"Words, words, words." –Shakespeare

   
     When you think about it, and I don't get the feeling that too many people think about it these days, repetition is one of the most important tools in advertising, which is to say one of the most important tools in rhetoric. Repetition of words and phrases can create a rhythm, even a hint of poetry. It sets up impact. It also helps to increase retention. Ask any preacher.

     You know this year's Grand Prix winner? It goes, "Dumb ways to die, so may dumb ways to die," and then one mo' time, "Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die." In Apple's "Here's to the crazy ones," the word "crazy" is stated in the beginning and then repeated twice toward the end; it's why it ends so powerfully.
     You can repeat words or phrases consecutively – "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz;" and in rhetoric, that's called Epizeuxis. You can also repeat words but have them separated by other words, like "The Dyson is an extremely powerful vacuum cleaner; and also not a bad looking vacuum cleaner." That's called Conduplicatio.
     You can repeat words at the start of successive sentences or clauses. You can repeat them at the end of sentences. You can repeat words or phrases and then, to accentuate that you're talking about something unique, you can break the pattern – "It has bells. It has whistles. It has everything. Even though it was made with human hands." There are enough varieties of repetition and enough reasons to use them to fill a book of rhetoric. (Mine is called "Classical English Rhetoric," and it's a book I keep within arm's reach of my desk.)
     Recently, I saw a commercial for Benjamin Moore (http://bit.ly/11VvdGM) in which we hear these words:

     Where we come from matters.
     Where knowing your neighbor's name matters.
     Trees carved with your grandparent's initials matter.
     Drug stores that still make milkshakes with real ice cream matter.
     And 3-story buildings that count as skyscrapers matter.
     And because these things matter, we should take care of them and make them shiny again.
     So Benjamin Moor is going to repaint Main Streets across the country this year.
     Because Main Streets make us who we are.
     And that matters.

     While the service that Benjamin Moore is supplying is nice, it's the stating of a number of things that share the same quality, followed by a break in that pattern and then the heroic return to the original construction that makes it feel important.
     Perhaps it doesn't matter that the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of a series is called an Epistrophe, but to know that such a technique exists and to what effect it can be used can, often enough, lead to an idea. (I solemnly swear it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the linguistic truth.) Here, it's the beauty in the words that ends up being like the beauty of the subject, the copy placing us in the right atmosphere to appreciate the simple beauty of our small towns. The words are like the perfect paint.
     Are the visuals important? Color-wise, the visuals are essential, but the words carry the idea. Just imagine them without those words: "The horror! The horror!"

   

The target

"Two men were duck-shooting - one a seasoned sportsman and the other out for his first bird. They looked up and saw a cloud of ducks above them.

    "Help yourself!" the veteran said. The novice fired. Not a feather fluttered.

     "How in the world could I miss all of them?" he exclaimed.

     "You didn't pick your duck," was the answer. "You fired at the whole flock."

      If an advertisement is to contain the consumer's viewpoint it must be made with a knowledge of the consumer's personality, sex, tastes, location and habits....One of the most vital facts for an advertising man to remember is that he must never let himself lose the consumer viewpoint which he had before he started studying a product."

     That was a passage from a book that I recently read. I share it, not because it states anything that we don't already know, but because it was written in 1928 by Roy S. Durstine (the "D" in BBDO) and is, what I believe, the fundamental truth of our business. We need to be reminded of that. Yet I hear that advertising is all about Innovation or Conversation or Technology or Delivery Systems or Making Things or Entertainment or God-Knows-What. Those things are only part of what it’s about. Front and center, it’s about Persuading a Consumer. 

     I’m thinking it's time for a reload.

What can we possibly learn from a traveling salesman?

    In the early 1900’s and through at least the first half of the century, a traveling salesman would knock at your door and, if he were any good, immediately do two things to begin his sales pitch. He would make two gestures – one with his right hand and one with his left foot: he took off his hat and he stepped backward. Instinctively you would open the door even wider, inviting the salesman inside. With those two gestures, his sales pitch would become a sales talk.

    These days, it isn’t that easy to get invited inside someone’s home, except in porn movies or slasher films. But the thinking behind his two gestures still holds true. It sets just the right atmosphere for effective advertising.

     There’s the courtesy of the lifted hat from a well-dressed professional and the deference expressed in the backward step, disarming your instinct for self-protection. In a matter of seconds, the salesman laid the foundation for respect and credibility. The step backward left a space for you to fill.

     Now let’s talk about the majority of pop up ads, pre-roll ads and hot links. In a medium designed to fulfill instantaneous wants and needs, these ads screw with our rhythm. There is no knock at our door and there is no deference and there is no space for us to fill. These things are in our face.

     My point is this: There are principles behind the successful techniques of the past, lots of valuable lessons that we can and should learn from. All we have to do is realize that we are in the business of persuasion and suddenly we have the history of human behavior from which to draw.
     As the salesman left, you would smile as he walked down your front steps. Then, almost breathlessly, you’d head back into your home and realize that you had committed yourself to 29 monthly installments of the Encyclopedia Britannica that the nice young salesman represented. You had been sold. And you didn’t mind one bit.

It's so good, I'm tempted to steal it.

     You know Colum McCann, the writer? The New York Times wrote a piece on him in last Sunday's magazine and it reported about an organization that McCann helped found, Narrative4. The organization "brings together kids from different places – sometimes directly contentious places, sometimes just places with their own hardships – and how over a span of days the kids pair off, one from each place, and exchange the story that most defines who they are. At the end of their time together, they tell the stories to the larger group, taking on the persona of their partner – an exercise, McCann said, in "radical empathy.""

