The
gifted creative, gifted mom and gifted friend Jenny Nicholson gifted me yesterday
with a memo from Bill Bernbach.
Bernbach
wrote the memo 72 years ago when he was just 36. Outside of one instance of Bernbach
bowing to the “patriarchy,” there’s not a single word in the memo that I would
change. There’s not a single false-note. Not a single observation that isn’t
more relevant today than it was when Harry S Truman was President.
Jenny
had sent me a jpeg of the memo, but because I wanted to ‘get it into my head,’ I
took the time to type a replica of it on my own computer. I resisted my usual tendency
to re-write. In fact, I even kept the typeface and the line-breaks exactly the
same. Not to lay it on too thick, but I somehow managed to show restraint that’s
rare today. I didn’t change a word or two so I could make this mine. Bernbach’s
memo is very-nearly perfect. It’s not to be sullied by the likes of me.
Maybe
because I am a genetic Hebrew, I’m going to start very near the bottom of the
note. Just before Bernbach’s signature is a simple closing. Bernbach signs off “Respectfully.”
Not cheers. Not a smiley face. Nothing glib or superficial. Instead with that treatment
we all get too little of: respect. It’s hard to feel respected when very nearly
the only communication you get from management is a shrill, all-caps admonition
to do your time-sheets. It’s hard to feel respected when raises have vanished.
And bonuses. And spot bonuses. And for the most part, even simple ‘thank you-s”
and hand-shakes.
Moving
up the page from the bottom, you’ll come to this sentence. “Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art and good writing
can be good selling.”
First, it’s clear from this small
assemblage of phrases what our business’ goal is: good selling. And it’s just
as clear how we can achieve our goal: Good taste. Good art. Good writing.
David Ogilvy might have said the same thing
a little differently when he said, “The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your
wife.” In other words, treat the people who look at your ads well. Respect their
discernment, intelligence and desire for things of quality—not things that
pander.
Strolling still further up the page, I come
upon these words: “If we are to advance we must emerge as
a distinctive personality.” Today, despite all the corporate
bushwa we’re fed about diversity and inclusion, a prevailing conformity affects
and infects our business. We greatly admire people who think like us. We stuff
people into tight-fitting boxes and “this is the way we’ve always done-it-ism,”
and then we say, “go wild.”
Whole generations of creative people go to
school—not to learn about the world, but to learn to make ads. We unabashedly
say, “this commercial will be like the one _______ shot for ________.” Don’t
ask if they’ve ever seen “Citizen Kane” or read “Moby Dick” or ever done anything
other than intern at an ad agency. They haven’t.
You won’t
find anyone who fits this description from Raymond Chandler. [He’s]
“an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer
and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
This man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit conformity
is the point of Bernbach’s preceeding four paragraphs. Some choice sentences
here.
“The danger lies in the temptation to
buy routinised men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies in the
natural tendency to go after
tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather
makes us look like all the others.”
“the danger is a preoccupation with
technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability.”
“look beneath the technique and what
did you find? A sameness, a mental weariness, a mediocrity of ideas. But they
could defend every ad on the basis that it obeyed the rules of advertising. It
was like worshiping a ritual instead of the God.”
“In the past
year I must have interviewed about 80 people…It was appalling to see how few of
these people were genuinely creative.”
Now, the first three paragraphs, starting
with the third and ending with the opening. To my mind these words describe our
current “professionalization” of our industry and our work. We rely on what’s
been done before. We rely on the pseudo-science of pseudo-data. We drink some
noxious alchemy of Kool-Aid, Hemlock and with a strong dose of MBA and we reach
our conclusions.
As if anticipating the powerpointization of
instinct, humor, surprise and imagination, Bernbach writes: “I don’t want academicians. I don’t
want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I want people who
do inspiring things.”
“There are a lot of great technicians
in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the
rules. 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.”
Finally, Bernbach’s opening.
“I’m worried that we’re going to fall
into the trap of bigness, that we’re going to worship techniques instead of
substance, that we’re going to follow history instead of making it, that we’re
going to be drowned by superficialities instead of buoyed up by solid
fundamentals. I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries begin to set
in.”
Maybe I should write it a bit more like e.e.
cummings, so it sits better on a page and in your memory.
I’m worried
that
we’re going to f
a
l
l
into the trap of BIGNESS.
That we’re going to worship techniques.
Instead
of substance.
Follow
history
instead of making it.
I’m worried lest hardening of the creative arteries
begin
to
set
in.
I’m worried.
-
-
But enough of me.
Here’s Bernbach.
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