How to create compelling Ads

An Interview With Linda Kaplan Thaler

Take us back to when YOU were starting KTG (The Kaplan Thaler Group). What important lessons did YOU learn?

Forget about having a vision or five year plan. The best thing we did to catapult our business was to just concentrate on the problems of the day, and then solve them. Success each day, brings success the day after.

In other words, the present takes care of the future.

What’s the key to being a great advertiser?

Put your head on the consumer’s shoulders. They are too busy to really think about watching your ads, so you need to entertain them so much, they’ll stay tuned in.

We simply love YOUR two books (co-authored with Robin Koval): The Power of Nice and The Power of Small, where do YOU get ideas for these books?

We get our inspiration from dissecting what works in our agency — showing courtesy and respect to everyone, and instead of seeing the forest through the trees, paying more attention to the leaves.

If YOU were hired by the World Food Programme, how would YOU market or advertise anti-hunger projects to increase donations and get more volunteers?

Ask everyone to not eat for three days. That would do it.

What’s it like working with Robin Koval? Tell us more about how YOU met her.

Robin and I met through a mutual client. I was unsure of what kind of partner I wanted. But the first time we met, at a coffee shop, Robin got there early and had bought a huge, surgically sliced muffin cut in two, one piece for each of us. I knew then that she was pro-active, considerate, and above all, frugal. It was that small gesture that told me she was the perfect business partner. Building our agency was not a piece of cake. It was more like half a muffin.

What does kindness have to do with running ad campaigns?

If you can’t be empathetic and really understand what motivates and matters to consumers, you can’t reach them.

It’s like a great marriage: Get to really know your partner and what makes him or her happy, and you’re bound to create work that he or she loves.

How can a marketer or an advertiser help change the world?

By helping their consumers be part of the change, and letting them know they make a difference with each small action they take. It’s not big countries or huge benefactors that change the world, it’s the generous nature of a billion ants.

Who are YOUR personal heroes?

Warren Buffet, because he never fires people, just continues to find better ways for them to function at his company. Oh, and also that he gave away his entire fortune to someone else’s charity (Interviewer’s Note: This was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). A good guy, that Warren.

What are YOU hungry for?

SLEEP.

Is there another Big Bang coming from YOU?

I dont know, but my great hope is that it will come from one of my kids.

What’s surprises YOU?

That I still love advertising, and that, after 23 years, I still think my husband is the sexiest man alive.

About Me (Linda Kaplan Thaler)

My name is Linda Kaplan Thaler, and I am the CEO and Chief Creative Officer of the Kaplan Thaler Group. We are one of the top 30 Ad Agencies in the country (USA), and among our clients, are AFLAC (Yes, that duck!), Continental Airlines, Wendy’s, US Bank, Swiffer,Dawn, and Lipitor, to name a few. Robin Koval and I have written three best-selling books, the last one being “The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All The Difference.”

Check out my Facebook page, Twitter, and our agency website (The Kaplan Thaler Group).