Rosser Reeves
Rosser Reeves:
“The art of advertising is getting a message into the heads of most people at the lowest possible cost…
…well it’s almost a problem in engineering, and we should subordinate our own creative impulses to that one over-all objective: Does this advertisement move an idea from the inside of my head to the public’s head.”
From The Art of Writing Advertising
Reeves is credited with inventing the concept of a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). I’m not sure I like his ads, but I do like his clear vision and articulation of what will work for his clients.
More interesting thoughts on Reeves at Hidden Persuader
— Addition —
I don’t meet many ad industry people. Probably I should meet more. I do meet a lot of people who have successfully started, run or managed businesses, or divisions of businesses; small businesses, medium businesses and very large businesses. One trait I find consistently in these people is an unashamed and unusually intense focus on getting value for their money. What I like most about Reeves is that he succinctly states the principal question of advertising in a way that acknowledges and respects the interests of the people who pay for advertising.
That principal statement of the problem is unaffected by concerns about whether the ads Reeves made would work today, or are unethical, or aesthetically pleasing, or anti-thetical to the trend away from interruption advertising; the question still stands. Business owners still look to advertising to address the same problem - moving an idea at the lowest possible cost.
I’m sure Reeves would bring you up on that last point: it’s not moving an idea, it’s moving a message — or, even more to the point, a product at the lowest possible cost. Looking to do anything other than that is to lose your focus — or worse, to get sucked into ‘artsy-craftiness’.
I wonder how long-term his consideration was when asking the question ‘what will sell the largest volume of this product?’…surely it must often be the case that the most devastatingly effective selling point and copy for the immediate campaign isn’t the same as the most effective long-term market manipulation? I’m thinking of Ogilvy’s hypnotist anecdote, where he threw out an ad that would have an unprecedentedly high conversion rate because it would undermine the business’s fundamental credibility.
02 Jul 2008 at 10:22 am