The Real Mad Men
Bill Bernbach and the Revolution that Wasn’t
Analogous to Wall Street in the financial industry, Madison Avenue was (and, some would argue, still is) the heart of the advertising industry. In 1960, it contained the headquarters of the two largest radio and television networks, the central advertising sales offices of most major periodicals, and, of course, the America’s largest advertising agencies. At the time, half of all the money spent on advertising in the United States was spent between the addresses of 200 and 650 Madison Avenue, give or take a couple blocks. Furthermore, nearly half of the remainder was spent at regional branches controlled by New York.
Despite the ever-present nature of the Madison Avenue establishment, the advertising world is constantly reinventing itself—perhaps most powerfully in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1950s, the morally ambiguous nature of motivational, psychological and subliminal research combined with new levels of government regulation and new attacks on materialism to create unparalleled animosity toward Madison Avenue.
In order to respond to the growing concerns about advertising, a new generation of ad men rose to the forefront of the industry by combining of creativity and honesty to create brand-added value. By the middle-1960s, this transition was hailed by many as advertising’s ‘Creative Revolution,’ and the moniker is still prevalent today. Rather than tricking consumers into buying a product today, advertisers of the creative era acknowledged and conveyed that advertising was an artifice and began long-term efforts to turn public skepticism into brand loyalty.
The father of this so-named creative revolution was undoubtedly Bill Bernbach, founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach. Decades before creative advertising gained wide-spread popularity, Bernbach emphasized the role of art in advertising and suggested that rules created mediocrity by restricting creativity. In 1947, two years before founding DDB and almost 15 years before the real start of the creative revolution, Bernbach circulated an open letter to the leaders of Grey Advertising, the agency for which he was vice-president and creative director. In the letter, he attacked the formulaic advertising that had grown out of motivational market research:
“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier and more inviting reading. They can give you fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”
When Bernbach did not win over the Grey leadership, Bernbach left for an office where he could put his name on the door and his methods into practice. Getting his start with the Ohrbach account, Bernbach was able to see modest growth in his agency, but the first decade of DDB was hardly noteworthy. In 1960, Bernbach’s billings had reached $46.4 million, but that was less than one-fifth of what the largest agency had, and only half as much as the tenth largest agency.
These larger agencies initially dominated Bernbach’s shop by producing large bodies of research for their heavy hitting clients, including large soap companies, national cigarette brands, major food producers, and the Detroit auto manufacturers. DDB’s earliest clients, however, were local retailers, clothing manufactures, and ethnic food producers with advertising budgets that reflected their small size.
Still, Bernbach’s client list was both caused by and the result of his own creativity. While Bernbach’s unwillingness to engage in extensive research projects kept many large accounts out of his agency, Bernbach attracted small clients in droves by selling the idea that “small companies…can’t afford to run just competent advertising” because “the big guys have competent advertising, too, and a hundred pages to your one.”
Needing to help his clients stand out on a limited budget, Bernbach turned to unconventional tactics and creative techniques to further the agenda of his clients. To place art at the center of his agency’s work, Bernbach ignored the rules and research of his competitors and began centering the agency’s processes on the creative staff—typically one copywriter and one art director per account. These two man teams are still common practice today.
In shocking departure from commonly accepted practice, Bernbach focused on “memorability and originality,” which needed to be “based on something worth saying.” This usually began with a visually striking image, such as this photograph of a young black man eating a sandwich made with Levy’s Jewish Rye:
Next, Bernbach would tell a story that emotionally connected the reader to the product, as evidenced by this ad for Chivas. Here, Bernbach told a story and made an emotional connection in just 17 words:
By focusing on artwork and storytelling and avoiding research, Bernbach was able to unknowingly escape many of the ethical concerns that plagued the industry. While Bernbach could not have foreseen the ethical concerns that would develop, his emphasis on creativity positioned him well for the tumultuous sixties.
Despite his creative talent and his ability to produce measurable results for his small clients, Bernbach decision to focus creativity left him without the strong selling points that other agencies had relied on. Without motivational research to prove his work would generate positive returns, Bernbach resorted to a simple, albeit off-putting, strategy: force his clients to accept the ads that he made. Simply stated, Bernbach believed, “if the agency makes an ad and the client doesn’t like it, the client ought to run it anyway.”
Since DDB’s clients were forced to accept the ads the agency produced, they needed to have tremendous trust in Bernbach. This trust allowed Bernbach to quickly develop new strategies in the face of a changing social climate. Bernbach’s authority to change a client’s advertisements quickly and with minimal discussion allowed him to adjust to new FTC regulations and anti-materialist sentiments faster than larger agencies, who were bogged down by demanding and involved clients.
