Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers
Q: I want to come up with a commercial message that’s totally fresh and unique. Any advice?
A: Give up. It’s all been done before. That is, if you believe Donald Gunn, the former creative director at Leo Burnett, a powerhouse advertising agency that handles such clients as McDonald’s and General Motors.
Gunn took a yearlong sabbatical and wound up categorizing all effective ads into 12 “master formats.”
But don’t get depressed if that means you can’t come up with an original ad… to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, “mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal,” and in advertising, theft is considered a “creative homage.” So go ahead and use this slideshow as a guide when planning your next advertising campaign.
If you’re trying to sell a novel, coming up with a TV commercial, web banner, or YouTube video can be problematic. If you reenact scenes from your book with actors, you deprive your audience of creating their own mind’s-eye version of your characters. How many fans of the first Harry Potter movie could read the sequels without picturing Daniel Radcliffe?
So you avoid doing a live-action reenactment. That leaves blurbs, right? But too many blurbs and you may have to use this.
Where does that leave you? I’d tell you, but I have a truly original idea, and I don’t want you jackals to steal it.
Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past decade, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, and the San Diego Padres. He recently finished his first mystery, KATZ CRADLE. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.
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