     I love this. Imagine an agency that embraces "radical empathy"? Imagine this exercise being part of the criteria to join an agency? Imagine an agency that is serious about its ability to tell the right story to a consumer? 

     I wish I came up with "radical empathy." Hopefully, I'll have plenty of opportunities to borrow it. And if I ever forget to give Colum McCann credit, let this be my admission of his ownership.

I. About management

     I seem to obsess about how to motivate people, not just consumers, but fellow employees. Maybe it's the old teacher in me. All I know is that, when it comes to the engine of the agency, I can't ignore the sputtering. 

     Recently, someone told me that half the kids coming out of VCU believe they will one day be on their own. In other words, 50% of the kids are not dreaming of working for JWT or Publicis or DDB. My guess is that the other 50% are dreaming of working for Weiden and Droga. 

     They may have a point and it may very well be a legitimate one, but their thinking is flawed – natural to youth but flawed.  They are dreaming of results – glory, wealth, hardware and one’s name on the door, when the real joy of being creative is the process, the journey, the moment. Who’s going to help them with that? To see not only that there is a joy in coming up with a clever idea, but to see the deeper joy in mastering that idea, working out every detail, every flourish, every word. Really owning it.

      I believe there is a cry for that joy – to make that job a craft, to have an earned pride that goes beyond wit, something that a superficial accumulation of skills on a resume won't give them. But they can’t hear their own cry – it's muffled under all the distractions of technology, holding companies, bad management, and so on. And this joy is not something they have much experience with, anyway; so whether it was once on a college art project or on a spec ad for the portfolio, they probably didn't know what it was, didn't have a name for it, only that it felt good. I believe, I have to believe, that this cry is fundamental to truly creative people. No, it’s not about having done big things; it’s about becoming big in the doing. I have to believe that. The quality of the execution, the thing we are ultimately responsible for, depends on it. We have to hear that cry and then help them answer it. If we don't, the most talented people won't stick around. More tragically, some of them won't even know why, wherever they go, unfulfillment keeps following them.

     Essentially, it’s a cry for creative directors who know how to manage. We need to hire and train people to be effective with them. We need the Phil Jacksons of advertising. We need people who know how to give form to that amorphous cry within. That said….

II. The Chicken and the Wolf

     A Chicken spotted a Wolf that was heading straight for his coop and cried, "WOLF!"

     The Farmer, coddled in his Laz-E-Boy, mumbled, "Stupid Chicken!" and ignored the cry, for he had an invisible fence to ward off such intruders. Little did he know, however, that a car accident down the road had hit a telephone pole and tripped his electrical supply. Of course, the Farmer's great-great-grandfather used to respond all the time to a boy that cried, "Wolf" but that was before there were invisible fences.
     Meanwhile, the Wolf leapt in and ate the Chicken.
     The next morning the Farmer saw the white feathers scattered about, put two and two together and thought, "Thank God. Now I won't have to listen to that annoying squawk box anymore!"

Moral: It's not as easy to get human beings to do stuff as it used to be.

My vision video script

I don't see a lot of people who can put an argument together.
Sometimes it depresses me;
Now it angers me.
It makes no sense.
Clients pay us to convince people to buy their product –
Right?
And in order to do that,
we have to change people's minds –
Uh,
I'd call that persuasion.
I'd say we're in the persuasion business.
Forget media.
Forget the work that you are dying to do;
Set aside your post-modern proclivities;
Stop
And do as Tim Delaney once said:
'Write yourself out of the problem.'
Address the fundamentals.
Address the things that people need in order to change;
Because those things haven't changed.
Executions may have changed.
But what people need to change
Has not changed.
Read The Art of Rhetoric –
Bill Bernbach did.
It was written 2,500 years ago and it will tell you
More about persuasion than Mashable will.
What's the argument?
Why should people believe you?
What are people feeling?
And what do they need to feel to change?
If you're not thinking about those things
Then you're floundering.
If you don't care about those things,
Get out of the business
Because you're fighting it:
We are in the persuasion business.
Know the timeless truths
And then,
THEN make cool shit in service of persuasion.
We are not in the business of making things;
We are not in the business of conversations;
We are not in the business of making cool shit;
We are in the business of persuasion.
Ask any client.
It doesn't mean ads have to sound like "We bring good things to life"
Or "Have a Coke and a smile."
Executions change.
They don't have to suck like "1800 Empire" or Brad Pitt for Chanel.
Executions should change.
Media changes, too.
But last I looked,
We are still talking to humans;
So we are in the persuasion business.
It pisses me off that it's so hard.
It used to be we had bosses who knew this shit.
Now we have bosses who answer to bosses who know nothing about the business of persuasion,
Bosses who can't tell an argument from a social media strategy,
Holding company CFO's,
Uber anxious account people
Who live for down-to-the-minute arrangements
And big decks.
They know shit about persuasion.
But that doesn't change what we do
And clients know what we're supposed to do.
If you're to do it,
You have to defy all the Babel tongues around you;
You have to write down the argument,
Find the further reality,
Imagine the hook set in deep
THEN persuade people.
Forget the trends;
Write the argument,
Write beyond time,
Get to truths the world can't deny.
If you don't believe it's possible,
Go to MOMA
And see all the timeless ideas that look new,
Just rise above the sounds found in alphabet soup.
Wax logical,
THEN wax poetic,
Write the lines of the proof,
THEN write between the lines.
As simple as that.
It'll work and nobody will be able to fuck with you.
That's all you can do.
We are in the persuasion business.
Lean into it.
WE ARE IN THE PERSUASION BUSINESS!