For Bernbach, all the pieces came together in his 1960 campaign for Volkswagen. While it seemed inconsequential at the time, Volkswagen would ultimately demonstrate the power of Bernbach’s style and its ability to produce advertising that emphasized quality in a straightforward, honest, and believable way. Still, with no chrome, no styling, modest horsepower, and only a manual transmission, Volkswagen was far from Bernbach’s ideal automotive account. Despite its negatives, Bernbach created advertisements that highlighted its durability in a straightforward and visually appealing way.
In DDB’s first Volkswagen ad, Bernbach’s team developed the headline “Think Small” and depicted a small Volkswagen Beetle in the upper left corner amid an ocean of white space:
Below the headline, the body copy harped on the car’s modest benefits, including how the car got “32 miles to the gallon,” used “five pints of oil instead of five quarts,” and could “squeeze into a small parking spot.” At a time when other cars were advertising their “radical new Turbo-Thrust” engines, “Quadra-Power Roadability,” and “Ringer-tip TorqueFlite,” DDB’s “Think Small” ad highlighted the Volkswagen’s practicality in a believable way that helped to disarm consumers who saw advertising as a form of manipulation.
Even without powerful research to support his conclusions, Bernbach’s work for Volkswagen validated his tactics and proved that despite lacking a formula for successful advertising, he could generate a tremendous return with a straightforward story, told in an honest way, alongside a tasteful and believable presentation. This line of logic is still prevalent in the marketing industry, as most modern marketers believe that branding requires an honest and interesting presentation of the product.
Still, it was no accident that Bernbach’s agency, and the Creative Revolution it started, did not strike gold until a full ten years after the founding of DDB. In the early 1950s, when Bernbach was just getting his start, motivational research was king, and clients who could afford it turned to agencies that had evidence, if not guarantees, that their past successes could be replicated. In that setting, Bernbach was nothing more than a talented copywriter with a propensity for clever headlines and playful designs. Only against a backdrop of burgeoning consumer mistrust, increased FTC regulation, and the rise of anti-materialism could Bernbach achieve success.
Despite the supremacy of creative advertising, Bernbach’s new style was not revolutionary, as it was merely the next evolution in a long line of selling tactics that cycled through Madison Avenue. The ‘revolutionary’ attributes typically assigned to Bernbach’s work were nothing more than a new mask on an old system, much more analogous to a democratic election than a military coup.
Once creativity’s success was well demonstrated and documented, Bernbach began to sacrifice art for money, similar to the Madison Avenue executives of old. Despite professing a love for his small clients, Bernbach’s success allowed him to replace the clients that made him famous with their larger competitors in order to increase his revues. Between 1961 and 1969, Bernbach exchanged El Al Airlines for American, General Foods for Sara Lee, and Utica Club Beer for Stroh’s.
His determination to produce great work was drowned out by his desire to keep his new, large clients happy. Not wanting to rock the boat, Bernbach settled for safe, good work. While it is difficult to fault them for running their businesses in this way, their commitment to straight forward stories, their faith in believable branding, and even the respect that had fought hard to earn was by and large for sale.
Ultimately, Bernbach and his followers did not revolutionize the advertising industry. While the creativity demonstrated in Bernbach’s ads for Levy’s, Orhbach’s, Chivas, and most notably Volkswagen replaced advertising’s mechanical style, the Creative Revolution did not change the enduring elements of the industry, like its emphasis on sales, or create a focus on consumers. Bernbach and his followers failed to exchange what the client wanted to what the consumer demanded.
In the end, the so-called revolutionaries of the creative-era merely developed the façade of honesty so that advertisers could stand behind clever headlines while they continued to hawk their products and count their profits. While these façades were powerful enough to succeed in ways that motivational research had failed, they failed to create change worthy of the title revolutionary.
For advertising to move beyond a façade and toward real change, an added element of respect for the consumer would have to be added to Bernbach’s straightforward, honest, and believable style. By working with consumers, advertising could become informative, entertaining and unobtrusive, making the shameless promotion of consumer capitalism much more palatable to the average American.
While the egos of Madison Avenue were too large to allow for the focus to shift away from the clients and revenues, a little known copywriter in San Francisco began to produce advertising that responded to the consumer. Through an emphasis on the ad man’s responsibility to the audience, Howard Luck Gossage was able to fully address the accusations against the industry and engage the consumer in conversation. In doing so, Gossage practiced integrated marketing communications more than 20 years before it was defined by the 4As. More on him to follow.
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