresponsible barbarians, and the polite slogan of the previous company, "To maintain the cleanliness of New York, don't litter," is hard to reinvent.
The results of the survey show that most New Yorkers are not aware that littering is fined $25. So we created a strongly worded ad warning litter guys that they would be sent to court. At the same time, we persuaded the New York City Department of Health to organize a commando team to have uniformed moped members patrol the streets and catch violators. Newspapers and magazines donated an unprecedented number of free pages to publish our advertisements, 1105 free ads on New York television in the first three months, and more than 390,000 fines were delivered to violators four months later, and the municipal authorities exercised their authority.
Are ads mostly vulgar, harsh and unpleasant?
Is advertising vulgar and annoying? CarCrosland shouted in The New Statesman: "Ads are mostly vulgar, harsh and unpleasant. And because advertising is often mixed with true and false, it is bound to cause cynicism and corruption among practitioners and viewers. ”
I think that the educated people now mainly blame advertising in this regard. Ludwig von Mises portrayed the ad as something "harsh, noisy, rude, boastful." He accused the public of not responding in a timely manner to noble advertisements. I tend to blame advertisers and agencies – myself included. I must admit that I am ignorant in judging which ads will have a negative effect on the public. I've made two ads that seemed completely problematic to me, but they were attacked by the public. Once an advertisement for a Hathaway blouse showed a beautiful woman sitting straddling a chair in purple trousers and smoking a long cigar. Another illegal work was a television commercial in which we smeared Ban Pai deodorant on the armpits of a Greek sculpture. The symbolic meaning of these two advertisements is indifferent to me, but it arouses the lust of lustful people.
Featureless typography, shoddy photos, cumbersome copywriting, and fun, low-level advertising songs annoy me more than the obscene content of the advertisements. It is easy to ignore these disgusting things in newspapers and magazines, but it is absolutely impossible to escape people's eyes when they appear on television. The insertion of such advertisements on TV shows made me extremely angry. Are TV station owners so greedy that they refuse to reject these things that violate human dignity? They even interfered with the inauguration of the president and the coronation of the king.
As a practitioner, I know that television is the most powerful advertising medium invented by mankind, and I mainly rely on it to earn a living. However, as an ordinary person, I am happy to pay for the privilege of enjoying TV programs without advertising interference. From a moral point of view, I myself am caught between the two.
Television commercials made Madison Avenue the premier symbol of uninteresting, materialistic worship. If the government does not establish television regulatory agencies in time, I am afraid that most people of insight will eventually agree with Toynbee: "The fate of our Western civilization will depend on the outcome of the struggle we and all that Madison Avenue stands for." "I'm very concerned about the existence of Madison Avenue, but I'm also skeptical that it will survive without radical reform.
The Hill & Norton survey reports that most people of insight now believe that the values cultivated by advertising are too materialistic. The fact that the opinion of people of insight today is exactly what the majority of voters will consider tomorrow is a threat to the source of my livelihood. No, dear sister, advertising should not be abolished, but it must be transformed.
Original author 丨 [American] David Ogilvy
Excerpt 丨 He Ye
Editor 丨 Zhang Ting
Introduction Proofreading 丨 Guo Li