Fueled by a youthful rebellion and a growing disenchantment with the hyperbolic rhetoric of the Big Three Detroit automakers, the public was soon to experience Bill Bernbach’s brand of anti-advertising. His distinct style of creative would not only acknowledge the looming mistrust of consumerism and advertising in general, but would also mark the beginning of an era dubbed “The Creative Revolution”. Bernbach’s agency DDB (Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach) was ground zero for this evolving paradigm in mass communications, quickly becoming a bellwether of creative excellence.
His agency’s candid and honest style heralded in a newly found respect for the consumer, whereas earlier advertising reflected the formulaic, lab coat mentality of the 1950’s. Bernbach comments,
To keep your ads fresh you’ve got to keep yourself fresh. Live in the current idiom and you will create in it. If you follow and enjoy and are excited by the new trails in art, in writing, in industry, in personal relationships…whatever
you do will naturally be of today.
(Bill Bernbach)
In 1949, Volkswagon claimed to have only sold 2 cars in America. By the mid-1960’s it
was the car of choice for the counterculture, selling millions and embodying the ideals of a
youth movement. The ads with their conversational and matter-of-fact copy resonated with a public who had grown weary of the hucksterism (sic) of Detroit automakers. The consumer had been duped into believing the pabulum it had been spoon-fed from Detroit was all that was on the menu.
At the time, before the Creative Revolution, buying a Buick, Oldsmobile or Dodge meant buying into banality and built-in obsolescence. Car features noted in the late 1950’s included such testosterone-charged rhetoric as “radical new Turbo-Thrust”, “Quadra-Power Roadability” and “Finger-tip TorqueFlite” (Frank, pg. 61) The auto industry’s battle cry and underlying dogma was “if new was good, then newer must be even better.” But with an ad that began, “This Volkswagon missed the boat.”(Sullivan, pg. 7), otherwise known as the “Lemon” ad, a new genre of communications was born. All of the sudden advertising had a soul. And it was through the inherent humanity felt in the ads that made them so successful. Capitalism became cool and the car that was once “known as nothing less than a Nazi product” (Frank, pg. 67) began to sell, and sell, and sell. Bernbach’s recalcitrant creativity had launched a revolution, altering advertising forever.
After he died in 1982, Harper’s magazine told its readers he “probably had a greater impact on American culture than any of the distinguished writers and artists who have appeared in the pages of Harper’s during the past 133 years” (The Advertising Century, Bernbach).
With memorable dialogue like “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” “Mamma Mia, that’s a spicy meataball.(sic)”, “Just Do it” and “Where’s the Beef?” advertising has become a part of something more than just selling cereal, burgers and shoes. It has so entrenched our day-to-day lives it is almost impossible to separate the two, and perhaps, our culture at large.
The Cult of Personality-Advertising and the Celebrity Endorsement
Billions of dollars are spent on advertising because corporations believe in its power to generate demand and move product. Without a profitable return on investment (ROI), advertising campaigns are scraped faster than you can say “Rodney Allen Rippey”. Some of the most expensive ad campaigns to date involve the use of celebrity endorsements, promoting everything from Jell-O® to batteries. It is estimated that more than 20% of all TV commercials feature celebrities with advertisers paying more than $500 million per year for their services (Belch & Belch, pg. 232). So, how is this relevant to our culture at large? Because so much of what determines the success of a campaign relies on the cultural significance and consequence of using that particular celebrity at that particular juncture in our society (ergo, culture).
Celebrity endorsements seldom are random events. Celebrities must be considered for their congruity with the brand and personal characteristics. The attributes they bring to the table need to maximize communications not overshadow a product or service. The goal is to remember what they were selling, despite the belly baring and body slamming.
And most importantly they need to be credible. If we are confident and believe a celebrity’s claim about a product or service, then we are wont to buy into what they are selling.
Even stronger are celebrities with incredible mass appeal: Michael Jordan for Gatorade, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Brittany Spear for Pepsi, and most recently, Spiderman for everything from Cingular Wireless to PopTarts®. Yes, even fictional comic book heroes, taken directly out of the pages of pop culture are being signed and delivered via endorsement deals as sugar-coated as the cereal box that bears their likeness. The recent release of the new Spiderman movie had an opening weekend of over $114 million dollars, the largest to date. It has since then gone on to gross over $200 million, faster than any other movie in history. One would be hard pressed to deny that the massive pre-release movie endorsements had nothing to do with the stellar ticket sales. Or course, using real celebrities can be a riskier proposition than using one that comes with a copyright. Lightening struck twice for Pepsi while trying to recoup and distance their brand identity from the explosive personality of Mike Tyson and religious controversy fueled by Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video. Yet, the celebrity endorsement remains somewhat of an enigma of the marketing mix.
In the Journal of Consumer Research, Grant McCracken outlined a new perspective on celebrity endorsement, titled, “Who is the Celebrity Endorser? Cultural Foundations of the Endorsement Process” (Belch & Belch, page 234). In it, he argues that the traditional precepts of source attractiveness and credibility are, by themselves, insufficient for effective communications. To counter, he has developed a model of the celebrity endorsement process based on meaning transfer (Belch & Belch, page 234).
The basis for his model stems from the culturally acquired meanings the celebrity brings
to the endorsement process. These “meanings” include personal attributes such as age,
class and gender as well contextual meanings that stem from an actor’s latest role, to
whom they are sleeping with.
In his three-stage model, McCracken attempts to explain what can be a very complex and subjective process. Working somewhat with a domino effect, the stages move through the following successive pattern: (Stage 1) The celebrity assumes the meanings they draw from their particular roles and lifestyles, whether they originate in film, TV, sports, or other visible venues; (Stage 2) Those meanings are then transferred to the products they are endorsing ; (Stage 3) The meanings the products have acquired are finally transferred on to the consumer.
