The Creative Mind of Bill Bernbach: In Conversation with Dan Lombardi of DDB
A couple weeks back, I found myself sitting on a couch parked in the middle of the busy, open-plan NYC office of Doyle Dane Bernbach. I sat there waiting and ready because I had the opportunity to meet with Dan Lombardi, Creative Director at DDB.
You may be wondering why I was so interested in speaking with Dan if he works at DDB and not Ogilvy. To take a brief side-step from Dan, allow me to validate my own excitement that left me nearly bouncing on that couch and explain the significance of DDB.
Bill Bernbach (the ‘B’ of DDB), is generally credited with igniting the Creative Revolution of 1950’s and 60’s advertising. As a contemporary of David Ogilvy, his impact on the developing industry was massively influential. He was a creative thought leader and many of his mantras and axioms ring true today.
Interestingly, Bernbach and Ogilvy are constantly compared. Each achieved massive success and contributed to the industry, however, their bond runs deeper. Bill Bernbach was essentially the Tupac to David Ogilvy’s Biggie. By that, I mean that they were intimately connected as both friends and foes. They had the same end-goals but their paths to get there differed immensely.
Where Ogilvy wrote extensive copy that fore-fronted information that educated his consumers, Bernbach was always the quirkier ad man, lauded as being more “out there” than his contemporaries.
More notably, Ogilvy swore by consumer research, while Bernbach swore by intuition and inspiration.
Assuming that you have been keeping up with my posts (thanks, mom!), it is easy to see the stark difference between Bernbach’s iconoclastic thoughts and Ogilvy’s more factual approach.
Like Ogilvy, many of Bernbach’s quotes and mantras eerily sound as if he could be the keynote speaker at a 2016 digital advertising conference. He would say things like:
which could just as easily be about the current data-saturated age…except that he died in 1982 (a year before Ogilvy On Advertising was published!).
He would also praise word-of-mouth marketing in a way so reminiscent of today’s “WOMM” craze that I was genuinely surprised to see his name at the end of the following quote:
SO back to Dan Lombardi.
Dan’s story interested me because, like me, he was an English major with no background in agency advertising. After he moved to Chicago, he was advised to read three books about advertising. One of which was the famed From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor by Jerry Della Femina and
another was Ogilvy’s first book, Confessions of an Advertising Man. Although Dan has never worked at Ogilvy — his career includes stints at Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, and now DDB —reading Confessions made David Ogilvy a foundation to the start of Dan’s advertising career.
Below, you will find excerpts of my conversation with Dan. His comments are marked with a line.
On Evolving Media and Platforms
Bernbach and Ogilvy were there when TV just started penetrating houses. Soap operas were just taking off and, for the first time, clients took their budgets to television. People were seeing more ads now than ever.
Dan’s description of this pivotal time in advertising (and American) history displays the strong effect of TV on consumerism. To reach the target audience, advertisers no longer had to depend on finding their consumers, rather, the consumers would welcome the advertisements into their intimate spaces — their homes — through the new-found medium of television.
Ogilvy and Bernbach’s presence during this time made me wonder what they would have thought about the current massive change to media. I asked Dan how he thought the two would have reacted and adapted to the digital age.
Media is always evolving. Television is an outgrowth of print which is outgrowth of radio. [Medium aside,] it really comes down to, what is the idea, what is the concept, what is the nugget — and that’s what those guys really focused on. The medium that it played on was simply the medium of the moment.
Today it might be digital, or content, or things that go viral and show up on your feed, but all of that is just the media of the moment. What is still true is that there has to be an idea or a concept behind it. That is as true today as it was back in Ogilvy's days and Bernbach's days. That’s what Bill tried to focus people on, you’re not being creative for the thrill of being creative, in fact, he rejected people who were just trying to do outlandish things just to get attention. He wanted to focus attention on the product and communicating to the people in a unique and motivating way that gets people to go out and buy the products. It wasn't just “look at me!”
A lot of times the medium of today is to just try and create engagement and have a connection with the consumer, even if you're not selling them anything. In that way, your top of mind is just trying to keep current. But it comes back to that idea of what is the motivating principle that will get someone to buy your product.
We’re still in sales. This isn’t a fine art, this is not your self expression. This is finding unique and creative ways of connecting with your target so that they will buy something.
Dan explained to me that Ogilvy and Bernbach would have found the internet to be just another tool. Just like they adapted to TV when it came along, they would adapt to the internet. It isn’t necessarily about the medium, it’s all about what is the core idea that will engage consumers and motivate them to buy the product.
Bernbach himself had what to say about this:
On Agencies’ Unique Voices
Since Dan has been exposed to multiple agencies, I was wondering if different agencies really have different approaches or if they all just tackle today’s issues the same way.
Leo Burnett definitely had its own point of view. The principles, were all about how every product has an inherent drama in it. It is the job of the creative person to discover that drama. What is it about this product that makes it so unique that it will make it desirable to the target? And if there is no drama in its taste or design and if there is nothing that differentiates it, you need to create something that makes it different — that’s where the Keebler elves came from.
Keebler cookies are just like every other packaged cookie, but the way they made it unique is that it was “made in trees by little elves” and once they made these characters, all of a sudden they had a brand. Leo Burnett did the same thing with Snap, Crackle, and Pop, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger, and Charlie Tuna. The funny thing about Leo Burnett back when I was there was it what we were always wondering what’s the next little critter that’s gonna come out of this place. That office had a unique reflection of their founder and they pounded that into you.
At DDB, Bill Bernbach’s four freedoms [Freedom from fear; Freedom to fail; Freedom from chaos; Freedom to be] are used consistently with the idea in mind that you need to give creatives these freedoms to think outside the box.
Saatchi and Saatchi was into this thing called “lovemarks.” It was all about the emotional connection a consumer has with a product. The idea is that you identify with certain brands which is why you might buy Starbucks over Dunkin Donuts, or if you have an iPhone then you see yourself as a certain kind of person.
Agencies are generally reflective of their founders. Those ideas are infused throughout work and the people who work at those agencies tap into that philosophy to some extent. It’s definitely true of the older and more stable agencies.
Bernbach and Ogilvy may have had contrasting views on advertising, but I think that this quote by Ogilvy nicely synthesizes both of their schools of thought:
“Big ideas come from the unconscious…But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”
Ogilvy preached research and Bernbach preached creative intuition. Their methods differed, but Ogilvy’s above sentiments evoke similarities to Bernbach’s approach. As Dan explained to me, at the end of the day, it’s about the big idea.