This last stage is probably the most difficult to interpret as there is no tangible transfer of meaning to measure and evaluate. Instead we rely on a type of congruity between the symbolic interpretations of the brand and celebrity. Of course, the advertiser and ad agency hope they have achieved the desired effects in this expensive pas de duex.
In short, by buying the product or service, we vicariously adopt and assimilate some desirable trait we admire in the celebrity. Their behavior patterns, whether real or scripted are transmitted into our behaviors and/or thoughts. In the instances where campaigns are enormously successful and influential, they become a part of popular culture effecting everything from playground antics to record sales (e.g. the annoyingly popular “WASSUP?” which originated in a Budweiser beer commercial).
Primal Urges, Corporate Profits and the Need to Understand What Makes Us Tick
In 1947, Fortune magazine ran an article on the perennial advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson Company, which bears the namesake of its founder. The article stated that the primary cultural function of advertising was “the creation of new and daring, but fulfillable (sic), consumer demands; demands that would not occur if advertising did not deliberately incite them.” (Frank, pg. 49) Since that time, advertising has become somewhat more of a cultural barometer to measure and forecast trends and behavior patterns. Yet underlying it all, no matter what school of thought you subscribe to in this classic “chicken and egg” argument, is advertising’s fundamental need to understanding human nature in order to be successful.
And because success is typically measured in sales, the populist view of advertising’s role becomes irrelevant as long as advertising remains an investment for the corporate sponsors, not a liability.
Underscoring human nature is the sum of our behaviors, thoughts and beliefs, which are by definition what makes up part of our culture. In addition, our incendiary disposition has sparked much debate and verve for many things political, religious and in terms of advertising’s influence, fiscal. This is perhaps why the process of making an effective ad becomes more a discipline of psychology than one of qualitative or quantitative science. Intuition is impossible to measure, and even harder to diagram on a pie chart. A serendipitous concept idea, borne at two o’clock in the morning, may launch a windfall and a career. By contrast, using focus groups to test ad campaigns can sterilize an idea reducing it to mediocrity. Whereas an ad that stems from a brilliant idea, masterfully crafted, moves us as a form of art might.
Matter of fact, it was this concept of raising advertising to an art form, with a newly found respect for the consumer that made ads developed during the Creative Revolution in the 1960’s so endearing and enduring. Again, Bill Bernbach imparts his wisdom,
At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him.
(Bill Bernbach)
Bernbach knew that Americans, especially at the start of the 1960’s, were inherently conservative and logical in the buying process. And he also knew the power of emotion conveyed in advertising could cut through all the superficiality. However, all the emotion in an ad was wasted if it was saying something that was not important, persuasive and credible. The key, Bernbach asserted, was listening to the consumer. And in order to listen, one had to know what touched and moved people. Gimmicks and cute slogans gave way to enduring product truths that found their humanity by fulfilling our unspoken needs and desires.
The tame and sedate culture of the 1950’s was evident in its ads. Conversely, the 1960’s gave way to empowered ad copy that reflected the move away from inhibitions and societal constraints. Slogans such as “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby” stemmed from the burgeoning Women’s movement (Bond & Kirshenbaum, pg. 66), while earlier ads focused on a woman’s strive for domestic bliss. For instance, an ad seen in Life Magazine, circa 1949 for Hoover vacuums begins with the headline “She would like one of these for Christmas” and goes on to
tell the reader “She’ll be happier with a Hoover − so make her happier this Christmas” (LIFE,
pg. 137). The headlines have changed over the years, yet they still remain small tokens of how we measure worth and success.
Conclusion
Like opening a time capsule, one might be able to infer many of our idiosyncrasies and buying habits just by skimming the ads in a single issue of LOOK or LIFE magazine. Our culture was distilled down to simple visuals and a few key words whose lasting impact defies the most logical of explanations. From the specter of nuclear war conveyed in President Lyndon Johnson’s famous 1964 “Daisy Girl” commercial, to the durability of the Golden Arches, Americans began to experience the power of brand as precursor to the coming Information Age.
The culture we see around us today has largely been built by a marketing machine that thrives on branding almost every visible space of real estate. From Coke® and Pepsi® in the halls of our schools, to the latest blockbuster movie tie-in, we are, at best, pushing our own limits of information overload. Marshall McLuhan’s “medium” has seemingly become both infinite and indefatigable.
Marshall McLuhan’s seminal work on mass media, developed during his career as an educator and communications theorist, brought phrases such as “global village” and “the medium is the message” into the vernacular of everyday life.
In closing, his following quote sums up advertising’s influence on our culture succinctly, requiring no further comment.
Historians and archeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful daily reflections any society ever made of it’s whole range of activities. (Marshall McLuhan)
Works Cited
Books
Frank, Thomas, The Conquest of Cool
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997
Bond, Jonathan & Kirshenbaum, Richard, Under the Radar-Talking to Today’s Cynical Consumer
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998
Sullivan, Luke, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This-A Guide to Creating Great Ads
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998
Belch, George & Belch, Michael, Introduction to Advertising and Promotion-An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective
Zwettler, Rob, Second Edition, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1993
Online/Internet
The Advertising Century, Klein, David-Group Editor, Donaton, Scott-Editor
Advertising Age, downloaded: 23 October 2001, <>
The CLIO Awards Web Site (site no longer carries the link of the original documents
downloaded in 2001) <http://www.clioawards.com/html/main.isx>
Merriam-Webster Online
Downloaded: 4 April 2002, <>
Dictionary.com
Downloaded: 4 April 2002, <>
Periodicals
LIFE, 5 December 1949: page 137
